Game Speed

[Barghaest]

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.

I don't have that issue. Most of my cities may be churning out wealth for a handful of turns before the next tech unlocks (one thing I did forget to mention was moving Process Wealth to Agriculture); however, there's ALWAYS something I can be doing - managing workers for city growth (pop or border), exploring (early to mid game), stomping out barbarians threats (early to mid game - especially since I use raging), border skirmishes with AI/CS (suffer plenty of DoWs but if things start to get too dull at times I can start a war on my own), participating in "missionary wars" to combat heathen religions/spreead my form of enlightenment (early mid to late game), etc...

As the game progresses a unit of some sort is usually available for upgrade and those not descendants of UUs tend to be rebuilt from scratch (especially back city garrisons who haven't earned much xp since you can get a decent starting amount from Renaissance and higher through buildings/SP) so even if I'm not churning out new buildings I'm replacing older units. Plus I have to keep searching for new resources (Coal, Oil, Aluminum, Uranium) and constantly keep an eye out to prevent other Civs from achieving a victory condition.

With the number of Civs I play (normal allotment for map-size and usually play Standard or higher) there's almost always a war taking place... and fairly often I'm involved (voluntarily or not).

The times in which I'm actually just hitting end turn is seldom to none (the few exceptions are when I've lost interest in the game and just want it to end but another victory condition would be easier than domination - being runaway tech leader or finding a huge issue with my mod that requires a restart to implement but wanting to go ahead and win since I've gone so far) I've always got SOMETHING to do... I haven't done away with most of the empire micro-management, I've just slowed the pace of the game down to a point where mid to late game I don't have to do SOOOO much of it each turn - just a bit at a time.

 

[Welnic]

I adjust my game speed according to the size of the map that I am playing on. Normal for small or smaller, epic for standard and large, and marathon for huge.

 

[glider1]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this already but unit maintenance costs and upgrade costs matter greatly and so standard speed introduces the greatest tension in terms of strategic planning for military capacity I think. This is because you have to plan the intersection of when military technology matches your warplan exactly. Standard makes you have to think ahead more than marathon in that respect. It depends if you are trying to maximize the difficulty or maximize the immersion. Quick speeds is even more difficult however I think the AI is probably incapable of handling the challenge of quick speed well enough.

Cheers

 

[tyrael233]

Always standard. I simply hate playing when I know that I've won, so I end up never finishing games on Epic/Marathon.

Of course it happens on standard too, but the time it takes to finish is greatly minimized.

 

[Barghaest]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this already but unit maintenance costs and upgrade costs matter greatly and so standard speed introduces the greatest tension in terms of strategic planning for military capacity I think. This is because you have to plan the intersection of when military technology matches your warplan exactly. Standard makes you have to think ahead more than marathon in that respect. It depends if you are trying to maximize the difficulty or maximize the immersion. Quick speeds is even more difficult however I think the AI is probably incapable of handling the challenge of quick speed well enough.

Cheers

Actually slower speeds tend to have a more drastic impact on unit maintenance for me (easier to maintain a large army in standard since I can reach economic boosting techs faster/increase gold producing cities in pop faster whereas in slower speeds the maintenance tends to ramp up slightly faster than my economy forcing me to constantly disband workers/sell buildings/pillage neighbors/bully city-states/track down barbarian camps to maintain an army large enough to fend off multiple aggressive AIs - especially the case if unit production speed does not scale identically to growth/research).

 

[bluebud]

Who did you say that it's designed for standard speed? I think it's designed for all speed. Anyway i played quick. Because i wanna play with various leader and strategy within a limited time.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Always marathon for me, and sometimes it feels too fast (especially in the later ages).

 

[Darac]

I wish the earlier era's took a little longer. I find i'm at gunpowder before i can blink. Civ4 had a nice pace to it, you could beeline for swords and take a whole continent before they were obsolete. then take the second continent with rifles and win before industrialisation.

I find i don't use anything except longswords if i start with iron, if i don't there is no time to settle a city on iron and then use longswords before they are out of date and i find muskets and rifles just wiz by.

But i don't have the patients to play epic or slower speeds.... I like to think i can finish a game in one sitting.

 

[Barghaest]

Always marathon for me, and sometimes it feels too fast (especially in the later ages).

Heh, a kindred spirit.... if I ever get this mod finished you might like it.

 

[Esperr]

I play on standard and quick, I feel like its more fun and challenging then the slower speeds, simply becuase you have less time to faff about, theres less margin for error, and you have to play a much tighter game.

 

[CYZ]

In summary...slower = easier

Nah, it's not that simple. There's certainly two sides to this coin.

Don't forget that when you are the one being attacked by a more advanced civ, then you are the one who won't be able to pop a new millitary tech in a few turns, and that you won't be able to produce a few extra units before they reach your cities.

In general, offensive war=easier on slower speeds. For everything else you need alot more planning because you can't switch tech- or buildplans quickly.

 

[DrunkenRine]

wasnt there an option in alpha centauri that just nerfed technological progress? i guess that is kinda missing in civ 4 and 5 ... i share the opinion, that the slower game paces just make the game tedious instead of enhacing the flavour of exploring an era more in detail.

 

[Dogmouth]

It depends on the map size. For me, standard = normal, large = epic, huge = marathon, and small = quick (although I almost never play small/quick or smaller maps because victory on small maps feels petty). The larger maps require slower times to balance out the large distances your units need to move.