Is Civ 4 going to be as unbearably long as Civ 3?

[Carver]

I've never encountered this long AI turn phenomenon, despite the fact that I play huge maps. Is this to do with CPU quality (mine is almost God-like) or is it a higher level phenomenon (I play Monarch)? And how long is long?

Oh and is the time taken up by animation, or computation?

I think it largely depends on the number of players. I can play huge maps also with minimal lag (no more than a minute), but if you use the max number of civs it starts to crawl (or so I hear).

 

[I_batman]

Well, for example, I usually only have about 10 workers under manual control for jobs that are high priority or need that special touch (like the first few cities). The rest are given various auto-comands. I am the emperor, not the foreman. (Yes, I am well aware that I am losing a fair amount of resources doing this).

I do not visit every city every turn. If I'm not paying attention and one riots, so be it.

I do use build queues for every city.

By doing this, I gain the most important resource, my time.

OK, thanks. Not exactly the way I play, but the game allows for all styles of play.

 

[Wolfwood]

I view civ3 as "unbearably long" in the sense that, the game becomes very boring for me in the late industrial to modern eras.

That's the only interpretation of the "unbearably long" that I'd be ready to sign (and which is why my mod is little more than an epic game with industrial and modern ages deleted and age of sail added - as well as dozens of new units).

In my opinion, it is only natural for a game like Civilization to take tens of hours to complete - after all, you don't build an empire in a day!