Epic feels like playing Marathon...

[Hakuoh]

Turn 511...
i normaly won arround this time.

 

[I_qua_I]

 

[MantaRevan]

I agree. The game is slower than I anticipated.

 

[kingofsealand]

First game i won was played on prince/epic speed as poland. The extra social policies from poland allowed me to explore more of the cultural tracks than ever before. However, by about 1800 I found my expansion had slowed my research to the point that my technologies did not line up with real world dates. Previously one might rush through techs and be gaining modern warfare units in the 1800s. Now its quite the opposite, im just now getting my gatling guns and rifleman and such coming up on 1900. At first i thought they had ruined my favorite game speed but the more i think about it the more i realize, if they did not do this then huge civs could easily rush to a technology victory. Especially if they headed straight for the "space procurement" branch of freedom (i had access to this long before any spaceship parts). Then one could simply buy all the parts in a mere few turns!. I think what they have done is more significantly increased research costs with empire growth so that a tech victory has been switched from the easy "fallback plan" for people who fail a culture win to a more challenging win which forces you to optimize your research capabilities without 20 different cities. Otherwise you may have the capacity to build the parts but will never get to the research required in time to build the complete ship.

 

[Mesix]

Normal feels like Epic. I was playing as Poland going for a space victory. I rushed through Liberty (easy with the extra policies from UA) for the free GS to settle an academy early. I stayed as 1 city until I finished my National College. I was able to get another GS relatively early as well. I expanded to 5 cities and had libraries in all of them, universities in three. I am just about to enter the Renaissance Era at turn 200. In G&K I would be doing it at about turn 120 using the same strategy.