slowing down a Civ III game

[ucla_vince]

One thing that has always frustrated me somewhat is the relative speed or rate of development in the game. I always feel like it's a pointless waste of time to build a large number of the units in the game because new units become obsolete too quickly. So I often find myself basicly jumping from spearmen to infantry without wasting my time with anything in between...

Is there a way to significantly slow down the game, so that you have to spend several hundred turns in each era?

[vmxa1]

Well yes and no. In C3C you have a very long upgrade path for most units, so I do not see the problem.

If you want to slow down the game, choose lots of islands and water. Play with a civ or two less than the default. Play with no huts. Do less trading and keep the AI at war with each other as much as you can.

[vmxa1]

Oh use younger worlds and wetter. This give more mountains and jungles. Those will tend to make it take longer to expand.

Restrict the number of civs with AG or Sea traits.

[ucla_vince]

nah, that's not really what i want...

I guess what I'm looking for is something more along the lines of increasing research costs and increasing the total number of turns in the game. So it takes alot longer to reaserach new techs and you don't have to worry about running out of time.

[Solomwi]

Play huge maps with 8 civs. The map size increases actual beaker cost of every tech, and the low civ count holds back the flurry of contact and trades early in the ancient.

[ucla_vince]

I'll try that...

thanks

[Dis]

aside from going into the editor, the above choices are probably your best shot.

[nbarclay]

You can tweak tech costs in the editor. Under World Sizes, there is a "tech rate" field that affects the pace of research. Under General, you can tweak the minimum and maximum time required.

I'm attaching a scenario I threw together in case anyone might want to try it. Here's the scenario description:

This scenario is designed to double the time required for technological advances. It doubles the tech rate for all map sizes, increases the minimum time for research from four turns to eight, and increases the maximum time from fifty turns to eighty.

Note that I haven't tried it out yet, so I have no idea how gameplay will be affected. The AIs may end up self-destructing because they run out of buildings to build and build too many units, leaving themselves unable to come up with gold for research.