Huge Terra Marathon Game (Emperor Level)

[polypheus]

Anyone else played with these settings?

I started playing with these settings first on prince then moving to monarch and now trying out emperor. Due to the huge map and 11 total civs (not uncommon for all 11 to be comparably powerful with about 5-6 cities each) and marathon settings making building units/buildings take a long time, the game is quite difficult and VERY different than emperor level with smaller maps and/or faster speeds.

For one thing, with 11 civs, founding religion tends to be difficult and religion in many games tends to be very fragmented making diplomacy a challenge. Oftentimes, declaring a state religion is suicide so no-state is the only choice (which means forgoing organized religion bonus).

With the huge map on emperor and marathon speed, it is not uncommon for much uncivilized lands to exist and therefore facing barbarian archers and axeman that are a real threat in the early game. Therefore archery is not an option but mandatory (your empire will be crushed if you rely on warrior defense against barb archers and especially barb axemen!) But even with the huge map, with 11 total civs in the game, the race to claim enough lands for your 6 cities itself is not easy and scouting and early planning on city placement is vital. And resources are reasonably spread out so not uncommon to have horse, bronze or iron out of reach (sometimes even all three!)

Also with 10 other civs nearly equal in power and co-religionist feelings, and marathon speed building of units, wars can be quite long drawn and debilitating. Even if successful, you tend to only cripple yourself while other civs pass you by in tech while you spend precious time building units instead of libraries, monasteries, etc.

And with so many civs, it is common to be bordering on 5 civs (with others basically bordering as their border an ally), so security is always a concern. Having long distance empires then becomes not feasible (due to maintainence but more importanly difficult of defending across such vast distances from end to end). Having so many civs bordering also means it is common to have an aggressive civ nearly forcing you into debiliating wars. And you MUST pre-plan your defense from the getgo as waiting until the enemy has a massed stack against you, it is too late to build up sufficient last-minute defensive armies with marathon speed building!) Yes I know you can whip but it won't make enough of a difference if you have the 1-2 unit anti-barbarian defense and that's it.


Anyone play with these settings besides me? It is a TOTALLY different game than emperor level with other settings!

 

[Spammurabi]

The closest I've played is large 4 Custom Continents 18 Civ maps. In such a scenario, I ran into a lot of the problems that you described, although with 18 civs barbarians were much less of an issue. I hate barbarians, so I set it up that way on purpose.

Given that you have one giant continent, you may be able to pick up a religion from one of your neighbors, especially if you have sailing. However, in my experience, the Creative trait really shines when you can't get a religion easily and you need to do a lot of landgrabbing and fogbusting. It just makes the game run a lot more smoothly.

Something else to consider is that the larger the map type you are using, the more favorable a cottage economy becomes relative to a specialist economy, so it may be advisable to play a financial leader. If you can get an early religion as well (and with Wang Kon or Huyana Capac, you very well might), that would solve your landgrab issues.

Now that I think about it, Stonehenge or the Incan culture-granaries would be good alternatives to creative and early religion. Wang Kon also has the advantage of early protective archers to defend you from early barbarian incursions.

Spiritual leaders also have the advantage of being able to skip over the 4+ turns of anarchy every time you switch civics, but whether this is really better at Marathon speed relative to normal is debatable.

I would recommend either Huyana, Wang Kon, or Augustus as your leader. You may do well with one of the Egyptian leaders as well- Hatty is creative, and Ramsesses can easily get Stonehenge, and the war chariot would very effectively protect you from any barbarians early game (hopefully you'll find horses!).

I really enjoy the long, epic game like this, with grand armies and huge empires slugging it out. Have fun!

 

[Harbourboy]

Good luck on making Wang Kon work with these settings. I am on my 20th attempt at a Korean Emperor Domination win on a Continents map, and I'm still trying to find a strategy that leads to victory.

 

[madscientist]

I have played every leader on Prince level (currently woking on my last one, victoria) using huge maps, marathon speed, randam land masses, water level, terrain. To me it is more realistic (did Rome really conquer that entire globe with a Pratorian rush???). It forces you to plan through the modern era unless you are popluar enough and can quickly bang out the UN. Domination is impossible, conquest intriging (I did this with Washington and alot of razed continants), Space a probability, Cultural risky. Diplomacy changes as most AIs drop their religions. There are many enjoyable features to these games there will always be numerous leaders doing and some doing poorly. Also diplomacy is intriging, especially if you can get the entire world at war with each other while you stay peaceful and teching.

 

[polypheus]

I agree with you madscientist. The reason I play Huge Terra Marathon is that it is the most sensible, realistic situation possible that can resemble real world history as closely as possible. A lot of the gamey strategies simply won't work in Huge Terra Marathon as it is a completely different animal. There's too many powerful Civs around that careful play is a must.

HOWEVER, at Emperor level, playing it is extremely frustrating. I found even Monarch frustrating but I was able to get to the point where I could play successful games in it sometimes. (Note successful does not mean necessarily winning but means being able to lead a Civ prosperously to the end of the game with a good chance of winning in the end).

At Emperor though, you have to first of all have a very good starting situation. Most starting situations are simply crap and you have to abandon them right away. Others look okay but after playing for a while you realize the strategic situation is poor.

But once you find a good strategic situation, then you need a little bit of luck and near perfect play. One time I found had a great situation going early on. However a barb axeman reached my capital (defended by City Defense II Archer) and to my astonishment won and razed the capital thus ending that game. (There was no way to recover from that). I took a slight gamble (which usually works) and instead of whipping an additional archer, decided he could hold on. He failed.

Then I started another good Emperor game. However, I was unable to secure bronze and didn't get iron until late (that tech takes forever to research in Marathon). Unfortunately Monty started a war and it was debilitating (having to whip many emergency archers) but I prevailed and was able to sue for peace. But immediately thereafter Ceasar (another generally aggressive Civ) declared full scale war against me and pillaged my iron mine and roads just as I finished building them. I was forced to defend with archers only without roads which was a real PITA (my empire spanned 20-25 spaces at maximum extent!) I was able to defend for a while until he brought in Praetorians and it was the end.

The point is that playing Huge Terra Marathon Emperor, you must play a near perfect game. I have played one successful such Emperor game but pretty much everything has to fall into place. I think that it is simply too difficult a level to play consistently and am about to abandon further attempts at it!

 

[madscientist]

Polypheus,
I agree. I have tried the higher levels but realized I had little chance of winning using my usual starting settings. That is why I decided I would rather win with every leader on my comfortable level. I will probably play some monarch games and see if I succeed but probably not emporer. What I would really like is to be equal with the AI (Nobel level) in tech and production pace, will accept some starting happiness/health limitations but have alot smarter AI. Hopefully this is the case with BTS. I also do not like terra maps, and prefer exploring to determine if I have a fractal, arhceoploego, contonant, Pangea map. I also found in these games that barbarians have to be planned for more. If I have lot's of forrests/jungles but distant AI's I better beeline the great wall or at Bronze working AND animal husbandry. I also try to utilize my natural boundaries, mountain ranges, rivers, penninsulas etc... all the while trying to keep city number reasonable while the AI's spam 10-12 cities. If I try that many cities the economy crashes, so I am frequestly looking at trashing 6-10 AI empires with 10-12 cities each for domination wins. I'll take the spaceship at that point, especially if an ocean separates us!! Again the huge maps offer alot more options and issues and the marathon speed lets you war at a reasobale pace instead of starting a war with Macemen and ending up with rifles.

 

[polypheus]

@madscientist

Agree with you on all counts. I like Terra only because it simulates Earth history but with an otherwise random map. However, I can see wanting something completely random as well and having to completely explore the map.

My own experience on huge maps, marathon speed, emperor level, is that the initial hurdle is VERY steep but if you can get past it you can play a successful game. HOWEVER the problem is getting your empire started and fully developed. While you are doing this, you are extremely vulnerable and are depending on having the "right" civs for neighbors and for those civs to strategically have the "right" religion so you can actually declare it yourself without risk. And then having access to bronze/iron early enough to build a decent army that can handle all classical era units thrown against you. (Chariots won't work at all for defense and horse archers take forever to research and even then are vulnerable against veteran spearman so metals is much more needed for early survival than horses). Getting past this vulnerable stage is what is basically make or break the game. But if you can fully develop and build a decent metal-based army, you can then weather most invasions and in any case your army is of decent size, AIs tend to not pick on you at that point too much.

HOWEVER before reaching that point, AIs, especially aggressive ones, will take full advantage. This is why the Emperor level is so frustrating, and I am discovering, not really all that fun. Too many things have to fall into place and while occasionally that happens, you end up having to abandon tons of games to get that to occur that you start to tire of it.

 

[Florian]

Are Terran maps the ones where everyone starts in the Old World? And if so, does that make Astronomy the uber tech, since whoever gets it first is able to get a big jump in colonizing the New World?

 

[Maestro_Innit]

I'm so glad someone else is having the same experience. I only ever play on Huge maps and on Marathon settings and only ever with 18 civs. For me it's the most strategic, most involved gaming you can get out of Civ. On standard everything it's all about rushing this or rushing that and can be too much like a game and not much like a strategic experience. Personally I don't like playing Terra though cause obvious forknowledge of another resourse rich landmass is not realistic. I like to play Fractal maps and it's not uncommon to have large island masses enough for 5-6 cities which are unoccupied. With Terra there's always the unconcious need to get to trans-continental sailing techs whereas on Fractal there's the "is there, isn't there?" question which makes you think about it.

(Note successful does not mean necessarily winning but means being able to lead a Civ prosperously to the end of the game with a good chance of winning in the end).

I couldn't agree more. Whilst obviously aiming to win every game, for me it's not a necessity for enjoyment. As long as I'm one of the power brokers in the world and am not completely left behind then winning or losing is less important. I'm also not anywhere near good enough to try this at Emporer level! For me I think playing huge / marathon adds at least two difficulty levels. I play on Prince mostly, for enjoyment, but Monarch for a real challenge - and I rarely win on Monarch. There's just too many civs and too much land making it really hard to manage a large empire on higher difficulties - especially whern the computer seems to be able to just dump cities anywhere, regardless of resources, just to fill the land with their colour and yet they can still afford to supply everywhere?

Anyh00 - for me it's the only way to play. It can take a week to play a game but hey .... that's value for money

 

[madscientist]

Ahhh!!! 18 civs! I have tried this on my computer but it slows down so much it's not worth it. Still 11 civc offers a good challenge. Now if I could get the wife and kids to let me have the new/faster computer for a week then I can get somewhere.

 

[polypheus]

For me I think playing huge / marathon adds at least two difficulty levels. I play on Prince mostly, for enjoyment, but Monarch for a real challenge - and I rarely win on Monarch. There's just too many civs and too much land making it really hard to manage a large empire on higher difficulties - especially whern the computer seems to be able to just dump cities anywhere, regardless of resources, just to fill the land with their colour and yet they can still afford to supply everywhere?

Anyh00 - for me it's the only way to play. It can take a week to play a game but hey .... that's value for money

Agree completely. Compared to previous Civs, the AI is actually quite decent so even at Prince, if starting situation is poor, I can have a difficult time of it even now. However since Prince, the AI is basically equal to the human player with only small bonuses, I can usually fight my way out of tough starts as the AI do not enjoy very big advantage in terms of production speed, supply costs, etc that are too big a hurdle to overcome.

But on Monarch, that is much harder and on Emperor, pretty much requires everything falling into place. It has happened for me but if I have to play dozens of games for it to happen, then can I claim that Emperor is actually playable for me???

Huge maps and marathon definitely adds at least two difficulty levels. If you play huge with 11+ civs, no rushing/conquest or other gamey RTS-like strategies will work. You cannot hope to defeat all the Civs or even close to it thus endless wars and early conquests will simply result in you duplicating the Mongol Empire which falls behind quickly in tech and gets crushed by the Civs you couldn't touch that were able to sit by while you do your warmongering. Not to mention of course that being overly aggressive Monty-style play leads to your invaded opponents calling on war allies as well.

And with marathon speed, strategic, long term planning is crucial as you cannot expect to research or build units quickly enough to overcome poor planning.

Monarch, I think, is probably realistically the most difficult level that can be consistently successfully played on Huge Maps at Marathon Speeds. At Emperor and above, the hurdle becomes very steep and extremely frustrating. AIs are expanding like mad, thus you must expand like mad just to get your 6 cities! While expanding like mad, your infrastructure and armed forces is lacking and you are extremely vulnerable to early aggression which many times you cannot survive. Not to mention that on huge maps, you must deal with complex religious situations and rarely getting horse/bronze/iron in the right places and hooking them up timely that it is quite a chore to get by. This is what makes emperor at huge/marathon not really that playable in most cases I am discovering.

 

[Florian]

For me I think playing huge / marathon adds at least two difficulty levels.

I can see how playing with 11 more civs than the standard would make it a lot harder to come out on top, but on a thread about game speeds a little while ago, consensus was that Epic and Marathon make the game easier, since they allow the human player longer periods of time to take advantage of his vast superiority to the AI in the area of military strategy.

 

[madscientist]

I can see how playing with 11 more civs than the standard would make it a lot harder to come out on top, but on a thread about game speeds a little while ago, consensus was that Epic and Marathon make the game easier, since they allow the human player longer periods of time to take advantage of his vast superiority to the AI in the area of military strategy.

Yes, you can take advantage of this but within limits. However, with the size of a huge map the time it takes allows a civ to research needed techs. Also there are more AI's they can ally with or at least trade techs for. Then they can always vassal themselves to a superior tech CIV (Mao, Saladin and Cathy love to do this) learn the techs then break away at a similar tehc level to you. Warfare is only one issue and the edge in production/research times of the civs make up for it on Prince (and Monarch).

 

[Florian]

Madscientist,

But the AI has those edges on any Prince or Monarch level game. I'm just suggesting that Huge makes the game considerably harder, while Marathon scales that difficulty back a little bit. That is, it would be harder to play a Huge map at Standard speed.

 

[madscientist]

Florian, Gotcha. But in my opinion it makes the game less fun if more difficult. I have always had a preference for games where I can sit back, think, and take a while completing it. Standard spped is just too fast for me. I do agree huge marathon is probably easier than huge standard.

 

[polypheus]

I can see how playing with 11 more civs than the standard would make it a lot harder to come out on top, but on a thread about game speeds a little while ago, consensus was that Epic and Marathon make the game easier, since they allow the human player longer periods of time to take advantage of his vast superiority to the AI in the area of military strategy.

You have to consider that at Emperor+ levels, the AI have various health/happiness/production bonuses and in addition also starts off with tons of units from the very start (one settler, a couple workers, scouts, archers. etc). Meanwhile here you are starting off with your lone warrior and settler and that's IT!

At marathon, research, units, buildings take a LONG LONG time to complete. Why a settler on average take 34 turns (and other units similarly long). And research of even basic techs can take 20-30 turns! (and some like Iron Working and Alphabet can sometimes take upwards of 50 turns depeding on ones starting situation!) Similarly mines, workboats, roads, etc.

Meanwhile, the AI has a couple of archers, scouts and workers ready to go. These units in and of themselves are worth the equivalent of hundreds of turns to build not to mention the AIs production/health/happiness support bonuses!

Since units/buildings/research take so long to build and with huge land and so many Civs techwhoring, you have little room for error. It means that the establishing yourself is extremely difficult and defense requires forward planning and thinking. For although units/improvements/buildings/research take a long time to build, units still move at about the same distances/speeds. I do not believe that a warrior or chariot moves any faster or slower regardless of game speed while buidling that unit differs in time considerably. Thus that enemy stack is coming at your full speed while you are taking perhaps 15-20 turns to build your lone swordsmen/axemen/spearmen! Thus while on faster speeds, it may be possible to build up your army if you anticipate a war in the near future, in marathon you are forced to whip. That in itself is a huge setback!

At Emperor level, the AI advantages and the slow speed of building and research definitely makes it harder not easier IMO because there is no room for error.

 

[madscientist]

I do not believe that a warrior or chariot moves any faster or slower regardless of game speed while buidling that unit differs in time considerably. Thus that enemy stack is coming at your full speed while you are taking perhaps 15-20 turns to build your lone swordsmen/axemen/spearmen! .

Yes, that is another point I have encountered. My current game with financial Victoria I spent 55 turns researching alphabet and only then did I get hunting from a trade. Of course I had copper just outside my fat cross so I did not need archery. Other things on marathon speed, takes 9 turns to chop a forrest, 6 turns for a road on grassland, 15 turns to farm wheat, 60 turns to build a workboat if you work a non-production tile from the start. All the while your lone warrior is scouting perhaps meeting 3-4 civs, popping technologies and gold from huts are huge. That said I have enough times taken my initial warrior and simply declared war on the first civ I met and razed their capital because they couldn't build a protecting warrior fast enough (AI always sends their first units out). Once I actually took out both saladin and hatshesput when I was Hannibal on an archeaological board (yes all three of us were on the island.

 

[Quornix]

I think that part of the reason it seems harder is because a slow game speed favors the attacker rather than the defender. It doesn't necessarily favor the human, although the human certainly tends to be the attacker. But with 18 civs, perhaps you are more likely to be the defender than the aggressor.

And whipping up and chopping out an army is standard tactics on Prince and above. It's even more powerful on Marathon, because you can, in theory, produce one unit a turn that way, which, on a slower game speed, is equivalent to three units per turn (compared to producing them manually). Your unhappiness will last a lot longer, but you can whip an army out much faster, relatively.

 

[ds61514]

You have to consider that at Emperor+ levels, the AI have various health/happiness/production bonuses and in addition also starts off with tons of units from the very start (one settler, a couple workers, scouts, archers. etc). Meanwhile here you are starting off with your lone warrior and settler and that's IT!

This is like all the other speeds too. The one difference is that (as you said) since techs take so long to research, if the civ has bad starting techs (think Montezuma without deer/elephants/fur), then all those workers are gonna be proportionally more useless than if it was a normal game.

At marathon, research, units, buildings take a LONG LONG time to complete. Why a settler on average take 34 turns (and other units similarly long). And research of even basic techs can take 20-30 turns! (and some like Iron Working and Alphabet can sometimes take upwards of 50 turns depeding on ones starting situation!)

The bonuses apply to the AI as well. Since there are more turns, there isn't as great a need for precise micromanagement. Oh you accidentally had the worker start a cottage when you wanted a farm? Oh well, since it takes x amount of turns, you only lost 1/x production. Compared with normal speed, since it takes x-y turns, on normal you lost 1/(x-y), which is more. This applies to all production; mistakes are not as bad because your fractional loss is less.

Since units/buildings/research take so long to build and with huge land and so many Civs techwhoring, you have little room for error. It means that the establishing yourself is extremely difficult and defense requires forward planning and thinking. For although units/improvements/buildings/research take a long time to build, units still move at about the same distances/speeds. I do not believe that a warrior or chariot moves any faster or slower regardless of game speed while buidling that unit differs in time considerably.

And this is pretty much why Marathon/Epic is considered easier, especially with a leader that has an early UU. Praetorians will last you forever; they move at the same speed no matter what, and though the AI may have infinite gold, the long road to feudalism and machinery means that the AI's ability to mass upgrade for cheap and thus stop your conquest is blunted.

Look at all the HoF games. Fastest finishes on all levels are always Epic/Marathon.

 

[Bursk]

I'd personally like to see a game speed that is the mid point between Epic and Marathon. I think that once BtS comes out, I'll make a thread seeing if someone can provide details of such a thing.