Playing Philosophy

[Drakeero]

I'm not much of a hardcore gamer. Mainly I like to play games at the "casual" difficulty setting (which is usually underneath easy). As such, I've become a fairly good cheater. There are some gameplay issues though, that I don't know how to easily fix with cheats or scenario options.

1: At the beginning of the game the years seem to pass too quickly. I'd like to spend more time at that "tribal" state and not rush up so quickly to the civilized times. I've tried setting in a very negative number in the year increment scenario option, and I've gotten it down to 20 years a turn, but I still don't know how to get it down to 1 year at the beginning.

2: Techs come awfully fast, especially in the beginning. I find myself continually racing to build roads and irrigation, and try to keep city improvements and military units up to date with the improving technology. It may not be practically possible without cheating, but I'd kinda like to try to enjoy and savor each step more before rushing off to the next one. Like taking armies of warriors, archers, and horsemen against each other without phalanxes or legionares popping in all of a sudden. I've been unable to alter the tech paradigm sufficiently to come up with a near-freeze of tech development.

Are there any ways to resolve those two problems, or some important part of playing philosophy that I'm missing?

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

I'm not much of a hardcore gamer. Mainly I like to play games at the "casual" difficulty setting (which is usually underneath easy). As such, I've become a fairly good cheater. There are some gameplay issues though, that I don't know how to easily fix with cheats or scenario options.

1: At the beginning of the game the years seem to pass too quickly. I'd like to spend more time at that "tribal" state and not rush up so quickly to the civilized times. I've tried setting in a very negative number in the year increment scenario option, and I've gotten it down to 20 years a turn, but I still don't know how to get it down to 1 year at the beginning.

2: Techs come awfully fast, especially in the beginning. I find myself continually racing to build roads and irrigation, and try to keep city improvements and military units up to date with the improving technology. It may not be practically possible without cheating, but I'd kinda like to try to enjoy and savor each step more before rushing off to the next one. Like taking armies of warriors, archers, and horsemen against each other without phalanxes or legionares popping in all of a sudden. I've been unable to alter the tech paradigm sufficiently to come up with a near-freeze of tech development.

Are there any ways to resolve those two problems, or some important part of playing philosophy that I'm missing?

By creating a scenario, you can force the per-turn time accounting to be just about anything you want. You can also change the base amount of beakers required to learn a new tech (and all subsequent techs will be proportionately increased). However, if you do this, I'm not sure if the game would be equally playable once you got into the later game stages. You might want to spend some time in the scenario creation area to get some ideas of the types of changes and control you can have over how the game progresses.

I also don't know where you draw the line between customizing and "cheating" because these types of changes are certainly not the same as playing the base game as-is, but they are possible within the constructs of the game as a whole.

 

[TzarMikhail]

cheating is never a good way to build skill level on civ. theres TONS of ways to customize your playing style its all up to you. some people really explode in the early stages, others play it quiet until later in the game. im an expansionist. i expand early and build might later. depending on wars however i might have to shortcut my expanding for might earlier. its really a game to game issue. use your head and do whats logical. if your not a hard core gamer on civ do what entertains you if that means cheating, but ill say this a 1000 times, its SO much more rewarding fighting through some rough era in your civ and stepping out greater with no cheats. this game is a strategy game that revolves around your civ. so downtimes make it more realistic. if the games too easy all the time youll soon play to kill time. i think 99% of civ players with there were 48 hours in the day just to play the game more.
my brother used to cheat all the time on his games and it always made me wonder why he played since he never really learned anything from it. harnessing even one armored unit in the BC era makes you god like yes, but its so much better to have your army against their army and use tactic, not shortcuts, to achieve greatness!