Why Marathon?

[Walter R]

Well I said I'd try a longer game speed in earlier post, so I started my next game on Epic (yeah I know that isn't marathon but I'm heading in that direction).

I've had three sessions so far and I have to say that I feel a bit all over the place! I stayed with the other settings from previous game (King, Large Islands, England, 6/12). I find myself continually trying to re-calculate things against my normal reference (Standard), e.g. beakers/turn for the game turn in order to asses my relative progress. I could be wrong but some costs seem not to scale the way I would have expected; I'm pretty sure a settler cost me 640 g but a library cost me 550 g, whereas I was expecting 750 g and 450 g repsectively. Policy costs seem enormous but I may just have less culture/turn than usual. It's turn 300 and something and I'm only just sailing off to war with Sulemein!
Anyway I'll run with it, play a couple more games on Epic and then try a Marathon game.

 

[Ravellion]

I don't agree that militarily it's easier. If I kill an enemy unit the other civ takes longer to replace it but it works the other way too, if another civ kills one of my units then it takes me longer to replace it.

Yes, but the AI tends to lose more units than human players (who are more likely to pull back and regroup if things aren't looking quite so well).

 

[PhroX]

To me, Epic is the sweet spot. Marathon has a bit too much of "not much happens this turn", particularly at the start, while standard feels far too fast, there's no time to really get into a game if it's over in 300 turns...

 

[johnny_rudeboy]

I never finished a marathon game, started a couple however. But what I dont understand is why the building cost needs to be 3 times higher then on normal speed just like with the science. I would be ok with having to spend 3 times as many beakers in to researching something but would like to be able to build things quicker. Perhaps only twice the cost. Otherwise, dont you just end up with the same scenario as when playing on normal speed, that you eventually move quicker through the eras then you have time to build that eras buildings and units.

My problem on normal is that once I finished a wonder and a couple of buildings for one era, the next era is just around the corner. I dont see why this would not be the same on marathon.

Lets say I want to play as Rome, build a barrack and produce an army of legionnaires. The cost of the barrack is 225 then every unit will cost me the same 225 . And by the time I have the army I want I wont be so far away from upgrading them to longsword so what is the point of marathon then? I mean, the cities dont produce more hammers on higher speed so the units will still obsolete as fast as on quicker speeds? A hill is still 2 with out a mine?

 

[Walter R]

Well I said I'd try a longer game speed in earlier post, so I started my next game on Epic (yeah I know that isn't marathon but I'm heading in that direction).

I've had three sessions so far and I have to say that I feel a bit all over the place! I stayed with the other settings from previous game (King, Large Islands, England, 6/12). I find myself continually trying to re-calculate things against my normal reference (Standard), e.g. beakers/turn for the game turn in order to asses my relative progress. I could be wrong but some costs seem not to scale the way I would have expected; I'm pretty sure a settler cost me 640 g but a library cost me 550 g, whereas I was expecting 750 g and 450 g repsectively. Policy costs seem enormous but I may just have less culture/turn than usual. It's turn 300 and something and I'm only just sailing off to war with Sulemein!
Anyway I'll run with it, play a couple more games on Epic and then try a Marathon game.

Turned out to be a pretty good game. I still couldn't shake the feeling that I was "behind" even though I established a strong tech lead somewhere around the start of Industrial, the feeling persisted through to victory.
Highlight of the game was getting a three-way DOW from the two top dogs (America and Japan) and their little puppy Sweden (I'd already taken Stockholm some time before). I crippled America's invasion fleet in a couple of turns or so (Don't mess with the English navy!) and got a favourable peace offer a few turns later; then having done something similar to Japan's force I went on to take Osaka, Kyoto and some other smaller cities before accepting peace, which set me up nicely for final assault on Washington and Dom victory on T495 (I don't have any comparison for win times on Epic but that feels a little bit slow?) I was a bit more deliberate with wars as the SPs were a lot slower coming so happiness was definitely the brake to my warmongering. As with another thread, I carried on with my "American campaign" well after VC...

 

[Spenceroon]

i tend to play exclusively on epic, varying map sizes/types, prince and random leader. The times i play Civ, as opposed to other games, is when i want to chill out and take my time. I have a bad habit of never going back and finishing my games, but playing them on the day is a good experience.

I've played marathon once, abandoned the game early as i couldn't get my head around the timings. It was still classic era and i had tonnes of warriors (it was my first germany game, went a bit over the top with the UA) but nothing had happened. I'd like to give it a second try sometime though.

I guess some people play slower speeds for the same chill out feeling. Civ for me is one of those games where i can lay back with my feet up and comfortably play with just the mouse and not be glued to WASD keys. Slower speeds give me that feeling

 

[bbbt]

I can see playing marathon on a huge map, where you can spend a lot of time exploring. Marathon on a tiny map, and you're just hitting enter a lot.

Personally, I tend to play standard with the research speed a bit to be closer to epic levels (I put it about 135%). I'm still unsure if that makes the game more difficult on higher levels (the AI gets more production time ahead of me while I play catchup) or easier (any tweak throws the AI's plans off a bit).

 

[Quineloe]

I play repaced epic (mod) because I like the game to take a long time, but, because I'm a builder, I want to actually be able to build things and enjoy them (units, buildings, GP). Each era takes quite a while.

Is that mod on the steam community thing and what is the exact name please?

 

[EK834]

I dont see why this would not be the same on marathon.

Lets say I want to play as Rome, build a barrack and produce an army of legionnaires. The cost of the barrack is 225 then every unit will cost me the same 225 . And by the time I have the army I want I wont be so far away from upgrading them to longsword so what is the point of marathon then?

It's all about unit movement/opportunities.

Building and researching takes longer (and buying is more expensive), but unit movement stays the same. If on Standard you have just 15 turns left to move your barely produced army to your neighbor's cities and attack before your Roman legions are rendered obsolete by Longswordsmen, on Marathon you will have 45 turns for that same campaign, and time to return the survivors home to be upgraded. It's with that advantage you can get more out of any era's units (and you can also safely use the same units for longer).

It's the same for everything involving movement (exploration, building Feitoras all over the world, sending GM/GMoV to destination etc.). You can achieve more things within the time frame of an era than you can on Standard. Those who like Marathon find it favors immersion. If you're playing for e.g. Portugal, you get a real "age of exploration" and of building your Feitoras on Marathon. You don't get just a few built at the closest CS only in the era they become available.

 

[CaptainPatch]

To me, anything less than Marathon feels too much like RTS -- which I absolutely hate -- even if it's a turn-based game. Civilization is supposed to be about the growth of an empire over the span of several millenia. Speeding things up to where you can complete a game in less than a day of gameplay seems to undermine that game environment.

 

[PreLynMax]

I edited the XML so the unit builds take half the speed than default, so the wars feel epic even on Marathon, but as it was said before, it's much more immersive to play as.

Why would you want to play a strategy game where you finish it in a coupe of hours? I've played a ton of them from the Romance of the 3 Kingdoms games, Crusader Kings 2, the Total War games and all of them take weeks to finish a game. It just feels far more epic. To be honest marathon Civ 5 games aren't long enough for me.

I love Rot3K 10, I have over 50 PS2 games, and it is, IMHO, my most favorite PS2 game I have. Most want to play as one of of China's greats (Lui Bei, Cao Cao), but I prefer to create a character and rise to glory. You can literally go from a lowly random soldier to a glorious general controlling half of China in a standard game.

 

[Cromagnus]

Lots of good answers on here. I think the most compelling reason I might try Marathon is for military conquest. If there's rough terrain between you and your next target it can take 200 years to travel there! ;-)

But, frankly, I'm fine with the number of years/turn once you get into the Modern Era.

Is there an easy way to tweak the turn timing so that it's more linear? Right now the years/turn gets exponentially shorter over time. I'm not saying I want 1 year/turn in BC, but maybe half the current rate at the ancient era, so a blend of Marathon and Standard. But that would require adjusting the tech and social policy rate over time in the game... hm, probably not very easy to do.

 

[El Caballerion]

To me, anything less than Marathon feels too much like RTS -- which I absolutely hate -- even if it's a turn-based game. Civilization is supposed to be about the growth of an empire over the span of several millenia. Speeding things up to where you can complete a game in less than a day of gameplay seems to undermine that game environment.

If CIV 6 does not have a MARATHON feature, I will not play it.

 

[glider1]

Is there an easy way to tweak the turn timing so that it's more linear? Right now the years/turn gets exponentially shorter over time. I'm not saying I want 1 year/turn in BC, but maybe half the current rate at the ancient era, so a blend of Marathon and Standard. But that would require adjusting the tech and social policy rate over time in the game... hm, probably not very easy to do.

I can do that for you no probs if you help me improve this mod before I release it on Steam (if there is any interest). It tries to make the early pre-writing phase of the marathon game more interesting:

Better Marathon Mod:
1) All civs start locked in war
2) Scouts enable peace negotiations if they can get to the enemies border
3) At writing, peace can be negotiated even without scouts
4) Everyone including AI starts with two warriors
5) Everyone including AI starts on equal happiness
6) AI get's no free techs making ancient era wonders plausible
7) AI's combat offensive attack increased so that the AI can defend itself.
8) Barbarian numbers increased to standard speed.
9) Units capped at standard production costs but stay at game speed purchase cost
10) Includes appropriate UI notifications
11) Can be played at any speed but preferably marathon.
12) Compatible with the AI.

It's out of alpha and into beta phase. There might be other adjustments to make. I'm tempted to modify the military AI to suit this mod better (not sure). It is possible to ancient age rush the AI but not sure how good a strategy it is. Might have to give the AI archery tech.

It's not compatible with other mods that have a DLL and at the moment not compatible with mods that modify the city banner or trade route overview screen.

And yes, marathon is a very cool game speed because of the epic feel.

 

[Shimmler]

I play with Iron Man mod. It has 3025 turns cap. Why? Cause my civilization is like a child to me. I want to feel how it grows, form it's infancy to maturity. I want to feel each era as era, not as minor step forward.

 

[iamdanno]

Is that mod on the steam community thing and what is the exact name please?

I think this is it:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=78052871

 

[Pep]

I usually play Marathon because I think it's the best possible Civ experience. My main concerns about this game speed is that Civ 5 has being designed with standard speed in mind, and then scaled to the remaining modes. Changes in game mechanics sometimes are properly balanced only in standard speed, and a later patch is required to fix them in other game speeds. I suppose it's because game testing when developing is being done mainly at standard speed.

Regarding this issue, the Fall Patch has improved substantially Marathon gaming for me. Before this patch, I never used Great Scientists to discover new techs (they only provided an amount of science equal to 6 or 7 turns of research). I always settled them. The same happened with Great Writers and Political Treaties. After the patch, I must think and choose between an immediate huge benefit or a long term small advantage. Making one strategic choice instead of another is what makes Civ so enjoyable, and a proper balance is needed for this to work.

So I'm very glad with the Fall patch and Marathon!.

 

[Chemical Toilet]

Everyone ITT is saying that units last longer in Marathon, and I've found that not to be the case since they take longer to build. Proportionately they're in the field just as long as any other game speed before being upgraded.

Marathon is a nice concept, but production, growth, etc needs to stay at a constant scale IMO.

 

[Cromagnus]

Everyone ITT is saying that units last longer in Marathon, and I've found that not to be the case since they take longer to build. Proportionately they're in the field just as long as any other game speed before being upgraded.

Marathon is a nice concept, but production, growth, etc needs to stay at a constant scale IMO.

It's simple really, unless you play on Huge maps with less than standard # of civs, units hold their value longer on Marathon.

It takes 20 turns to move 40 tiles, no matter what speed you're on. By the time you've moved that far, your units are starting to become irrelevant on Standard. But not on Marathon. That army can take 2x more cities before becoming irrelevant, because travel time is half of conquest. I imagine the speed at which you take a city doesn't scale either, so # of attacks to capture a city being constant, you capture faster in relative terms.

 

[cpm4001]

If CIV 6 does not have a MARATHON feature, I will not play it.

...handy there being that smiley...