just curious long this takes others.

i 'm finding this game can takes insane amount of time.  of course how you play it can influence that.  for example, if you do manual battle instead of auto, that can add much more time to game.

i'm finding coupling treasure search across world, managing ai players and research, racing to get the exclusive tech/equipment stuff, and so on , all these can make playing overwhelming long.

i been cutting corners and shortcutting to lessen the play time.  

how do other go about managing play time?

I don't time individual games. It really doesn't matter much since you can save and come back at any time IMO.

If you want shorter games, you can tweak settings to make them so like smaller maps and fewer AI enemies. Making resources more abundant. Playing a faction that does well in battle (Ardent mages, Necrophages).

Why do you want shorter games in the first place? That's the most important question. Once we know that, then we can tell you best way to get there.

If your time is that limited, maybe you need to find a different genre of game to play then? 

Off the top of my head I can't think of many strategy games let alone 4x strategy games, which are worthwhile, that are truly short in length.

Maybe Age of Wonders 3 would be a better bet on small maps with independent cities turned on. Most 4x players like to savor the length and complexity of games like these.  

mm...ok. i don't think folks that commented so far got it.    or folks never experienced how long this game CAN be.  everybody plays tiny maps perhaps.  but it's ok.

say you have following setting:

-endless difficulity

-huge map

-5-8 continents

- 7 AIs

and when you are warring with 2/3 AIs at once and there like 5-6 battles to decide on in a turn, then you would get how long manual battles can be cumulatively perhaps.

endlessfan12 wrote:

mm...ok. i don't think folks that commented so far got it.    or folks never experienced how long this game CAN be.  everybody plays tiny maps perhaps.  but it's ok.

say you have following setting:

-endless difficulity

-huge map

-5-8 continents

- 7 AIs

and when you are warring with 2/3 AIs at once and there like 5-6 battles to decide on in a turn, then you would get how long manual battles can be cumulatively perhaps.

Sorry, I must've misunderstood your initial point then.

You're way ahead of me with regards to how much you "stretch" the game sessions ...

I personally don't see how you can significantly shorten the game duration with the sessions you've chosen, other than set the Resources to "abundant" and the Anomalies to "many".

endlessfan12 wrote:

you think i baked a pie that's too big to eat?

no one here's this crazy ?

ah it's ok, i'm managing....

People play with those settings.  They just don't expect short games.

Unless you've never played a 4x before, I can't see how you'd think that you would get short games with those options.

well just cuz you made a big game doesn't mean you can't explore ways to shorten the time and make it enjoyable also.  

anyone with common sense can see that.

i don;t  play to kill all the AIs but also to keep em alive ,weakened and controlled.  i 'm not doing extinction in the current game.  

endlessfan12 wrote:

anyone with common sense can see that.

There's no need to drop this in.

On-point:

4X games usually tend to last longer than other types of strategy games.

Settings which encourage long games (such as a huge map, lots of continents, factions and so on) ... tend to achieve their goals, thus making the game longer.

I'm not sure what exactly your goal is ... If you need shorter games, select smaller maps, fewer factions, abundant resources and so on.

Half the fun is in all the detail. Come mid game I'll spend a half hour picking and configuring a hero and then designing the units just for that hero. So I don't care how long it takes. The end is not the goal.

To me long game that takes 10 hours is not a problem. I have save option. I know that game can just suck you in but honestly 1.5 hour long session can be pretty satisfying. I personally dont try to speed game up and instead are trying to enjoy it. Only maneuvre that i use to save myself some time is Autoresolving battless when i know mine advantage is huge and I wont be (most likely) engaged untill mine army heals. This game is not an race for me. When I play I make myself emperor who sometimes wants to resolve things faster but other times takes more cautious patch. I dont play to comepete in contest ''who can win more games i 4 days''. I play to win but I dont care for time. If I winn in 300th turn I shall be just as pleased as if it would be in 80th. Well at least this is mine philosphy.