Desparately need tips on speeding play for Civ 4 BTS

[TriMiro]

Here I am just spamming this thread:

Have you considered playing some of the BTS mods. I recommend Rhye's and Fall of Civilizations. Some of the civs can be won very fast (I can win with Babylon in 15 minutes and Egypt in 30). RFC is a mod, but it is just as interesting and challenging as the real Civ.

[Supr49er]

Triple post TriMiro.

[The Priest]

Anyway, it is really hard to mount an offensive if the Apostolic Palace or UN are butting in all the time. It is OK once you have enough votes to override, but getting to that point can be a pain. Frankly, I think they add nothing good to the game, and I wish there was a simple option to just turn them off.

Ah the power of the human over the AI! The parts of the game which mess up our clever plans and which the AI makes use of - we switch off! Poor AI no wonder it needs 'cheats'

[draethor]

Sheesh... Dunno what to tell you really then! Head over to the BtS tri-league tournament forum and give intermediate game 13 a spin.

It's only on prince which will be easier for you, but no loads makes it interesting (can't take as big of risks obviously). But game 13 is a standard size, normal speed game - how long does it take you to finish? Looking at my replay, my reasonably late-game win (with lots of warring) took 4h41m. Most of the tri-league intermediate games have taken me in the 5-8 hour range (though a couple have taken 10, one game took 13).

Maybe it's just your computer? Does it take awhile after ending your turn for the next turn to begin?

[snoopy369]

Ways to speed up the game:
1. Turn off animations if you haven't already.
2. Play on "Quick" speed. 300ish turn maximum instead of 520. Things cost half as much to make, etc.
3. Play smaller maps. Small and below maps tend to finish faster because you eliminate a couple AIs early no matter what; also, reduces the late-game movement times (you have to cross half the map no matter what in the late game).
4. Play Pangaea. All civs on one continent. You will have a domination/conquest victory in these games usually, but if that's your style (as it sounds like it is), it's better for that style of game.
5. Stack attack, quick combat on both sides, as you said you already did.

You can control+click to get all units of one type - I generally stack attack with that. Also, ctrl-H selects 'healed' units (100% health) if you have a mixed stack. Finally, it is not a random order, but in the order of best odds, with siege generally going first. It's not necessarily the most intelligent order, but it's better than random

[Shalkai]

Another thing that will save time...when a city pops up and asks what to produce next, put two or three things in the queue. All those "What would you like to produce next" popups at the beginning of each turn are probably 25-30% of your whole game time. You can save hours just by planning ahead and loading up the queue.

Wars take a lot of time - going for Culture win can be lots quicker than a Dom/Conquest victory. My play speed tends to drop by about 2/3 when I'm at war, because I plan moves, scout, check odds before battles, carefully move so there's no openings for the AI, etc.


Different people play at different speeds. I usually play at normal (500 turns), and take 8-10 hours on a standard map. Game speed is far more important than map size. Going to a small map would probably save 1-2 hours. Going to Quick speed would save 2-4.

Some people can play really quick - knock out a Normal speed/Standard size map game in just a few hours. I'm not one of 'em. You may not be, either. Even if you're a very deliberate player, though, using Quick speed and looking towards non-military victories should allow you to do a game in an evening or two.

[mmontgomery]

Thanks for all of the great suggestions!

I did not know about the ctrl-H healthy unit selection shortcut. That could save some time, especially if I could just get units of a particular type.

Each time I move a unit, it is like a one second delay for the next unit to zoom and select. I think part of it is moving the current unit. Is there a way to make my units move instantly? I have seen cases where the animation to move a unit onto a transport is still ongoing when I move the transport away from the shore. It makes it look that the unit jumped into the ocean. I thought 2 Ghz dual core was plenty fast, but maybe something else is slowing down my computer.

How do you put multiple items on the queue? It seems like as soon as you select one thing, the dialog box goes away.

As for the Priest comments, disabling a game feature you find annoying should neither help nor hurt the AI; they can't use the feature against you, but nor can you use it against them. I have read about human players getting very fast wins using Apostolic Palace, but I don't care to win that way. So disabling Diplomatic Victory is perfect for me.

As I said, I am new to the game, but I will see if I can figure out Intermediate Game 13. Can you tell me how to get started with a tri-league game? Thanks for the tip!

[Hauptman]

Originally posted by mmontgomery
Thanks for all of the great suggestions!

I did not know about the ctrl-H healthy unit selection shortcut. That could save some time, especially if I could just get units of a particular type.

Each time I move a unit, it is like a one second delay for the next unit to zoom and select. I think part of it is moving the current unit. Is there a way to make my units move instantly? I have seen cases where the animation to move a unit onto a transport is still ongoing when I move the transport away from the shore. It makes it look that the unit jumped into the ocean. I thought 2 Ghz dual core was plenty fast, but maybe something else is slowing down my computer.

RAM

How do you put multiple items on the queue? It seems like as soon as you select one thing, the dialog box goes away.

Shift key in city view

[Shalkai]

To put multiple things in the build queue, just choose "Examine City" instead of a build item. Then go down and pick your first item, click. Now, hold down the SHIFT key, and click the next item you want to build. It should appear, *after* the first thing you selected, in the production queue. (If it didn't appear as the second item, you weren't holding down the shift, probably. Fix with click and SHIFT-click selecting what you want) If you know a third thing you want to build here, go ahead and SHIFT-click it as well. ESCAPE - and you're done with production in that city for 15-30 turns!

Another variation...after you get an important tech like Code of Laws, where you need to build courthouses everywhere (except maybe your capital in this example)...put them in the queue right then, for all your cities. Select your second city, Shift-click courthouse so it will get built after whatever's currently going gets done, then hit that little white > arrow up at the top of the city screen to switch to your 3rd city. Add courthouse to the build queue....then switch to the next city. Keep going to the next city until you get to the little ones that aren't ready to build courthouses yet.

The F1 key is your friend to see what your cities are doing - use it to see whats happening, and to pop in to individual cities and tack things on to the build queues.

[Hauptman]

With that whole courthouse bit, I believe there is a key that effects all cities... I see it once in a while in the loading hints, it's not alt, as that sets indefinate build maybe cntrl-alt? So when you want all cities to start on a factory right away, you can do that with one keystroke.

Kudos to anyone who remebers the right keys... cause I dont.

[snoopy369]

You have a laptop, it sounds like, and my guess is it's your video card that is the slowdown. Probably an inadequate card, and/or not enough video ram.

You can use quick move (presumably you already do?) and turn animations off, as I said earlier, that will speed it up some (and possibly a lot on your laptop).

[draethor]

Originally posted by mmontgomery
As I said, I am new to the game, but I will see if I can figure out Intermediate Game 13. Can you tell me how to get started with a tri-league game? Thanks for the tip!

Yup, just head over to the BtS forum from the main apolyton forum page. Then go to the poll thread that says intermediate game 13. You can download and play it without signing up. If you want your scores to be considered, then just post your name on the signup thread (that's floating around there) and then sign up in the thread that you're downloading and starting.

But there aren't any requirements or mods just to download and start playing, so do that for your first few games on there to see if you like the concept.

[Vampgelus]

Another way to get rid of AP or UN, is to raze the city it was built in (exept it is one of your own)... :P

[TriMiro]

Each time I move a unit, it is like a one second delay for the next unit to zoom and select.

I have experienced the problem that you are talking about. It is not the speed of the computer. I have 2.3 GHz CPU and 2GB RAM. My video is GF7300GT 256. The problem is either with the Civ game or some driver. Basically there is a memory leak or something making the game go slower the longer you play. The solution: save the game and then reload the same save. It instantly runs faster. You can also try to restart civ if that does not work.

[Willem]

Originally posted by mmontgomery
But how do you get your games down to 5-10 hours?

Why would you want to?

I play nothing but Marathon and a game will last me for days. I just can't envisage playing a game for that short of a period. Frankly, it sounds to me like Civ is just not the right game for you. It's always been rather time consuming with Civ 4 being probably the quickest of any of them, with it's new speed options. We never used to have those before, at least not to the extent that we do now.