Conquests too short?

Starhemberg · November 23, 2003, 05:23

Ok, I know that one idea behind creating scenarios is to shorten the length of a single game. However, my opinion is that Firaxis has gone too far in this matter.

From my impression, most of the scenarios only last between 2-4 hours, which is way too short in my eyes. Why put months in the design of a scenario only to spoil the players' fun by creating stupid time limits that force them to play a fast civ-style?

As for me, I think it is not satisfactory to play three hours of, say, the Rise of Rome only to be interrupted by a victory screen which calculates percentages and civ points I don't care about. I wan't to conquer the world without winning, or even worse, losing the game before even being able to reach the true goal (absolute domination) in year x.

What do you guys think? Isn't it a pity to have nine damn fine scenarios when you have very tight time limits that restrict you,
or in other words, even spoil your fun by kicking you out of the game through a victory status screen at the same time?

Dis · November 23, 2003, 06:22

2 to 4 hours?

Rise of Rome took me over 14 hours.

That's almost too long.

I play scenarios because I get sick of the epic game lasting too long. But I don't like small maps.

Scenarios are the right length for me.

WarpStorm · November 23, 2003, 09:54

The Sengoku one takes just as long as a normal game. The Middle Ages is also a fairly long scenario.

Starhemberg · November 23, 2003, 10:00

I hear that you can complete Mesoamerica in one hour.
Same for Age of Discovery.

And I saw screenshots of the WWII in Pacific and Rise of Rome
conquests taking only about 4 hours

.

Dissident: 14 hours seems fine to me. Any idea how much time there was left before the scenario would have ended?

Snotty · November 23, 2003, 11:14

I hear you can finish Napoleon in one turn

WarpStorm · November 23, 2003, 11:24

Quote:

Originally posted by Starhemberg
I hear that you can complete Mesoamerica in one hour.
Same for Age of Discovery.

Oh, you haven't actually played them. They both took me longer than that (a few hours each). Heck, just checking out what the new rules that were in effect for each Conquest took me about 15 minutes.

There's a mixture of lengths from short ones suitable for MP matchups to mammoth games that take nearly as long as the random game.

asleepathewheel · November 23, 2003, 12:37

Quote:

Originally posted by Snotty
I hear you can finish Napoleon in one turn

True. My first sid "victory"

statusperfect · November 23, 2003, 12:53

Dis · November 23, 2003, 19:04

Quote:

Originally posted by Starhemberg
I hear that you can complete Mesoamerica in one hour.
Same for Age of Discovery.

And I saw screenshots of the WWII in Pacific and Rise of Rome
conquests taking only about 4 hours

.

Dissident: 14 hours seems fine to me. Any idea how much time there was left before the scenario would have ended?

yes I won by 20% domination. There were still about 24 turns left I believe.

I admit I did have an urge to paint the map red just like I saw in my history books in school. I tried to get the map to look like the actual roman empire. But the damn celts proved too tough (even though I had superior units). And I was getting too tired moving around almost 100 legionary units, and 100 garrison units (though most were fortified), fire catupults, and many galleys.

Dis · November 23, 2003, 19:07

Is there something about Napolean I don't know? I haven't loaded it up yet.

The first scenario is fairly short. But it is sweet as well. That one is called mesopotamia. It took me a little over 3 hours I believe. But it was a fun scenario. It captures the intial land grab ( a very fun part of the game for me) very well, and then a real quick city build up followed by building wonders. Actually there really isn't much time to build up cities- you better put those city sites in good production zones or you won't get the wonders.

Master Marcus · November 23, 2003, 19:14

Rise of Rome took me 15 hours. Of course some others are a bit short, but very addictive. For these kind of scenarios, I find the various lenghts OK. Perhaps another one or two with a 540-turns limit like the Sengoku would have been welcomed, but overall I like the formula.

GhengisFarb™ · November 24, 2003, 01:03

Yes they are fairly short. The Middle Ages one took me 17 hours but that's because I hunted down all four relics and returned them all to Jerusalem in one crusade.

Fried-Psitalon · November 24, 2003, 10:09

There is a bug with Napolean that allows someone - if they really want to cheat and win that way - to win on turn 1.

Not trying to speak high-and-mighty, but the fastest win on AoD or Mesopotamia that I've heard of and seen proof of were my own: AoD on Demigod at 1:35 and Mesopotamia at roughly the same.

This was probably the 10th or 11th time I had played them, I had all the animations turned off, was moving only and exactly what I needed for the particular strategy I was attempting to illustrate as broken in the beta-test, and ignoring everything else. So yes, it IS possible to complete AoD or Mesopotamia that fast, but it's not easy, and you do lose a lot of the fun by playing it that way. I think it'd be a lot more fun to research piracy and snag other people's boats, personally. (But hey, I got what I was after and that problem was fixed in the beta. Wee!)

Some are shorter than others, but some can be quite long:

Mesopotamia: Fairly short, unless you go heavily warmonger. It's a builder scenario.

Rise of Rome: Long. It's a big map, and the vic conditions aren't easy to fulfill, particularly as difficulty goes up.

Fall of Rome: Fastest I ever did this was 3.5 hours using my "playfast" method. This sucker can be pretty long if you leave all the animations on and don't have the other civs do your dirty work for you.

Mesoamerica: This one's about medium. If you "harvest" your neighbors, it can go quicker; if you wipe them out altogether, it can take longer.

Age of Discovery: Extremely variant, depending on your strategy and civ choice - American civs will take less time, European imperialists only slightly more, European scallywags the most.

Sengoku: Unless you take the "quick early out" with a prebuild of the War Council, this scenario can be LOOOOONG. Longest of all, in fact. You CAN finish it if you're trying to do it fast in an hour and change by prebuilding the War Council and being a contact fiend, but you'd miss 2/3 of the units in the game that way.

Napoleanic: Personally I hate this scenario, so I can't judge it, but it seemed pretty long the one time I forced myself to slog through it.

WWII: This one is long simply through the sheer number of units you move around, and I don't care if it's only 50 turns long. Hehe.

Just a few thoughts.

Stuie · November 24, 2003, 10:49

Quote:

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
Sengoku: Unless you take the "quick early out" with a prebuild of the War Council, this scenario can be LOOOOONG. Longest of all, in fact. You CAN finish it if you're trying to do it fast in an hour and change by prebuilding the War Council and being a contact fiend, but you'd miss 2/3 of the units in the game that way.

I finished a domination win of Sengoku in about five hours on Monarch. What dissapointed me was that the tech tree ran out long before I finished the game. Either research is too fast, or techs need to be added.

As for the topic, I like the idea that I can play a quick conquest, or dive into the epic game for hours and hours and hours of gameplay. The shorter conquests are a nice alternative.

asleepathewheel · November 24, 2003, 11:17

I finished a wonder victory in Mesopotamia on Emperor in 1 hour and 2 minutes. Unfortunately my score was actually lower than my monarch victory (I think 5 wonders verses 4) and it doesn't show up! Macedonia is pretty easy to play as if you wall off the bosporus and pump up 2 cities to size twelve with workers.

Starhemberg · November 24, 2003, 13:43

Thanks for the info guys.
Guess the situation is better than I thought, although I would have welcomed even longer scenarios. Nobody "needs" a civ game that takes only 3 hours.

Dis · November 24, 2003, 16:53

Just fyi. I finished Fall of rome last night. A little over 8 hours.

Not bad. Once I wiped out east and west rome I put everything on automatic and forified most of my units. I didn't have the patience to manually terraform everything. I also changed my city production to regular buildings.

That's a problem I have with the normal game, once I know I'm going to win- I don't want the game to drag on and on.

But luckily I was gaining victory points very fast having troops on most of the VP locations (I only missed a few- central france region, London, and there is one more near the alp mountains)

Plotinus · November 25, 2003, 08:37

I completed Mesoamerica in just two hours, on my first try (as Monarch). That was good fun. I like the idea of a short snippet of Civ like this, and I like the way that different scenarios take different amounts of time - some short like that, and some mighty slogs. I'm looking forward to being Napoleon this evening (what will I tell my girlfriend? "Not tonight, Josephine." If only that were her name).

Dis · November 25, 2003, 16:55

yeah that one didn't seem big. I just started it last night. I'm trying to decide to go for culture or domination. I'll probably do domination. I've done cultural vicotry in vanilla Civ3. Nothing too exciting. Although I do enjoy playing a builder. But in that scenario you gain culture through ritual sacrifice (though I think in Three Sisters scenario you can sacrifice barbs), so I'd have to do warfare anyways.

I did Middle Ages in just over 7 hours. but if you wanted to, you can spend twice as long on that scenario. But once I revealed the whole map, the turns seemed to slow down a bit. And I really had no desire to try to win by domination or even- gasp- conquest of all 17 civs. I just took all 4 relics to Jeruselim once I had the galleys to do so (my armies wouldn't fit on curraghs).

Snotty · November 25, 2003, 16:58

Quote:

Originally posted by Plotinus
I'm looking forward to being Napoleon this evening (what will I tell my girlfriend? "Not tonight, Josephine." If only that were her name).

Absentmindedly tell her that and you get to play civ every night

asleepathewheel · November 25, 2003, 19:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Dissident
Is there something about Napolean I don't know? I haven't loaded it up yet.

Play as the French but employ some good ole' Italian Mafia tricks. See how much they will pay you for your protection.

joncnunn · November 25, 2003, 20:30

Mesopotain took me around 12 hours acoding to the clock.
Granted I spent 1 hour doing nothing but looking at the science tree and help files.

No wars at all, except some of the barbs, especally when the second civ entered the 2nd era.

Game ended in wonder victory, there were still quite a few techs left in the 2nd era.

Quote:

Originally posted by Starhemberg
From my impression, most of the scenarios only last between 2-4 hours, which is way too short in my eyes.

Aqualung71 · November 26, 2003, 09:06

Seems to be a few mixed opinions here, so I thought I'd add one more!!!!

Like others, I've found the different scenarios to be of different lengths - still not sure how some of you have found time to play them ALL already! I've got a half finished RoR (playing Persia) that I'm just getting tired of, it's so tedious moving all those units every turn just to keep Macedonia out of your cities!

I've been reading the other thread on "is C3C too easy?". Yes, it seems to me that compared to PTW at the same level, C3C is easier. However, when you consider the scenarios I believe the reason this has been done becomes clearer. When we say "easier", I guess we mean easier to win.....in time. Perhaps I'm lazy, but pre-C3C I used to play Emperor and bide my time for most of the game, then zap 'em all in the modern era. Using this strategy, you generally find that you're behind on points for most of the game, even though somewhere after halfway you can quite clearly become the dominant power militarily and economically. Plus the fact the at emperor level you usually found yourslef behind on tech's most of the game and scrambling to pick them up through sharp trading.

Well, because the scenarios are shorter, the patient players who try to "wear down" the opposition now need to completely rethink their strategy, because just as they're smiling to themselves that they are the most powerful civ on earth, the AI quietly informs them they've had their arse kicked!

While this annoys me no end, it has certainly forced me to rethink my strategy, and I will probably end up being more aggressive earlier.

I think the developers have really challenged hard-core Civ'ers into redefining their Civ strategies, and for this I applaud them.

MrWhereItsAt · November 26, 2003, 23:01

Try the fan-made Age of Empires type scenario available in the files section - it looks HUGE. I don't think anyone could finish THAT in a few hours. And I look forward to more fan-made ones in the near future.