I get bored with the game ...

Hi Everyone

I find that I really enjoy the game in the Ancient and Classical period but that I find that I get bored with the game when it enters the Renaissance, I rarely make it to Industrial and have never played through to the later ages of the game. I bring this up because I was just playing yesterday but now instead of going back and loading the game I want to start a new one. Which given all the work that it took to play seems a bit weird, so I just thought I would ask if anyone else does this or has had a similar experience?

Cheers Zonkvert

PS I would have put in some sought of survey to see when people stop playing but that is beyond me, if anyone else knows how to do that that would be great

PPS I see that it says at the bottom that i could post a poll, but i have to go to work now, so i can not look up how you do this, cheers

I was like this in earlier Civ series. But with gods&kings late game is actually fantastic.

I have that with Hotseat, which is like so enjoyable in the beginning but after a while there's just nothing fun.

I would recommend setting your speed down to Quick, because you can pretty much win the game in a single day or 4-5 hours on Warlod below (not sure about above, but depending on how good you are I would assume it would be just as quick).

There's a lot of considerations here:

1) Play smaller maps. Even on Marathon games, if I play Duel, I can win (or lose) in 3-4 hours on Emperor.

2) Play on a higher difficulty. When I first started Vanilla when it came out, I played Prince to learn the game. I kept playing Prince for too long, though, because I often got tired of playing in about the same era as you because the game was usually well in hand by then. The best step at that point was to start climbing the difficulty-ladder.

3) Play on Quick. As TheKingOfBigOz said, Quick ensures something is always happening.

4) Alternatively, play on Marathon. If you prefer the Ancient/Classic/Medieval eras, Marathon games will give you ~500 turns in that space of time. Many UUs are available in those eras, and many UB's as well, so I can understand wanting to not get too far past (unless your civ has a later UU, like the B-17, the Panzer, the Foreign Legion, and the Zero).

5) Try the GOTM on here, or try a couple games of scenarios. I play the official scenarios whenever I'm a bit bored of playing the standard game.

6) Try different map settings or civs. There's a lot of possible variations, too many to count, when you consider all map settings, all civs, and all the other settings to try (like policy saving, etc.)

7) Turn off combat and movement animations. I turned off combat animations and it's unbelievable how much time that saves, especially on the lenghtier animations (planes and a couple others).

mmm those are some good points, especially the speeding it up...

zonkvert... I'm the same way. Even on small maps, I usually just start a new game instead of going to an old save. I love the opening... but get bored later. I started a thread like this a few months back in the same vein.

There was a mod for Civ 4 I believe that changed the difficulty depending on how you were doing. So if you were starting to pull away point wise it would start ramping up the challenge, and if you were getting smashed it would take it easier on you.
I thought that was a great idea.
I find in most games, I have a rough time getting those first 5 cities, and right about half way through the game I pull away from the pack and pretty much don't look back. I rarely get into very much of the late game. Never built a giant death robot for instance.

Then I'll play my next game one level higher and get smoked (usually by barbs 1st, then finished off by a cavalcade of DOW)

Anyone do a flexible difficulty system for CiV?

There's not much to be considered there... the game is simply boring. It has though a great flavor, and myself I can't resist to restart a game when I shut down my computer. Loading seems so much a step behind. But even the flavor in this game is limited ; you will eventually get bored after some dozen playing hours.

It's been like this across all Civ games for me. In my opinion, three different issues contribute to this:

1. The beginning of the game benefits from the joy of exploration and discovery. But later, even if you haven't explored the entire map, this process starts. The world becomes too wide and exploring every nook and cranny becomes tiresome, not to mention pointless (everything of interest has been picked up by other civs).
2. Later in the game, your time is increasingly wasted by repetitive actions (building a library in your Nth city, clearing pollution etc.), large armies to micromanage (especially in V) and waiting for the AIs to take their increasingly long turns (V again takes the prize here, especially once you start seeing large parts of the map and the AIs are at war; I suggest turning animations off at that stage of the game).
3. Once the player takes the lead, he can never lose it again. So, after that point, the game loses tension.

Personally, I have only finished 2 games in a hundred hours of CiV. Since I didn't have Steam back then, I can't say what the ration was for the older games, but I don't think it was much better... This is definitely something that the designers of future CIv games need to look into.

For now, I have simply decided to live with this . I still love all Civ games, including V.

Jon Shafer described your problem in his blog:

"A moniker often used for empire builders is “4X”, for exploration, expansion, exploitation and extermination. Unfortunately, once you get halfway through a game the first two Xs – by far the most enjoyable for many players – are pretty much wrapped up. Unless you really enjoy watching meters fill up or have a particular love for the less-than-perfect combat systems these games tend to feature there’s really not much left to see. And so we quit and start over." - Jon Shafer, http://jonshaferondesign.com/2013/02/04/strategy-games-are-broken/#more-1104

I'm very OCD about completing my games. I've gone back through numerous save games at different turns and played them out with different results. As long as I complete one of them, I'm content.

While I completely understand, and to a lesser extent agree, with your assessment, I find the race to the finish part of the fun of the game for me. I do tend to get bored when it's the same repetitive diplomacy and trade chats with other civs, so I'll often mix it up by denouncing, and as Old Peter said, the late game is much more interesting with spies and religion.

The game is what you make it. Some of us enjoy the early discovery and finding out what landmasses were spawned by the game engine, some of us like to turtle up and build a massive empire to ourselves, and some of us enjoy the constant back and forth with competing civs and CS vying for supremacy. I've personally never played MP, but I'd imagine that adds another element for consideration.

Grab a bottle of scotch, a bag of chips, draw the blinds, close the doors, put the phone on vibrate, tell the wife to hold your calls, and go on an adventure.

wow, join date 2005 but only 8 posts. I think i wouldve forgotten my login and password in that amount of time, haha.

i used to commit to every game but now will drop early if i cant complete a game in 1 or 2 sessions. most of them are from seeing that I wont get a win but sometimes it is just very late and the next day Ive forgotten my general plan on the next few turns so i'll start a new game. and some of that comes from just knowing how it will end. but i do have 1100 hours in Civ5 so I've certainly given the game enough time as is.

Hammer Rabbi said:

i used to commit to every game but now will drop early if i cant complete a game in 1 or 2 sessions. most of them are from seeing that I wont get a win but sometimes it is just very late and the next day Ive forgotten my general plan on the next few turns so i'll start a new game. and some of that comes from just knowing how it will end. but i do have 1100 hours in Civ5 so I've certainly given the game enough time as is.

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This. I don't really get bored so long as I try out different settings and what not from time to time, but I have to say that needing more than 3 good sessions to complete a game is sometimes a reason I will abandon a game in progress. Again, it's exactly as the quote says at one point: if I've forgotten my general plan [for] the next few turns I'll start a new game.

I don't abandon games out of boredom anymore, now that I try raising difficulties, new settings, and all the other stuff I listed before. But if I forget my strategy for a particular game and forget what needs to be built (or not built, if I'm going to buy or get the buildings for free), then I sometimes abandon the game, especially if I have to load multiple times and try to remember things days later. And, of course, a lost cause is another time I'll abandon a game, though playing out a close game just to survive is sometimes fun, depending on conditions.

I've been asking for years for a game called 'Ancient Civilizations' that doesn't go past 1400 A.D.

Hammer Rabbi said:

...if i can't complete a game in 1 or 2 sessions... I've forgotten my general plan on the next few turns, so I'll start a new game

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True, this also happens. When I have looots of time at my disposal to play continuously or with small interruptions, I tend to finish my games. But sometimes there's an entire week or more in between my sessions, which obviously means I'm going to start a new game rather than continuing the one that I left unfinished.

I have a similar feeling for Civ5, but the reason was that it made my netbook slow. So (confession time), I uninstalled Civ5 and installed Civ4 in my netbook. Civ4's faster actually...

I tend to do better with it when I have a longer period of time where I can finish a game or almost finish it. Two sessions max, or perhaps three for a longer game. Otherwise I lose interest. Of course I still have fun with games I don't finish, perhaps just as much fun for games that I do finish.

Sherlock said:

I've been asking for years for a game called 'Ancient Civilizations' that doesn't go past 1400 A.D.

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There are mods for that. Go fish.

If you need a way to spice up your game, go on a duel map and put 22 civs on it. Now that's fun.

I started playing with 12 civs on regular map instead of the normal 8 I think . Soooo much more fun and competition . Diplomacy is more complex . Unless you really push with no wonders etc you are lucky to get 3 cities by borders are harden and no were to settle on Earth map except for being really creative on your continent or going off contintent . So more battles and friction faster .
Mid and Late game at least 3 Civs are in Contention but sometimes 4 or 5 . Games are so much funner and more competitive for me .