How do I speed up a round of Civilization 5?

I am a recreational player and time is a limiting factor for me. Is it possible to configure Civilization 5 in a way so that an average round can be completed in one evening (lets say within 5 hours)?

What I have tried so far:

• Choose minimum setting for game pace
• Playing on small maps
• Aiming for fast wins (cultural victory or even domination rush)
• Put all workers on automation immediately

They games are usually still longer than I want them to. Are there any other things I can do to speed it up? I don't really like the third bullet, "Aiming for fast wins", because it limits my options and I would like to do some space races as well.

There are a variety of ways to make games finish quicker using the game setup options before you begin a round.

1. Map Type: If you choose Pangea then everyone is pretty much on the same continent meaning you don't have to waste time building ships and what not to invade other civilisations.

2. Map Size: Obviously, the smaller you go then the easier it is to get to other civilisations and a confined space will make the fight for territory carry more weight, inviting expansion.

3. Difficulty Level: Having this on easy will make defeating other civilisations easier and thus make the game end quicker. But I think this is kind of pointless as you obviously would still like it to be a challenge.

4. Game Pace: Can adjust the length of time for construction and scientific research. This will probably be your best bet as you can speed it right up. Takes less time to build infantry, wonders etc and then at the same time you will be able to do the Space Race in less turns.

5. World Age: The older the world is, the more time mountains have been exposed to erosion, leading to a flatter Earth. Kind of makes it easier to get to the other civilisations.

Hope this helps.

The stuff you've tried are precisely the stuff I'd recommend, so I'm not sure it will be simple to make it even faster.

My thoughts:

• Avoid prolonged wars. Combat is fun but it takes a lot of time. During a war I spend as much time on each turn as I do on 10 or 20 out-of-combat turns.

• You can make the quickest pacing even quicker by directly editing the game files. It's not really hard - all the settings are saved in textual XML files.

• You can give all the civilizations involved some head-start. For example, use cheats - like the excellent In-Game Editor mod - to give yourself extra settlers or workers at the beginning. To compensate for the advantage you get you could also use this tool to add units or funds to the other civilizations, or just increase the difficulty at the beginning to give the AI a more equal footing (but be aware difficulty affects a lot of different things).