How long are your games?

You are definitely a freak.

Freak.

I can't finish a Medium map at painful in that amount of time.

Pls share with us your tactics on playing this fast.
Have you found ways to reduce some of the more tedious tasks in the game?

Obviously this post requites my boast of having achieved victory on EASY in a short 20 hours.

I bet you guys are attacking people or something. That's not very kind you know.

Nah.. they are all just having a bit of fun
Paguma was almost asking for the responses from the way he phrased his comments.

That said Paguma, I'm still interested in how you did it.

It takes me days to finish a large/huge map. But, then again, I only have a limited amount of time I can play each day. My current huge/challenging game is going into its third day, and I do not think I will finish it until the fourth. Ah, how I wish I had the 8 hours plus a day I used to have to play games, like I did when Civ was my second life!

Good grief....just finished my first gigantic for up to 20 solid hours for an 11,000 score. Knock off 5 hours for a sensible score (ie just to win).

I'll start by saying I still don't understand half this game, so I ignore a lot of it. I don't claim to be a good player, just a fast one.

1) Avoid wars at all cost, they take too much time, and too many resources.
2) Automate almost all the city production through governors.
3) Only micromanage planets if really necessary.
4) Don't be afraid to just keep pressing the TURN button when nothing interesting is happening.

With no wars, and few ships outside of my planets exploring (other than a couple surveyers), I often press the turn button, and a couple seconds later I can press it again.

My 4 hour gigantic map was played without a single war (until the last 6 turns), without ever having a planet invaded or invading a planet. I really only ever had constructors moving around, and that was only to stop the Arceans who were encroaching on my borders, and getting too strong.

Unfortunately the Arceans surprised me and attacked just as I started to research Final Frontier. I had nothing but BattleAxes defending my planets and he had Overlords. Needless to say, my turns went from 5 seconds to 5 minutes as he ran arounnd destroying all my ships. I didn't bother to build new ones to defend, and just let him beat me up, knowing there was no way he could invade all my planets before 5 turns were up, and I discovered the Final Frontier. Sure enough, he never had time to invade any planets before I won, but my military was completely wiped out.

Sorry, I don't think I have a real strategy, I just don't pay much attention to details, and hit TURN a lot. I'll probably have to slow down my playing when the competition gets tougher, but I found on Intelligent they were not very much of a challenge.

Oh, one other thing, as part of my avoiding wars at all costs... I tend to be very weak as I stretch myself thin early in the game, so contrary to most people's advice, I always pay tribute in the early/mid games. I often initiate and offer tribute to people who don't like me, before they even ask, to try to increase their opinion of me. Then, as soon as I can get trade and decent engines, I start trading with all the AIs, but especially the more powerful and the ones who don't like me.

I can generally avoid wars with all the AIs, this way, so I can just race through the Tech and win without much trouble. I can also win culturally quite easily. The one thing I can't do very fast is win Militarily. Although I could, simply by culturally beating the opponents down to a couple planets and then invading, but that seems like a cheap military victory win.

I find the military ships maintenance costs are way too high to wage big wars, so I find it best to appease all the AIs to simply avoid war, and move along the Tech tree.

I'll try another Huge with higher AI next to see if I can still do it that fast. I'm going to play Huge instead of Gigantic because my computer was pretty slow for the last 25 or so turns on that Gigantic map.

I only play Huge and Gigantic maps on rare world they never take me more than 5 hours (i never submit cause crappy scores and i use LOTS of mods so i dont thinks its fair) but i also max out my resurch with the senate and raceil bonuses so i am half way up the tech tree before the AI are a 1/4 and have maby 3 or 4 millitary vessels while i have a standing navy of 50 battle axes (not anymore stupid 1.03A) so i take them over realy quickly.

My games take much longer than yours, Paquma. I agree that avoiding wars is a good idea, but I haven't discovered the knack for that yet. If any AI ever gets even a modest military advantage over me it starts to demand so much tribute that I cannot possibly pay it (for example: key star systems, 1,200 treasury when I have 300). So I am baffled as to how you could keep the Arceans (and presumably other civs as well) with Overlords from attacking your BattleAxe based military until so late in the game.

sounds like a exceptionally boring way to play!

bb413: That's obvious a matter of opinion. Combat in this game seems very tedious to me, so I don't enjoy it. I also don't enjoy micromanaging my planets. So to me, this is the most interesting way to play.

Vynd: His military was 3 or 4 times greater than mine (according to the graph). I always had at least 3 or 4 trade routes going with him, and occasionally gave him gifts, and always gave him his tribute when demanded (which was infrequent) I also had a booming economy though, so his tribute demands were pocket change anyway. What is 1200 credit when you have 30000. That's playing with 100% of my resources being spent too.

I had a lot of advantages in economy and morale (so I can tax more). Also, since my military was so crappy, I had virtually no maintance costs.

All that said, my relations with the Arceans generally were "Wary". He didn't like me, but he tolerated me. The only other races close to me were the Drengin and Torians, but from early on I boxed them in and traded with them, so their economies were completely dependent on me.

The Altareans were pretty much destroyed by the Arceans, and surrended to the Torians late in the game. The Yor were too far away to bother me, and were boxed in by the Arceans. It really was a 2 way race from early in the game.

BTW, I upped the skill level of my opponents, and finished 3 more gigantic universes this weekend.

1)

DIFFICULTY: All AI at Genius
DURATION: 3 hours.
MAP SIZE: Gigantic

Pretty much as the one I described above, I did it without a significant army, but by staying in good relations with the other races. I probably would have lost this game had the computer been allowed to pursue Technological victory.

2)

DIFFICULTY: All AI at Genius
DURATION: 4 hours.
MAP SIZE: Gigantic

Took me a little longer, and I did a worse job, but got more points. I think I was only the 3rd best race, but I was the only one able to pursue Tech victory, and they just kept fighting each other, mostly funded by strong trading with me.

3)

DIFFICULTY: All AI at Incredible
DURATION: 4 hours.
MAP SIZE: Gigantic

This was pretty crumby actually. I got those first two wins early in the Canadian long weekend, and spent the rest of the weekend really struggling with the Incredible AI. My "stratagies" just didn't seem to work against Incredible AIs. They detected my early weaknesses and would always attack me early int he game. Finally in this game, I got a map, where my neighbors were so far away (except one) that I didn't encounter them until my trade ships and military were ready. I was able to trade with all the people who hated me to keep them from attacking me. Then I basically treaded water, except my economy was strong. Then as I was probably only half way to the Tech victory, I bought Galactic Creation from the Torians for 8000 credits, 6 trade goods and a planet. Then 20 turns later, I discovered Beyond Humand and Final Frontier, and winning a very unsatisfying game.

Funny thing is, my race was pathetic in that last game, yet it was my highest score ever because of the difficulty rating.

Now that I've won at a game at Masochistic, I can go back and play at levels that suit my current skill level better. I think I'm currently playing a mix of Intelligent/Genius level. That's where I seem to get reasonable opposition. More than that, and I tread water until I can pull off the cheesy Tech victory.

My games take lonnnnnnnnnnnng (but I like i like that ).
Until now, the only way I could finish a game in say, 4 hours, is to loose by that time (:( , which happens far more often than I would like to admit in 1.04b .
I guess I'll have to take the AI down one level

Usually if I play a huge map solid, I can get a win in 6 hours. I take on a combination of tactics which include the starfighter gambit, plus culture bombing, plus prudent use of attacks against a weaker empire (particular one that has technolgies that I don't) I've found that if I have a huge influence advantage from galactic wonders, I can take down worlds in the middle of the AI territory, and then erode their influence from the inside since those planets I took in their core pick up the huge influence bonuses from the wonder.

Usually once I get a sufficient number of Dreadnaughts online, I'll chew up the as many AI ships as I can and sue for peace. If I leave them devastated enough, I'll go for the jugular.

Tiny maps: take me less than 2 hours to play through
Small maps: not sure, never played
Medium: not sure, never played
Large: probably 4 hours
Huge: 6 hours
Gigantic: dont know, but since there's about 5 times more territory to cover (144 vs 512 sectors), probably 16 to 20 hours

SeanB

I should add that if you play on the higher levels, your game and very easily come to a quick end if 1) the target civilization has Final Frontier and 2) you take a planet militarily from that civ. Often times you get the most powerful tech, and your game ends. So it could be that it may not reach the 20 hours (at the clip their researching someone's bound to hit it by to 10 to 12 hour mark)

SeanB

My one game where I went straight to tech victory
without taking over the galaxy, it took me less then 4
hours. Im pretty sure I can do it now in about 3 hours.

If im taking over the entire galaxy through cultural
influence, its about 6-8 hours to finish.

Through military, I imagine it would take about 10+
hours, but i havnt done it.

All gigantic abundant tight cluster galaxies at
masochistic level.

Paguma,

Try playing a small or tiny map for a drastic change of pace.

It may sound funny, but because I'm a slow starter, I find tiny maps very difficult. The AI creams me on those.

Hmm... my current large/bright game has taken two days so far. I'm obviously doing something wrong. I tend to put quite a few ships on patrol though, so I do spend a lot of time watching other people's wars.

No, don't think you are doing something wrong compared to me. You're probably doing things right, and I'm doing them wrong.

Although I'm always a fast player in these types of games, which is why multiplayer for turn based games is just completely useless to me anyway.

Part of my "problem" is I am impatient. Where other people spend a lot of time making sure everything is going well before pressing the turn button, I just keep happily hitting it until something is obviously wrong, then I fix it.