Why Marathon is Best Time Mode

[xiaoshan]

I play Marathon, yes I do. I love how "epic" it feels, like I'm creating a real alternative history. I switch to Epic every now and then, but I just cannot get enough of Marathon. My games take about 3 weeks and I periodically think about strategy at work or while working out. Yeah, I like this game that much.

The thing I like most about Marathon is that it makes each decision much more important, i.e. every military unit I lose, I get pissed since it will take many turns to build up my forces again. It makes everything more valuable, thereby making the entire experience more visceral. I typically have the best games on King or Emperor, depending on which Civ I am using, etc.

What are thoughts here?

[mvon007]

Marathon with islands is a bad combination, that's my thought. 500+ turns before you can really get around the sea conveniently is quite painful, although exploring such a map is amusing. I need to play a decent land map on marathon to give it a proper go, fully understand the added epicness, but not so sure about some of the decisions of how things were made more expensive / taking more turns, and some things weren't changed, e.g. giving gold to city states is unchanged, ruin bonuses are unchanged, but everything is around 2.6-3x more expensive than at normal speed. Interesting.

[Damsteri]

I played lots of marathon games in the vanilla and in the G&K versions. Then I made my own modified double speed between epic and marathon (epic is 1.5x standard and marathon is 3x). Marathon is heavily focused to military. You have 3x more turn with your units to wage wars. Best thing is that you can have wars in many different eras. You might lose your classical era battles, but then catch up in the medieval and win wars then. Marathon is definately good for military movements, but it's quite boring for other peacefull victory conditions. My most boring game was marathon one city challenge game with gandhi on huge archipelago map. 1300 turns of pure boredom.

Game don't scale all aspects of the game when the game speed is changed, which brake balances in marathon. Especially gold amounts remain same mostly, which results odd things. For example El Dorado gives 500 gold and you can buy a Settler in standard speed, and on marathon that is not even the half of the cost of the settler. City state gift sums remain same (250,500,1000), but on marathon you get 3x more gold from the barbarian camps. Anything relating to early gold output is important in marathon.

Some of the civilizations are better on slower speeds. All civilizations which has unique ability related to barbarians are very good on marathon: Germany, Ottomans, Songhai. If you combine huge map with marathon speed, then also the wide empire civilizations (Maya, Rome, Carthage, Russia, Egypt, Inca) will be boosted and Sweden too. Shoshone's larger cities are huge bonus in marathon. Then some of the civilizations are hampered with the slow speed and not scaled up gold amounts. Spain's gold discovery bonus is not scaled and there are other civilizations too which are affected. Game is totally different in balance on marathon speed than standard speed. Cilivilizations are balanced on standard speed, they are not balanced on marathon speed.

Currently I play only using standard speed and I have found out that it's quite different than slower speeds. You said that decisions are important because you can't lose a unit on marathon. True, but on marathon you have always time to heal them, even if it takes 5-9 turns. You can also move your units long distances between your cities. On quick or standard speed the important thing is not to get too much damage, because if you take too much damage to your units it's useless, because healing in non-friendly lands is way too slow. You could train a new unit in the same time you can heal your badly wounded unit. Also if you stop your units to heal 5-9 turns time passes too fast, you could lose your advantage. It's more important to fight only those battles which are important in faster speeds, because you don't have time to move your units from one front to another and heal every now and then. You have to move your units correclty, because every wrong move will cost way too much time. I learnt that in Mongolian scenario (quick speed), You have to make exactly correct moves every single turn if you want to win it on deity within 100 turns. There is no time to go scouting or waste turns on healing, every move have to lead towards victory or you lose.

[xiaoshan]

@Damsteri

Yes, I see your point on balancing...and yes, there are plenty of boring points too. I typically go for Science or Diplomatic victories when I do Marathon. What happens is that I end up doing the whole "balance of power" strategy with the AI civs. In Marathon, this requires a Pangea map almost as a neccessity since you don't want to be surprised by a huge civ after you are fianlly able to get out on deep ocean. This pulls in the military aspect in even if you don't plan on annihilating an enemy civ. Makes for some fun, and I try to get the most of the whole relationship management with other leaders aspect of the game.

[mvon007]

Very important points about the value of military units - indeed, those out in the field (even a very long way out) become more valuable as they are harder to replace, and healing is more viable as such. Again with curious balance, gifting a unit to a city state has the same effect as on faster speeds.

Some decisions can certainly be more important, as deals last 90 turns - research agreements and the like are a bit crazy. Having a trade route plundered is seriously nasty. But at least with autosaves still being every 10 turns, it tends to take less time to go back and try to fix things :D.

[Damsteri]

You can change autosave to save every turn if you want, maximum settings are 999 saved and autosave for every turn. Though marathon/huge autosaves for 1000 turns require lots of hard disk space... Gigabytes.

[Griffiths]

I have never played on Marathon before, but I have heard a lot of good things. Would everyone recommend trying for a domination victory first time out? Maybe make the size a little smaller so that I can be sure to finish the game? I have a habit of quiting some games if they get too boring.

[friend robocat]

if going Dom:

please play as the Danes on frontiercontinents map please oh please

[Kordis]

I prefer turning the victory conditions off myself.

[Just So Guy]

I play Maraphon, Archipelago all the way.

[Yow!]

On civ iv i played exclusively marathon, played some marathon on civ v, then switched, due to balance problems like Damsteri said. It's too easy to overcome your oponents, units stay useful for a much longer time, you hardly get to feel the annoyance of an artillery over your cannons, you have a very large margin of error in your tactics during marathon games, as said before.

So im now a standard player, as it gives you a need for speed, and the ai have a better chance. But if they had it better tuned, i would go marathon.

[mvffinsandmilk]

If i didn't have 3 jobs I'd play marathon games on the biggest map ever, since like Damsteri said it makes every military unit that much more powerful.