Your favorite speed

[mariogreymist]

How much real time a game takes is more dependent on the strategies used than the speed setting on the game. Cultural, diplomatic, space and time victories can all be done much quicker than conquest or domination in terms of playing time.

That said, I played a large, marathon game over the last couple of days that took less than eleven hours for a conquest win (in 1315AD, but still a conquest)

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Voted "Normal". I might consider a somewhat slower speed (i.e. Epic) but as it is I lose interest about 1/2 the way through...

I'm retired, and I can find the time to do whatever I want to do. I also multi-task it.

For me a game usually takes about one week. A lot of my playing time is done on my laptop, sitting in front of the tv in the living room, watching digitally recorded shows, many of my wife's choosing. She has a laptop, too, so she can shop on eBay.

Somedays I keep the game running and I'll think about it all day while doing other things around the house, entering commands each time I pass the machine, and I'll often play while eating lunch.

Sounds amazing man, that's the life.

Seriously, you finish marathon games in 7 hours? On what, duel size maps and rushing your opponent? It typically takes me 12-15 hours to finish a Normal game and 7-8 hours to finish a Quick one.

Me 2 man. At least that long (don't play Quick tho).

Whoa, what do you guys use the time for? My Standard/Marathon games usually last for 4-5 hours, depending on the VC. Space race takes longest, Domi and Cultural take less. Large maps take about 7 hours.

Micro? I cannot even comprehend how fast you must be playing to achieve that.
Also somewhat of a noob, but still.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Whoa, what do you guys use the time for? My Standard/Marathon games usually last for 4-5 hours, depending on the VC. Space race takes longest, Domi and Cultural take less. Large maps take about 7 hours.

It takes longer when you do an airpower based war. The group/ungroup buttons for planes don't really exist, the order the fighters are picked by the computer is really weird and it also lags for a while when your fighter's intercepted. It took me as long to play the NC Charlemagne on Quick as it took me to play the LHC Louis XIV on Marathon because of the way the air-force is implemented. It sucks because that's my favorite kind of war.

 

[Silu]

If anything, I find airpower based wars much faster than regular soldier&siege ones, just because they take less turns. Just clicking stacks of planes for strikes and bombing runs while advancing with Tanks/Cavalry at high speed.

Why do you need to ungroup air units? Not like you can waste unit-turns by bombing or striking "too much".

^^ About the effect of different VCs:
I would imagine that variance in Domi length is less across the speeds than for other VCs. In other words, Normal Space Race can be a LOT faster than Marathon Space Race, while Domination on both speeds doesn't differ that much.

 

[DMOC]

Normal or Epic.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Why do you need to ungroup air units? Not like you can waste unit-turns by bombing or striking "too much".

Because if they're grouped and one of them is intercepted, the ones that would come after the intercepted one do not attack and you have to look for that specific plane in a stack of 30-50 fighters, ungroup the intercepted one as well as all the others that have already moved in order to attack with the Fighters that still have moves. Repeat that in case any other gets intercepted. It's less work to just ungroup them and go one by one.

 

[DMOC]

How do you get a stack of 30 fighters? Isn't there a 4 limit or 8 limit with airports?

 

[Continental Op]

I'd say epic. I like it too when a game takes a long time, but the last time I took a marathon game, it lasted for over 38 hours. And that is just too much.

 

[Silu]

Oh. I have stack attack enabled in the options, this is one of the keys to fast warfare. I would imagine that it fixes that behavior as well. Anyway, 30-50 fighters? How can you have more than 8 on the same tile? Carriers, I guess?

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Exactly. When I'm going to a Dom/Diplo win I stop researching for good when I have Artillery, Fascism and Flight. No Radio or Industrialism. Nothing else is necessary, provided you can get them before they get Advanced Flight and Modern Armors/Artillery. Mech Infs just don't cut it.

Edit: check what I'm talking about on the following games:

LHC Louis XIV;

LHC Mao Zedong here and here;

NC Charlemagne.

 

[mechaerik]

You are aware you can shift click to select multiple units, right?

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Yes, the problem's not grouping them (although a working button would be nice), the problem is ungrouping the ones that fall into the category I described on post 66.

 

[Silu]

Enable stack attack or ctrl+click one of the remaining ones.

 

[ferros]

I always play on Marathon! Why? Because I like it when the game takes time, I've always played on the slowest speed in all Civ games and I belive that's how they should be played.

I remember once in Civ2 I tried the fastest speed on a small map and I had captured the whole world after an hour or so. It wasn't fun to me. When I play I want to get into the game as much as I can, I want to sit back and think about what to do next and study my enemies while I build up my empire! When I have tried faster speeds I haven't experienced any of that since I then have felt like I had to rush everything before the game was over and I didn't get into those game as I wanted. I just missed out on to much of the game on faster speed, I need the game to be slow to enjoy it.

Does that mean that I have to sit and play all day? (As some people tries to make it look like when others play on slower speed)

No! Or well, on weekends or when I have a lot of freetime I can sit for a couple of hours while thinking "just one more turn.." but I usually just hit Ctrl+S and go do something else when I have to and return to finish my some other time.

Just as a note, I haven't had any Civ4 game to pass the 12 hour mark - so far. My longest game was 11 hours and 47 minutes, a space race victory in 2003.

 

[Glassfan]

Marathon - so that units don't become obsolete by the time they reach your enemy

Amen, brother.

 

[Antilogic]

Amen, brother.

I've found that Epic works pretty well for that. I get the feeling that the game is best balanced around Standard-sized maps on Epic.

Heh, now that I think about it...recently, I've played exclusively Epic games. I don't think I've ever picked Quick, and I'm pretty sure I haven't played Normal since Warlords. Marathon is just far too long, and I can't stand waiting 30ish turns to get my first worker out the gate.

 

[samthedagger]

That said, I played a large, marathon game over the last couple of days that took less than eleven hours for a conquest win (in 1315AD, but still a conquest)

Maybe it's because of my meds, but I cannot think fast enough to complete such a game that quickly. A large marathon game would take me an eternity. Maps larger than standard typically give me a headache and the marathon setting would leave me in tears halfway into the classical age.

 

[mariogreymist]

Maybe it's because of my meds, but I cannot think fast enough to complete such a game that quickly. A large marathon game would take me an eternity. Maps larger than standard typically give me a headache and the marathon setting would leave me in tears halfway into the classical age.

It's not so much how quickly one thinks, but how well one can formulate and execute a large-scale plan for victory. There are many neat things that can be done in a game of civ, and large maps offer room to get many of them done (Quests, wonders etc). But most of them are unhelpful in an effort to achieve an early conquest. In the game in question, I built a grand total of one wonder (Great Lighthouse) and made attempts at no others. I basically stopped improving my cities so they could continuously produce military assets. And of course, I planned my invasions to maximize the damage my units could inflict, and to ensure I would capture the key targets quickly. It's not fast, but disciplined thinking which results in early wins.

 

[Roland Johansen]

(chose epic)

I like to play on huge maps and epic speed is better suited for the larger map types. The distances on larger maps are larger (duh) and thus the relative movement speed of your units compared to your world size goes down. Epic speed increases the number of turns and thus the amount of tiles that units can move during a certain fraction of the game's length. The two settings (huge map and epic speed) result in a better balance of unit movement compared to map size.

I also like epic speed more, because it allows you to chop the game up into more delicate decision moments. There are more moments of decision for a similar end result and thus I can control that end result in more detail.

Marathon speed is a bit too much for me. One problem of the setting (for me) is that it makes it very hard to build a meaningful number of units during a war. The setting makes unit movement rates per time frame relatively huge compared to construction speed and thus wars depend far more on what you start with than on other speed settings.
Some other game elements weren't balanced to game speed at all and because marathon is so far removed from the standard, this becomes a bit too noticeable. For instance, barbarian spawning rates, random events, random decisions by the AI (such as war declarations and requests), global warming effects and appearance of resources on mined hills and other such elements aren't balanced with game speed at all. This isn't very noticeable when you stay close to normal speed, but marathon isn't very close to normal speed.

In a way, I would love to play at slower game speeds, but for me the game imbalances become a bit too large.

 

[DoubleCheck]

I like epic the best. The slower speeds really make you focus on strategy. A quick game requires almost nothing but fairly strong military. The only reason I don't play on marathon is that I seldom have that much time to devote to one game.