Re: Speeding Up Games

On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 01:43:27PM -0700, David Paigen wrote:
> 
> While I enjoy playing freeciv, there are two things which
> stop me after awhile, the amount of time it takes to get
> things done and the amount of time I spend playing.
> 
> The CMA is a good start on addressing the first issue.  So
> is using fewer cities.  In my last game I kept myself to 12
> cities until my 'take over the world' phase.  That worked
> well for me.
> 
> 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.

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)

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).

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

There are plans in the works to make the latter phase of the game less
tedious (the armies patch and mass troop movements concepts come to mind)
as well as AI surrender (Per: this was discussed wrt ai diplomacy, what was
the result?)

-mike