(Ultralong mod) Marathon on huge map

[Sukayo]

To understand some mechanics i switched now to 10x all where i all the time already have Marathon.

Definitely balancing is heavily broken for a lot of things in such long games, single decisions are having a much longer influence, and to have nearly the correct time for wonders / techs / civics is much more impossible.

But because here is no bonus for having the wonder in the correct time, this doesn't matter.

I like to hear more impressions from players playing such long games - anything from the reason why to play such a a 'boring' game, up to tips for interested players.

For now i play with the aztecs, the eagle warrior combined with the workers boost to district building is incredible. I play at king level, nice to see how fast the AI gets districts up. Just now i have a worker farming war with one of the city states on the continent where no AI is left to farm.Turn 434 and 3350 B.C., Oracel and Stonehege captured from AI players, lost pyramids and Hanging gardens to unknown AI players, just on getting shipbuilding to be able soon too cross the oceans.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Turn 434 and 3350 B.C

I love Marathon Civ4 but wow that's amazing.

 

[historix69]

What do you mean by "i switched now to 10x all where i all the time already have Marathon." Do you play 15.000 turns with 3.000% costs instead of 1.500 turns with 300% costs? Is it a mod?

One of the main consequences from an ultra-slow tech pacing is : your units can travel further before becoming obsolete and if you have a decent tactic or an temporary advantage in military tech (like Swordman, Crossbow, Knights, Frigate, Tanks), you can conquer much more land before your advantage runs out. This might lead to huge historic empires like the Mongol Empire or the British Empire in your game. And huge empires have more science, which can snowball you even further ahead ...

In Civ5 I used to play Giant Earth Map (ca. 90x180, 43 civs (?)) from Ynaemp Modpack with some adjustments to Marathon (1500 turns) Gamespeed : 600% Tech Costs (instead of 300%) but only 150% costs for units and buildings (instead of 300%). Capitals (via Palace building) were buffed with free city walls and sufficient bonus (flat value + %) for production, science, culture and gold to allow a good start for every civ. Since the map is so big, it is essential that Research is slow and eras last some hundred turns before the next era makes units obsolete. Otherwise units are not able to travel very far ... Low building costs allow you to enjoy the game almost like on standard speed, you have enough units at hand for offensive war or defence and can develop your cities without crucial decissions like : do I build a Knight for 40 turns or a Workshop for 50 turns? You can build both or you can rush buy since purchase costs are lower and you have more time to earn money ... and you have more money from more cities. To progress in research, you need more well developed cities than usual, otherwise you won't be able to research techs in time. However the possibility of very wide empires makes the game hard to balance ... I enjoyed these sessions in Civ 5 very much and I will probably do such a mod for Civ 6, too. (It's just more work since now there is only one modifier "cost" in Gamespeed.)

 

[Sukayo]

I use:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=871996066&searchtext=
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/time-x-all-in-one.25564/

it combines
Research Time X
Civics Time X
GreatPerson Time X
Years Time X

and does not alter costs for units/buildings - leads to other unbalancing, but can make the AI very challenging.
Like in my game now the city states are having all 20+ units, so when here comes a war up between them a lot of fights can occur.

Or St. Petersburg had around 10 irrigated grasslands, but still no tech to make mines. Lead by AI, and built the Stonehege before i made with the bonus from one city state the first tech.
I will try for sure a harder setting soon, now i need only to understand how the worker bonus with the Aztecs is working. 3 loads are at the beginning enough to create a shipyard, later not, so it cannot be 20% ...

 

[historix69]

When stretching game time the early game is very tricky to balance to avoid long times where you can only build units since you miss the tech to improve land or build (new) builings.

In Civ 5 I used the Palace to give everybody a huge flat boost in Science (+10 or so) per turn while I doubled all the tech costs (based on marathon). So it was possible to research early techs in sufficient time while later in the game the +10 Science was meaningless. This however means that early differences in science from population or a library have no significant effect and all civs roughly share the same science rate for a long time in early game until they expand and go wide.

When playing with standard production costs and Time-X, I would leave the Tech costs for ancient Tech/Civics at standard costs and would start the increase in research costs with Classic Tech/Civic. So you can establish a functional ancient empire as a base ... This tweak in research costs is a bit extensive to mod since it does not fit the wild card sql statements used in the Time-X mod :

Spoiler :

update Technologies set Cost = Cost*X;
update Civics set Cost = Cost*X;

Did you try to start a game with advanced start in Classical Time with Time-X mod?

 

[historix69]

Ok ... I did some testing ...

You can simply change the sql-statements in the *.sql file from :

update Technologies set Cost = Cost*X;
update Civics set Cost = Cost*X;

to

update Technologies set Cost = Cost*X where EraType is not "ERA_ANCIENT";
update Civics set Cost = Cost*X where EraType is not "ERA_ANCIENT";

... then the ancient techs and civics are not affected and you have some variety to build while waiting for Classical Tech to complete.

(The "X" is 2,3,4,5,10 depending on the mod you use.)

Edit :
To individually scale Tech/Civics per era look here
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...and-production-for-marathon-gamespeed.617803/

 

[Sukayo]

727 turns, now i see that i am too fast for 10x all 1st Musketeers entering service and still 2900 BC.

Thanks for moving to the mod forum, was not aware what tips will come up ....

 

[historix69]

You should take notes or make savegames when completing an era. This makes it easier to determine better modifiers for research.

It is likely that you are too fast. If you have normal growth and building times, your empire will grow much faster and have higher Science output from everything (buildings, population). You need to compensate the wider empire and bigger population by additional increase in research costs, e.g. in a first step you could try to double all science cost (which makes Science x 20). You can do this in the small sql-file with an editor.
Or change to the TimeX5 mod and adjust techcosts to x10.

How many cities do you have? Self-founded, conquered?

Have a look at https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tech-cost-mods.617813/ how to slow down research time by era ...

 

[king of nowhere]

seems an interesting mod. but is there the chance to customize the slowing down? 10X is too slow for me, I would like more a 5X or 3X. just letting the player decide the "slow factor" should not be hard to code.
Also, I would suggest slowing somewhat also city growth and border growth, or your cities are going to reach their cap population and grab all the land around very early. maybe by half X?

 

[historix69]

see here https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tech-cost-mods.617813/

You can adjust the "CostMultiplier" to 500% or 1000% if you want to slow down everything.