How long is a playthrough?

[tukkek]

Hello! How long does a playthrough take on average? If there are different game settings such as "fast" or "long" modes like in many other strategy games, how many hours are they?

I realize it also depends on the player so please let me know your own experience if you'd like thanks a bunch!

[div1]

There are so many variables and considerations in the early game that have massive consequences on how the game progress, that a run can be a few hours in the first tech age or well into the second age depending on how much the RNGeesus blesses your start.
Even with the godlike start in some aspects, you still can meet AI that have snowballed like no tomorrow and are an full age ahead, because they started with an even more ludicrous start area.
Every tribe you meet gives a very wide array of bonuses, like having 3-4 civilizations rolled into one, then there's the POI's in the regions giving benefits, what you get from ruins, what terrain you're on and more.
You can start out with basic units at 5-6 health base point or 2 base health points, having ranged at start or units that regenerates on their own everywhere, no movement penalty in woodlands or every climate doesn't give penalties, able to make elephant units or having swords unlocked that are a 1-2 damage bonus, units that have a flat +1 to all damage or give +1 electric damage but receive +1 electric damage.
That's just some of the unit stats that's possible from your starting tribe, then there's the other tribal bonuses and penalties that can be +10 to yields from a type of districts up from 5-20, a flat -5% to all science or prosperity income that are core to the gameplay, and so on.
There are more but I'll move over to the ancient wonders dotted around the regions giving bonuses like -50% unit purchase cost in the region, -50% to unit production in the region, just to mention a few.
Then there's the POI's giving a flat +10 to a income in the region's city like production, currency, prosperity, influence or other benefits.
So you could either be godlike in your decides starting region (that you scout out on your own at the start, choosing which one to lead) or be left with bonuses that gives no sense in your starting area.
Like having reduced movement embark/disembarkation cost in the middle of a Pangea landlocked tribe, have your tribe loose loyalty when destroying mountains (clearing paths), removing totem trees (those lock an area into a certain climate and are a huge negative to your units and cities: can't heal/less movement and can't collect resources because of wrong climate), killing robots (the game's barbarians but a lot worse and the guardians of 50% of the ruins), removing ruins (the quickest way to gain resources that's needed for any unit upgrades from basic), military conquest (it's a given why that's an issue in an 4X game), and so on with more things to consider.
Every tribe in the game have 5 or more of these stat changes + 2 actions giving loyalty bonus and 2 actions giving loyalty penalties, where at neutral 0 there are no changes, but + or - gives ramping benefits/penalties to all sources of income to that tribe's city at a percentage of them.
So what's a positive to your starting tribe can be a direct negative to the neighboring tribes and that loyalty sticks around even when you conquer them, leaving your expansion option being a city at -50% to all incomes that keeps spiraling down as the game progresses.
The diplomatic option is to do the tribe's preferred actions, but in some cases you could be ahead of any competition by +20 points, but see them be gobbled up by your opponents on their turn.
If you still manage to deal with that, the robots doesn't like that you clear their guards at ruins or change the climate to suit you, so once you do one of those actions you're on a timer to clear the 3-4 guarded ruins in the region or you get a robot stack dropped from orbit on a mission to raid your city or alter parts of your region's climate.
So you have to clear the 3-4 guarded ruins in a few turns quickly, as the timer increases the more transgressions you've made and the remaining guards gets reinforced every time you clear a stack, starting at 3, 5, 7 and in worst case 9 enemies in the final stack.
So you have to have several stacks of 5 units each yourself even attempting this, requiring you to have built up a considerable amount of resources to produce and support those units, taking as little damage as possible and having ready stacks near every guarded ruin.
This can almost exclusively be done by scouting alone, hitting as many of those unguarded ruins early with your main stack first, getting resources to field a bunch of scouts doing the same and several workers to clear those ruins afterwards.
So giving a clear answer about that average even as a lone player are like averaging out every lifespan that have ever existed on Earth, without knowing of 99,99% of those lifespans.
This isn't just another Civ clone, it's every single civ like game out there bundled together to give us strategy gamers a Gordian knot to solve every time we try a new run.
It has an expanded version of the unit customization of Alpha Centauri, the tactical combat of Humankind with trickle in reinforcements a stack/turn at a time, the mountain of resources in Civilization:Call to Power I & II and Civ:BE combined while every single one mattering for a different reason in any age, there's the districts from Civ IV and the Endless Series but with even more, they have managed to squeeze in the complexities known from all the games that can very liberally be called a civ clone and then some.
This has replayablility as a core feature, with the OP leaders for their own reasons, so that a strategy that roflstomped everything in one game can be like a ball and chain in the next.
Hunting for that perfect start can take you a century or happen tomorrow, you'll never know before you try.
So even how negative I might have sounded in the start, I can only say that if you've ever liked to play a Civ like clone, this is the one to try, because you'll never see the similar run twice, even with the same leader, so this has the potential to deliver infinite hours of playtime.
This will give you a challenge or a breeze, depending on how the beaches of sand grain dices lands and your actions on those changes.