Did they change the quantity of turns?

[LunaticSlave]

But don't research, units and buildings all cost more on marathon, so while you may have thrice the number of turns to build eg a worker, you also need thrice the number of hammers = thrice the number of turns? So in the end it's the same, no?

Yea everything costs 3 times compared to normal, except units (units are just twice as much). Marathon for me is micromanagement heaven thanks to the insane amount of turns compared to other speeds. My average games on marathon are around 15 hours range on normal maps...my last game was of about 20+ hrs though, hell of fun. If you are into micromanagement, then marathon is for you!

 

[IronCrown]

Ok, that explains it. Makes me loath it even more though I prefer little armies over huge stacks.

 

[Rusty Edge]

I'm spending about 40 hours to complete a game now. I don't think it's micromanagement so much as more of everything.

I don't like the speed of techs (they seem to come too easily )and unit obsolesence ( it happens on the way to engage the enemy ) on standard settings.

 

[ladiesman]

But don't research, units and buildings all cost more on marathon, so while you may have thrice the number of turns to build eg a worker, you also need thrice the number of hammers = thrice the number of turns? So in the end it's the same, no?

Everything does take longer/cost more, yes, the early game especially is slow moving. But after you have established cities set up, things can move more quickly. By the time...Axemen show up I have a few cities that can churn them out in 4 or 5 turns.

Wonders do seem more...well...epic. In an Epic game, I seem to build wonders no problem. On a Huge map in Marathon with 18 Civs....Wonders are a desperate race.

Like I said the techs seem to come at just the right time....in an Epic game, I get everything too quickly. Plus the fact that in a Marathon game I think everything obsoletes too quickly...in an Epic game I kinda feel like why do I even bother? In the few Epic games i've played I didn't even build Musketmen or Riflemen and just went straight to Infantry. Or maybe built a few Musketmen just...because and then built Infantry. UU's seem worthless in Epic games....Mid-late game ones....I played an epic game as England and my Redcoats were obsolete before I built one!

It's even worse for me because I play peaceful and tend to be a production/tech juggernaut. I could see Epic being good if you're a military player and spend alot of resources on the military. As it is, I keep a small defense force, capable of "holding the line" if a war does start and clean up any Barbarian invasions. Lol, I have an odd style of warfare since BtS came out....I fight completely defensive wars that last a long time....and take advantage of war weariness and flood spies into enemy territory. Alot of times I end up with border city defections and then sue for peace, maybe even giving one back.

 

[axident]

I don't play epic or marathon anymore; in fact I can't remember the last time I played a non-Normal game. The AI is weak enough at war as it is, so I don't feel like piling it on thick by going to epic/marathon. Normal for me.

 

[Lurking Liu]

I love Marathon for all the aforementioned reasons, but also because there's less of a safety net. Cost of units are increased--though not as much as buildings--but movement speeds are not. So you don't have the time to fix a major mistake. Especially with the improved AI... Tokugawa will not hesitate to throw ten Galleons full of units at your rear coastal cities with only one turn of notice. In other speeds, you can quickly scrape together two or three units to defend, but in Marathon you're lucky if you've gotten one in that time, often without a chance to promote them.

 

[Arlborn]

Marathon kinda feels too much on the military side for me.
Units are proportionally cheaper than the other speeds, and if a Stack Of Doom comes right next to your border, it is WAY harder to build the required units to defend in time. So, just build a lot and throws a SOD in the AI and the AI gets even worse defensive power than normally it is...And by the way, does the AI actually 'knows' that the units are 'cheaper' in marathon?? Nah, I prefer Epic. Although sometimes I play marathon or even normal.

 

[FexFX]

Personally I love Marathon...But that's not why I popped in to post here...

Yes Firaxis changed all the game speeds...but they didn't adjust any of the other formulas relating to gamespeed..Such as cultural growth rates, Building and improvement rates, etc etc...

The result is you have more turns in which to do the same ammount of stuff...This ends up making it so that the game ends before you reach 2050 about 90% of the time now by either a cultural victory or a Space Race victory if the UN doesnt win it first... I've seen Cultural Victories from the AI on Noble difficulty with 89 turns left in a NORMAL speed game...

When I made my Speed mod "FexFX--Bigger-Longer-Deeper-Harder" I took a close look at all of these formulas...and made fixes where appropriate.

Those of you who prefer shorter games wont much care for it, because the shortest game available is about the same as an Epic game in BTS now...and those of you craving 1500 turns wont get it either since I scaled back to 1200 turns to remain consistient with Vanilla and Warlords (plus to be honest I'd already done all the math for 1200 before I realized it was 1500 now).

 

[Rusty Edge]

I don't play epic or marathon anymore; in fact I can't remember the last time I played a non-Normal game. The AI is weak enough at war as it is, so I don't feel like piling it on thick by going to epic/marathon. Normal for me.

Even though everything doesn't apply I'm always eager to hear what you're up to. So just for comparisson - I've played 3 or 4 of my 40 hour games on BTS. How many do you think you've played on standard settings at this point?

 

[paintchip]

this may be a little off topic, but why isent there the option to set how many turns you want to play anymore? sometimes i just wish i had a little more time to win domination.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I don't play epic or marathon anymore; in fact I can't remember the last time I played a non-Normal game. The AI is weak enough at war as it is, so I don't feel like piling it on thick by going to epic/marathon. Normal for me.

You have a good point, and I agree with you, but that problem is easily fixed by bumping up the difficulty one or two notches. At the moment I'm playing a Marathon Large Terra map with Agg. AI on Monarch, and I have to say it's quite fun. Sure the AI is weaker at war than we are but when you see 3 AIs declare war on you over the course of ten or so turns, and have 3 stacks coming at you from different directions you wouldn't be so quick to say it.

By the way, I am usually a normal-speed player too (and always quick speed for MP games) so I'm just playing a marathon game to spice things up a bit.

 

[PieceOfMind]

this may be a little off topic, but why isent there the option to set how many turns you want to play anymore? sometimes i just wish i had a little more time to win domination.

You can turn off time victory. Though I haven't tried this myself, I think I heard that doing this means you can't win by any victory type after 2050. Can someone else clarify this?

 

[phloppy]

For me, I hate units being outdated before I even use them


To solve this, I went into the CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml file and double the research number for marathon. OOOhhh yeah, tech up to your special units, then pump them out enmass, and take over the world!!

Much more satisfying this way. I like the tech research number at 600-700 depending on how long I want to stay in the early early tech stages. Any higher, and I end up having nothing to make but archers, axeman, and spearman for too long of a period

FYI standard marathon tech number is at 300. I find that, even though you play vanilla marathon, the production of units are also slowed down in my opinion. So in essence, it feels like the game is scaled to feel the same way as other speed. Just a lot more turns in between, but without the fun of having use your favorite units in any gratifying way.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I never allow a time victory, so I'm pretty sure it alway was and always will be infinite turns.

I'm thinking of making a new speed, with all the build times of quick but the tech and inflation rate of Marathon. If I played marathon I might consider allowing a time victory, but I not a big fan of pressing Next turn every few seconds.

 

[Yzman]

I use marathon because even though some turns drag, it makes late game that much better.

 

[IronCrown]

I admit that late game flies by too quickly, it always feels like I spend 80% of the game in pre-gunpowder time. I never use modern units, I usually fight my last war with infantry. The game is usually finished before someone builds the first tank.

So in the late game I'd probably switch to epic speed if it were possible. But I won't go through 600 turns of boredom to get to this... if someone would make a mod that allows speed change during a game, that would be interesting.

edit: I guess a rather simple solution would be to just double the beaker cost of late techs...

 

[Underdawg]

Since all I play are huge maps... how could anyone not use Marathon on those? Epic or normal speed on a huge map? Your stack of macemen will be obsolete before you know it. Trust me, there would be no wars until at least the medieval age because by that time you are still expanding! Especially with the default number of AI on Huge Maps (11). Try it for yourself.

On the flipside... I don't know why someone would use Marathon on something small like a Normal Size map (excruciatingly small size IMO). Plus, on such a map size, Marathon really cripples the AI by awarding Micromanagement (which the Human is superior at ie. warring).

Also, Normal is sooo quick. I finish it in 1-2hours. (on a standard size map). I can shift+enter through the whole game so quickly.... (Overclocked e6300 @ 3.0Ghz makes this game blaze by).

 

[IronCrown]

My normal games last ~10 hours, though admittedly I often play lazy and don't pause the game when I do something else like eating. But I don't see how you could complete a normal game in 1-2 hours, that's impossible. MP games are mostly played on quick speed with blazing turn timer. Nobody can play much faster than that and still most games take 5+ hours to complete, unless there is an early conquest victory.

If you complete a normal game after 400 turns and spend only 20 seconds on every turn on average (very unrealistic for late game empires), that means 400*20 seconds = 133.3 minutes. Add computing time to that and it's about 3 hours. And those are really unrealistic turn times.

 

[VilleDick]

The only game I've played it was 2020 and it said 79 more turns left. Am I under the impression that game now end in 2100? And not 2050?

 

[Underdawg]

My normal games last ~10 hours, though admittedly I often play lazy and don't pause the game when I do something else like eating. But I don't see how you could complete a normal game in 1-2 hours, that's impossible. MP games are mostly played on quick speed with blazing turn timer. Nobody can play much faster than that and still most games take 5+ hours to complete, unless there is an early conquest victory.

If you complete a normal game after 400 turns and spend only 20 seconds on every turn on average (very unrealistic for late game empires), that means 400*20 seconds = 133.3 minutes. Add computing time to that and it's about 3 hours. And those are really unrealistic turn times.

Computing time on a standard size map with for 50+% of the game is literally instant on my computer.

Playing a standard size map normal speed game right now (started at 4:15AM-4:20AM, it is now 4:44AM as I write this, turn 205 now, computing time between turns have started to be one second each instead of instant). Since I don't want to stay awake much longer, I just automated the workers, expanded until I was cut off, and now I'm just shift+entering, maybe I'll wipe out my northern neighbour, I have quite a big stack. BTW settings are Monarch, Standard Size, Fractal, everything else default (I used Play Now).

I got 3 great artists already, I may go for a cultural victory (beeline for mass media then run just culture slider). One thing to note, I have tons of wonders in Athens... I am about 4th in tech, but I only lag by 2 or 3 techs behind the leader.

Observations, Around turn 200+ turn computing time goes from nearly instant to about a second give or take, goes up to two seconds sometimes during war. Turn computing time takes longer during wars.