Late game way too fast

[Killazer]

It seems like you go from tanks to modern armor before you can barely even build a tank let alone use one. The whole industrial to modern transition seems too fast to me. What do you people think.

[Blake]

I think in 1.09 at epic speed it's about right. There is plenty of time to use tanks.

If you do too much "buildery" research, then the lifespans of units can be very short, a classic example is Muskets -> Rifles, if you research all hte peaceful tech you can, these are literally only one tech apart.
On the other hand, going to extremes, it's possible to get Gunpowder as like your 8th tech, and Rifles then take like another 8 techs more.

So on sum, for Peacemongers units can have very short lifespans, while for Warmongers they can have very long lifespans...

[Just_Matt]

Epic time limits

I started building space tech @ about 1910. It's now about 1945. I've crushed 3 civs and taken their people as my own. I'm engaged in a 3 front war on 2 continents. The game is FINALLY getting interesting and I see that I'm on a countdown to the final 100 turns. Argh! There's no way I'll be able to destroy all of the other civs in that time without resorting to nukes or something. Why doesn't the game allow me to play until the 2300's or something? We are building space elevators here after all.

[snafuc4]

Re: Epic time limits

Originally posted by Just_Matt
Why doesn't the game allow me to play until the 2300's or something? We are building space elevators here after all.

Turn off the time limit in the game's victory conditions

[Son of David]

I agree! I usually manage to get about four distinct 'periods', one with ancient units, then macemen/pikemen/knights having a period, then a little time for cavalry/riflemen/cannons, and then boom! It's basically just chaos from early industrial onward.

Even those earlier periods are short-lived though.


The only time this isn't true is when I have a huge tech advantage over the computer players, if they have been crippled/beaten down/had a bad starting location/been fighting each other etc. However in that case I usually end up with cavalry still running around in the 1960s.

[Quillan]

As Blake pointed out, a big part of it is the order you research the techs. In a lot of my games, in the middle portion of the tree, I'm making a beeline for Liberalism and Economics, to get the free tech and great merchant being first to those provides. Usually after I've done that (if I get Liberalism first I usually use the free tech on Nationalism), I almost always wind up going for Constitution/Corporation (for Wall Street) and then come back with Democracy. Of course by this point, it's just a matter of a couple of techs to pick up Gunpowder, Military Tradition, and then do a quick Printing Press/Replaceable Parts/Rifling/Assembly Line and suddenly I've gone from Macemen/Knights to Infantry/Cavalry. If I'm involved in a war (or preparing for one), I'll usually get the military techs first. So I'll have Gunpowder well before I get the rest of the tech to that point, and then snag Military Tradition as soon as possible, but I'll have a lot of techs to backfill before I can get to Rifling. The longer you wait to get a military tech, the more likely it is that it will soon be obsolete.

[Just_Matt]

To: snafuc4

Hey, thanks! I usually start a quick game, I'll go in to the advanced options next time.

BTW - I got a domination victory at the end of 1954 (7803 points I think) as Louis XIV on Noble difficulty. This was my first completed Civ IV game and I'm pretty happy.

34 hours, that's alread good video game value for the money. Unf. there were probably 25+ CTDs in there, so that's not so good.

[Bobby Chicken]

34 hours; youre so slow; I know slower though. My games can last as little as 4 hours.

[Volstag]

34 hours! Wow, that's considerably longer than my longest Civ III conquests game (24 hours). Most of my epic, prince, Civ IV games run about 8 to 10 hours.