Late-game boredom

[TheWilltoAct]

I love the first half of the game, that's when all the fun decisions come for me; while I'm expanding and adopting new civics. I don't think combat is fun in civ(4), which makes me excited that is putting a huge emphasis on it.

 

[wayneb64]

What settings are you playing with? I play Monarch with Fractal Map, moderate climate, and I thought defaults on everything else. (I face six other AI's) I must get a good start point and even then I can only win maybe 5-10% of the games. I don't culture rush, and I find the AI's very competitive with all the bonuses they get. Usually a Civ on another continent gets it to easy and runs away with it, or some Civ culture rushes me and I can't get strong enough to stop it. I have been playing for years and the only boredom I face is if I go for a military victory, which is often not even an option.

I am almost half way though the Civ list trying to win each on Monarch.

 

[ahenobarb]

I would like to be able to change the game speed where the research takes longer (marathon) but building units, buildings and improvements are quicker (normal), this way I would be fighting wars in the dark ages instead of staying friendly with the enemies until later in the game when I am stronger.

This is easily doable. I edited the xml files and created a time scale longer than Marathon, with building/units costs the same, but research takes longer. So Net result is I stay in the Ancient and Medieval periods longer.

Also, I created an enormous map size to allow the period of exploration to continue longer. (After I've explored the whole world, the game starts getting dull I've found).

Finally, I made the cost of settlers astronomical so the only way to get new cities is to explore for goodie huts or wait for barbarians to start creating their own cities and take those. Sort of a modified OCC, with the AI forced into an OCC strategy as well.

 

[itg]

You may be doing this already, but automating your workers after all your BFCs are set up saves a ton of effort. Just make sure to set the 'automated workers leave old improvements' and 'automated workers leave forests' options.

 

[Kid R]

I'm definitely with the OP on the late game thing. I tend to declare my self the winner with a "unilateral victory" (UV) if the game's definitely won, or more often just stop playing because I've had enough of that game. I'm not really bothered who "won" anyway if it was fun.

But have a try at cultural victory and one-city-challenge. Both give a completely different flavour to the whole game and also remove the "gathering snowball" effect at the end when you know you've won but just have a lot of mop-up to do. Cultural almost completely removes the military factor which might be offputting, but in OCC it can be a lot of fun to sit there in your superfortress and send out groups of elite raiders to cut back rivals who get close to winning.

Re. the modern era music I quite like it - it reminds me of the sun coming up in the back garden and realizing I should have gone to bed 6 hours ago.