Marathon Speed

[Brutus66]

Playing the game at marathon is the only way that I can seem to capture that epic feeling of building a civilization. Playing at normal speed feels like "Civilization Lite", zero calories, no granduer, and eras go by at a blur.
I sympathize with your comment that marathon can be tedious, though; it seems to take ridiculously long to build a simple barracks or settler. This is a weakness of the game I think- you have nothing to do but click the turn button and wait for things to complete a lot of the time.
One of the things I liked about Civ2 was the fact that caravan units could be created and sent to another city to contribute to building a wonder- this gave the feel that your civilization was concentrating its resources on the building of a great project. I think you should be able to shift resources and population to cities where they are needed.

[couerdelion]

I think it is just something you need to get used to. Marathon has a completely different “feel” to it.

There are some differences that are subtle changes. Barbarians, by virtue of the speed, become “Raging” on normal settings and you see Barb axemen emerging very quickly. AI civs adopt a REX strategy due to the “cheap” settlers and units.

One other difference I’ve noticed is that gold from huts are not scaled to the speed.

I’m wondering now about starting a new Marathon game from what I know but using an IMP civ. With the emphasis on early city expansion, I’m now thinking that the Imperialist trait might be worth something at Marathon speed.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by couerdelion
I’m wondering now about starting a new Marathon game from what I know but using an IMP civ. With the emphasis on early city expansion, I’m now thinking that the Imperialist trait might be worth something at Marathon speed.

Now will someone tell me how powerful Cathy is at Marathon level? She’s an absolute monster!!! It’s also strange to have two cities getting trade commerce from each other without having any link to the capital.

Another quirk in Marathon speed affects “part-builds”. At Epic or Standard, you don’t need to worry too much about hammer-decay because you can normally switch back to a part-built unit/building before decay starts kicking in. At Marathon level, the period for which something can be left in the build queue before it starts to decay is still 10 turns so switching builds needs to be done more carefully and there is not the same lee-way that the faster speeds allow.

[sirboxalot]

Originally posted by Brutus66
Playing the game at marathon is the only way that I can seem to capture that epic feeling of building a civilization. Playing at normal speed feels like "Civilization Lite", zero calories, no granduer, and eras go by at a blur.
I sympathize with your comment that marathon can be tedious, though; it seems to take ridiculously long to build a simple barracks or settler. This is a weakness of the game I think- you have nothing to do but click the turn button and wait for things to complete a lot of the time.
One of the things I liked about Civ2 was the fact that caravan units could be created and sent to another city to contribute to building a wonder- this gave the feel that your civilization was concentrating its resources on the building of a great project. I think you should be able to shift resources and population to cities where they are needed.

Caravans to help build wonders was absolutely killer. I miss that, but I guess not having to micromanage trade routes is nice.

When I first picked up Civ IV I selected Marathon and haven't looked back--it's all I play. Spending eight to ten hours on a game is what I like to do. Normal feels way too fast, but maybe I'll give Epic a shot.

[SebP]

Huh. I easily need 8 hours for a normal speed game - space ship victory. Longer with Conquest type victories. Part of that is my pc, but i don't think it accounts for all that much

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Pandemoniak
Am I the only one there to pop my capital to the max happiness before building my first settler ? (Mind you, the second, third and sometimes fourth comes right after...)

Not that high in my case...I usually wait until my capital reaches size 3 before producing workers or settlers...

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
... I usually wait until my capital reaches size 3 before producing workers or settlers...

Ditto. Not that it's max happy though, since I'm playing Noble or Prince.

[Jaybe]

My huge marathon games don't take me that long. With combat animations (Off & Def) off, my last game (domination) lasted only 65 hours.

Yes, I spend almost a month to play a single game. I also am very reluctant to not finish a game I start.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Jaybe
My huge marathon games don't take me that long. With combat animations (Off & Def) off, my last game (domination) lasted only 65 hours.

Yes, I spend almost a month to play a single game. I also am very reluctant to not finish a game I start.

I thought I was the only one taking that long to play. After playing a couple of games to familiarize myself with the game mechanics, I switched settings to marathon/huge map and have played those settings almost exclusively since. I think I've played maybe 10 games, total, in over a year.

[couerdelion]

65 hours actually doesn’t sound so long, particularly playing on a huge map or at marathon speed. If I were to look at elapsed times I would get a MUCH higher figure but this is largely due to having a game running while I might only be playing it 50% of the time, or less.

I have only finished about three or four games (excluding a few that I “resigned” from about a year or more ago). Every game that I have finished I have lost

For those of you waiting so long for settlers or workers, I’m a little surprised. The extra population does so little to reduce the build time of workers and settlers that it is often better to start them at size 1. Very often the worker will be the first build that I go for although this will mean I have to be very careful with my starting warrior. Exceptions I tend to make are

1) Coastal with fishing and seafood resources (workboat first)
2) As above but without Fishing tech (research fishing first to get a work boat)
3) Start with hunting (often build a scout ASAP before second build)
4) If Bronze Working is available from the start and I have high food tiles, I might take the option of growing and using the whip for the worker.

I admit that I am still getting used to Marathon speed and in my last failure, I crashed and burnt with Cathy from my out of control expenses. After spending nearly 100 turns researching Pottery while my treasury was fluctuating between the positives and the negatives, I decided to call it a day and figured that Pottery/Writing needed to be thrown into the list of completed techs BEFORE hitting 20-30% science.

Current game went Scout/Settler and this seemed to have been a decent enough choice – except that all my units seem to think Bears are cuddly things. Interspersing warriors with Worker whips after that gives a kick-start to the ancient economy.

[Blaupanzer]

On marathon, I find I can't spare the population for whips, since everything grows so slowly. Also need serious units for the barbarian rush when it comes. Often hard to hold any resources but those on hills during the barbarians everywhere period. Usually get three cities in even prior to the onslaught, although I start with a warrior build, then build archers prior to settlers. I do build a worker fourth in each city so as to get the roads down, mines in. Also have to work in temples or monuments for culture if not a creative civ.

[Dis]

I have a love/hate relationship with marathon. at first I loved it, then went back to epic, now I'm back to marathon again. Great for lots of military action. I choose it when I'm in the mood for domination victories. when I just want a quick game with me going for spaceship, I choose epic.

Yes I know this gives me a certain advantage militarily, but oh well.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Willem


I agree. I usually go with Warrior, Settler, Warrior, Worker, then have the next city repeat the process. Unless I've discovered Archery in the meantime, which I usually do, then it would be Archer, Settler, Archer, Worker. You need to give your cities a bit of time to grow first. Having a population of 2 or 3 makes a big difference in your production time of units that halt growth.

Also, if you start off with a Worker right away, quite often there'll be nothing for him to do since you won't have the techs yet to let him improve anything. Doing things this way, there's no way the other civs will be at my borders anytime soon. In fact it will probably be the other way around.

I've always been a fan of settler first, I just can't grow out of that. It just seems better to get 3 cities up before the ai. When I expand as fast or faster than the ai, I win.

[couerdelion]

I’m still rather surprised at how my Marathon games are turning out. Given the rate of AI expansion, there is almost no alternative but to build up a number of cities but, no matter what I seem to do, I am failing to maintain anything like parity on food or production while commerce it getting squeezed at two levels

a) the expansion adds to costs
b) with only a limited number of techs, there is little to build except units so costs are being doubly hit.

This is despite ensuring that the “commerce” techs are researched (ie Pottery and Writing). Whilst my current game gave me a fair amount of jungle (room for 3 reasonable cities without venturing into jungle), I can’t see that the jungle is the cause. I was lucky enough to get two happy resources in the capital so cities with food can at least grow.

But still my neighbour Louis is comfortable storming ahead in the food, production, commerce game and with his marble and stone, managed to snag all 6 of the early game wonders (Henge, Oracle, Great Wall, Artemis, Parthenon, Pyramids) – only missing out on Great Lighthouse – and also grabbed Hinduism which now has the Shrine. While doing all this, he has still managed to expand to build more cities than me (playing Mehmed) and all this time, has been maintaining a lead (or close to) in the power graph.

Now since none of us likes those Creative types next to us – the ones who build there cities on our borders and then complain to us about the cultural pressures – it seems I have no alternative but to try to cut him down a notch or two but something here just doesn’t fit

a) he is more technologically advanced
b) he has a bigger army
c) his food/production/commerce is ahead of me.
d) his defenses are formidable (most cities are walled)
e) he gets bonus GG points on battles fought in his territory

He has two weakness

a) lack of horses or ivory giving me slightly greater mobility
b) he probably was not preparing for war

So despite the fact that I can grab two border cities quickly (and wrest control of the Pyramids), I am rather concerned that this game is looking so “one-dimensional”. I know that Marathon games play more to the military aspects of the game but it seems to me that it is almost impossible to do anything else. The AI in Marathon seems to be far better placed to take advantage of the cheaper unit costs and sees nothing to slow down their relentless growth. The human, OTOH, is often forced to build units because they have little else to build but being squeezed in, is also forced to use this against the AI.

In a faster game, I would have went for Construction and used the War Elephants and Catapults to grind down those defenses. With Marathon, I’ve rather decided that I have to start the job earlier.

I would be interested to hear if others have won Marathon games at the higher levels without having to resort to aggression.