How long does a game take

[mardukes]

Inspired by all the reading I've done in here but particularly by the discussion of micromanagement in the nearby thread about early science developement....

...how many hours does it take you guys to play a game? At king, at emperor, at diety?

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Let's just say I don't measure the length of a game in hours! (but I'm extremely slow)

 

[Ace]

I haven't really kept a log on the time invested, but, off the top of my head, I'd say anywhere from 15-20+ hours to play a Diety game on MGE with 7 civs, large map and raging hordes. The time really depends on what kind of game you are playing. A bloodlust game can be over relatively quickly, a Spaceship landing will take a little longer and if your going for a high score game, it will take a lot longer. (I recently finished a game in which I was going for high score and I estimate it took over 450 hours to finish! When you have 254 cities and your delivering 127 food freight each turn, it takes about 3-4 hours per turn!)

 

[Old n Slow]

On the other side, I've played "5 city" challenges (limit myself to five cities, no other restrictions) and played at Prince & King level mostly. Game start & end in an evening (say 4-5 hours) with the arrival on AC.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

I've done OCC games in a total of around 10 hours - and like I said...I'm really slow. I could see even ME zipping through one in one evening if I played "fast and loose" without second guessing every decision.

 

[ElephantU]

Sounds like the "perfectionists" are all weighing in here...

A "quick" game, Small to Normal map, Bloodlust, minimal log: 4-6hrs over 2-4 nights.

A "careful" game (like GOTM), extensive log, analysis, tech path planning, Supply/Demand calculations, etc: 20-40hrs over 10-20 days...

 

[mardukes]

Originally posted by ElephantU
Sounds like the "perfectionists" are all weighing in here...

A "quick" game, Small to Normal map, Bloodlust, minimal log: 4-6hrs over 2-4 nights.

A "careful" game (like GOTM), extensive log, analysis, tech path planning, Supply/Demand calculations, etc: 20-40hrs over 10-20 days...

Then I must still have quite a ways to go from a level of completely-suck. I don't even know what you guys are talking about much of the time and I just took over an hour for one move dealing with the switch from Communism to Democracy (every city alerting me of something!)

 

[la fayette]

"Un éléphant, ça trompe, ça trompe,
Un éléphant, ça trompe énormément"

Mardukes, don't bother to compare your speed with anyone else.
The aim is 'having fun' .

If you feel that you are still low on the learning curve, play small maps and ask for advice when needed: experienced players are people who have played this game thousands of hours (probably over 10 000 as far as I am concerned ) and should have an answer to almost any question you may ask.

 

[AGRICOLA]

An hour to process a change from Communism to Democracy seems a lot unless you have many cities and have to deal with nearly universal unhappiness caused by military units away from home cities, inadequate luxury levels or lack of wonders/city improvements that increase the number of content/happy citizens.

You might take a hard look at the City Display Options and eliminate any that are not needed. Ask yourself if you really need info about WLTK and much other junk? For a government change I always disable the city disorder warning, it's much faster to later scan the Attitude Advisor city list than to suffer through endless city disorder pop-ups.

 

[Strikefang]

Takes me 5-6 hours on Deity, my best game ended in 1935 cause those #@*$@* Russians launched the SS, I was far behind in tech, I declared war on them and got owned in 2 turns.

 

[mardukes]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
An hour to process a change from Communism to Democracy seems a lot unless you have many cities and have to deal with nearly universal unhappiness caused by military units away from home cities, inadequate luxury levels or lack of wonders/city improvements that increase the number of content/happy citizens.

It was actually the opposite. 80-90% of the cities went "We Love..." As it was my first time for this particular transaction, I realized that I didn't have much time to get all the Sewerage Systems in place before I needed them. So I had to adjust each cities production/allocation AND change what was building AND do the incremental buying AND I'm trying to adjust the shields so as to minimize waste on the last build so I'm doing those calculations! Whew...

Fortunately, I was sitting with over 30,000 bucks. I spent over a third of it during the turn.

 

[Ace]

Originally posted by mardukes


It was actually the opposite. 80-90% of the cities went "We Love..." As it was my first time for this particular transaction, I realized that I didn't have much time to get all the Sewerage Systems in place before I needed them. So I had to adjust each cities production/allocation AND change what was building AND do the incremental buying AND I'm trying to adjust the shields so as to minimize waste on the last build so I'm doing those calculations! Whew...

Fortunately, I was sitting with over 30,000 bucks. I spent over a third of it during the turn.

Sounds like you are on the right track.

 

[Old n Slow]

I agree. With a hundred or two cities, typical late game turns last at least 15 minutes each, and complicated turns (as you described can be an hour+). My late game conquering takes a while because I tend to surround the city to prevent partisans, having every unit (w)ait so they can surround the next city & repeat based upon the number of healthy howies. since the 'toggle' turns (switching from one gov to another) take so long, I'm starting to 'toggle' less often.

 

[Smash]

I can play a deity small map in 3-4 hours quite easily.An OCC can be done in similiar time.My record is about 90 minutes for OCC.

I did a large real world map space race game in 4.5 hours once landing in 640AD.On the other side is something like Red Front where I'll spend hours on the 1st 2 turns

 

[la fayette]

Smash = the Flying Mouse
(... the man who clicks faster than his shadow)

 

[mardukes]

Originally posted by Smash
I can play a deity small map in 3-4 hours quite easily.An OCC can be done in similiar time.My record is about 90 minutes for OCC.

I did a large real world map space race game in 4.5 hours once landing in 640AD.On the other side is something like Red Front where I'll spend hours on the 1st 2 turns

and win!?

testing my credulity

 

[Smash]

oh no,I always lose

The last game I "lost" was a deity +5 OCC game where I was edged out just at the end .Very fun game that was.Another I had trouble with(although I did win eventually) was DaveV's "Head Start" scenario where AI were given a "perfect" setup with 6-8 free cities along with a cursed event.txt that kept sending units at certain co-ordinates that just happened to be right in your start position.

 

[Leowind]

I haven't tracked hours to play a game, but given my limited free time for playing--I average probably a couple hours a week--It literally takes me months to finish one game. Most of that is spent trying to remember what I was doing last time I played My late game turns tend to run 30-60 minutes, but I think I'm getting a little faster (I hope). I also tend to play slow and think everything through and not trust my memory, so I'm always double checking stuff.

 

[ElephantU]

Try a log - check the GOTM site for some examples. Helps a lot!

 

[rogeristhebest]

i have a HORIBAL FATE :ripper: :rocket: [plasma] :shotgun: i lost 1 time in 10 mins so it depends on: the size of the world how many civilizations (human players take longer ), barbarian activity, bloodlust takes longer, and most of all how good u r lol,chat from start can somtimes speed it up or slow it down and so on it can take anyware between 5 minutes to 100 hours i gues its possible