Question about keeping late game interesting.

This is more me seeking opinions and peoples points of view. So I just created my account and figured I'd stop reading and ask this:

I love civ 5, I've had it since the summer of 2012 and played for probably a total of approx 400-500 hours. Sadly, despite all that play time, I've never finished a single game.. I don't even know what it looks like when you win or lose. I love this game, and have a passion for playing it, but even with the awesome additions from BNW, I still get bored in the late game. The problem used to be long turn times that became unbearable, but they're much better with BNW, and it's added a lot more fun late game concepts and much better AI. Despite this, I get bored in the late game. Oddly enough, I dislike going to war, and prefer diplomacy and building an economic powerhouse so in the late game I'm generally generating hundreds of gold units per turn, often have a powerful military, advanced technology, loads of happiness, tons of religion and culture per turn. It seems like all that's left is war, and it seems that's what the AI want.
What do you all like to do in the late game? What makes it fun for you? Currently I'm playing as Songhai, and the AI are Sweden, Assyria, and the Shoshone. I recently accepted a peace agreement with Sweden after seizing two cities. They gave me a very nice deal. I DOWed them because they'd been terrible neighbours. The Shoshone hate me and Assyria and I are very close friends.

I should add I've never played above Prince... for some reason

A silly question for starters: you know there are 4 types of victory that you can achieve without playing till 2050, right?

With that being said, I find domination victory to be the most engaging one. You need to maneuver your units to fight effectively, you need to manage diplomacy to avoid the whole world teaming up against you, and you need to think about happiness and economy. Meanwhile Cultural Victory is pretty much "a peaceful domination victory" and the earliest one I can achieve so far. My point is, in late game you should already have the victory in the bag, or otherwise do whatever you can to stop the leading AI, which I wouldn't call boring. However, I admit that late game is less diverse because most of the civs lose their uniqueness by the late eras.

Sagax said:

...I find domination victory to be the most engaging one. You need to maneuver your units to fight effectively, you need to manage diplomacy to avoid the whole world teaming up against you, and you need to think about happiness and economy. ...

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I agree that the domination victory is engaging, unfortunately the domination victory is also the one that takes the longest, since there is a lot of individual unit movement, and all the animations slow the game down, especially when you are watching all your city states battle it out.

For the OP: playing the game at a higher difficulty level than Prince may make the end game more challenging and thus more fun for you.

mr.canEhdian said:

I should add I've never played above Prince... for some reason

Click to expand...

I dare to say that there is THE reason.

Increase your difficulty level, smoothly, and once you find your true level, I guarantee you there will not be a boring end game.

Bottom line, me thinks you are already too good to be playing Prince.

Prince is totally boring and just too easy... First time in Civ5 I played on prince and after couple of plays I moved to Emperor and recently Immortal. I find Immortal to be the best level so far and it will definately NOT let you get bored!
If you want to have much faster turns just turn off units movements visible in the game options. For some reason this simple option make turns going almost twice faster but of course there are no beautiful units movements visible except for the battles...

Camillo said:

Prince is totally boring and just too easy... First time in Civ5 I played on prince and after couple of plays I moved to Emperor and recently Immortal. I find Immortal to be the best level so far and it will definately NOT let you get bored!
If you want to have much faster turns just turn off units movements visible in the game options. For some reason this simple option make turns going almost twice faster but of course there are no beautiful units movements visible except for the battles...

Click to expand...

... or... mod the unit speeds and you have the best of both worlds.

Sagax said:

A silly question for starters: you know there are 4 types of victory that you can achieve without playing till 2050, right?

With that being said, I find domination victory to be the most engaging one. You need to maneuver your units to fight effectively, you need to manage diplomacy to avoid the whole world teaming up against you, and you need to think about happiness and economy. Meanwhile Cultural Victory is pretty much "a peaceful domination victory" and the earliest one I can achieve so far. My point is, in late game you should already have the victory in the bag, or otherwise do whatever you can to stop the leading AI, which I wouldn't call boring. However, I admit that late game is less diverse because most of the civs lose their uniqueness by the late eras.

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Hmmm good points, no the late game probably isn't boring.. I find when I have a game I love, like the first and only time I played as Poland, I was having so much fun. But by the Modern Era, for some reason Rome's turns began to take like 20 seconds by itself, while the other AIs turns were more reasonable. After a while I couldn't take it. Thank you for the reply.

Aristos said:

I dare to say that there is THE reason.

Increase your difficulty level, smoothly, and once you find your true level, I guarantee you there will not be a boring end game.

Bottom line, me thinks you are already too good to be playing Prince.

Click to expand...

So wait, the difficulty increases, do they make the AI better? I always assumed it gave the AI an advantage in gold and whatever else but didn't make them any more intelligent or anything. If that is the case then I'm going to try. I think I'll play in a minute. Thank you!

Camillo said:

Prince is totally boring and just too easy... First time in Civ5 I played on prince and after couple of plays I moved to Emperor and recently Immortal. I find Immortal to be the best level so far and it will definately NOT let you get bored!
If you want to have much faster turns just turn off units movements visible in the game options. For some reason this simple option make turns going almost twice faster but of course there are no beautiful units movements visible except for the battles...

Click to expand...

You know, I cut most pleasant cosmetic things out to speed it up.. That is one I did not cut out, I'll make sure to do that. Thank you! Those long waits become maddening.

Aristos said:

... or... mod the unit speeds and you have the best of both worlds.

Click to expand...

I feel like a total moron after all these replies.. I totally forgot about mods. I remember being paranoid when I first saw the mods and fearing potential viruses.. Even from the Steam workshop.. I totally forgot! Thank you haha.

mr.canEhdian said:

So wait, the difficulty increases, do they make the AI better? I always assumed it gave the AI an advantage in gold and whatever else but didn't make them any more intelligent or anything. If that is the case then I'm going to try. I think I'll play in a minute. Thank you!

Click to expand...

Difficulty increases via bonuses... algorithms are the same, but amplified by bonuses for the AI (or maluses for the player).

That translates into a less forgiving gameplay... the lenience you have in lower levels vanishes, and mistakes are more and more punished the higher the level. I dare to say Emperor is the sweet spot for the majority here (at least the majority of veterans), Immortal is true hardcore and Deity is, ironically, an exercise in OCD where there is no strategy anymore but an almost-unique recipe or else... ).

You're bored in late game because you've essentially already won, and you're waiting for the closer. As people have said, difficulty increase definitely makes the late game more interesting because it can be more of a dash to the finish.

Unfortunately, no, the AI isn't necessarily much 'smarter' - it just more resources (and room to maneuver). So it's not really them competing with you - it's more of a handicap, where you have to race to catch up with them before they win.

This, unfortunately, that higher levels make the end game more interesting, but can make the early game actually less interesting, since you have a much more defined route and less flexibility in order to try and catch up, and basically end up doing the same things every time to start (though I'd say this isn't actually that strict until Immortal - King and Emperor still have more flexibility. Immortal and Deity are basically the beeline to universities nearly every time).

So it's a tradeoff, but, IMHO, a worthwhile one.