Short(er) 4X/grand strategy games?

So I've been playing some Civ IV.
Really liking it, and now I get what people mean with "one more turn". Problem is, I'm a father of two and free time is at a premium. I quit my first campaign (small map and quick game) after 15 hours when I had obviously won. I thought my second campaign would go faster due to experience, but here's the result of last night's two hour session: I built a few units and buildings, reserached one tech. I won't lie to you, it felt a bit slim. And the prospect of playing the rest of this game is only made more tedious by a war looming ahead of me.
So I'm quitting Civ IV.
I was really looking forward to getting into grand strategy/4X games, but I was also (foolishly it would seem) under the impression that I could play a campaign in 5-10 hours tops. Are there any games that would fit the bill? Stuff I had on my to-play list was: Alpha Centauri, Shogun 2, Crusader Kings II, Endless Legend, Age of Wonders III. I guess Civ Rev is one, but other than that? O wise gamers with jobs, help!

Civ Rev will give you the shorter games you are looking, however it is sort of a Civ lite game so you are sacrificing some of the depth of what you get in Civ 4. I'd recommend giving it a try though as I still think it's a pretty fun game and can be played in 4 hours or so if I remember right.

Alpha Centauri, Crusader Kings and Endless legend are all going to have the same problem as Civ 4 in terms of length.

Civ V, set to Quick Pace.

Definitely not Crusader Kings 2 if you want to do a full campaign. I think ten hours would get you through about 50 years, depending. They'd be pretty dense years, but you wouldn't be close to finishing a campaign. (I've got 186 hours in the game and I've technically never finished the campaign yet.)

Civ V is actually a bit faster than Civ IV. The maps are smaller and denser, and each hex matters more. I'd put it somewhere between CivRev and Civ 4.

Also, because I was playing it recently, the original Master of Orion might actually fit the bill for campaign length.

Eador: Masters of a Broken World has fairly short individual games, but they're strung together in a meta-campaign.

The Last Federation plays pretty quickly, though it's not the usual 4X.

Maybe a clarifying question is whether you're more concerned about the density of the play session (as in, you can have a meaningful 2 hour session) or the overall length of the game (keeping the whole thing under 10 hours).

If you don't mind an older title, you could check out the first Age of Wonders. (Sorry, I don't mean to sound like a one-trick pony). The gameplay holds up well, and the campaign scenarios aren't overly long. There's no random map generator though.

Gal Civ games can take a lot less time than Civ.

Endless Legend can last anywhere from 2 hours to about 5 or so.

CK2 is a long game. But, you can divide the game into smaller chunks of time (mainly lives of your rulers). A couple hours here and there is how I play: get in, do a few things and go to bed. CK2 is great because the narrative of the game has natural break points.

I haven't had a lot of chances to play for extended periods in a very long time, as I am on the opposite end of the kid thing from you il dottore (my kids are starting to go to college), so I totally understand where you are coming from.

LarryC wrote:

Civ V, set to Quick Pace.

Wouldn't that break the game a little though? At least in Civ IV playing a quick game in a normal map (small maps are boring!) would alter the balance in weird ways.

Gremlin wrote:

Maybe a clarifying question is whether you're more concerned about the density of the play session (as in, you can have a meaningful 2 hour session) or the overall length of the game (keeping the whole thing under 10 hours).

Hm, that's a good question, hadn't thought about it in those terms... I guess a little bit of both, but mostly density of play. I don't think that I would mind playing a campaign for 20 hours if it was interesting all the way.

It kind of does, but not to the extent of Civ IV. It's more Civ Revish on Quick Pace. The main issue is that the UUs aren't as good because the tech advances so rapidly.

I'd think about putting CK2 back on the list, then. You won't get very far in game-years each session, but the speed of the game is directly related to how much is going on at the time, so you speed through uneventful years and go day-by-day when in the middle of a critical war. The learning curve may still make it a bit rough, and a full 400 years or whatever will take you forever, but it's an option.

Does XCOM fit what you're looking for? That's about 20 hours, roughly, for the campaign, and works great in short bursts. Not technically a 4X, though.

Yes, CK2 wins in the "stuff per hour" metric, closely followed by EUIV. I'd also go with XCom as a possible alternative. That has a great pick up and put down ability, and is also available on iPad.

Xcom is definitely on the to-play list (great fan of the old games), but I see it more as a tactical game that scratches another itch.

As for CK2, it sounds like it could work. Since it doesn't have a win state I wouldn't mind playing piecemeal, a few (dense) hours with one dinasty, a few hours with another, setting my own goals. I'm a little scared of the learning curve, but for such a unique game I might put up with it...

garion333 wrote:

Endless Legend can last anywhere from 2 hours to about 5 or so.

That sounds encouraging! Would you say it applies to newbs as well?

Also, are Alpha Centauri and Shogun 2 really no-go?

il dottore wrote:

Also, are Alpha Centauri and Shogun 2 really no-go?

It depends on what you want to do with Shogun II. If you're happy to play custom battles then it will be fine. If you want to play a campaign, that's tricker. There's a trio of victory condition settings: short, long and domination campaigns. Domination would be a no-go because it requires you to conquer the whole map. Long is probably a no at 40 provinces IIRC depending on clan. Short is 15-ish provinces plus the capital in the centre of the main island.

It also depends on your personal playstyle. Some people can blitz through campaigns in a heavy weekend using rush-based tactics. I'm methodical in play and don't like blitzing, so it takes me more like 30 hours for a short campaign. Difficulty will impact too. The game isn't a pushover for newer players.

It's an excellent strategy game though, and well worth playing if you can manage it.

il dottore wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Endless Legend can last anywhere from 2 hours to about 5 or so.

That sounds encouraging! Would you say it applies to newbs as well?

Probably. The 5 hours might be more likely in your earlier games due to not knowing what to do.

If you go Total War, go with Shogun 2over Rome 2. Rome 2 after the updates is now an excellent game, but it's still way to bulky in scale to consider it short. Shogun 2 by its very nature (being confined to the island of Japan) is a lot more straightforward, focused and manageable. If you skip the battles you will still be cutting it close within the 5-10 hours, but at least during that time you feel that you will have made a lot of progress.

I would also avoid Distant Worlds. The game is great (as Veloxi will certainly attest), and while small galaxies are still fun, that game IMO really comes alive on the grandest of scales.

If you are looking for short, simple and watered down but still ok, pick up Sid Meier's Starships when it goes on sale ($5 is a good price point). It's not as bad as everyone says, but it's definitely not as good as we all hoped. For a quick, 5 hour strategy title it'll do the job.

DEFCON is always good for a quick couple of hours.

Budo wrote:

DEFCON is always good for a quick couple of hours.

Ooooh, good one!

You're going to have the same problems with any other 4x listed here (SMAC, EL, Civ V), because...

il dottore wrote:

but here's the result of last night's two hour session: I built a few units and buildings, reserached one tech. I won't lie to you, it felt a bit slim.

Civ IV at a quick pace should have you getting a new technology every 5 turns or so. Early game that's every few minutes. It might slow down late game as you have more units to move around, but even then you're looking at a new tech every 10 minutes or so, definitely not every few hours. I can't even imagine what you'd do to slow the game down that much. Way too much micromanagement maybe? Moving city workers around every turn? The only reason to do stuff like that in Civ is if you're playing on Deity and need to do so in order to keep up with the cheating AI. I'd never suggest that anyone was 'playing the game wrong', but you might take a look at why your games are taking so long.

For reference, a standard pace game of Civ IV should take about 6 hours. The same game in Civ V ups it to about 10-12. SMAC might be a bit shorter than Civ IV, but not much. ICS leads to a bunch of micromanagement late game. I personally found EL to be more on the Civ V side, but even then it's less than the 15 hours to not finish a small/quick game of Civ IV.

You could also try Sid Meiers Starships. Its not really what I would call a grand strategy but it is a 4x lite game, that is quick to play, kinda like Civ Rev. Not sure about how well it holds up on multiple replays but the first couple games scratched the 4x itch enough for me.

But— all those knobs need turning!
First of all I should point out I'm playing normal speed now. I don't micromanage everything, but I do move workers manually and keep an eye on city conditions every few turns. Still, I don't see how I could play one turn/min after I have a few cities going, unless I automated everything and knew all the techs and buildings so well I could choose without thinking.
Maybe I'm just a bit dense?

garion333 wrote:

Endless Legend can last anywhere from 2 hours to about 5 or so.

This is encouraging! I just picked up Endless Legend as a last minute Steam Sale impulse buy. I'm midway through my first game and really enjoying it so far. Like il dottore, I'm also a time-limited Gamer With Job And Kids, so I'm happy to hear game length is going to be less than half of that of a typical Civ game.

Having never finished a game of any Civ is much less than 30 hours, I'm starting to think that maybe I'm Doing It Wrong.

garion333 wrote:

Gal Civ games can take a lot less time than Civ.

Endless Legend can last anywhere from 2 hours to about 5 or so.

You play a lot faster than I do. Or on much smaller maps. Or are much smarter than I. Or a combination of all three.

Civ V is designed to be winnable with nothing more than 4-5 cities. That cuts down on turn activity. Additionally, 1UPT means you can take over the world with something like 10 units. That cuts it down some more. Finally, there's a bunch of automations you can do to help along, like choosing a target tech directly and then having the game automate the tech choice from turn to turn to get to your target tech. If you're not using the micromanagement shenanigans, you should still be able to play and win quite comfortably on Monarch.

For all these reasons, I play a Standard Pace Standard Size Continents map in Civ V in about 5-7 hours - a day's worth of gaming. Steam records over 1500 hours of Civ V under my belt, which sounds about right. I've played nearly every Civ many multiples of times over a variety of map types; and I complete most of my Civ games.

Part of the issue may be that different people apparently have very different pacing for the same game.

Gremlin wrote:

Part of the issue may be that different people apparently have very different pacing for the same game.

Yeah, I'm definitely on the slower end when it comes to TBS games, but I attribute that to the fact that I don't play the same TBS game from start to finish enough times to get fast at it before moving on the next new and shiny game.

Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/ecli...
It's $7 on iOS and is by far the app I've played the most on my iPad/Phone and also the best adaptation of a boardgame to the digital real. I've championed it here and elsewhere and have always been surprised it's not been widely played. It's by far best against human opponents, but there is upto 6 player matches and you can fill empty slots with AI.
If anyone gets into it and wants to play some vs, hit me up. I will play that game any day.

LarryC wrote:

Steam records over 1500 hours of Civ V under my belt

And 28 under mine. I guess that accounts for the difference in speed

I'd forgotten about Eclipse, pity that I never play on the iPad (it just doesn't fit in my day, I'm either on the iPhone or PC). Have you tried Starbase Orion, also on iOS?

Yep. That's a pretty darn good 4x-ish game, and short. Between that and Starships, you should have that short 4X game thing covered for a while.

troubleshot wrote:

Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/ecli...
It's $7 on iOS and is by far the app I've played the most on my iPad/Phone and also the best adaptation of a boardgame to the digital real. I've championed it here and elsewhere and have always been surprised it's not been widely played. It's by far best against human opponents, but there is upto 6 player matches and you can fill empty slots with AI.
If anyone gets into it and wants to play some vs, hit me up. I will play that game any day.

Yes! Such a great board game adaptation. They take all of the 4X elements and boil them down to a smooth board game. It makes all stats transparent, great stuff. I'm such a fan I own the board game too.

Is it a hard game to learn?