How to shorten game + keep your civ small?

[kleslie]

I enjoy playing Civ II on my powerbook, but I find that the game runs too long, and I usually end up with a huge and unwieldly civ. I've been playing on deity level with raging hordes. Questions:

1) How can I effectively shorten the game? I could play scenarios, although there aren't that many for the mac. Any other ideas? At the moment I usually don't wage a war of conquest until I need to. Would it be faster to just try and wipe out all the other civs ASAP?

2) How can you win without ending up as a massive and unwieldly civ? I've tried to get by with around 12 cities or so, but invariably some other civ comes along and grows huge, and then I have to go and conquer all their cities to prevent them from beating me.

What I enjoy most about the game is the initial exploration, as well as putting together my own network of cities, etc. I think it'd be more fun to play with fewer cities, say 8-12. I usually play with the smallest map and 7 other civs.

I would appreciate your input!

 

[Magnus]

Well there is something called the "One City Challenge" (OCC for short) where you build one city EVER, and try to win by spaceship. I have done it on Prince level and narrowly lost at King, but there are people who routinely win it at Deity. The game goes exceptionally fast, usually no more than an hour or two. There are several threads in the civ2 forums that discuss the concept at greater length and even a few that describe how they won in a detailed timeline.

 

[oryx]

I was going to suggest One City Challenge as well, but since it has already been done, here's another idea.

Generate a custom map using these parameters, small area, small land mass, archipelago, 5 million years age. That usually limits the number of cities that can be created because these settings tend to create a bunch of rugged islands.

 

[Sodak]

The OCC is a quick and fun game, you should try it. A similar strategy is to race for early AC landing. Solo and Samson over at Apolyton developed 3 approaches to landing before 500ad - One of them even made it in 76ad!

Basically, you build a Super Science City (the OCC type city) and a handful of helper cities. These you do not let grow, they exist solely to supply the SSC with caravans for wonders, and minimal science to max the tech rate. You do not build a civ, you build a research machine, giving trade arrows priority over everything. Your path thru the tech tree is crucial to get a pre-500 landing. Even without that element, the game is quick.

 

[Goatman]

Another way to win without building a large unweildy civ is to use the super growth strategy (Read the war academy). using this tecnique, your civ of 8-12 cities can be equal, if not better than another civ of 50 cities (So long as that civ is controlled by the AI, humans are more intelligent)

 

[Jorge]

You can try to play in a small map with 7 civilizations (not many space to found cities, so each civil will usually have no more than 10 cities). Also normal map, small land mass and archipielago works. The main problem with these solutions is that you have to limit yourself if you don't want an easy game (if you found more than 5 cities you will win easily).