This game is great and all, but...

[delsheol]

It takes about 10 billion years to play. I also played CIV2 - am I wrong in thinking that CIV2 was a much faster game?

To illustrate, here is what I did today:

11am wake up, eat, shower, morning stuff
12pm eat lunch
12:15pm start a game of CIV3: Tiny map, Regent difficulty, continents, most landmass, no barbs
4pm break
4:15pm continue playing
7:00pm make dinner for everyone, clean houes
8:00pm watch simspons (it sucked)
8:30pm work
11:00pm continued playing my CIV3 game
2:30am victory over last standing opponent via a space race: Game ended in 2038 AD.

Total time spent playing CIV3 on a TINY (!!!) map: 10 hours
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where the hell did the day go...

I can't keep doing this. Any suggestions?

 

[Shabbaman]

Well, you play a lot faster than I do...
I'm sure that civ2 did cost me a lot more time since I didn't use stack movement with it. Stack movement rules.

Try faster victory conditions than the space race. Especially and lower levels you can finish the game VERY VERY early with a immortal rush for example.

BTW, this should be in the GD forum.

 

[Rammstein]

If you spend all that time on it, it can't be that bad. It is possible to return to the game another day, you know.

 

[Scyphax]

I know a domination victory is fastest on a tiny map, but perhaps a space race victory is faster on a larger map?
More cities=more science=faster techs.
Perhaps by trading or giving away techs you can speed up technological development for all - making a harder but quicker spacerace victory.

One thing I found that if you reduce the % of land and play on a map 1 size larger - you have about the same amount of land but have increased resources and a lower corruption rate. This will make it easier for both you and the AI civs and hence you may get a quicker game.

I find the slowest thing the mechanics of ordering your workers arround. Initially I micro manage my workers and then (if you have the patch installed) you can get them to automatically impove tiles without distroying pervious improvements).
This saves me lots of time. The control R comand builds a road from 1 spot to another also helps.

 

[Ninakoru]

In my optinion, this game maybe don't suit for you... I never won a game after 1800-1900 AD.

I LIKE to spend 5 minutes in EACH turn thinking about what i am doing... But this of course is up to you.

¿¿ Maybe you are more suited to a real-time-strategy game ??

Dunno...

 

[RobOz]

The game is a bit long generally, but turning on Accelerated Production and playing on a tiny map is all you can really do. I could probably beat a tiny map with x prod in about 6 hours or so. (Barring any unforseen misfortunes.)

 

[WildFire]

The game is also a lot better when it is on a harder level and you have worthy opponents that can trade you techs. I'm saying this because winning in 2038?!?! Thats like chieftan or warlord. On my last diety game (space race win) i was done by 1300 AD or so and only played for like 4 hours.

 

[Jaybe]

For me, a recent 'quick' PTW game on a large map was 81 hours. Bigger is better!

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

I think the game takes just about as long as Civ2.

 

[black_adder2]

I would agree time is on par with civ2... I suggest you utilize regicide and/or elmination modes like others have suggested here.

And again remember you don't have to do it all in 1 sitting. I have played 1 game for weeks (on Huge with 16).

 

[Revenant]

A game of civ3 takes AGES for me to play but the reason for this is that my computer is so old that it can barely run the game!!
It takes about 20seconds to open the city screen and about 1 minute to start diplomacy. Thats why i try not to do either.

 

[GerrardCapashen]

Originally posted by Scyphax
I know a domination victory is fastest on a tiny map, but perhaps a space race victory is faster on a larger map?
More cities=more science=faster techs.
Perhaps by trading or giving away techs you can speed up technological development for all - making a harder but quicker spacerace victory.

Actually, the number of beakers that a tech costs to research depends on the size of the map, so playing on larger maps will not bring in techs any faster.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by delsheol
It takes about 10 billion years to play. I also played CIV2 - am I wrong in thinking that CIV2 was a much faster game?. . .

Of course Civ 2 was faster, especially later in the game. Now PTW MP slows it down to a crawl. People even with high speed PC's complained about this problem all year.

One trick I had with Civ 2 to make it run even faster was to go to the Cheat Mode and play as barbarians with only their view of the map. I could run through a few centuries of a slow-moving game and then see if anything interesting developed, then I could resume as whatever civ I wanted to be (switiching sides). it was cool. All of that I could do with the Cheat Mode - which we don't have in Civ 3.

 

[Karl_t_great]

Yes, it take lot of Real Time, I play mostly tiny map for this reason.

Occasionally I also try to avoid industrial / modern wars and go for the spaceship. Going for domination/conquest may actually take more real time, becourse You have to move Your military units a lot.

I you are very desperate automate most of Your workers.

 

[Ninakoru]

The most boring part is when bombarding with all navy, air forces and artillery... You can spend 10 minutes easily moving-bombing-fortifying frigates & battleships, re-basing and bombard with bombers, and bombard with tons of artillery...

If it were a junk-bombard command... I am talking on standard-sized maps, this must be really boring on huge maps..

 

[MummyMan]

Tiny maps suck, you don't get a feel for a world of nations, it's more like being in a country and there is a war among the states in it, unless you like that kind of stuff, just depends on what view you like

 

[Vinz Clortho]

I like this game because it DOES take so long to play. I see it like a very complex game of chess where you must analyze the board in full before making a small move that might set off a chain of events that leads to checkmate.

The only thing that irritates me is the CIV jones I feel when I have to go to work and I can't play the game. But then again it's good to step away from the game for a while anyway.

Also, I've been a die hard Quake fan since the game was released and whenever I start feeling bored of CivIII, I just save the game, shut it down and start up Ice Bot for a few rounds of capture the flag or log-on for some brutal deathmatch combat.

(Always a little weird to go from the peaceful music track of CIVIII to super-shotgunning someone to death to the sounds of NIN).

 

[MTheil3508]

I have played games for weeks at a time on huge pangea landmasses with the most land possible. Playing over 12 hours a day. The game gets so complex, my computer can hardly run it. It takes me five-ten minutes to wait for the AI to filnish their turns.

I played the Europe Scenerio for almost 2 weeks before my computer got to slow (I have a pretty fast computer). There were an upwards of 300 cities, thousands of units, ten remaining civilizations. Just to load the game, it took ten minutes. I actually watched TV when loading the game and waiting between turns.