Our group, composed of mostly experienced and evenly matched players, has adopted the following rules to help us finish our AA50 (1942 Start) games in 4-5 hours.
1. Three new Victory Cities: Sarajevo (Balkans), Cairo (Egypt), and Johannesberg (South Africa) for total of 21 Victory Cities.
2. Required Victory Cities to Win: 13 at the end of any turn OR 12 at the end of the final turn (no turn can begin after 4.5 hours reached).
Prior to adopting these rules, we played four games (13 VC to win) with games lasting as follows: 6 hours (victory be concession), 6 hours (draw declared), 9.5 hours (victory by concession), and 10 hours (draw declared). We haven’t tried out the new victory conditions, but we are hopeful they will get the job done, even if the new victory conditions don’t amount to “the losing side has no chance of coming back” which is what the existing VCs seem to represent. Our victory conditions are designed to give us a victor at the end of a long night of playing with this victory meaning “things were looking pretty good for you when we had to stop.” If we find that the new 13 VCs are too easy to achieve, i.e. our games start ending in 2-3 hours, then we may bump up the VCs to 14 or 15 or drop one of the new VCs.