[0.915] Game Pacing

Good feedback. I agree. Stardock games tend to feature a slower start than other 4X games. It does take tons of time to get a credible group of units together. This wouldn't be a problem if all the initial nearby monsters were weak, but as you said, you will quickly come up against Major nasties. I think this is best fixed by moving high level monsters to the widlands or very rare locations. Replace them with enemies that can be handled by an early game army / sov / magic. Allow these nasties to develop if left alone. This will make the wildlands even more deadly and special, which is fitting. The remaining early nasties will be strong enough to slow early expansion and exploration without choking it off.

I think the situation could be helped with better early techs. The initial military techs are kinda lame and don't do much...a whole tech just to get a wooden shield? That's it? It would be nice to have some more early options. For armor, it might be nice to have an earlier armor level, padded or hide or something. 

Overall though I think most of the problems are balance related and can be improved with further development.

Yea, the wooden shield tech was always a little funny .

If you have a problem with pacing, trying playing on "fast", it helps a bit. I do think it is a bit slow overall and could use some tweaks, but the option is there, so why not use it?

I am not having any of the issues you are except for maybe water taking up too much space.

I play on fast pace to get the game going. Otherwise the pacing is far too slow. I would cut the tier one and two techs costs in half so that normal pace is more tenable. 

I used to have a problem with pacing too.  Movement too slow.  Tech too slow.  I would play on Fast and play Tarth for the extra movement point every time.  Now either I'm becoming a better player or they've done some tweaks to the pacing because I'm playing non-Tarth factions on Normal speed and it seems to be okay.  I don't think I've ever gone all the way through the tech tree though so maybe I need to play on larger maps or something.

If you max prestige at the start through sovereign leveling and civics techs research goes much faster.

I don't have any problem with monsters, they seem easy on hard to me.

The monsters are FAR better now than they have been, but there are still some poor starts where the AI bum rushes all your expansion opprtunities except the one near the lone Umberdroth.

The starting pacing is still pretty ferociously slow for the first 50 turns, but once you get going it rolls along nicely.

I had a start where I was in the northeast corner of a continent, with woods south, mountains (impassable) southwest, and woods west - so only two directions to explore. Within 10-30ish tiles of my home base were FOUR juggernaughts.  The whole 'monsters have strengths and weaknesses' thing didn't apply, those things have no god damn weaknesses and are absolute terrors early game. Also nearby, an earth elemental and a fire elemental with their armies. About turn 80 when they all woke up, wandered around (I had nothing within 3 tiles of their original positions) and crushed a few of my cities. Gave up, restarted.

Sounds like a solution here might be to speed up the tier 1 techs some.

Gaeb that is a great example. A game like that simply should not happen except on the highest difficulty levels of special scenarios. Some people may see games like that often, some rarely. It is a major balance issue. I again argue that high level monsters outside the wildlands should be very very rare. A player that invests in troops, magic, and/or champions should be able to expand, with difficulty, but shouldn't be completely blocked off by multiple high level threats from the start of the game.

Why shall you be able to kill everything you see at the first glance? It's much more fun to try to avoid monsters, or feel it's a real risk or heavy investment if you really want the worst bad asses out. I like the pace, and think ppl don't liking it tend to wait building units until they have leather armour. Without scouts or starting support troops it get's abit riskier out there, and more clicking just end turn.

Or you can choose Master Scouts for your Civ and monsters will never attack you, except in Wildlands.

Norseman, there is a middle ground between being able to kill everything from the start with a glance and being surrounded by unbeatable high level enemies. i don't see anyone here asking for the ability to kill everything with a glance. As I said, the initial enemies should be dangerous enough to threaten early expansion and provide some difficult conflict. They should not be so strong that a player can't ever have a hope of winning until the end game. A player that invests in troops, magic, and / or champs should be able to overcome most early threats. Save the super powerful stuff for the Wildlands and late game. This would create a much more natural difficulty curve and prevent situations where an unlucky start makes the game unplayable.

Have played several games and not had this issue goon. Perhaps they aren't playing the game right. I use a lot of magic and that works for me.

Blackrain, plenty of people have been seeing this, some have given examples in this thread. And to suggest that there is a 'right' way to play a game like this...if that was the case it would be indicitive of a serious flawed game. A strategy game like this is built on the ability of the player to come up with varied ways of achieving goals. There shouod never be a 'right' way to play in a game like this. It isn't a rail shooter.

I tried playing the game on fast pace. The only thing that appears to have changed is the research time. I would like to also have the option to increase production and or leveling. This way If i wanted to play a "Dark age" game, I could have high production and slow research.

The only good games I have had were on medium maps. This is because more of the map is land based. When i play a large map, they all seem to be a archipelago, which limits my exploration options. Another suggestion would be to have a world type (Islands, continents etc) and to give water a purpose beyond blocking terrain.

Normal pacing is fine for me. I like it slow

As long as I have the +mana for the upkeep, I always keep "Inspiration" cast on all my cities, and absolutely, positively, cast it immediately on first city at start of game, it knocks the research time way down in the early game.

Yes, absolutely.  I have changed some stuff so that things cost much less, in money and time.  I also kept a mod from War of Magic that doubles the movement.  With these two things, the game is fun (though still buggy and often becomes unplayable because of crashes or such severe visual problems you cannot tell what anything is).

This SHOULD be an option, for those that want a game that is not paced so slowly.  It makes the game TREMENDOUSLY more fun for me, and I am sure there are others who feel the same.

I agree.  Research times and building production times are too slow in the early game.  It leads to too much end turn click spam for my liking.  I'd also be in favor of giving all the sovereigns scouting or some type of pathfinding.  Either that or give a starting scout unit in addition to the sovereign so we have more to do at the start.

I'd agree about the early game techs

Honestly, my typical games break down into three roughly equal stages

1/3 Unlocking things, building a basic couple of towns capable of supporting a couple of units and training champions up to survivability

1/3 Actually playing the meat of the game, improving my troops, fighting my first war and pursuing the things i want to, with some pressure still on me

1/3 mopping up because i've already won, and indulging in quests, spells and cool things that i don't really need

The proportion of that middle stage needs to be increased at the expense of the other two.

I love the startup phase the most. That is one of the reasons that I would easily restart a game if its getting boring

If you speed up the early techs too much, then the faction with the Research +5 trait will lose some of that advantage.  I would not change the tech speeds.  If you have an issue with pacing, then play on Fast, find a Lost Library, build studies and libraries, cast Inspiration, choose Path of the Governor, and/or grow your cities faster.

I strongly disagree with the OP.

If the pacing were 'sped up' that would leave little time for exploring and conquering the shattered remains of civilization. 

The early phase is currently my favorite part of the game.  By the time you reach mid-game, the content and AI start to become a little lack-luster.