Marathon speed tips and slavery

[LlamaCat]

anyone have some ideas on adjusting play style for marathon speed?

one thing I notice is that whipping is now 30 turns of unhappiness. so you get more hammers for whipping a population, I get that part. But everything costs a lot more hammers, so there is balance in that. However, it seems the unhappiness penalty is much worse in marathon, even compared to epic where you get 15 turns of unhappiness... any thoughts on the reasoning behind this, and whether slavery is nerfed?

I also am starting to feel the units are much more valuable and I hate to lose them in battle since they take forever and a day to build. 1500 turns for a game... jeez will I ever finish this game??

 

[GenocideBringer]

When adjusted for speed, Marathon actually builds units faster than other gamespeeds.

I only play Epic because my computer slows down later in the game, and waiting 10-20 seconds for a turn to calculate when I have so many turns to do is maddening.

 

[weimingshi]

Marathon is alot different than other speeds. I almost never whip in a marathon game. the unhappiness lasts forever and it takes forever to grow the population back. The drawback of whiping outweighs benefit in alot of cases. Army production is only a problem very early in game, where you don't have a specialized army production city. Once you set one up properly, it will take only 1 or 2 turns to production the most expensive unit available to you.

 

[alvan]

Marathon is alot different than other speeds. I almost never whip in a marathon game. the unhappiness lasts forever and it takes forever to grow the population back. The drawback of whiping outweighs benefit in alot of cases. Army production is only a problem very early in game, where you don't have a specialized army production city. Once you set one up properly, it will take only 1 or 2 turns to production the most expensive unit available to you.

I rarely whip aswell on marathon (my only gamespeed). Only times Ive done it is in the opening stages when ur expanding and creating settlers/workers faster gives u an edge. Another time might be when I miss to stall growth and my city start oozing greenish fog (I really REALLY hate that animation, eventho one isnt that bad)

 

[Sjaramei]

Just play as you did before. Just press the "Enter" button a lot more
Essentially marathon is just more movement for your army.

Using the whip is still important. The unhappiness penalty is the same as other speeds and it's adjusted to give more hammers. So i don't really know what the two above me is talking about?

You just have to adjust to the slower speeds even though the wonder building will seem insanely slow

 

[LlamaCat]

well, my point is that it seems the unhappiness penalty is applied in an unbalanced way... i.e., you get 3 times the amount of unhappiness penalty as in normal speed. Except the marathon settings don't give you extra happiness in your cities at the various difficulty levels. That would be balancing the 3x unhappiness penalty.

Unhappiness is balanced with happiness... hammers are balanced with whipping # of population, etc. So I understand there are more turns in the game, but this is irrelevant to how happy your cities are... the penalty is balanced across all players/AIs in the game regardless of game speed so why penalize whipping more than in other game speeds? Does that make sense?

 

[TRJS]

Makes sense.

Just another factor to take into account.

Have been dabbling in Marathon games myself and coming from epic speed I have learnt to whip less often.

 

[Elandal]

Whipping scales to all speeds, marathon included. There is no compelling reason to not whip at marathon speed - actually considering unit training cost scaling (2x instead of 3x like the rest of the scales) BW @ whipping workers / settlers is way more powerful at marathon than at any slower speed.

@LlamaCat
Could you try to explain your unhappiness problem again? I don't understand - do you get three unhappy faces per whip at marathon or alike?

 

[Sjaramei]

well, my point is that it seems the unhappiness penalty is applied in an unbalanced way... i.e., you get 3 times the amount of unhappiness penalty as in normal speed. Except the marathon settings don't give you extra happiness in your cities at the various difficulty levels. That would be balancing the 3x unhappiness penalty.

Unhappiness is balanced with happiness... hammers are balanced with whipping # of population, etc. So I understand there are more turns in the game, but this is irrelevant to how happy your cities are... the penalty is balanced across all players/AIs in the game regardless of game speed so why penalize whipping more than in other game speeds? Does that make sense?

Happiness and health is the same in all the difficulty levels now. (Speed is irrelevant)
This was a change in BTS. I'm 100% certain you only get one unhappiness face for each whip so thats still the same. Everything takes alot more turns, so of course unhappiness lasts more turns too, it's not a heavier punishment just because it's marathon. Does it make more sense now?

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

you just need to whip properly.

Whip for 2 population, this removes the 1 , and whip for units/ useful buildings....whip a temple for 2 pop, whip a courthouse, etc, whip a unit NEEDED.....whip away the war weariness....... "hell no, we won't go", Oh won't you just....CRACK.........

Population will grow back 1 point within a couple of turns, WITH A GRANARY...MOST IMPORTANT, GRANARY IS ABSOLUTELY NEEDED.

Now you have an extra population point cap, gold/units what ever... and losing units, don't you think Comp is in same boat, looses units or throw's them away, and no ready replacements.

Its a personal thing, me I find Normal speed ABNORMALLY QUICK, epic, seems too rapid, Marathon, I enjoy the micro management, and pushing the envelop. Paper cuts aside...

I whip for 90, 120, some times 150 turns of unhappyness, so what....what are they going to do, give'em forges, dye's markets, furs, Trinkets, is what they all crave. Crave out an empire of 3/4 size cities...and crush the 15+ civ cities, whip them till your arm hurts, then employ a OVERSEER TO WHIP FOR YOU....

 

[LlamaCat]

Whipping scales to all speeds, marathon included. There is no compelling reason to not whip at marathon speed - actually considering unit training cost scaling (2x instead of 3x like the rest of the scales) BW @ whipping workers / settlers is way more powerful at marathon than at any slower speed.

@LlamaCat
Could you try to explain your unhappiness problem again? I don't understand - do you get three unhappy faces per whip at marathon or alike?

Happiness and health is the same in all the difficulty levels now. (Speed is irrelevant)
This was a change in BTS. I'm 100% certain you only get one unhappiness face for each whip so thats still the same. Everything takes alot more turns, so of course unhappiness lasts more turns too, it's not a heavier punishment just because it's marathon. Does it make more sense now?

I can see it both ways now after some of these explanations. But to my first instinct, this is unbalanced at marathon because the unhappiness penalty applies to that individual city, so that city suffers for much longer than in other speeds. And remember there are no extra luxury resources or other things in marathon to fight unhappiness - you still need to hook up dyes, gold, etc or build theaters or whatever you normally do to increase happiness.

Yes, whipping gives you 3x more hammers... but things cost 3x more hammers for everyone. So there is the balance for me. You whip a population and get 90 hammers vs. 30 hammers- wow. But the settler you are whipping costs 300 hammers vs. 100 hammers!

Now, by ALSO making the unhappiness penalty for whipping 3x longer, I presume the game developers are saying: hey, your game is 3x longer, so you should have 3x longer penalty for whipping. In other words, each turn is less valuable for the overall game so it's no big deal if you have unhappiness for 30 turns vs. 10 or 15.

That kind of makes sense to me I guess. But in a way it also seems like whipping is less powerful at this speed, because each turn is more valuable for an individual city than it is for the overall game or your civ as a whole. Again, that single individual city is suffering the unhappiness, not your entire empire. What if I have other unhappiness and for whatever reason my city has unhappy citizens (more unhappy than happy faces)... I have to wait 3x longer for that whipping penalty to go away. To this individual city, those extra turns are really vital, no matter how longer the overall game is.

Now, does food and city growth scale to marathon speed? I hadn't noticed this and maybe that is the balance issue I am talking about. Because city growth is the balancing factor with slavery strategies.

Does it take 3x longer to grow cities in marathon compared to normal speed? Because if not, then my city can grow back quickly before those 30 turns of my unhappiness penalty has worn off.

 

[Elandal]

Food and growth scale at speeds as well. Whipping will produce same number of hammers per food on all speeds, which is what matters.

If you wanted whipping to be unscaled (unhappiness lasts 10 turns) on marathon, then the number of hammers produced would also have to be unscaled (30). But because growth is scaled, this would be just silly - you'd need to whip three times as often.

You seem to be confused about some of the scaling issues at marathon. So let's list the main ones here (compared to normal speed):

- there are three times as many turns

- city growth takes three times the food (60 + 6*pop on marathon compared to 20 + 2*pop on normal)
- culture levels are three times that of normal (300/3000/15000/75000 on marathon compared to 100/1000/5000/25000 iirc)
- buildings require three times the hammers to build
- units require two times the hammers to train [note: this is the major scaling difference]
- techs take three times the beakers to research


Basically on marathon speed if you do the same actions (including same whipping) as on normal, things will take three times the turns to complete but will complete the same year as on normal - except on marathon units will complete in 2/3rds of the years they do on normal, making early whipping more powerful on marathon.