Fighting the Duldrums

I keep coming back to this game because I love planting my first city, exploring, finding neighbours, interacting with them, etc. But once the first war is over, or once things are locked in place in a peace game, the game becomes very much an exercise in monotony. Keep pressing the "next turn" button, or keep directing units one by one across a continent or ocean, etc.

What do you do to make the game more interesting? Perhaps I'm just not playing the game right.

I have plenty of saved games that are just waiting to be finished but I grew bored and quit. There are plenty I finish out but sometimes I just don't feel into it anymore and quit.

Lately, I've been playing a lot of duel, tiny and small maps. Even tried out the quick pace yesterday for the first time. It does liven the game up a bit for me since the finish doesn't seem like such a monumental undertaking. The large games can turn into work more than fun by the end. I've been enjoying the game more since I began playing more smaller maps.

There's always fun mods you could try out. R.E.D. WWII edition is a big one, for example. Helps spice up the game.

Dunno (unless you've played the game too many times) but I have lots of fun staying peaceful and building wonders/ GWAM (I love to see who gets to be born in my civ and what work they produce);
Perhaps you need to up the game speed? Or perhaps you need to up the difficulty level. Usually on deity you will not get into a clear winning position until at least Renaissance.

Same here. I hadn't played in a couple of months, and I just started a new game. It was fun, and this one is actually more fun than most because there are a variety of civs who have a lot of power. But most games do get dull in the middle. I wish I had a better understanding of the tourism thing... maybe if there were more to do each turn with those things. There is a fine line between auto and manual. I think I'm just too lazy to take time each turn to mess with little things. I just go for wonders... build stuff... move on. Cities become these queues of buildings trying to maximize potential. Not much skill in where to place things or anything like that. Just build build build!

kb27787 said:

Perhaps you need to up the game speed? Or perhaps you need to up the difficulty level. Usually on deity you will not get into a clear winning position until at least Renaissance.

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Both of these are good suggestions, especially the one about increasing the difficulty level. The increased difficulty adds a lot of uncertainty and excitement to the game.

Perhaps the quintessential example of this is this thread created by Jatta Pake. It's not too long of a read, and a number of people commented about how it inspired them and/or renewed their interest in the game.

Another very simple trick is to just increase the number of civilizations. With 22 civs on a standard map, there is always something exciting going on.

Finally, just taking a moment to make yourself aware of the story that your game is creating can do wonders. I think that this thread is a fantastic example of the best way to do this, but I might be a bit biased since I wrote it Another good example is this thread by Redwings1340.

Anyway, best of luck to you, Gentoo. Please let me know if you are able to recapture your Civilization V groove.

Gentoo said:

I keep coming back to this game because I love planting my first city, exploring, finding neighbours, interacting with them, etc. But once the first war is over, or once things are locked in place in a peace game, the game becomes very much an exercise in monotony. Keep pressing the "next turn" button, or keep directing units one by one across a continent or ocean, etc.

What do you do to make the game more interesting? Perhaps I'm just not playing the game right.

Click to expand...

It's my favorite part too, but sometimes leveling up solves the boredom that comes after things are in place, unless you are already playing on Deity, then my advice is useless Other thing, are you playing single player games? I think MPs or semi-MPs are far more interesting or if not possible, try random personalities from the AIs so you don't know what to expect from a neighbor Shaka, HTH...