Discussion on amount of time spent on GOTM

[Zur]

I am having trouble finishing GOTM on time, with my limited real-time. Assuming 50 cities, one would take 15min per turn at a reasonably quick pace. given that we play 450 out of 550 turns (until 1950AD), and excluding the first 50 turns which can be completed quickly, we have 400 turns at 15min each ie. 100 hours. This means 3-4 hours everyday for a month.

Now, I have only 2-3 hours every 2-3 days per week. Most people in full time work would find that they have a similar time budget, I think. Am I missing something here? Where does all the time come from? Any tips to save immense amounts of time?

Edit: I already automate workers and exploring units after the initial phase. Most of the time is taken in the mid to end-game IMO.

 

[Lawrence]

Not true IMO, I think 50 hours at most.

Map size and CPU speed maybe a big issue. But I run the game on a Pentium3 450 machine and the speed is good for standard or smaller maps. With large and huge maps and fullhouse AI, the game goes very slow in industrial when AI starts to build its hundreds of infantries.:soldier:

If you play peaceful expansion game the time will elapse much more quickly, maybe 12-13 hours a game, I don't know, never did any tests. But some players like Grey Fox can complete the game "in one run", and I figure that he is human being and needs some sleep.

 

[Zur]

I use a pentium 1.3Ghz. I'm trying to play most of my own games on smaller maps now, but for GOTM, they are usually standard or larger, for the reason that players have NOTHING to do for the rest of the month after the game is complete!

I find that most of the time is spent during my own turn in setting production/moving units (especially during war). Less so during AI's turns. Cycling through units can be a problem since sometimes I want to move a stack of units LAST, but then I select a unit nearby and have to cycle thro the whole stack again before going on to my other units which I want to move first! I can fortify them, but there's danger of forgetting to activate and move them at the end of turn.

How an average (non-OCC) game will be completed on 12 hours is beyond me... Grey Fox ever said he stayed up the whole weekend, so...

 

[Ribannah]

So far I haven't been able to complete any of the GOTM's in time.
It would be nice if we had 3 months to send in the result - which also means we would always have three active games to choose from. If today you have just one hour to play, it's not a good idea to pick the one where you're involved in a great war; instead you could play a decent number of turns in the new game that is still in the ancient exploration phase.

 

[ShredZ]

Well lets see, if you are moving a stack of units use the J hotkey, goto commands are way faster than manual movement.

Also, turn off the animations for massive battles, esspecially if you are about to bombard 30+ times in one go. The only thing the is bad with no animations is on the AIs turn, its hard to see wuts going on b/c they move too quickly. (1.3ghz)

The real only time consuming aspects of the game is moving units and city maintenance, use the governor to manage the Happiness and tell him to either focus on production or commerce, it works well for me. And Ive already given hints on how to speed up combat, good luck!

 

[Phillip_martin]

Hang in there

Originally posted by Zur
Now, I have only 2-3 hours every 2-3 days per week. Most people in full time work would find that they have a similar time budget, I think. Am I missing something here? Where does all the time come from? Any tips to save immense amounts of time?

I have about the same gameplay time with the added restriction of a three year old into the equation so I struggle to get my game in every month. Both my submissions this year have been on the deadline!

I don't think there is much we can do post-industrial (apart from using the governers, automating workers and J stack movement) to speed things up. I would write off attempting a good milking score and concentrate on an earliest whatever victory.



Keep an eye on the discussions going on about how the GOTM will be run in future as debate rages over the flawed (IMHO) scoring system. What may result is a new version or (off-shoot) which has different goals than seeing a game out to the bitter end.

From a personal point of view I find the latter stages of a game far less interesting than the early ones so I don't mind missing the boat on a GOTM submission. Not mention my score usually sucks

 

[Lawrence]

My preference:

No movement animations.

Show Enemy Moves, don't show friend moves at later stage.

Set every useless city on marketplace/aqueduct/worker, the former two will never complete, the last one got its uses.

Use governor to manage useless cities' moods.

If use mass bombardment, turn off combat animation.

Nevertheless, CIV 3 is a time-consuming game.

 

[Lawrence]

And it is. In my 1h50m session just now, I only advanced from 1752 to 1768, 8 turns.

But this was because of grand warfare, I was at war with two different civs and took a total of 20+ cities in these 8 turns. I would expect another 15 turns like this before every opponent's destruction.

 

[Zur]

Yes, I use roughly those preferences. Am now switching to governors as they could save some time with minimal tactical tradeoff. Still trying to maximise use of corrupt cities. Hanging in there...

I guess I have got it pretty much optimised unless I start making some heavy strategic tradeoffs.

I guess philip_martin is right about finishing the game fast, though I would usually prefer to play out to the natural ending.

 

[Sir Yelof]

I have two suggestions:

1) Change playing style away from min-max game. If you just try to enjoy the game and don't focus on squeezing every last bit out of each city, you'll be able to complete the game much faster. Turn on the governors, automate maybe 1/2 your workers in the later stages... Okay, you won't get the top scores on GOTM, and every once in a while you'll be cursing your luck (I missed the Great Library by 3 turns in GOTM9), but overall it's vastly preferable to worrying about the tedious tasks.

2) Play more lower difficulty games until you get faster. I found that the simple tasks of deciding what to build next and where to move people and all that took a lot of time when I first started playing. Now they're nearly automatic choices (with some adjustments as you move to higher difficulty levels.)

--Yelof

 

[Ribannah]

I find that by far the most time-consuming part is to allocate the citizens to the city's squares. This could have been much easier if only some simple optimization techniques had been programmed, eg to prevent riots and overproduction of food.
Decision-making is not the problem, it's the manual execution of your own orders that hurts. The governors are simply not good enough to leave it all to them.
Chosing what to build, giving orders to workers, selecting spots for new cities etc. goes pretty fast in comparison.
Lower levels are just plain boring after the exploration phase is over.

But I'm not complaining that a game of civ3 takes some time, the 'complaint' is about the requirement to finish the GOTM within a month.

 

[civ_steve]

I experience the same problem. With my schedule, I can get 50 to 60 hours of game time during the month, but I need about 15 to 30 more hours to finish the game. I suggested a GOTQuarter a couple of months ago, but there wasn't much interest.

I, too, am experimenting with different ways to speed my play up, but have yet to finish a GOTM.

 

[Serg]

I have the same problem with latency of each turn and hole game.
For decision of this problem I choose the warlike style of the game and work for domination or conquest victory. I'm sorry for that because in Civ2 I played to the end of time for the maximum development. In Civ3 I only 1 time played at modern era. For the same reasons I usually miss the large map GOTM (I play for only GOTM).

 

[Lawrence]

This is my first milking game(GOTM 9), and I am finding it extremely tedious to clean up pollution in late game. When I use automate, my workers go to set up railroads in useless mountains and leave the pollution be. Who can give my some advice on how to clean up pollution and save time?

 

[Sir Yelof]

I think Shift+P tells the worker to go find pollution and clean it up. Don't know if it's as permanent as Shift+A for automation but try it out.

--Yelof

 

[Lawrence]

I tried Shift+P, but the workers stops working and turn the control back to me when all pollution they can reach are cleaned. So I have to fortify them and wake them up again when new pollution comes out, this is what I call tedious.

 

[Zur]

hmm, it is probably programmed this way to avoid wasting workers' turns. If you tolerate slight pollution, have just enough workers to ensure that new pollution will always be cleaned up but that some pollution (as little as possible) always remains.

 

[Phillip_martin]

If you have to fortify a worker it probably mens that they have no useful task to do.

As Zur suggested use Shift-P for the majority of your drones, live with that far off useless mountain being mined for a few turns until they finish and notice the pollution. With a decent sized automated worker force most task are done quickly.

Another suggestion (and one I haven't tested out myself) is put a couple of workers in the problem cities and hit Ctl-Shift-I. If all tiles are improved it should sit in the city until the green slime appears. After cleanup it should go back into the city to rest and detoxify. Give it a go and tell us the result.

 

[Lawrence]

Ctl-Shift-I means I would have to put a couple of workers in every city. Though I have all the slaves which can be used in this way, but leaving 4 workers for an entire island is much more efficient than leaving 2 workers for every city and seems worth the tedium.

Maybe I should go for your advice 1. Another question: when your city's got a food surplus of 1 and there's no other squares to work out( so, the city's pop will go increase-decrease-increase-decrease ), what do you do? My current solution is to pillage one railroad to stablize it, but it collides with the idea to automate workers.

 

[Zur]

What I do sometimes is just leave it. I get 1 extra pop half the time (with granary). Your solution is probably more efficient. I don't think it really makes much difference to the game overall at that stage.