Long games

[TheBackStabber]

I'm new to civ iii, and i've found that some hall of fame games took around 50 hours to complete a domination victory. I don;t want to play games that long. Are there any ways to make games shorter (or to play faster?) I know that there is accelerated production, but is it such a good idea to play with that turned on?

 

[Spoonwood]

20k games generally take the shortest amount of playing time of any game. You can always play a smaller map size also. 50 hours in an HoF report may not actually mean 50 hours of pushing buttons. I often leave cIII (compare cIV or ciV) up and running while I go and do something else... like web browsing/reading/writing around here. I know VMXA has said he's done this, and I feel sure plenty of other players do this also.

I wouldn't recommend against turning on accelerated production necessarily, but if you want to pick up the pace of your games in general, I'd first play on a smaller map size with fewer opponents.

 

[vmxa]

50 hours, sounds fast to me. You could use the AP option (Accelerate Production). That was meant to speed MP games. You could play on small or even tiny map.

 

[splunge the 2nd]

Pick a civ with an early powerful UU and play on low level on a smallish map.

 

[darski]

If you want a really quick game play as iroquois on a tiny map using the Iro Domination strategy.

those games can be over in a couple of hours. My best time was 21 minutes.

I call these games "potato chips' as no one can play just one.

 

[Ataxerxes]

The advice about playing smaller maps is a good idea. That really speeds up the game. I'd say reducing the size of the map to standard will make the game more than twice as fast.

I wouldn't play accelerated production. In my experience, that makes the game harder and (for me) less enjoyable. But you could try it once.

 

[vmxa]

I just check my current game and I am on turn 66 and have 43 hours in it. It is on 180x180 with 24 civs AW, so that is not too bad.

 

[DWetzel]

Keep in mind, 50 hours is for a HOF game, where someone was likely scrutinizing every single move of every single unit and every single city every single turn. There's no reason that you can't play a perfectly fun game in probably one-tenth that time.

In general:
High difficulty = longer game
Bigger map = longer game
Your chosen victory condition also affects things a lot.

 

[Skullsplitter]

I finish up in an evening, two at the outside. I just play it more like an RTS than a TBS. I can't play at Deity that way, but I can now at Emperor. Of course it means that I forego some of the specialized things like intensive forestry operations for all but my core towns, but so what? Beating the AI doesn't require that. (That's one of the reasons I've started that founding the capitol thread. I want to get to the point that the first 50 or so turns are second nature.)

 

[GamezRule]

War games are usually longer. The exception is probably 100k.

 

[CommandoBob]

I'm new to civ iii, and i've found that some hall of fame games took around 50 hours to complete a domination victory. I don;t want to play games that long.

It is just an issue of mind over matter.

If you don't mind, it don't matter.

(Okay, that is trite and simple, but it is true.)

Let's ask the question another way:

Do you expect to get 50 hours of enjoyment from Civ III?

Well, you don't know yet, since you are checking around, but if you got the game for $20 you probably expect to enjoy it for at least 20 hours. And you've come here for advice, so you obviously don't want to play the game poorly.

It would be nice to say that a longer game is a better played game...but it is not. My first CivIII game lasted over 40 hours and I lost. Standard map size with continents. On Chieftain. As Rome.

My first HOF game (Huge, Conquest, Monarch, India) took over 200 hours. I was slow and I was logging stuff every turn, which added quite a bit of time. Did I enjoy the game? You bet. Did I begrudge the time invested? No.

I do understand that sticker shock feeling when the game tells you how long it has taken to play. I was taken aback when my first game sprang that fact on me. But don't let the fear of a big number on the ingame stopwatch stop you from having fun.

Play the game the way you want. If you don't enjoy it, it won't matter how long it took; you won't play it again.

 

[TheBackStabber]

Keep in mind, 50 hours is for a HOF game, where someone was likely scrutinizing every single move of every single unit and every single city every single turn. There's no reason that you can't play a perfectly fun game in probably one-tenth that time.

In general:
High difficulty = longer game
Bigger map = longer game
Your chosen victory condition also affects things a lot.

About how long would a game on regent taking place on a standard continents map, with a domination victory achieved around the modern age take?

 

[TheOverseer714]

Anywhere from 20-40 hours. I just played an Emperor Domination that went to 1565 and took 66 hours. Of course my game runs on a separate computer while I do other stuff.

 

[CommandoBob]

One of the biggest unpleasant suprises of the game is having your cities shut down due to happiness issues. If you use a player's aid like CivAssistII or MapStat/CrpSuite, these programs will inform you when cities are about to be a problem. The alternative is to look at each city each turn and manually check their happiness. Even then it is possible to make mistakes by reading a Content citizen as a Happy citizen. I've done that many times.

It doesn't take that long to fix, but it is a preventable nuisance.

There are some graphics mods that use smiley faces in the city screen to indicate if the citizen is Happy or Unhappy. These are a great help. And they are easy to install(download, rename the orginal file and replace it with the download).

These programs are available to download in the Custom and Creation section of the Civ III forum. They are free.

Aside for waging war and fighting the battles, the second biggest chunk of time is spent in managing the cities. I try to cycle through all my cities each turn in a Succession Game but not so often in a solo game. By the time I get to the Middle Ages I try to visit each city every 2nd or 3rd turn.

One thing to look for when you visit a city: can it grow? If the city is at size 6 and you do not plan to build an aqueduct, how much extra food is being produced? And can you have your citizens work other tiles so that you can hire some specialists without the city starving? If you can do that, do so and let the specialists bring in more money (2 gold per taxman) or increase science (3 beakers per geek). This works best when the production is very corrupt (lots of red shields and only one or two blue shields).

 

[ChaosArbiter]

This has been answered pretty thoroughly already, but on a Huge Pangaea map on Regent, I've just reached the Modern Age in 1862 and it's been 16 hours (with 1000 turns).