How long does a campaign take?

[brian800000]

Hello all, I'm considering this game, but concerned that I just won't have the time needed. How long (in terms of hours) would you estimate that it takes you to play a year of the war?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[bradfordkay]

For me, it would probably be in excess of 365 hours...

[CapAndGown]

PBEM or against the AI?

[brian800000]

ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown

PBEM or against the AI?

Could you give a rough estimate for both?

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: brian800000

Hello all, I'm considering this game, but concerned that I just won't have the time needed. How long (in terms of hours) would you estimate that it takes you to play a year of the war?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Against a PBEM opponent, there's more time between turns. I average ~ 1 hr. / turn-ish. Against the AI, you can crank out the turns faster and punch through them to suit your schedule.

You'll have more time to yourself after you voluntarily abandon your family and friends, get yourself on double secret probation at work and forget to go to religious services. Then again, the divorce attorney and therapy sessions will start to eat into your time too.

[CapAndGown]

PBEM turns probably take twice as long because you tend to be more careful and because you do not have the same degree of continuity. That is, against the AI you can finish a turn, hit the advance, watch the turn resolution, and immediately begin plotting your next turn, whereas in PBEM, after hitting the advance, you send the turn off to your opponent and wait for them to send it back. Even with rapid turn around times, you lose some of that continuity.

I would say a quick turn for me would be half an hour in PBEM, an average turn maybe an hour, and when critical action is occurring, maybe a 2-3 hours. Every once and a while, I also spend mucho time on a turn just checking up on everybody. In my PBEM game we got through the first year of the war in about 5 months, an average of about 3 turns per day. Things have slowed down now because I OD'ed and had to cut back. Against the AI you could probably crank out 3 turns in an evening.

[bradfordkay]

Personally, I think that this is not the game for somebody who wishes to rush through the war. Sure, you could average fifteen minutes a turn - but you'll be missing out on the depth that the game has if you do so.

The joy of this game is in the journey, not the end result...

[jomni]

Playing a few turns a day (PBEM or AI) is actually fun.  Not playing and thinking about what will happen the next few days is actually the fun part.
If you play too much in a day, you'll get burned out and brian dead.
Taking it easy will also give you enought time for family and other games.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: jomni

Playing a few turns a day (PBEM or AI) is actually fun.  Not playing and thinking about what will happen the next few days is actually the fun part.
If you play too much in a day, you'll get burned out and brian dead.
Taking it easy will also give you enought time for family and other games.

You mean you cheat on AE?

[:D]

[Alekks]

To put it another way, if you have ever played any of the Civilization series of games, then you're familiar with that "..just one more turn..." pull of those great games. This game has a pull even stronger than that, but with a multitude of more units to manage. It is very easy for hours to pass almost without notice. Depending on how much game time you have to spend, that can be good or bad.

Playing almost exclusively against the AI, I find I can manage a couple days worth of game turns each day during the work week and a week or two on the weekend without feeling rushed to get through the turns. Your mileage my vary. [:D]

You can certainly try to go faster, but as already mentioned, you may be short-changing you gaming experience and missing several of the nuances of the game mechanics by doing that. Also, you have to avoid the temptation to go "tunnel visioned" on a specific area of the Pacific Theatre because something happening there has caught your attention. The entire map, plus the off-map bases are your responsibility as the Allied player. For example, early on in any of the Grand Campaign scenarios, if you get too tunnel-visioned on getting units out of the Philippines and breeze through turns, you'll find you have neglected the DEI and Australia where you'll need to begin base building, pilot training, merchant shipping routing and unit shuffling of all types in those areas. It helps to get in the habit of taking a "west to east" or "east to west" path to cycle through bases and units each turn so you don't neglect something. It takes longer, but you'll be kicking yourself otherwise if something is missed that proves costly.

All that said, there are some excellent scenarios that can be played that are much shorter in time scope that can be very useful as primers for the Grand Scenarios or as scenarios that can be played through in a much shorter overall time commitment.

[KenchiSulla]

My poor opponent from Singapore regularly goes well into the AM to match my playing times.... Then we can pump out a couple of turns in a evening.

To give you an idea of scope:

We started our game 2nd week of december 2009 and we have just arrived 18 sept 1942... We do both have lives outside of the game ofcourse, heh

[jomni]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: jomni

Playing a few turns a day (PBEM or AI) is actually fun.  Not playing and thinking about what will happen the next few days is actually the fun part.
If you play too much in a day, you'll get burned out and brian dead.
Taking it easy will also give you enought time for family and other games.

You mean you cheat on AE?

[:D]

Yes I play with her other sisters... UV and WITP. (^_-)

[Grfin Zeppelin]

Even If I had only half and hour playtime everyday I would still buy it.

[tigercub]

if you are interested in WW2....it makes WW2 into a drug!

Tigercub

[Sardaukar]

It takes me approx. 2hrs nowadays to make proper orders for Allied 1st turn, then I can usually make (routine) turn in every 15-20 mins. I play exclusively 2-day turns, so 1 week of game time in hour of real time is quite usual.
 
Of course, it there are big operations in planning and execution, turn usually takes bit longer.

[Misconduct]

Yesterday was one of my many days off from work, I spent the time starting up 2 campaign games against the AI, I finished both first turn moves under 4-5 hours max. Typically I spend 15-20 minutes per turn depending on what needs to be done, being Japanese early in the war I probably will spend more time then I did as allies until later in the war.

Either way I agree with Tone Girl, even if I had minutes per day to play, i'd still be chugging along. As to having a life, I work 20 hours a week barely, so my times spent either reading college books (come on, i'm 27 and you are never to old to harass college girls that are legal age).

[John Lansford]

I started my CG vs the AI right after I got the download the day it was available, and I'm only to 10/43 so far.  Apparently I'm almost trying for a 1:1 ratio on days in the game vs real time...

[DeriKuk]

In my PBEM my opponent and I are averaging about three game days to one calender day . . . so that shoud come out at about a year-and-a-half. Of course, being a realist, I expect it to slow down some times, and speed up at others.

[aciddrinker]

ORIGINAL: brian800000

Hello all, I'm considering this game, but concerned that I just won't have the time needed. How long (in terms of hours) would you estimate that it takes you to play a year of the war?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Im playing my GC as Allies from march and im in mid 44'

[brian800000]

What do you guys think of playing the AI? I know it isn't as good as another person, but is it challenging? What are the prospects of a human playing as Japan versus the AI on the hardest difficulty setting?