About the tech tree and unit obsoletsion: I think that the gap between units is far to big and it is to few techs. You should be able to resarch improvements to each unit which for example can mean that you musketmen gets flintlook muskets instead of matchlook muskets or something like that, going from musketmen to riflemen without seing any development in the muskets is very strange.
I used to play marathon when I was a kid and had more time, now as someone with a job, house, and wife I play epic. Honestly I think epic is pretty balanced anyway. Standard everything blazes by too quickly for there to be any real appreciation of anything (IMO)
I wish there was a way to change from standard to epic or epic to marathon when the game hits the industrial era.
I don't like the "nothing to do but hit end turn" situation in the early eras of the game on slow speeds; but I feel that the industrial/post-industrian eras go by too fast and that it becomes too much of a mad rush to hurry to a victory condition.
I'd like to enjoy the second half of the game more
I find Normal to be the best for me. I finish one game a week playing off and on about an hour per day. I have played a few Epic and Marathon. I played Marathon in Civ 4, but Civ 5 runs a lot slower on my computer. I only have dual core so the turns take a while, from 10-30s each.
I play marathon, with a mod that increases research time slightly, but decreases production down to standard production (Wonder production stays at marathon though).
However if I'm going for something like a OCC or cultral victory or something I play standard. Otherwise its a bunch of clicking 'next turn'.
I'm still hardcore, and do marathon. But I'm thinking about switching to epic. If I ever do anything other than the liberty tree again, I'll do epic. Because not having that 25% increase on building improvements on marathon is perhaps the worst thing in the world. It takes like 20 turns to build a trading post.
The main reason I still play marathon is a holdout from my Civ4 days. I have too many Civ4 traditions, it's why I don't do as well in this game as Civ4. Marathon just seems like the "hardcore" type of play, and standard seems to be for noobs who have no attention span. No offense to anyone, I know that's not accurate to say, but I still feel like marathon is for the hardcore civ players who like their games long. I remember in Civ2 a game of Civ would take me like 2 days to play (2 full days mind you, it was my weekend).
I voted Marathon, but I actually play a custom speed more than anything. Slow research/growth/culture/GP (between 1.5-4x slower than Marathon, depending on specific category) but standard speed construction/build/training. Really get to play around with units more and have to pace expansion so you don't overtax economy/happiness. I find it very enjoyable since I can use a unit type for several turns before an upgrade is available (have some early epic battles in the days of warriors and archers and again with swordsmen and horsemen then later with knights and pikes).
Current game I'm somewhere in the 500ish turns (554 I think) and just entering the Medieval era with the AI close behind. Massive late-classical landwar taking place on the next continent over between Ethiopia, Polynesia and Inca (just embarked a few scouts across to scope the place out) while Spain and I (only two on our continent) are in a standoff - although I could probably wipe her off the map if I wanted, I'm concentrating more on testing some of my latest changes and maintaining good relations with three nearby CS but if Spain keeps bullying them I'll burn a few of her cities down.
I play marathon, with a mod that increases research time slightly, but decreases production down to standard production (Wonder production stays at marathon though).
I voted Marathon, but I actually play a custom speed more than anything. Slow research/growth/culture/GP (between 1.5-4x slower than Marathon, depending on specific category) but standard speed construction/build/training.
You may say its' balanced for standard but I maintain standard is awful on any larger maps. When you invent riflemen. Build one. Send it at your enemy and you are cranking out infantry by the time it arrives it's pretty stupid.
I voted epic but I would play marathon exclusively if I could slow down tech but not production. Having a decent amount of time in an era is not worth 35 turns to cut trees ;x (yes i know that's an exaggeration)
Extended Eras: Science and age progress at marathon speed, but production is at normal speed.
Basically, your cities will get all buildings assuming you get them early. you'll have massive armies in ancient and classical eras, and unit don't obsolete nearly as fast. Just don't play as spain with wonders and you're set for a good game (was playing on king for a change, was easy as warlord, found GBR 3 tiles away from my capital in working range, Potosi 20 tiles away and sinai in a desert due north)
Just disable cultural victory, it proceeds at normal speed, having 5 full policies at medieval era is just silly.
I use this old mod from the mod database, called 'Marathon speed rebalance'. It got relatively little attention, and good luck finding it now, but its absolutely the best mod ever. The current only game speed mod "historic game speed (extended eras)" available in the workshop is much worse.
Extended Eras: Science and age progress at marathon speed, but production is at normal speed.
Basically, your cities will get all buildings assuming you get them early. you'll have massive armies in ancient and classical eras, and unit don't obsolete nearly as fast. Just don't play as spain with wonders and you're set for a good game (was playing on king for a change, was easy as warlord, found GBR 3 tiles away from my capital in working range, Potosi 20 tiles away and sinai in a desert due north)
Just disable cultural victory, it proceeds at normal speed, having 5 full policies at medieval era is just silly.
Thank you, thank you, a thousand times THANK YOU. This is pretty much EXACTLY what I've been searching for.
Just wondering; how does the AI handle these altered times?
I'm indecisive so my turns take forever so I can't play higher than normal. Playing every free moment it still takes me a full week to do one game of civ5. I was usually two weeks for civ4, and once or twice it was two months.
Thank you, thank you, a thousand times THANK YOU. This is pretty much EXACTLY what I've been searching for.
Just wondering; how does the AI handle these altered times?
The ai handles it decently enough, i only played this 1 game so far, and with such a lucky start it got extremely easy extremely fast, but on king i'd assume you'll have some pretty fun times warring with warriors, spearmans and archers.
Fun fact, most civs are in the medieval era, in 1500. BC
I also adjusted the Pantheon/Great Prophet rates up 400% (40 to found first pantheon, 20 each additional, first GP at 800 with 400 increment) and extended Peace Treaty length to 30 turns.
I removed all Free Tech/Social Policies replacing them with other benefits (currently free Great People, but I'm still testing to see if this throws off GP rate too much, if so I might adjust the GP rate down to compensate or come up with another worthy bonus to replace free tech/SPs).
I'm playing with no Ancient Ruins (I'll get to adjusting their outputs later) since free tech, unit upgrades, free pop/settlers, huge culture/faith boosts - and to a lesser extent even large amounts of gold - gives the lucky finder a HUGE boost over other empires early in the game (when your first tech will take about 40-50 turns, stumbling across a free tech in half a dozen gives you a tremendous edge over everyone else).
And I swapped the bonus food from Granaries with the Food Kept After Growth from Aqueducts to slow initial growth and extend Ancient era slightly (had a side effect of making Tradition finisher give free Granaries, so I'm working on a rebalance for it since a free Granary in 4 cities is basically just 4 less maintenance a turn - by the time you complete the tree you will likely already have built them - and not that special)
Had to adjust unit maintenance to avoid empires going quickly bankrupt since the game length is far longer than standard marathon pace and I made all civilian units - settlers, workers, workboats, Great People, missionaries, inquisitors - maintenance free (still testing those values since the occassional empire can have outrageous income mid to late game - such was the case with Ethiopia when they pursued Diplomatic Victory, I was hard pressed to stop them because they had an incredible income compared to mine)
Modified some of the civ traits to avoid them unbalancing a slower paced game (for example I removed the Science bonus from generic Citizens from Korea so they only get a bonus from true Specialists and makes less of a major tech gap early in the game but they still retain a competitive edge from building wonders and specialists) - oddly enough I didn't need to adjust France since slower research pace means less cities you can manage and the minor culture boost doesn't make them a massive runaway (they do take the culture lead early, but that SHOULD be the case of a UA, it just shouldn't mean insta win).
Outside of game speed related changes, I'm incorporating other changes that make the game more enjoyable for me (quite a bit from CIVUP/VEM such as deserts/snow taking 2 move and promotions to counter it and I'll be working events in eventually) including:
Made barbarians a bit nastier (150% bonus vs cities, the ability to embark across oceans from the game start and their naval vessels can also limp through ice tiles at 1 tile per turn - currently trying to figure out how to get them cross mountains now that Can Move Impassable doesn't work since the Carthage UA) so even though they don't heal you have to keep an eye out for them and I usually play with them Raging. They still have a cap on xp (although a bit higher than standard, 100 vs 30) but plundering camps has always been its own reward and with Honor they become even more valuable (not to mention certain Civs have UAs that make them worthwhile - Aztecs, Germany, Ottomans, Songhai... even Celts now).
Extending Recon units past Scout
Adding in a line of civilian promotions - they currently only earn xp when first produced, it's granted by libraries, universities or public schools as well as Collective Rule policy in Liberty
A few new units (my main one is a truly late game unit - Combat Engineers with Globalization, they're basically workers with a 65 Combat Strength, extremely weak vs any Future era, who can earn Recon promotions and duplicate any Build of a Worker but can move through ice and paradrop to access regions otherwise inaccessible to standard workers - I started incorporating them way back before G&K cause I often found otherwise inaccessible locations with resources, especially ringed by mountains or along the poles)
Modifications to some buildings (Univeristies give less science from jungle but also offer some for other areas like Marshland and Sea Resources making them more useful worldwide instead of just in heavy jungle areas... gave a bonus to GG rate to Heroic Epic and added the Morale promotion to a few other National/World wonders - I always found myself trying to build ALL my units out of whichever city had Heroic Epic because of a free promotion, having 3-5 cities to do so helps my OCD a bit and was a better solution than making the promotion instantly apply to all units akin to Great Lighthouse).
And a few other tweaks still the works (portaging crews for workboats/Great Admirals to transport them across land to different bodies of water, for example... still rather buggy because you have to swap back to workboat BEFORE embarking the crew and swapping from Land to Sea units will not always put you in the adjacent water tile - often find the unit teleported to the nearest coastal city so I can't get the workboat to a resource blocked by ice from the city as I'd hoped right now...).
I can only agree with this that standard is in many ways easier than marathon. On higher difficulty the AI has much less turns to wipe you out, before it's army is obsolete, so your much stronger on defense and a human player is going to be better at planning upgrades, so you get an advantage on offense too where the AI would not know to go back home with his last age army.
If you build a small/tall empire and turtle a relatively peaceful game then maybe it would be easier to adapt. If you intend to go on the offensive and do some war mongering, then it is much much easier the slower the game speed is set. If you build several longswordsmen and send them off to invade an AI civ, you don't want them to arrive and be greeted by riflemen. Likewise, you don't want your AI opponent churning out defenders every turn as you are trying to capture his cities.
I have to second this... even though I prefer a slower pace of research than even Marathon pace, I'm probably a mediocre player at best (usually get WTFPWNed in multiplayer and even by AI in most RTS games because I'm more of a concept empire builder first and turtler second and genocidal warmonger as a last resort).
The AI doesn't adapt well to slower paced games. It's a little better since G&K/the pre-G&K patch, but prior to that at the speed I'm running now, the AI would drive it's empire into utter ruin without needing me to attack them (matter of fact I used to DoW AI and slaughter units/burn cities to HELP stimulate their economy and reduce their unhappiness) because they didn't manage income well (they were a unit Pez dispense regardless of what it did to their GPT) and their happiness worse (pooped out settlers like they'd eaten them with too much curry even though they were already in the hole because of lack of access to luxuries).
I'd previously ran even slower research (1200%); however, I'm noticing the AI occassionally dip unhappy (not revolt critical currently and most is result of losses of luxuries due to war with other AI) at my current rate so I can't risk going slower until I'm sure I can stabilize current speed (happy with current speed anyway right now, just unsure how mad it'll get post-Industrial).
Slower paced games give the human player more time to analyze situations/adjust plans/counter AI moves whereas the AI takes the same amount of time to compute regardless of speed and has less creativity to handle situations (no thinking outside the programmed box).
The only time Slower-pace is NOT easier is related to handicaps. If you play on Deity or Immortal, the AI starting with a buttload of free techs that will take you hundreds of turns to churn out is a huge disadvantage, so when going for higher difficulty levels than Emperor or possibly King, faster pace means less tech-gap advantage.
Thank you very much, this seems to solve what I was ranting about in my OP.
EDIT: The lack of things to build if you aren't at war does seem like it would be a problem...the creator of this mod tries to solve it by making conversions from production to wealth and science more effective, but I can't help but assume that I'll quickly become bored of not constructing new and great things in my cities. Looks like I'm going to have to cook up some new buildings of my own.
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and was a better solution than making the promotion instantly apply to all units akin to Great Lighthouse).
