How do you guys/gals do it?

[Ironhawk]

I dont use the nation overview screen that much since, even in a large game, there will only be a handful of provinces that are really, really important. Powerhouse forts, provinces with lots sites, etc. Personally, I find that a strong protocol for doing all my turn tasks speeds things up significantly ie: check battles, plan attacks/counterattacks, recruit/summon, move reinforcments, blood hunt, taxes, research. That way I dont get bogged down in trying to think about everything at once.

[Potatoman]

I tend to play on smaller maps with 2-3 computer opponents, 4/5 victory point win conditions, and easy research. This makes for quick but entertaining 2-3 hour games.

[Cheezeninja]

Ghost Riders and Gate Stone. This item/spell combination will significantly decrease time spent mopping up.

[Endoperez]

Cheezeninja said:
Ghost Riders and Gate Stone. This item/spell combination will significantly decrease time spent mopping up.

Once you've researched Construction 8 and Conjuration 9, and have good enough Death mages and the Earth/Astral mage (while the requirements are bigger in Dom3), and the gems to forge Gate Stone and spam Ghost Rider, you could've ended the game already.

Also, Gate Stone is currently bugged.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

I think a couple of things would really help speed games up:
1. auto-search for scouts/spies
2. auto-search for mages scrying for magic sites
3. auto-search for mages wandering around looking for magic sites.
4. being able to direct an army/unit to an endpoint and having intelligeng path-finding. Right now you have to direct them 1-2 province at a time, turn by turn. Maybe it would weigh like this: first would be friendly provinces, second would be provinces with enough supply, third would be provinces with fast terrain (e.g. avoid swamps, mntns, etc.), fourth would be least number of provinces. You could check the path and change it afterwards.
5. if 4 is too complicated, then how about scripted orders--then you could just tell an army/unit: script--move prov1, prov2, prov3, prov4, prov5, end.
6. in fact, scripting would be awesome. You could tell one mage to forge item wine bag every other turn. You could tell another mage who has summon vine men via an item, to just summon vine men every turn. You could tell a fortress to recruit 1 mystic and 8 myrmidons each turn.

This would go a long way towards easing the administration of a huge empire. In my current game, I am taking 15-60 minutes to do all the minutia (tactics, logistics, strategy). Then, when I hit E it takes 5-10 minutes to think and resolve battles etc.. I have an Athlon 3400 with 2GB of ram, and it is churning!

[Graeme Dice]

Uh-Nu-Buh said:
You could check the path and change it afterwards.

This shouldn't be too hard to implement via an A* search, which would automatically take care of turn by turn changes in the path as long as the search is run every turn.

What I'd really like to see is a way to lock certain commanders so that the pool gems command doesn't work on them.

[Ironhawk]

Uh-Nu-Buh said:
2. auto-search for mages scrying for magic sites

This already occurs. Like auto-tax, auto-site search via spells was one of the MM improvements made to dom3.

[upstreamedge]

I don't worry about speed at all, because as I have said elsewhere that long turn hosting is what makes dominions such a good game. I am doing homework, going and talking to people and generally not being eaten by the game because the turns are so slow

[Cainehill]

That's a bit like saying "This model of car having a top speed of 20 MPH is a good thing - I can enjoy the scenery, and besides which I didn't want to get to work anyway".

[Gandalf Parker]

You forgot "safer" and because more speed ruins the experience completely.