What game pace do you play on?

[milehigh026]

With over 1700 hours in this game so far, I have played probably about 90% of my games on the fast pace and humankind difficulty setting. I just started a new campaign a few days ago and decided to play on endless. Huge difference in the way the game plays....and I hate it!! It takes soooo long to do anything. Just curious what the people play?

[The Doctor]

Normal pace - I can compete a single game in about 8 hours which is fine. I have no interest in making it faster but I may shift to longer games as the game develops.

[utilityguy]

I go blitz if I want to experience quick, big, wars in each eras, along with being able to chill with the city building by building and researching everything at a decent pace while playing as cultures similar to the Zhou in power. Blitz has been superb, in my 500+ hours of experience, in regards to consistently providing me with wars where Ancient and classical ships were the main form of protecting my lands from overwhelming forces.

Fast if I want to experience a better "normal" speed.

Normal whenever I want to play the game as the Devs intended.

edit:
Between the three mentioned, Blitz is my second most played, and Normal speed is my most played.

In terms of difficulty, I stay away from HUMANKIND--preferring the next two highest difficulty settings when playing on normal and fast, while blitz has been the main mode where I go with lower settings to see if the A.I can do well

[Dorok]

Each pace I tried played very differently, moreover switch from a pace to another pace can be brutal by direct comparison.

I played Blitz a few time and didn't like, 450 turns once and ok but nothing else, 300 turns many times, 600 turns also many times, but at end 600 turns won.

For sure switch from 300 turns to 600 turns makes feel everything is very slow but for me the feeling disappear fast. And past that 600 turns pace has everything for it, according to my preferences:
- It gives more duration to each era, and gives more weight and meaning to each culture.
- It gives a lot more time for wars and world strategies and moving armies around the world.
- It lower city building harassment hence allows focus more on other aspects. It's a point the game should really improve, chain build should show proximity bonus from build already in build stack, without this it restrict a lot on building stack length.
- It feels a more proper pace for science and eras, perhaps it's because you have more turns to quote you are wrong and can adapt, or it's just from the different balances.
- It makes the best part of the game (because of AIs) longer, more or less at half play the gameplay starts deteriorate, but you got 300 fun turns, and you can quickly rush or just not bother play more for long, typically at 400 turns you could start another play or it's just for some experiment in late eras but until AI are fixed for that it's not much more.

Otherwise depending of game versions, some balance at 600 turns could be less good, typical was buyout, which seems have been improved at 600 turn with last game version, but probably not as well tuned than at 300 turns. Trades was probably advantageous at 600 turns but with last game version it seems harsher, but I don't know how it is now at 300 turns. Upgrade prices always felt ok for me, for both 300 turns and 600 turns. There's certainly more, but I can't compare anymore with 300 turns I haven't played since many plays.

[mk11]

Map size also matters. Blitz ans a huge map and you don't have time to see the world

[Dorok]

Right map size but also some other play options change in deep the gameplay, with or without New World, one continent or many, chaotic+many big lakes or normal and few small lakes.

But for some reasons i need dig to explain, I never feel big maps smaller than huge maps.

[milehigh026]

Originally posted by mk11:

Map size also matters. Blitz ans a huge map and you don't have time to see the world

You're right. Map size is a big factor on how the game plays. I have always used a huge map and 9 AI, unless I was going for a particular achievement that made sense to play on something smaller.

[Spacesuit Spiff]

Longer speeds because they reduce the RNG variance (get stuck on a river turn 1 in blitz you can gfy, endless doesn't feel it nearly as badly) and wars are a lot riskier. Units die at the same rate but take longer to replace, so it becomes more important to keep them alive. There's also more opportunity to make military plays on the strategic map, whereas on fast speeds you barely have time to walk the doomstacks to your frontline.

[milehigh026]

So after playing a few more days on my endless pace game, I'm still not convinced that it is a better pace for the game.

When the game released I could understand that people wanted to play a longer game than 150 or 300 turns. But now that you can disable the turn limit on any pace settings playing a long, boring pace just doesn't suit my play stye. When I am used to playing on fast (150 turns) having everything take 4x as long to complete was really dull. Constantly pressing end turn just so that my troops could move and by buildings could finish was mind numbing. This was the first time I have ever fallen asleep at my computer LOL.

[Dorok]

I suppose that's why there's paces, a sort of multiple games for one game, depending of player preference. But it's effectively very different games. For example your comment pinpoint the slow move of armies in Endless, but in Blitz you don't even have time to move armies. Not a surprise Blitz and Endless are totally different games, and it's not just a matter of patience.

That said, it's also my patience that Blitz exhaust quickly, the harassment on building and build stack not implemented fully so you can really stack without lost, is out of my patience. :-)