I hate winning. It's SO BORING.

[Virtual Alex]

I guess I can't get my difficulty level figured out. I thought I was a monarch player, because i really have to fight to get ahead. The problem is I get ahead around military science or steel. Then I just run over my nearest AI with Granadiers when he has longbows or macemen. Then if I can keep the ball rolling into another AI or two I will. By then I have so much land that victory is pretty much assured unless there is a huge runaway AI. But there hasn't been one in my last 2 games.

Then I spent the MAJORITY of my time crushing the planet and inching toward that stupid Domination victory.

I want to spend the MAJORITY of my game fighting hard to stay in 1st place (or getting to first!) and the minority winning.

But each time I try emp I feel like I am so far behind and playing horrible. I guess it's time to give emp a serious try.

[mechaerik]

Try a new map script like Hemispheres, where you are isolated from the other AIs.

[jauggy]

I agree with you OP; the start/middle part of the game is fun and that's the part we're you most likely to face wars at around tech parity and there's an adrenaline rush because you just might lose. Its the time when decisions are crucial.

The end part is boring when you're ahead in land and tech and it is just a chore. There's a point where you know you've won the game, but haven't reached the dom limit yet.

I've tried to fix this by changing sides in the end game (save WB file then reloading and choosing different civ). One experiment I did was to switch over to one of my vassals i.e. play the end game as a vassal. It still feels too easy though because my master will gift me lots of techs. I haven't won the game I'm experimenting with yet though. Will finish it later. As a vassal, you cannot declare war by yourself and your master can demand stuff from you. You also have much less land if you are switching to another civ who you vassalised earlier.

[Ignorant Teacher]

Well, if you all feel the industrial era brings you no challenges, I strongly recommend you to move up a level. I'm spending my last games on Emperor and I can tell you that, if you don't watch it, the AIs make serious efforts to win on Emperor.

Another thing you could do is install Better AI. It makes, as the name says, the AI smarter and the games more difficult.

[Virtual Alex]

Better AI sounds awesome. I am a Mac user though, and I don't think that MOD works for me.

Yeah I guess I need to move up a level. I want to see my score though! But I don't want to play for another 4 hours crushing defenseless cities.

[mariogreymist]

Originally Posted by Virtual Alex

Better AI sounds awesome. I am a Mac user though, and I don't think that MOD works for me.

Yeah I guess I need to move up a level. I want to see my score though! But I don't want to play for another 4 hours crushing defenseless cities.

This is why God created nuclear weapons.

[Virtual Alex]

Ug, speaking of nukes.

They are so much fun to use.

Finally won domination in 1934AD with 65 modern armors and 35 IMCB. I love nukes.

[kaltorak]

Agree totally. Once the game is won, it can turn pretty boring. Mostly if it is modern time and you have lots of cities.

The problem is, that doesn't mean it is too easy. For example you can play at a difficulty where it's hard to win. But once you have the lead and will clearly win, it can become boring.

What I hate most is city management in modern times if I have lots of cities. The problem is the automatic builder sucks in many situations. If I just took 8 new cities and set them to automatic, I DON'T want all to start building barracks if I got 5 other totally developed cities tossing out units each 2 turns...

[mariogreymist]

Originally Posted by kaltorak

Agree totally. Once the game is won, it can turn pretty boring. Mostly if it is modern time and you have lots of cities.

The problem is, that doesn't mean it is too easy. For example you can play at a difficulty where it's hard to win. But once you have the lead and will clearly win, it can become boring.

What I hate most is city management in modern times if I have lots of cities. The problem is the automatic builder sucks in many situations. If I just took 8 new cities and set them to automatic, I DON'T want all to start building barracks if I got 5 other totally developed cities tossing out units each 2 turns...

you know how to use the build queue right? It's usually simple enough to give them all the things you want, and control hurrying them (if you want) through global view. One of the first things I do when I capture a city is set it to rebuild (or build) the improvements I feel are necessary, in the order of best benefits. I tend to do the same when founding cities...line up those first five buildings, and let them go.

[TheMeInTeam]

My suggestion is to learn stack move, turn combat animations off, use queues and waypoints, and otherwise speed up your play. If you do, that domination part is fun and it can go very fast.

I shadowed madscientists earth 18 role play challenge with my crappy desktop, and won it ~6 hours (most of my games are < 3 hours). Less than an hour of that was at war, and I produced well over 300 tanks and used transports to get to europe and africa (I was montezuma, and settling all my land and clearing south american jungles took FOREVER).

[bestsss]

Virtual Alex, don't play pangea-alike maps. Try the lonely Sid map on emperor and go for domination.
On a side note: paratroopers are way better than tanks combined w/ nukes.

[Patak]

Try multiplay. Kicks ass.

[pesgores]

If you hate winning, then start doing demographic tests. Count the total population of the map all 20 turns. It's fun.

There is also the classic recomendation, play different map types, and aim for victory types you don't usually try.

If a difficulty is too easy for you, and you want challenge, then moving up to the next is the next step.

[Silu]

Virtual Alex: what game speed do you use? Marathon feels to be pretty prone to that kind of games, opposed to Normal.

[JujuLautre]

Try fall from heaven. If I'm correct, there is an option which makes that if you are first (perhaps not right at the beginning, not sure), you take the control of the dead last civilization. and have to make up your way from there again

[Virtual Alex]

I play Monarch, Large Map, Epic Speed. I play on Big'n'Small maps, I hate pangea.

To clarify, I don't hate to winning. Winning makes me feel like a brilliant player. What I hate is winning in 1400 AD and then stomping the game until 1900AD.

I know I should move up in difficulty, but when I try playing emp I feel like it is hopeless so quickly I end up abandoning the games. It's hard to find a perfect difficulty for myself. I guess what I am really looking for is to have the vast majority of the game spent really fighting to win, and just a few dozen turns on cleaning up a sure win. On monarch I feel like I am really playing up hill and having a hard time up until I just totally run away with the game. Hopefuly on emp I can "win" on 1900AD and play clean up until 1990AD and have a real nailbiter of a game!

TMIT: When you say waypoints, are you saying you can make a city have a waypoint and all produced units will go to the waypoint? if so, I have no idea how to do that and it sounds really really useful.

[Silu]

That's called a rally point; you select a city (or cities, you can select all cities on a landmass with ctrl+click) and shift+rclick on a tile.

[Virtual Alex]

Wow that sounds really great. It's a good thing that nice adviser that asks me if I would like to donate my cities to other AIs would actually tell me something useful like how to use rally points.

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally Posted by Virtual Alex

I play Monarch, Large Map, Epic Speed. I play on Big'n'Small maps, I hate pangea.

To clarify, I don't hate to winning. Winning makes me feel like a brilliant player. What I hate is winning in 1400 AD and then stomping the game until 1900AD.

I know I should move up in difficulty, but when I try playing emp I feel like it is hopeless so quickly I end up abandoning the games. It's hard to find a perfect difficulty for myself. I guess what I am really looking for is to have the vast majority of the game spent really fighting to win, and just a few dozen turns on cleaning up a sure win. On monarch I feel like I am really playing up hill and having a hard time up until I just totally run away with the game. Hopefuly on emp I can "win" on 1900AD and play clean up until 1990AD and have a real nailbiter of a game!

TMIT: When you say waypoints, are you saying you can make a city have a waypoint and all produced units will go to the waypoint? if so, I have no idea how to do that and it sounds really really useful.

I wrote a guide to playing faster which is in my signature, if you're interested.

Also, I'd like to point out that falling behind =/= a sure loss. In one of my more recent immortal games, I was researching paper when one of the computers completed apollo program.

I won.

Granted, that was an extreme example ----> I mass axe rushed 2 AIs on my continent, settled out my (massive amount of) land, and won UN by playing diplo well. However, it is important to note that by the time the game ended, I could build nukes and tanks and was #1 in production...meaning most anything but culture was open to me if I went aggression.

Very important in high level play is researching techs you can trade, building the correct tile improvements based on your plans, and building the correct things in the CORRECT ORDER in your cities depending on what you want to do with them. A lot of rookies under-expand too.

[Continental Op]

I seem to have a problem in using my military efficiently, because getting domination/conquest seems impossible sometimes. In my current game (noble, epic speed, huge islands map, playing Hannibal of Carthage) I managed to get a HUGE lead both in tech and military, but it doesn't seem to help. Even though I had modern armours while my rivals were still using rifles, I just can't get them to capitulate.

At first I attacked Augustus with cannons and maces, that I gradually upgraded to rifles. I took his hole main island, the rest was still in the dark, but had to make peace because Tokugawa and Napoleon DoW'ed me. Those two were easy pickings, but apparently the only ones in the whole game. Next I attacked Willem, took many many cities from him. At some point I again had to do peace, because Hammurabi was on the way and wouldn't open borders. So it was Hammurabi's turn. And that stubborn idiot made me take each and every city he had by force, all 30 of them. The same thing happened with Alex next. Both of them fought to the bitter end. And now it seems that the same thing is happening with Saladin. And I still have about at least ten civs to go...

So what is wrong? I've used modern armour, I've used nukes, I've used jet fighters, the works. And they still don't have anything on me besides infantry. My military strenght is about five times more than my worst opponent and I'm teching something like future tech 6. They don't even have nukes yet, most of them not even industrialism. And it's 2006 already. I've built a spaceship almost ready so I won't have to settle to time, but I so would have wanted to have a conquest/domination on this one.