Normal to Epic

[wisesteward]

I have been playing Civilization since Civ 3 and I currently have BTS. Although I just joined Civfanaitcs, I have been reading the posts for a long time and have found them especially helpful.

I consider myself a pretty good player and I usually play on Prince or Monarch. I recently made the transition to playing on Epic instead of Normal and I am finding some of my usual dominant strategies to be not quite so dominant.

What are some of the major considerations and ideas that I should know about now that I am playing on Epic? I usually go for domination or space race victory if that helps.

Any tips would be great. Thanks.

 

[DMOC]

There aren't really many tips from Normal - Epic. Just play the way you normally would. Keep in mind that warring is better on the slower speeds because it takes a less amount of "game years" to move your unit to places. Also, the AI will be less likely to finish more units while in war on slower speeds.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

War more or at least neglect units less. The penalty for doing so is greater, but the returns of building them are greater on epic.

IMO, epic is the best of the 4 game speeds.

Quick: Completely useless, unless you want to cheese culture. On higher difficulties this speed can make warring impossible. Even as game turns make years go faster, troop advancement is guaranteed to move slower. Playable if you can win without going to war on the map, utterly useless if you can't.

Normal: What the game was scaled for initially, I think. This is the fastest speed that is playable IMO. Offensive wars are harder than slower speeds but easily doable...you just have to be careful. On some of the higher difficulties, war in certain eras takes a back seat as suboptimal. Space/culture are easier to win on this than slower speeds, while war is harder basically.

Epic: IMO the best balance between game speeds and victory methods. Even on normal, it's possible to start a war, advance fairly well, and see the AI tech or steal (god knows how they suddenly have the EP for this when they're so backward they don't have any EP multipliers, but whatever) 2-3 techs mid war. This is particularly terrible on high difficulties because the AI can magically upgrade virtually every unit (wait, how did they get $$$ while putting so much into the EP slider that they could steal tech?!). Regardless, epic alleviates some of this. Space and culture remain viable on this difficulty for both human and AI, but wars actually feel balanced even at higher difficulties.

Specifically, what I like about epic over normal is that you can actually fight in any era, well other than on deity maybe.

Marathon: I would have less of a problem with marathon if not for one thing: deliberate imbalance. Marathon makes units cost less relative to buildings than on other speeds. Between this and warfare time (where basically nothing scales), wars are laughably easy on marathon. Part of me likes it inherently because it's just not realistic that armies appear out of nowhere while powerful standing forces march, but the slow pace and bad scaling turn me off to it most of the time.

IMO aside from random events which are horribly implemented and should be off by default, the speed scaling issues is one of the bigger failures with civ IV. I like war but on quick it's not realistic at all, even though if quick were balanced properly it would be my preferred speed.

Instead, spending 25-30 turns at war in quick is an eternity, even while it is blazing fast on marathon and pretty good on epic. That WOULD be fine, except that wars on quick are rigged to take MORE TURNS than on slower speeds, rather than less. This disparity frustrates me to no end.

These days I mostly play epic, with some normal and marathon here and there.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Interesting points in TMIT's post - this has inspired me to try epic speed.

What are people's feelings about map size with epic speed? Standard vs larger? Specifically, does a standard map feel too small with the slower speeds?

 

[wisesteward]

I appreciate the advice. I have been playing it for a while now and I think I am adjusting. I think my usual strategy of only maintaining a defensive force during the ancient era hurt me because I was getting attacked frequently and struggling to quickly build a defense force. I usually start my warmongering in the early classical era.

I think my favorite thing about epic so far is the longer tech research times. I like that getting a tech lead is even stronger now since it takes longer for the AI to catch up. Epic will probably be my default speed now.

 

[Ricci]

I think my favorite thing about epic so far is the longer tech research times. I like that getting a tech lead is even stronger now since it takes longer for the AI to catch up. Epic will probably be my default speed now.

Of course, you should wait till you get adjusted to marathon and that will be your default then; standing armies are just a necessity to survival, except being in a geographical or/and political very advantageous situation (which in case allows an ease on this). Wars are much realistic, with more units in average to other speeds, and difficult enough due to difficulty levels not because Feudalism, Civil Service and guilds are researched and applied during them.
Enjoy Epic, as it is a very nice speed (godsend compared to normal), prepare to truly longer games, and meanwhile you continue to adjust consider the following escalation:

- Normal 500 turns
- Epic +50% from normal - 750 turns
- Marathon +200% from normal - +100% from epic - 1500 turns (this are a lot of turns, believe me)

 

[Joshua368]

How easy would it be to mod marathon so unit production matches the rest of the game? Sounds like it'd be pretty simple, maybe you should try that sometime and see how it's like.

 

[Iranon]

Interesting summary, TMiT. I'll go to war in any era on Normal speed though, and dislike slower speeds mostly because of the different balance of warfare.

On Epic (and especially Marathon), I miss the feeling of tension - if I can go to war under favourable conditions I can be assured it will end well for me, and I end up missing the (sometimes tough) choice between steady progression, burning troops to take down that civ faster or just taking a few prizes and agreeing to peace.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Interesting summary, TMiT. I'll go to war in any era on Normal speed though, and dislike slower speeds mostly because of the different balance of warfare.

On Epic (and especially Marathon), I miss the feeling of tension - if I can go to war under favourable conditions I can be assured it will end well for me, and I end up missing the (sometimes tough) choice between steady progression, burning troops to take down that civ faster or just taking a few prizes and agreeing to peace.

Since you're saying this could you give some insight on how you get anything done in the medieval era?

Bombardment takes forever. The AI with 8 cities can put out 6-12 units just while you bombard on normal. Espionage isn't realistic yet. The final alternative is just MASS catapults and city raiders...screw bombardment lol. Faster for certain but you'll need more hammers into the war, and on immortal I can't swing it. Actually, given how wars on normal/quick work you might actually SAVE hammers by just suiciding the siege w/o bombardment, since they can make close to a longbow or other defender/turn and will do it once you're next to a city.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

How easy would it be to mod marathon so unit production matches the rest of the game? Sounds like it'd be pretty simple, maybe you should try that sometime and see how it's like.

It IS simple. You'd just tweak the speed and save that xml under custom assets. I'm not going to do it though, I'd prefer QUICK to be the speed that's balanced. I could do without mashing end turn constantly and that's very typical of me on marathon .

 

[Solomwi]

Interesting points in TMIT's post - this has inspired me to try epic speed.

What are people's feelings about map size with epic speed? Standard vs larger? Specifically, does a standard map feel too small with the slower speeds?

I've found huge/epic to suit my preferences best. With a continents-type map, this virtually ensures that my game won't be over before the Renaissance.

 

[Iranon]

Since you're saying this could you give some insight on how you get anything done in the medieval era?

Bombardment takes forever. The AI with 8 cities can put out 6-12 units just while you bombard on normal. Espionage isn't realistic yet. The final alternative is just MASS catapults and city raiders...screw bombardment lol. Faster for certain but you'll need more hammers into the war, and on immortal I can't swing it. Actually, given how wars on normal/quick work you might actually SAVE hammers by just suiciding the siege w/o bombardment, since they can make close to a longbow or other defender/turn and will do it once you're next to a city.

Medieval war is very slow, but from my experience not too pricey... mostly because I'm fighting in someone else's land and there is no decent siege unit that works in the field.
Also, the slow pace can be an advantage: I can let a war ally do all the real work and swoop in for the prize in the last round. No other time period requires as fine a balance between siege and cleanup troops, and AIs rarely have it. This means they'll often manage to damage the defenders significantly but not to take the city.

Barring a poor helpful war ally who'll just end up backstabbed, I just bring a ton of siege and chip away at the opponent's defenses for multiple rounds... they're welcome to reinforce their city to hell, collateral damage will keep my total losses manageable regardless. I don't care if I have to build half a dozen of Accuracy-promoted Trebuchets or more in addition to my normal force to take down defences in a somewhat timely manner... those won't see combat until the defenders are shot to hell anyway so the investment over the course of the war is trivial.

I certainly don't cover as much ground as quickly as in the classical age, but my overall losses are smaller if anything (because if I rush things, the war is going to become REALLY expensive while in the classical age I don't mind throwing some units away if that cripples my opponent's production enough).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I see...so you're fine with a plodding, slow war as long as WW doesn't get bad and it doesn't trigger an AI script to dow you (aka knowing diplo).

It's an interesting choice. I find I still prefer to lean on the relatively low-micro cottages over anything else and just make a GP farm, but that makes my tech slower. I'll consider a slow medieval war nonetheless in situations where I can do it without getting killed. Similar to fighting in the renaissance vs backward medieval garbage, medieval war at parity is a pretty big window. Although humans can use cuirassers and dominate the sparse AI pikes, that doesn't work too well in reverse for the AI (especially if we have a supermedic by then). I guess trebs are the order of the day here then. You can't be losing a ton of troops.

I suppose an interesting alternative would be to actually use espionage after all. Assuming the player gets great wall or sinks some commerce into it, I suppose it'd be possible to down the tougher castle cities that way.

Heroic epic and forges become really important though. It can be tough to match the AI production otherwise :/.