What game speed do you play?

[aviator99_uk]

I have always wanted a slower civ, and marathon on civ4 is exactly what I wanted.

Marathon is ideal for warmongerers who get fed up with the faster speeds making units outdated before you can get them into battle. A cultural victory is potentially quite tedious waiting for those quarter million quavers to rack up. You can even use Ironclads !!

Normal is ideal for those who want to go for cultural type victories. Painful for warmongers who find that their macemen are met by infantry by the time they have walked into battle.

What say you all?

 

[[Comrade]RaVE]

I'm playing a quick game with a roommate of mine right now. Huge map, 8 AI civs plus us two. I'm thinking when this game is over maybe slowing it down a bit. Quick is a little TOO quick for a CIV game.

I like being able to use units you upgrade, too, heh.

 

[Kalleyao]

Yes, I like marathon. Wars are really easy in that speed.

 

[Duke Anselmi]

I usually play epic, and sometimes marathon. I play them because i love classical,medieval and reneissance eras, and want game to last longer, also, as you said,marathon is useful for warmongerers.

 

[fuji]

I play normal but that's just to test certain tactics, for a real game I think epic is the best solution...

 

[Sisiutil]

What is the main difference between the speeds? Is it just more turns, or something else?

 

[TCGTRF]

What is the main difference between the speeds? Is it just more turns, or something else?

Military victories are easier at the slower speeds for SP games. Warmongers like that. It also makes chop-rushing proportionally more important the slower the game goes.

Slower speeds mean that everything except for the speed of production of units and buildings and unit movement speeds are slowed by a given percentage. Builds are slowed, too, but not as much. Movement speeds not at all. This means that you can build more of a given period's military units before they become obsolete and get the equivalent of a lot more movement turns per game.

Tom

 

[atreas]

Military victories are easier at the slower speeds for SP games. Warmongers like that. It also makes chop-rushing proportionally more important the slower the game goes.

Slower speeds mean that everything except for the speed of production of units and buildings and unit movement speeds are slowed by a given percentage. Builds are slowed, too, but not as much. Movement speeds not at all. This means that you can build more of a given period's military units before they become obsolete and get the equivalent of a lot more movement turns per game.

Tom

Some debatable points here Tom: slower speed means of course that BOTH the speed for the production of units AND the speed for the production of buildings in slowed down (in fact, I think that you also mean the same when you say that "builds are slowed"). Of course war IS easier (or maybe more strategic) - but NOT because you can build more units; just because these units will have a bigger "window of possible use" (they will not get obsolete quickly and they can move around for more turns) so you can "catch" the opponent and have time to punish him. But it seems that in normal speed you care much less about possible unit losses in a war than in Marathon (you can't build new units quickly enough to replace them, when time is the critical factor).

Also about the forests, your comment is very debatable. When in normal speed you chop like crazy, knowing you will not lose much (think of the forest as +1 hammer * some turns, for example), in slower speeds you see this forest and you think it twice: the benefit of chopping isn't proportionally bigger than in normal speed (everything is scaled), but the turns you will LOSE the forest are MUCH more. Since each chop is a potential "loss" of hammers for an immediate gain, the picture isn't clear when the loss gets bigger. Of course, when you play in a small map and all you care is to get some swords and kill everybody around you don't consider this; but slower speeds (I think) are meant to be for the larger maps where you can't dominate so easily.

 

[senwiz]

I like the slower games along with the the bigger maps. Makes for a nice slower paced game. Yeah, it can take forever to get through, but...I would rather have it that way.

If I'm looking for a fast game...Just plug the small map in with a duel, and blow him up.

 

[aviator99_uk]

. But it seems that in normal speed you care much less about possible unit losses in a war than in Marathon (you can't build new units quickly enough to replace them, when time is the critical factor).

Also about the forests, your comment is very debatable. When in normal speed you chop like crazy, knowing you will not lose much (think of the forest as +1 hammer * some turns, for example), in slower speeds you see this forest and you think it twice: the benefit of chopping isn't proportionally bigger than in normal speed (everything is scaled), but the turns you will LOSE the forest are MUCH more. Since each chop is a potential "loss" of hammers for an immediate gain, the picture isn't clear when the loss gets bigger. .

I agree.

As I normally play marathon I spent a long time wondering quite how the chop strategy balanced out, and wasn't convinced. Having played some odd games at slower speeds (like normal) to see if I could understand how leader traits helped towards culture type wins, the chop strategy becomes more significant.

Also note the spiritual trait in marathon may come good, on marathon it's not unusual to have anarchy for 7 turns (or more), rare to have it for more than 1 turn on normal.

 

[swinenston]

Quick is useful for multiplayer when you are not taking simultaneous turns, since a game can take a while to finish (days not hours!). My only problem with quick is that it renders units obsolete too quickly. The moment I've built enough musketmen to launch an attack, rifling comes along and so on. You don't get time to enjoy an era, if you know what I mean...

 

[Elmstr]

just played a couple of games

 

[Rast]

I prefer to play on Marathon, I find that the speed of all builds is slowed, though unit builds not as much.

Also all worker actions are slowed, including chopping.

These are the big differences I've found between normal and Marathon, aside from the slowdown of builds and worker actions.

1) Military units are really valuable on Marathon. You can't throw a stack at a city and not care if you take 50% losses because it just takes too long to replace them.

2) Despite that wars are much easier most of the time since you have the time to let your big siege weapons do their job, and can move your units much more before they become obsolete, making certain strategies viable on Marathon that would never work on normal (such as declaring war purely to pillage, or attacking with stacks of small-window units such as Musketmen)

3) Barbs are bigger threat on Marathon. Techs take longer to research and it takes more time to scout and settle the map, but the barbs still spawn and attack at the same speed, which means you face far more barbs. It's not quite Raging Barbarians level but it's close.

4) Chops are huge. Being able to chop a settler in 5-8 turns (for some reason not all chops take the same amount of time on Marathon), send him to where he's going in another 2, and have a city running on the 11th turn, verses spending 35-40 turns or more is even bigger on Marathon than normal.

5) On the flipside, with all the barbs running around at the start and you chopping your forests to build basic city improvements so you don't spend 45 turns waiting on an Obelisk, I have yet to be able to manage a strong early war effort before Catapults, which makes it harder to get to parity with the AI on the high difficulties.

 

[NuWorld]

3) Barbs are bigger threat on Marathon. Techs take longer to research and it takes more time to scout and settle the map, but the barbs still spawn and attack at the same speed, which means you face far more barbs. It's not quite Raging Barbarians level but it's close.

I'm just playing standard-monarch-4 continents-12 civs game with raging barbs. Happens that I was on a smaller continent with Saladin, I made a mistake and took him out with ew Praetorians (kept the capitol, razed other city). Barbs were everywhere, had 6 cities on half of the continent, rest was in fog. All I could do is to pump out units to keep the barbarian tide off, managed to get libraries and couple off cottages per city to maintain maxed tech slider, couldn't improve more tiles cos barbs would pillage my a**. First civ contact was made at 200 AD I thought I would be in such a bad shape compared to other civs, so I kept playing just out of curiosity. Much to my surprise, I was 3rd in score and on par techwise so I quickly settled whole continent, 11 cities total. Once the barbs were off I surpassed other civs, only Qin is beating me in techs, conquered half of Russia (feared cossacks but my veteran riflemen took them out with no problems ).
Only thing that pi**ed me off was the fact that you cannot get more than 3 promotions (10 exp pts) while fighting barbs, one of my outpost archers killed 47 barbs and gained no exp once he passed 10 pt mark .

 

[_alphaBeta_]

Epic for me!

I like that military units are more valuable and do not obsolesce so quickly. It's also nice to have additional movement capability per game, especially when the game first starts. I didn't like on normal how you barely have time to scope out the land before the first settler arrives. Marathon is a little too slow for me, so it's the best of both worlds for me.

 

[TCGTRF]

Some debatable points here Tom: slower speed means of course that BOTH the speed for the production of units AND the speed for the production of buildings in slowed down (in fact, I think that you also mean the same when you say that "builds are slowed"). Of course war IS easier (or maybe more strategic) - but NOT because you can build more units; just because these units will have a bigger "window of possible use" (they will not get obsolete quickly and they can move around for more turns) so you can "catch" the opponent and have time to punish him. But it seems that in normal speed you care much less about possible unit losses in a war than in Marathon (you can't build new units quickly enough to replace them, when time is the critical factor).

Also about the forests, your comment is very debatable. When in normal speed you chop like crazy, knowing you will not lose much (think of the forest as +1 hammer * some turns, for example), in slower speeds you see this forest and you think it twice: the benefit of chopping isn't proportionally bigger than in normal speed (everything is scaled), but the turns you will LOSE the forest are MUCH more. Since each chop is a potential "loss" of hammers for an immediate gain, the picture isn't clear when the loss gets bigger. Of course, when you play in a small map and all you care is to get some swords and kill everybody around you don't consider this; but slower speeds (I think) are meant to be for the larger maps where you can't dominate so easily.

Got some good points there, atreas. The building of units and bulldings are not slowed as much as the increase in game-time, so they do get built proportionately more quickly *and* you get more moves with them.

As far as chopping goes, there are some areas that you're *always* going to want to chop on any speed--river valleys, adjacent tiles to the city in the early game, hilltops (especially hilltops because the lumbermills are going to be a LONG time coming on a slower speed.)

Generally, I play on huge maps.

For the most part, I agree with your statements. You sound like a really good player from your posts on the boards.

Tom

 

[SenhorDaGuerra]

marathon is sooooooooooooooooooo boring. they should make a speed thats in between epic and marathon, cos sometimes marathon seems too quick.

 

[Shadowsong]

I play either epic or marathon, depending on what victory I'm trying to achieve.

 

[MrCynical]

Marathon is my favourite, since it gives you time to make use of the units before they become obsolete, and I prefer the more relaxed approach anyway. The only slight snag is the first 100 turns or so can be rather dull, since there's very little to do in most of them.

marathon is sooooooooooooooooooo boring. they should make a speed thats in between epic and marathon, cos sometimes marathon seems too quick.

Do you mean epic seems too quick? You seem to be complaining marathon is both too quick and too slow. In any case, it only takes a few minutes of XML editing to add a game speed tailored to whatever suits you.

 

[ULTIMATEGP]

I play epic. I've never seen the marathon option. Also note I play with version 1.00.