Marathon mode is excellent

[sparkyal]

The DDG's taking years to get around the globe is still there. It is better to think of it like turns instead of years.

I haven't played on Marathon yet, I've been playing on Epic, and it has been pretty cool.

sparky

[eris]

Well, I finished my first Marathon mode game. Got a domination victory in the 1600s. It now stands as my highest score. It wasn't bad once I got out of the early ages. I had to build up until I had Knights before I went into conqering mode. Prior to that, I had the most amazing thing happen. I founded Hinduism and at one point in history, every civ was Hindu, even Elisabeth, who had founded Buddhism. If I hadn't already said no to a few tech demands I would have thought about going for a Diplo win. I have never had so many folk like me. Then, just before I was ready to launch my conquering hordes. Various Civs started little wars with each other. The diplomacy screen was a mess of different colors!

For some reason, I felt it more necessary to micro manage things I had never done before. I am not entirely sure why that was. It is probably good for my overall game. I'll try a couple more Marathon games if I can. They sure do take up more real-time time. That is the major disadvantage so far. I have to keep remembering what my grand strategy was in between playing sessions.

[Generaldoktor]

The most stated concern about Marathon mode is that, with long production times, you can make a decision that's wrong for production and then not be easily able to rectify it. (You can really only overwrite one production or else lose everything invested in it, forever.) It looks like you avoided that on your first game, but beware in future ones.

Regarding micromanagment, there is a big argument going on right now in the Call to Power forum about whether C4 eliminated microcmanagement as advertised, or is as big or bigger a micro headache as the CTP variant, "Ages of Man."

Whatever! I like micro, it's a big part of why I play the games, to let the problems of the real world slip away as I get submerged in a rich, complex game problem. Others will tend to disagree...

[Blaupanzer]

At normal speed, noble-level, micromanagement does seem less necessary (read: useful) than in earlier versions. I am used to micromanagement and use it in all civs, but the real rewards in Civ IV seem to be related to the willigness to go to war. So if Marathon speed recaptures the feeling that a player may use more than one path to victory that would be cool.

In previous games (especially I and II) the player could use war to recover from an early error. Is this still the case on marathon speed?

Note that taking more real time for a game only to find you will lose because of a decision taken 20 in game hours ago is NOT fun. If this is the case with marathon, then I will stick with my "udate all your units after you take your first city when invading far away civs "strategy on normal speed since I can play twice as many of those games in the same real time. Can some of you marathoners let me know if the condition of the first sentence in this paragraph is usually the case for you at Noble or above?

Thanks.

[Generaldoktor]

Blau, I would really encourage you to try it, rather than rely on us. The short answer to your question, IMHO, is "yes, sometimes," but unless you are playing multi-player, you can ditch a game that is no longer fun for you. (Nobody has to know! )

Everybody is talking about Civ4 like it's been here forever, but even for those of us who lined up on the very first day of sales, it's only been about nine months. And less, since refinements like "Marathon Mode" have been implemented. I look at it as a continuing learning process. I played Qin recently in an aggressive setting to learn about Cho crossbows and found out I couldn't use them really because gunpowder came in too fast. I'm not losing in that game, but haven't gone back to it, because the reason I started it is no longer valid and my time is valuable too.

Do what you want, when you want!

[Eogen]

The dark ages

Actually, the dark ages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_ages) were so named because, due to the eliptical nature of the revolution of the earth around the sun, it was literally darker in the northern hemisphere during the middle ages.

Geeze, you people and your 'history'.

[Badtz Maru]

Re: The dark ages

Originally posted by Eogen
Actually, the dark ages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_ages) were so named because, due to the eliptical nature of the revolution of the earth around the sun, it was literally darker in the northern hemisphere during the middle ages.

Geeze, you people and your 'history'.

I am pretty sure you're joking, but considering some of the stuff I've seen spouted as fact on these forums, I'm not ruling out the possibility you aren't.

[TheNagus]

Re: Re: The dark ages

Originally posted by Badtz Maru


I am pretty sure you're joking, but considering some of the stuff I've seen spouted as fact on these forums, I'm not ruling out the possibility you aren't.

He's gotta be joking. Or REALLY stupid - the link he gave says the opposite to what he does

When the term "Dark Ages" is used by historians today, it is intended to be neutral, namely to express the idea that the events of the period often seem "dark" to us, due to the paucity of historical records compared with later times.

I felt obliged to create an account just to point that out...

[Blaupanzer]

Of course, the "Dark Ages" were only dark (lacking much literary and artistic input) in parts of Western and central Europe. The same time period was jumping with art, literature, and science in the Arab, Chinese, and central American societies.

So how does all of that relate to Marathon Mode?

[Blaupanzer]

Tried it a couple times; much better feel; more like Civ I. However, as has been noted, this speed is very unforgiving. Forget to do or change something at the proper moment and your whole strategy can be blown to shreds.

Cannot get my head around raging barbs though, seems almost masochistic to do that to yourself, even though one AI civ was blown away by barbs in one of the games.

Thanx for the tip folks.

[Generaldoktor]

I play Raging Barbs a lot, but keep my difficulty down around Noble most of the time to compensate. Raging Barbs does seem to give you the equivalent of a level of difficulty itself, in the early game. Barbs eventually disappear as the map is settled. It can get sort of like a video game though, like "Space Invaders," "Shoot him, there's another, shoot him; there's another, shoot him!" Probably the most masochistic is with Marathon speed, large Highlands map with continuous mountain chains, (Lakes map may work as well.) The barbs hide and appear everywhere in between the mountain ranges, building actual little civilizations; the AI civs have trouble dealing with them in those numbers and are restricted in settler spamming and a lot of their similar tricks. It is not unusual to see AI Civs killed off early in this; (Mansa Musa died out last night in a game I was playing like this; Toku frequently does too; both rely heavily on settler spam, early on, to their detriment.) The barbs in these games become like an extra player, at least early; and loyal to no one. It is an effect I like.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

yes the barbs are great it has to be raging

[iamsomeguy]

This mode is interesting, but is not what I want.

Everything scales. I ended up stacking multiple workers so they get their work done quicker, and I *still* run through technologies and have obsolete units before I have a chance to not only build them but even use them.

This really isn't anything other than just a scaled longer version of the normal speed game.

what it *should* be is this:

extremely long time to research techs

everything else normal

that way you can build an ancient city, have warrior and archer armies, and each tech is a HUGE deal.

Anyone know how to make the game do this?

[Datajack Franit]

I´m about to win my first Emperor game on Marathon, and my biggest complains are 3:

1- upgrading units just doesn´t happen. I can´t spend 500 gold for upgrading ONE cannon into ONE artillery. I have 45 cannons, go figure out

2- on marathon, researching ancient ages techs with a starting city and no terraforming costs between 24 and 34 turns. no need to say that the players founding Buddhism and Hinduism have something like 50 turns of advantage on the human players focusing on Judaism, 150 on Christianity, 200 on Confucianism. IF you manage to grab a religion, the rest of the world will be united against you. In this Emperor game I´m winning I NEVER converted to any religion, losing all the advantages like Org.Rel 25% and Theo +2 exp. per unit. Not to mention losing the free spy in those cities that were touched my my religion (I focused on a religious beeline, Polytheism and Monotheism, got them both but couldn´t convert because the rest of the world was either Buddhist or Confucianist) I couldn´t just have enemies attacking me every 20 turns.


3- Culture has no place on Marathon. Even in big cities, Cathedrals, Colosseums and Universities are taboo, as they take at least 20-25 turns before factories. And don´t make me start with the factories, my capital took 35 turns to build it. I gave up building power plants after the rest of the world gained back 600 score points of advantage. Crazy

[Yaga]

I can't speak towards Emperor mode per se, but your criticism founding religions is one of things I find challenging about Marathon mode.

Unless one starts with Mysticism, it is incredibly difficult to found any ancient religion. However *because* of the long turn scale, it is much easier and effective to spread the later Era religions -- a well developed Medieval or Renaissance city can put Missionaries out in 4-5 turns. It's an investment to do so, but if you found, say, Islam or Christianty, a Civ with two or three decent cities can spread the religion in 40 or 50 turns -- that's 15-30 missionaries, which should give substancial coverage.

Then there's the tack I took in my present game (Marathon, Large, Monarch) playing at the Romans. After waiting to see which was the dominant religion on my continet, and aquiring the Great Person necessary to build the shrine, I simply declared war, marched my Praetorians, took the city, built the shrine, and then sued for peace. Since I had already acepted the religion (which was by far the more popular) and propigated it through my kingdom everyone was only -1 upset with me (declared war on their friend) but that was more than made up for by the +'s for then spreading said religion throughout the continet, and onto the next...