Marathon mode is excellent

[Yaga]

How are y'all liking Marathon with Warlords? I've a few such games under my belt and have been finding a number of new challenges w/ the sprawling, mini-world-wars that can spring up in the late middle ages, early renaissance.

Thoughts?

[Civaddict78]

Originally posted by swat-spas2
AIs don't preserve units or attack nearly as intelligently as the human player does. You having more and more units to make mistakes with does little to challenge you.

As a newbie here I am staggared by the depth and level some guys take to this game, not in a negative way, and I realise that with only about 10 games behind me in the 10 months I've had it that I may not be too experienced yetlast night- got wiped out as a small english colony on epic speed, noble level- but when I looked at all my results, my 5 best wins, all by domination, had occured on marathon speed. In fact my only domination victories occurred on this speed.

I think marathon speed gives you more time to plan for the long game and human intelligence will win out in the end. having just started playing epic i find it harder tobuild up the required strength in depth to go-a-conquering and while I get ahead in technlogy, my armies become outdated fast.

It is however, as the poster I've quoted says, a better challenge with less time!

[crusader10k]

to yaga,
sounds about right. u got east and western roman empire mixed up. eastern roman empire, or the byzantine empire fell in 1453 to the ottoman turks, western rome fell to the visigoths (Aleric??).

marathon sounds good, i'll give it a try though i may just incrase the tech time, ill have to see which is best.

[Entropic]

Though 90+% of games I play are Huge Map Marathon games, I think Marathon gives the Human an unfair advantage in Standard Size maps and smaller (though I don't really see as much fun in playing a 6AI standard size map... but that's just me) because it leverages the Human advantage in warring. I think even Large maps aren't that adequate for Marathon speed (Human advantage still too big).

[crusader10k]

sorry yaga, i totally didnt check if there was more than page one, dont know what i was thinking.

anyway Entropic, i agree with u. my first two games marathon were kinda easy. on my third i added raging barbarians and i actually ended up behind in tech and eco. maybe i was just playing poorly. still, i agree marathon makes wars against ai easy. still fun tho

[Doc555]

Marathon mode is excellent. Now what is needed is a Tolstoy mode.

Tolstoy mode would be Marathon mode during war time and Quick mode during peace time. Also it would drop in to war mode when more than one Civ approached a goal (Circumnavigation, Wonder, Religion, ect...) Also there would be a modified speed during peace time so that you could commit a sneak attack with out having your units obsolete by the time you attacked (or were attacked.)

[Chicagophil]

I wish there was a mode that was slower than Marathon.

[uberloz]

Originally posted by Chicagophil
I wish there was a mode that was slower than Marathon.

I agree!

It would be nice if there was an option to just pick one era and stay with that era the whole game.

Maybe have one turn equal one week or one month instead of multiple years?

Obviously you would have to have 'Space Race' disabled for the earlier era's, but all the other victory conditions could still apply.

[snoopy369]

You can of course create a longer marathon mode easily via the xml file GameSpeedInfo. Just mirror the changes from Epic to Marathon ...

To stay in one era is harder, I did something that kept you in the Medieval era once you got there; mostly you disable the techs and then set the speed options such that research takes longer. You could play a medieval only game starting in the medieval era by giving all medieval techs (or just advanced starting, either old-style or BtS Advanced Start), and then make teching take a REALLY long time (some mods do this, like Genghis Khan). Say 100 turns a tech or more even when well built up. (That way techs are valued).

You certainly can do per month, and I think per week but i'm not as sure about that.

[Peter Triggs]

Originally posted by uberloz

It would be nice if there was an option to just pick one era and stay with that era the whole game.

Maybe have one turn equal one week or one month instead of multiple years?

Check this thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=166104

It answers your first suggestion (but not the second).

[Zenn-La]

Originally posted by 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?

That would be ideal.

[Verrucosus]

This used to be easy in Civ2 and Alpha Centauri. There was a simple modifier in the rules.txt / alpha.txt files that allowed you to speed up or slow down research while leaving everything else the way it is. My guess would be that the Base_Research_Rate value in the GlobalDefines.xml (see under Assets\Xml) file performs that function for Civ4. I am not certain whether you can simply change that value or whether other changes are necessary for your plan to work. Depending on how much you want to slow things down, you would also have to find a way to increase the number of turns (... or be content not to get to the modern era before 2050). The experts in the creation sub-forum should be able to offer more help. If you try this, please come back to tell us how it works.

[Jaybe]

The file you want to work with is CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml.
It is in the Assets/XML/GameInfo folder.

[Blaupanzer]

When I find that file, what do I do besides back it up first? (Don't you just hate folks who know enough to get in trouble, but come crying to you to get them out?) Tried some mods but things got very weird in terms of the calendar and turns remaining information. Suspect I changed some things in potentially contradictive ways. Most frustrating! (No, I don't have a save. I replaced the modded file with the backup and blew away the game. THEN I remembered that the save might have been of some use to sombody. Ah well.)

[Jaybe]

BlauP, first thing I (supposedly) do when I am going to change an xml is copy the original into the corresponding folder of my CustomAssets, then work from that copy. If you are going to be changing GameSpeed, you can wager that the calendar is going to be different. But otherwise, report back with (1) what your intentions were, and (2) what did you change, including from/to.

May I come crying to you when I make some doozies on my PC (without my being charged an arm and a leg)? I DO know enough of Windows to get myself into trouble, but that's about it.