Do you play to win?

[headcase]

Not for all games, but for Civ 5 I do.

 

[eris]

I have never played just to play, there has always been an intended victory condition in my mind even if I had to adjust that according to game events. Once or twice I continued a game past the victory, like seeing if I could have handled that invasion rather than escape to Alpha Centauri, but the entertainment/immersion value dropped for me drastically without that overall goal.

 

[HammerandSickle]

I never start a game with a certain victory in mind. I play to recreate (or shall I say, to create) history. That way, even when NOT playing, I feel entertained with an ongoing game as I add some imagination into it.(helps pass time at school, by the way)

I think the victories are additional indulgences that make a great game even greater.
Awesomer is the word

 

[baldfalk]

I play to complete achievements.


...Someone help.

 

[Hustapha Thool]

I usually do not play to win, most likely due to the fact that I play marathon/large. there is just not much point in finishing a game. By the time the modern era roles around, it is very rare whether you know you will achieve a victory condition or not. Turtling up and clicking till the end is not as fun as starting a new game/map.

After you have bee-lined toward certain victory conditions so many times is tends to get pretty formulaic, no matter the civ. As others have said here, I tend to roleplay a civ, at least as I see fit. I would really like to see Civ move toward that kind of a play style with really divergent civs and tech paths, balance be damned, than the homogenized everything kind of feels the same so I can win attitude of today's games.

 

[aguds]

I try to make a country I would live in. Too many times does the AI come and bother me with war due to these "victory conditions" I hear about.

 

[wannabewarlord]

I try to make a country I would live in. Too many times does the AI come and bother me with war due to these "victory conditions" I hear about.

I see. So you would live in a coutnry full of Mech Infantry and giant death robots?

 

[jdolan1983]

Depends at the moment i just started on prince (newbie) and im playing to stay alive not really thinking about winning but just been able to control the africas where i landed is an achivement to me so far, maybe i can go on and win but its nearly the 1900's so i dont think i have enough time to mount a serious conquest win and i think im probably way behind tech wise to get any other win

When i master this level i will do a few play to win games before moving up a notch once more

 

[DefoesRightBoot]

Bit of both, to be honest, I've been known to go to both extremes.

Eg - one game I started in the Future Era on Deity & Continents, Duel, then went straight for the spaceship, just in order to have the best chance of winning at Deity level.

Another I started on Huge Pangaea in a 2-player MP game, and send one player's warrior straight out to kill the other player's settler before he'd even started, just to basically have a 'sandbox' game to build an amazing empire. (Was huge in the end, think I had about 200 cities, all above 20 size and a few around 50!)

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I used to play Civ4 with an attitude of "I just want a good game experience." However, I've found that in Civ5, I'm going straight for the victory conditions. This probably has more to do with the way the AI plays than the way I play. In Civ4, you could play a game just to build an empire to your liking without worrying all too much about the AI. However, the AI in Civ5 actively plays to win, so it sort of pushes me in that direction as well.

It works out, though, since I enjoy Civ4 more as a civ-sim and Civ5 as a challenge to win. I do hope the next iteration of Civ makes role-playing more viable/fun.

 

[CSS]

477 hours played and I have never finished the game. I usually quit in the modern era when I see that the AI has no chance to beat me. So "I just want a good game experience".

 

[Ekmek]

It works out, though, since I enjoy Civ4 more as a civ-sim and Civ5 as a challenge to win. I do hope the next iteration of Civ makes role-playing more viable/fun.

thats a good point. It seems Civ5 is missing the RPG mode that civ4 had.

 

[CoolLizy]

I see. So you would live in a coutnry full of Mech Infantry and giant death robots?

Giant Death Robots have peaceful applications, I assure you.

 

[texdionis]

I always play for fun. Just holding to my style, varying it a bit over time and have good games. Should a win happen, the next I try a level up, but that's all.
I do play for achievements, though.

 

[TravisATWA]

I dont just play to win ...

 

[chazzycat]

Depends entirely on my mood. Sometimes its about the challenge to win, sometimes its about trying new strats or a weird map/civ combo...sometimes it's just for fun.

 

[cccv]

My goal is to win at the end, but not necessarily every action I take is with that intended outcome in mind. Sometimes I just build a library because I think the citizens in that city should have a library, not because I have a spreadsheet made up that tells me that building a library at this point in the game will have a cost-effective hammer-to science ratio and is objectively superior to the hammer-food ratio of building a granary there instead right now, etc. I tend to have a general idea of "I need more science, so I should build more science buildings" or w/e most of the time, but I don't "play to win" in the sense that I calculate-- or even know how to calculate-- what is an optimal move at any given time. I just have that general idea of what I'm aiming for and attempt to win with that. And if I don't know what to do with a city at any given time, yeah, I just say "well, these fine people deserve an opera house" >.>

tl;dr: I don't play deity for a reason >.>

 

[spider1]

Depends entirely on my mood. Sometimes its about the challenge to win, sometimes its about trying new strats or a weird map/civ combo...sometimes it's just for fun.

This. I couldn't have said it any better.

 

[Becephalus]

I play to win but I don't min/max and I do a lot of role-playing. I will declare war on people when I don't think it advisable or take policies that are unwise for fun.

Probably most importantly I typically chase ALL the victory conditions instead of focusing on one. I find the "I got 18 GS this game and got science victory in 1600" style of game-play trivially easy limiting and unfun.

 

[XRW175P6MQ4]

Giant Death Robots have peaceful applications, I assure you.

Where I live, they use GDR's to get cats out of trees.