[Freeciv] Re: Speeding Up Games

[Thomas Strub <ue80@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 04:11:08PM -0500, Mike Kaufman wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 01:43:27PM -0700, David Paigen wrote:
> > 
> > But a big problem is how long it takes to play a game.  I
> > have been playing on 50x80 worlds (or 80x50) and finishing
> > a game (to around 1900 AD) takes several weeks.  The game
> > gets in the way of my life.  But I thought, if a game only
> > took a week or so to play, I could play one game a month
> > and still get stuff done.

When you play fast turns you can reach 1900 AD in 2-3 h. I played a 1
city to space game ... ended around 1940. No enemies on the map ..
 
> Declare victory and quit after you're sure that the rest of the game is 
> simply a mopping up exercise (i.e. you've got overwhelming technological
> superiority)

That's around the phase where you have more points than all your enemies
together. 
 
> Alternately, if mere willpower isn't good enough, you might try playing on
> much smaller maps, or pick a generator that gives fewer continents (or one
> continent).

You can reach win condition with bigger maps really fast too.

> If you want pressure, set the timeout to be a nonzero value (although it is
> speculative whether this will 'speed' up winning a game).

A good value is around 40-60 secs until 1 AD, than 90, later a little bit
more.

When i want to save time i try to build the same units/improvement in a
cluster, so an island produces caravans, the next destroyers ...

And don't waste time with building defence units ... only defend spots
which posible get attacked. And its cheaper to build defence later than
having a warrior for 60 turns in a city.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Strub  ***  eMail ue80@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
jb: people are stupid, they don't want to learn.