Too Fast Through The Gunpowder

[Vinnie]

Does anyone else find that the gunpowder era is too short in this game?
Fair enough compared to the Ancient times the gunpowder era was short but given the huge amount of conflict during that time (basically the time of building nation states) I would have expected there to be a greater delay between Musketeers and Machinegunners.

[Don Maddox]

Yes, I completely agree. It seems like it takes forever to get to "the good stuff" just to see the game end a short time after that. I keep the automatic game end at the year 2050 turned off.

[dita]

Yes, totally agree. Once you hit the gunpowder era, the game seems to fly though all the over advances. Trying one of the other game speeds will help this problem...though I haven`t tried it let.

[Corporal Kindel]

I agree that gunpowder goes quick, but I kind of like the early ages. You can do a lot of damage with swordsman and catapults. Usually, of the games I've won, I've gotten cultural wins by rifleman & assembly line. Once I've gotten three or four religions with temples & shrines and several wonders in my top three cities, I ram the cultural slider up to 100% and baske in all that culture raining down. I've never actually seen all the later technologies & jets, my games are always over by then. The farthest I've gone has been tanks, gunships, and destroyers.

The thing about Civ that I've noticed is that it's hard to take opponent's cities. They're usually heavily defended, and it takes a large force (and all the resources devoted to creating it) to take one large city, meanwhile you fall behind the science & building production in relation to the other AIs (not to mention the maintenance cost of these conquered cities, if not razing), so I think it's much more economical & easy to go for the culture win in Civ IV & otherwise defend.

It's great to watch your neighbor's cities flip without even firing a shot! I love that about Civ, you can conquer your opponent's cities without even waging war. The culture thing is great.

Personally, I think the biggest challenge in Civ is the barbarian hordes early in the game. I've lost many games due to those stinking barbarians, and they can completely stifle building production & expansion when you have to produce huge military forces instead of more important buildings. I usually don't have much of a problem when the other AIs attack. Get a guy in a woods-hill location with double woodsman promotions and watch Toksugawa waste three, four, or even five units trying to kill it.

You can always try slowing the game speed, go from normal to epic. I've never tried changing from normal, seems to work fine for me. I think the key is keeping ahead of the AIs on science up to rilfemean & biology, and then ram that culture slider up 100%. I haven't had much problem with that strategy (if I've managed to make it past the barbarians early in the game). I've seen defending rifleman kill tanks (especially with Elizabeth & redcoats), can't beat that philosophical & financial trait for cottage spamming & great people generation.

[JSMoss]

Absolutely too short. Also way too short a time from first space flight to launching a star ship to Alpha Centauri. Even on slower reseach speeds it is so fast as make it nearly essential to diable that to have a good game. Should require five to ten future techs. I have never capture a city where the Apollo wonder is but if you do not lose your entire ship you should. As it is I usually end up disabling that vicotry condition.