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

[guspasho]

Take for example this thread. A standard map takes 50 hours. Large and huge, a hundred! I play small maps and usually win in 10-16 hours, on easy difficulties. Please tell me it will become easier to play a game of Civ 4 within no more than a few hours!

 

[Urederra]

From the wonderful civrules' Civilization IV pre-release information.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/#BigPic

There will be three game speeds: Quick (mostly for Multiplayer, in Single Player mode (or SP) it is equal to Civ3's Accelerated Production mode), Medium (a bit faster than Civ3, 15-20 hours of game-play) and Epic (a bit slower than Civ3). All of the game speeds (Quick, Normal, and Epic) retain all the flavor of Civ itself. So even though the speed is different, the feel will not change.

 

[jwijn]

Unbearably long? The sheer number of turns, in Civ, is not the problem to me. Rather, I see it as one of the better aspects. The only length problem is the time it takes for the AI to calculate its moves

 

[wooga]

I view civ3 as "unbearably long" in the sense that, the game becomes very boring for me in the late industrial to modern eras. Civ4 needs to incorporate something to counter the pattern where the dominant civ power early on continues to grow in power exponentially (I think this is what people refer to as the snowball effect). Civs need to break up and collapse without all the losses being treated as gains to other civs - in other words, in civ3, a civ only dies when it is absorbed into another civ. The world as a whole is always increasing in power, tech, units, etc. I want Civ4 to depict prolonged global retardation!

And my suggestion for this is to have more powerful plagues, civil wars, famines, and any other ills. I also think the civs should be handicapped (perhaps through religion factor) so that the various regions bloom during different eras in a more historically accurate manner (this was not properly implemented in civ3 through the unique unit triggered golden ages).

 

[Avayaman]

oh no!!! the longer the better! the dragging, micro managing, turn by turn, ardorous up hill climb called civ can never be too long. in fact, if i had a complaint, is that even the epic game mode is shorter than the old game.

 

[Carver]

Take for example this thread. A standard map takes 50 hours. Large and huge, a hundred! I play small maps and usually win in 10-16 hours, on easy difficulties. Please tell me it will become easier to play a game of Civ 4 within no more than a few hours!

I'm pretty sure I've played a huge map in under 50 hours. For me, the main factor in how long a game will be is the amount of warfare I decide to udertake.

 

[warpstorm]

I finish most standard maps in about 12-15 hours. I do not micromanage every single possible thing, though, as it sounds the person writing the thread does.

 

[searcheagle]

I and many others will play the largest map possible to create the longest game possible. The bigger the world, the larger the challenging of conquoring it.

 

[The End Is Nigh]

I do not have a problem with the length of the game. I actually enjoy the micromanagement. What I think most people have a problem with (including myself) and are complaining about is the huge amount of time it takes for the AI to calculate everything between turns. I think they should do something about this to address the problem.

 

[I_batman]

I finish most standard maps in about 12-15 hours. I do not micromanage every single possible thing, though, as it sounds the person writing the thread does.

I am curious Warpstorm, about your style of play.
When you say you don't micromanage everything, at what level of detail do you let the computer take over.
Example: I will sometimes allow the governor to handle the population to head off riots in certain games, but I never allow the AI to choose what units and improvements to build. I will stuff the build queue, depending on the game.

How do you play, and what do you define as "micromanaging"?

Just curious.

Personally, I find the micromanagement a double-edged sword.
On one hand, it part of the attractiveness of the game, on the other hand, it sometimes does get tiresome.

But I would always prefer a more complex, rich game, than dumbing the game down for kids to play.

 

[warpstorm]

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.

 

[nullspace]

I wouldn't call Civ 3 "unbearably" long, but I know that I'll appreciate the quick game mode in Civ 4. What's fun for me is trying out new strategies and seeing if they work. So I like to get to the conclusion pretty quickly. Just seeing a huge empire (and doing all the repetitive tasks needed to run it) doesn't do anything for me.

 

[Sub]

I also don't have a problem with the length. I play like warpstorm, I hate micromanaging. The only thing I do have a problem with is in the end of the game where the AI takes 10 plus minutes to do their turn (okay, in reality its around 1 and a half minutes on my comp). That pisses me off. I hope they do what Gal Civ did, have the Ai calculate their turn while you're doing yours.

 

[Truronian]

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?

 

[Timeeee4]

I'd say your "God-like" pc is the reason, you don't have this problem. Mines pretty good, even in the end game I only wait like 20 seconds top.

 

[Slax]

I don't like the late-game slow down, either, but for me its not the AI calculation time or snowball effect, but simply the sheer number of units that must be moved around. For example, taking a stack of 60 tanks and creating 3 equal stacks is painful. This must be repeated if stacks reunite within a tile. Hopefully, decent unit grouping procedures will alleviate this in Civ4.

 

[Phoenix_56721]

The longer the game the better for me! I like to play on huge maps, and love how time consuming the game can become. To me this is what’s sets Civ. apart from other strategy games. I mean if you’re going to attack someone across an ocean it’s going to take a lot of planning and time to do so, and if you get attacked in the mean time while your army is fighting over seas, and didn’t have proper defenses, you’re in trouble. In RTS games you just have to bring back your army and there back in a minute or so. I’m disappointed that in Civ.4 that the maps are going to be generally smaller, because of the switch to 3D, although I think it was a necessary switch. I hope they make up for the smaller maps by limiting the amount you can move per turn.

 

[Avayaman]

i had first tried playing civ 3 (when it first came out) on a P200, and it would take almost 10 mins/turn. I upgraded my system for the sole purpose of playing civ 3. Hehehehe

 

[guspasho]

I finish most standard maps in about 12-15 hours. I do not micromanage every single possible thing, though, as it sounds the person writing the thread does.

I just finished a game on a small map that took over 32 hours (two weeks in real-life time.) I used governors to manage happiness and automated all my workers save for when I had to airlift them, I was mostly at peace with total control of my continent until I got to the modern era, when I had to wage war to expand, and I won through cultural victory. Way too long, in my opinion. Even without micromanaging the cities it takes forever to move units and wage war. And on large and huge maps even managing city production is pretty arduous. Waiting for the AI between turns isn't so bad anymore, though it was pretty bad with the first computer I played Civ 3 on when it was released.

 

[HourlyDaily]

Probably fair to say that while I love a long game myself, this is why the game is being cut down to shorter 'hits'. The longer and the more immersive, the better.