I'm playing this game for the first time, on the SotsVerse map (7 player map, 6 factions) as SolForce, with the AI on Easy (because there is no tutorial that I could find and I knew I'd have to learn everything on the fly - heck I didn't even know there was a manual until turn 150 or so). It's now around turn 350ish, and I don't think I'm even a quarter of the way through the techs (maybe halfway in one or two areas, going by the wiki, several others I haven't touched at all yet). I've expanded a fair bit with 20-odd systems and a number of provinces, but expansion still feels quite slow with all the fleet basing management, travel times, occasional invasion by an unfriendly neighbour, incessant Swarm attacks (probably averaging one incident every 2nd turn) and so on. I still have no real idea where anyone is except one alien faction that (for reasons unknown to me) offered an alliance which I accepted. The enemy faction doesn't seem to be particularly ahead of me in tech, but maybe they just aren't fielding their best stuff (since the AI is on Easy). My income grows slowly because expanding also means making more fleets to deal with all the attacks, raising my expenses. I am finally managing a net 2M research or so after focusing on trade for a long while and not expanding very much (not many easily-reachable systems available right now, and those ridiculous Von Neumann Berserkers occasionally blast one of my systems to slag and seem to return very shortly if I try to recolonize it, so I've lost a few systems permanently as well), though probably I'm missing some essential techs somewhere that provide empire-wide boosts.
Long story short, my game is progressing, but I don't actually feel like I'm getting anywhere fast after 350 turns, particularly as the time for each turn can be rather long, between the increasingly long turn resolution, tedious Swarm fighting between turns, and so on
How long is a "normal" game? I assume I'm probably behind the curve as I didn't know what I was doing at the start (and still don't know my way around the tech trees), but are games typically over by now or are they 1000+-turn marathons like a Civ game?
Long story short, my game is progressing, but I don't actually feel like I'm getting anywhere fast after 350 turns, particularly as the time for each turn can be rather long, between the increasingly long turn resolution, tedious Swarm fighting between turns, and so on
How long is a "normal" game? I assume I'm probably behind the curve as I didn't know what I was doing at the start (and still don't know my way around the tech trees), but are games typically over by now or are they 1000+-turn marathons like a Civ game?
