Pace

[Muskie]

In the big mess that is the Scouts thread I noticed someone always plays on marathon. I've tried various options and some of the scenarios, but I never thought of changing the pace. Surely the game is balanced on standard pace, but I can see that on Marathon you would have more time to fight with older units in older ages so if that is your preference...

A slower pace would presumably be advantageous to empires that get their unique units and buildings early.

Any thoughts on the effects pace would have on standard or even gasp optimal strategies and openings? ;-)

 

[CivOasis]

In un-modded civ V, the various speeds are balanced to make it seem like the same setting, just longer or shorter (I.E., production and research are proportionally as long). Since standard games already can take awhile, most players don't exactly favor epic or marathon.

That being said, there is one significant difference: Military units effectively die faster. It is much harder to amass an army and fight wars, so early UUs are relatively more powerful, but later UUs are probably more significant, because you can upgrade to them en masse.

UBs would definitely favor early ones, as the abilities have more of a chance to take effect.

If you're playing with mods, though, there are several that affect this balance to create different styles of play. I.E., I play almost exclusively with a mod that reduces production and upkeep costs of most units and buildings (not settlers), reduces improvement build time, population growth, etc., but further increases tech time (for balance). When using that, my strategies are very different than normal.

 

[jeramy]

I generally play on Epic, and normally on either emperor or above. I find that all of the normal strategies that work on standard still work on epic. I just find that I have more time to fight with my armies on Epic. On standard, I found that shortly after building a decent army, their technology became obselete, and I was always just upgrading without much fighting.

 

[Mesix]

You are right about there being a bias toward early UU/UB/UA at slower speeds. Civ 5 is somewhat better balanced in this regard than Civ 4 was from my point of view. With my friends who played Civ 4, we considered the game speed to be a handicap for difficulty when war mongering so a Deity level game played on Marathon would be similar to the difficulty of and Emperor level game at standard speed. In addition to UU, units in general obsolete much quicker while their movement does not change. If you build an army of Long Swordsmen in a marathon speed game you can reasonably expect them to march across a continent without becoming obsolete. On quick speed, you should expect that they will be going up against Riflemen by the time you take over your first opponent. Of course you can spend gold to upgrade assuming that you are keeping up with current tech, but the game dynamics are very different at different speeds.

 

[qalsip1977]

It's widely felt among immortal and deity players that the slower speeds actually give the player the advantage because the AI can't adapt as well. Some folks have gone as far to say that playing a deity game at marathon is like playing on Emperor...

I have noticed a difference as well but I don't know that it can be quantified.

 

[Muskie]

It seems warmongers are in favour of the slower speeds. How does it affect cultural, scientific, or diplomatic victories? In order to win those other three ways you have to complete a lot of the tech tree and then build some wonders on top of that. Surely lengthening the time it takes to research everything makes the game more favourable to warmongers and it even harder to hold out peacefully in order to win culturally or diplomatically.

 

[CivOasis]

It really favors builders over warmongers, actually. You can't go out on a conquering spree, and a small, well-trained army performs much better.

 

[Muskie]

I'll have to try it, but there isn't any badges for winning on a different pace. ;-)

 

[Johan de Witt]

There is indeed a big difference between speeds.

I usually play on Marathon and the biggest difference is; once you crush the enemy's army, you have a lot of time before the enemy can replenish his troops. Building times are a lot longer, so losses are more severe.

This means that warmongering is a lot easier. The human player is much better at preserving units and because those units will be fighting a lot longer (xp isn't changed), they will be hugely upgraded. I once did a one-city-challenge with Egypt and in the end, I had seven artillery defending my capital and all seven had all possible upgrades.

It does make for interesting games though, you really get a chance to fight a bronze-age war on Marathon where on Normal, you would end up fighting with longswordsmen in the same war.

 

[Ellye]

I can't stand Standard and I can't even imagine how it must be on Quick.

"Right, let me just move my swordsmen to his border and... oh, it's time to upgrade them to longsword men already?"
"Nice, got my UU! Time to wage war! ... Nah, never mind, as soon as I actually get to their civ, it will already be obsolete anyway."

I only play on Epic ever since Civ4.