Mechanics
Match length
You choose how many turns a match lasts on the setup screen, in the Match length section that follows the seed. There are three lengths:
| Length | Turn limit |
|---|---|
| Short | 60 |
| Standard | 96 |
| Long | 120 |
The setup screen opens with Standard selected; pick another length if you want one.
A Short match takes roughly 30–45 minutes. Standard and Long have not been timed yet, and no duration is written here until they are.
What changes and what does not
Only time changes. The board, the city quota (6) and the population cap rule (base 5, steps opened by buildings and techs) are the same at every length; so are the units, the buildings and the combat calculation. A long match does not give you a bigger empire — it gives you more turns to use the empire you build.
The victory conditions are the same too: whoever takes every rival capital before the turn limit runs out wins; otherwise the highest score at the end of the last turn wins (Victory conditions). The score formula does not depend on the length (Territory and score).
The shape of a match is measured per length
Each length's phases are turns measured in that length: the table lists each length's turns side by side.
| Phase | Short · 60 | Standard · 96 | Long · 120 | Typical work |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exploration | 1–15 | 1–15 | 1–15 | Fog lifts, neighbours and resource nodes are found |
| Expansion | 10–21 | 10–23 | 10–25 | Pioneers head out, the city quota starts filling, economy settles |
| Conflict | 22–52 | 23–83 | 24–104 | Armies form, cities are besieged |
| Endgame | 53–60 | 84–96 | 105–120 | If nobody conquered, the score race decides |
The bands are not an engine rule but the measured shape of a match: no rule ever says "this turn is the exploration phase". They were read, by the same rule for every length, from the curve of AI-vs-AI matches. The early phases barely depend on the length — the first cities and the first contact arrive at roughly the same turns in every length, because the board and the number of cities do not change with it. The difference is in the late phases: in a longer match the conflict lasts more turns, and the endgame is the final stretch of the match.
Rivals pace themselves to the length
The Defensive personality's late wake-up is tied to the share of the match as well: if it is behind on score after turn 22 in a Short match, 36 in Standard or 44 in Long, it turns to attacking (The AI opponent).
A truce is already capped by the turns left in the match: towards the last turns, the truce you can buy gets shorter (Diplomacy and truces).
The daily seed
The daily seed is always played at Standard length (96 turns). The point is that everyone who plays on the same day plays the same match; if players picked the length, results from the same day could not be compared.
That is why picking today's seed on the setup screen locks the length selector with Standard shown as selected. Your own choice is not lost: it comes back as soon as you switch to another seed.
Saves and statistics
The save stores the turn limit, not the name of the length. A match you left unfinished and a result code you shared keep the limit they started with. When you paste a result code into the seed field, the turn limit comes from the code too — even when the code carries a daily seed: a code promises the same match, and the Standard lock does not turn it into a different one. If you change the length yourself after loading a code, the match is no longer the code's match and the daily seed locks to Standard again.
Win rate and fastest conquest are kept per length: an early conquest in a Short match and a conquest on the same turn in a Long match are not the same achievement. The number of matches played is a single counter across lengths.
The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.