Tricks for speeding up LAN games?

[KingJackaL]

Hey, haven't found this discussed here in detail so thought I'd ask.

I run gaming LANs here (80-100 people normally), and a few of us have recently realised we all have CivIII and enjoy it, so we've been trying out LAN games. The problem is just that... we can't ever finish them! Now be gentle - cos yeah, most of us are rather noobish at Civ (esp. multiplayer).

First time we tried it there were 4 of us, and we used a medium sized pangea (simultaneous, normal turn-time) - which was a mistake, cos after a couple hours we'd only just met each other and started diplomacy. This last LAN the 4 of us tried a tiny continents map (simultaneous, fast turn-time). It went a whole lot better, with some big wars starting up - but the game still didn't finish. It ended with me being the biggest, but only 1 city had actually changed hands all game :|. I had about 14 cities by then (and was pondering just getting rid of other settlers in existing cities because the city micro was just leeching too much time on the fast turn-times), with the next biggest having 9 cities.

We know that FPS-like 10min games are unrealistic, and even RTS-like 30min games are probably unlikely, but I'd be grateful if anyone could suggest any mods/settings/etc that'd help speed up the game for a bunch of noobs .

The obvious:
- use a 'tiny' map
- use 'continents' or 'pangea' maps
- use fast turn-times
- use simultaneous moves

Saw this in another thread:
- automate your workers (I never did this - I should have)

Cheers (and yeah, we still enjoy the games quite a bit despite the lack of finishing, hehe ).

 

[onedreamer]

it's quite hard to end a game in just one session, be it single player, internet multiplayer or LAN multiplayer.
However you can save a game and reload it next day or next time you meet, did you know ?

As for speeding up games even more, I would never suggest automation because I think the best part of the game is micromanagement... you may try Accelerated Production though.