How much time do you spend per turn?

[LintMan]

I'm curious how much time everyone spends doing each turn.

very I've found that by mid-game, I often take an hour or (much) more per turn. I recently spent about 4 hours on a single turn, where it's near the end-game, and I have a huge empire (Orania map) with 8-9 different fronts, plus tons of item forgers, summoners, site searchers, etc, to all manage. Now, some of that time is spent looking up monster summons or item stats, but: Yikes!

Am I a micro-managing nutcase, or just incredibly slow, or do other people spend this long per turn also?

[Norfleet]

You're either incredibly slow, or I'm fast: The upper bound for the time it takes me to complete Turn N, for all N > 1, is usually equal to (N/sqrt(2)) minutes. Thus, to perform, say, Turn 60, it will never take me more than 42 continuous minutes of turn-related activity. Ever.

That's for a first pass. Then I complete my turn, notice that everyone has NOT finished their turn yet, and then spend the remaining time pondering at extreme length, exploring anything I had misgivings about, and possibly changing a few moves later. But I always submit my turn with N/sqrt(2) minutes, with the exception of the first turn where I have to set all my general CRTL-orders and mapfilters. That one might take up to 3 minutes.

[st.patrik]

I probably take somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes per turn, depending on whether something big is going on or not. But I don't much like huge games, just because of all the micromanagement.

[PvK]

I don't play simultaneous multiplayer, which is what Norfleet was talking about. Hence his "first pass" comment, and mentioning that the other players are not finished yet (Norfleet is a maniac player and fast, though). I play PBEM and single-player, which is I think what Lintman was thinking about when he asked.

Personally, I tend to take as long as it takes to be happy about what just about everyone is doing, which takes a long time. But I do that because I enjoy it a lot (and partly because I'm a perfectionist), and not because I need to. I could probably be 85% as effective by spending 25% or less the amount of time, if I wanted to. I play quite quickly when I'm trying something out rather than "roleplaying" the whole game.

I do start to find things a bit unmanageable in my larger games by turn 110 or so. I still enjoy playing, but often do one or fewer turns per game session. I haven't timed myself but I think I may have spent an hour or more playing a single turn sometimes. It's still a whole lot of fun for me at that point, but it becomes somewhat of an effort to remember everything that was going on everywhere.

PvK

[ June 07, 2004, 22:23: Message edited by: PvK ]

[HJ]

I take a long time to do the turn as well. In the endgame, it usually takes at least an hour or so to check up on what everyone's doing, to find the hammer of the forge lord and all 5 dwarven hammers and other item boosters, to think about what to do with this thistle mace that I just discovered on a sage who cast haruspex about 20 turns ago, etc. . Things that really help are the 'n' key for selecting next idle commander, the invaluable f1 key for site searching/taxes/PD, and renaming to a point (when you don't need to rename people every turn, since that's just micromanagement again). I sometimes even write things down so that I don't forget what the plan was, e.g. what equipment I need forged on the next turn (after I find all the hammers), which gems I need to refrain from using so that I can cast a big ritual later, sometimes even who has what items. I wouldn't mind some things to ease up the micromanagement, but it doesn't really detract from my enjoyment.

[alexti]

The biggest time killer in the end game is slow F1 screen. I would go to do some adjustment and it'd take Dom2 10 seconds just return back after changing tax rate for example. It works fast on first provinces, but after 150th province it gets very slow (it seems to strongly depend on how far down the list you are). Another annoying thing is small item storage which causes me to move all available items to mages for storage, so that there's room for the items being forged. But of course, it's getting hard to find the right item when it is kept by some mage somewhere I wish Illwinter would increase inventory size. By the look of it it doesn't look like a complex task.

[NTJedi]

I believe most will agree that the time spent per turn depends on how many commanders, troops and territories are currently owned. Those like myself watch each battle where even more time is added. I watch the battles to study positions and commands for units plus to learn how opponents position their troops as well.

Also it depends on what expectations are set between the gamers... if everyone agrees a 15min limit then thats the rule to follow.
It would be a nice feature to see a time limit setting available for Dominions_3... something similar to Heroes_III would be perfect.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by NTJedi:
It would be a nice feature to see a time limit setting available for Dominions_3... something similar to Heroes_III would be perfect.

That already exists. You can set the Quickhost timer to occur in 15 minutes, for instance, which means a turn must take less than 15 minutes, or you STALE!

[PvK]

Dominions II as RTS... oh boy.

BTW, I seem to get an instant response from the F1 screen, even to jump to the Last province on the list in a fairly big game (turn 100+). I'm on a fast computer at the moment, though.

PvK

[alexti]

Did you try to change tax on 150th or so province in the list? Though it may depend on number of commanders as well. And I'm not in a mood to count them, my very rough estimate would be around 500 commanders.