Faster Gameplay Tips

[MDPhillips]

I've noticed when looking at the results for some of the GOTMs - where everyone is playing the same size map and game speed - that the amount of time the game was played varies widely.

What tips does anyone have for speeding up your gameplay? I might get more sleep if I could finish a game faster.

Thanks!
Mitch

 

[Bierp]

I might get more sleep if I could finish a game faster.

Thanks!
Mitch

Sleep is for the weak. Game till you pass out!

B

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Some tips I use:

- By midgame when all my cities have their key infrastructure built, I automate the workers. Yes they sometimes make stupid decisions, but by then there is so little left for them to do that they don't cause any harm and you can easily grab the nearest worker and put things right.

- I use build queues a lot. For the cities that aren't particularly critical, just load up the build queue with the next few things you want built. Also set the emphasize options - usually food and commerce for a city I'm not going to bother visiting that often.

- Use right click and hurry production or change production to alter what is happening in a city without visiting it. If you have a build queue loaded the city will automatically resume on that after your change production order.

- For Heroic epic city you can set it to automatically cycle across a few unit types if you want.

- I disable the animations for attack and leave them on for defense. This way I know who is attacking me and where, but get instant results for my own attacks.

- Use the foreign advisor to check out potential trades from everyone rather than visit each of the other civs in turn.

- When at war, generally I concentrate my attacking army in a single large stack (or multiple large stacks if I am really large). A large stack usually does better vs collateral damage and is easy to move.

 

[mice]

A note on automate workers; in options check the box for "workers leave improvements", or something like that. This way they dont replace your cottages with farms ,which they wil if you let them.

I presume you're using hotkeys for workers...I , T, M . B for bombard , W to cycle to the next active unit F to fortify .... < and > to cycle through the stack and check promotions,health.

Good original question because if you can reduce the labor of playing you can spend more time on strategy. Why rush if it's a great game?

 

[ownedbyakorat]

Just be careful that you don't hit "F" to farm. Doing that once early in the game can destroy your civ's competitiveness in no time.

 

[Hypnotoad]

I have a programmable mouse and I've programmed one button to be the "enter" button. This way I can just click it to end the turn, click it to leave the city screen, etc. I've found that it actually speeds things up a bit. I'm a big fan.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

I presume you're using hotkeys for workers...I , T, M . B for bombard

What technology do I need to research to enable the bombard action for workers?