A'AbarachAmadan said:
I have to agree, though I never did that in Civ 3 since they took so much longer to play.
People keep saying that Civ4 games are faster, but I don't really see the difference. Civ4 games have fewer cities than Civ3 games, but a similar number of "productive cities". In Civ3 I would often have lots of highly corrupted cities doing nothing but building workers, which never got very big and didn't take much micromanagement at all. Large cities in Civ4 take slightly less micromanagement than in Civ3, because you don't lose production carryover, but it's not a huge difference (although it's certainly a welcome change from 1.09 to 1.52). Combat is about the same, perhaps a bit slower (it takes longer to grind through in the Middle Ages in Civ4 than in Civ3 because Cavalry only move 2, and because cities have larger cultural radii, and you can't encroach on them so easily with your own cities). Workers take a bit more time to manage in Civ4 than Civ3, because you have more choices, because you can't just mindlessly assume that building roads everywhere (and then railroads) is the best thing at a certain point, and because I feel the need to find something for my workers to do (like chopping all of the remaining forests at the right times) at a point in the game when in Civ3 I'd be joining my excess workers back into cities.
I don't deny you could play a quicker game just as an experiment, and not pay as close attention to all of the details, but then, I think you could do that in Civ3 too.
I'm just not seeing how the game is faster.
Also, personally, playing the same game twice just in order to get a better score doesn't appeal to me. I have no problem with someone else doing it, though. I'd rather play two different games in the same time, and if I don't score as well, that's ok.
P.S. The option to play with a growth notifier would, by itself, significantly speed Civ4 games, because I find that much of my time is spent clicking through cities, most of which don't need anything new. But it's pretty important to visit and evaluate each city on the turn that it grows. (Actually, I'd also like to have a "pre-growth notifier", that would list cities that are will grow on the next turn.) This isn't currently available for GOTM, as I understand it, but it's true that one could play test games with more tools so that they would go faster.
)
Wanna give a Civ4 GOTM a chance. I've won diplo on Settler and Time on Chieftain (just missed spaceship by a few turns--originally shooting for diplo again but couldn't get the votes)...never played any other levels--and never fought any wars. Never played on epic or lake either. Should be interesting!
