Production Time vs Game Length Cap

[IMADAJ]

I was reading a post the other day about getting 10 cities in 100 turns, and , I believe Victoria (forgive me if I’m wrong. I can’t find it to quote now) wrote about trying not to build a settler if it takes more than 10 turns to finish because if one is looking to win by turn 200, anything longer than 10 turns is more than 5% of the game.

This got me thinking. While always keeping the ratio of production time and game length in mind, I never really avoided long production times unless it was hundreds of turns or something.

Does anyone use a hard cap or cut off for production and not just “a feeling” of what’s too long?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Does anyone use a hard cap or cut off for production and not just “a feeling” of what’s too long?

25-30 on standard speed is a good measure imho. if your universities are taking 30 turns to build, you can probably do something better. you can set the cut-off earlier, too, depending on how fast you usually finish.

 

[Builderphile]

Yes, I only play online speed and I generally don't build anything that takes more than 10 turns to build unless it is a wonder or extremely important district (and even then, I will try to chop those in faster).

I also leave wonders alone unless I can build them in less than 20 turns (or chop them in).

 

[StashMcWhalen]

I think I want to take more finance and accounting courses in college because of games like this

 

[Minou]

I don’t know about it building ANYTHING that takes longer than ten turns but in general it is a bad idea to start something if you won’t recoup your investment. Like if you want to win by T200 it makes no sense building a Workshop that will finish on T180. This is why fast players often run lots of projects near the end of a game. Campus Research Grants gives a little science instantly for example so it’s marginally useful up until you hit the last tech you need.

That being said you can always speed things up with chops, purchases, and Great Engineers. I like to use the wonder building engineers for the Scott Research Station late in the game and using Reyna and Moshka to buy an extra Spaceport or two (or three) for lasers in the last 20 turns,