Epic speed (a thread for people who only play normal speed)

[padillah]

I can't get enough infrastruture built to support my cities and units. And I can't get to Currency o anything else fast enough to help.

How do you build an infrastructure at this belaboured speed?

Tom P.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Forwarn45


OK - I am a player who plays on normal speed so I'll post a comment. This thread hasn't totally convinced me epic is better. It sounds as if it might accentuate several of the advantages the player has over the AI as well as favor a more military strategy. But perhaps I'll give it a try anyway at some point and try to get a conquest or domination win. (I have usually won the other ways).

The slower game speeds are a lot easier. My first win on Noble was on Marathon, long before I could even get in the top half of the scoreboard on normal speed. You're right that the longer game speeds accentuate the player's advantage over the AI. The AI gets big bonuses on all difficulty levels when it comes to upgrading units because it's not able to effectively determine which units should be upgraded and which shouldn't, so it just upgrades them all. On Marathon this bonus means a lot less. The AI also has problems fighting prolonged wars, even with it's war weariness bonuses, and the fact you can wage a long war without having to worry about the AI getting an upgrade to their units makes it easy to dominate the AI in combat.

This works the other way, too. The Quick game speed is a lot harder than normal. I think it's because on longer games mistakes don't hurt as much - sometimes when I build the Pyramids or (more rarely) research a new civic tech I'll forget to change my civics, or I'll forget to do something else immediately when the option comes up. If I don't catch my mistake for 5 turns, that really hurt my turn advantage on Quick, but on Marathon it's no biggie.


As an aside, I tried making a game speed where the research was at 300% (like Marathon), but everything else was the same as Normal. I built the spaceship in 1100AD and techs were coming about as fast as they do in a normal game at that point because it gives you so much time to build up your cities and armies that your cities will be building research or wealth for most of the game.

[MikeH]

I think I'm going to try marathon in my next game.