Feeling bad while play CIV

Seraiel

If you want anything from I please ask in German
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Sep 6, 2011
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Hey...

I ask this question, because I regard the HoF as my home, and here is where my friends are.

I need advice on a personal question. You know, I play the current GOTM, but it doesn't matter, could be HoF aswell, similarity is playing competetively. When I started playing CIV, I had an enormous ambition to learn to beat Deity. I played Huge maps, because I wanted the most gigantic game where I needed to make myself tons of thoughts because the situations are so difficult and hard to control.

Then 5y passed, and I think I can proudly say, that I have successfully mastered CIV to a very high degree. When I play however, it sometimes becomes a nightmare. In the beginning, everything is still fine, not many decisions to make, the game progresses, great, but in the end-game, even a small map absolutely kills me. I'm currently playing at a speed of 2-4h / turn (!!!) . I probably could play those turns in 1h, but then I would work myself to "karoshi" . I try to play very relaxed but on a high level, and I just cannot feel good anymore, because I make things that aren't fun anymore. Microing many cities / turn, that's still ok, it's probably a nightmare for most of you, but what whith those things like calculating the number of troops, planning when to start a GA to draft, optimizing everything on the path towards that to gain 1 or 2 turns on the attack date, using Galleon chains instead of just sailing happily over the ocean, calculating Corporation spread to maybe again save 1 turn on it, pushing towards the land limit with a safety margin of 2%, optimizing troop movement to maybe take 1 city 1 turn earlier, Worker management, espionage, GPs for as much as 6 GAs (1 through TM) , building Wealth and Research to again gain 1 turn with 30 minutes of micro, you know what I mean.

The problem is, that the more one understands about the game, the more easy but also the more complicated it becomes. One has ideas and does things one would never have thought, considered or even done, if someone wouldn't have suggested them to you. How do you deal with such situations, is playing CIV to you always fun? What do you do, when it's no fun anymore, play worse?

Seriously looking for help.

Seraiel
 
Don't always try to optimize everything. Sometimes it is better to not optimize too much and have more fun playing. Just a suggestion.

孫子武
 
In serious games, like GOTMs or HOF, I do most of what you describe. But I'll play my own games now and then for fun, which usually means pretty much fighting from the beginning and winning the game as fast as possible.

As you know, I never play huge/marathon or even large/epic. I just feel like those games burn one out. And I don't play Deity for "fun".

Anyway, my "addiction" has long past me by now and I play very rarely. Mainly a GOTM or HOF game here and there. Taking time off from the game gives me more incentive and makes me fresh for the next time I do play.

It's still my favorite game, so I always see myself playing CIV IV till I croak probably..ha...just far less frequently now than before. In a way, Civ IV spoiled me to gaming over time as I find less pleasure with other games and genres like a did before, except for grand strategy like EU IV, which is excellent. Heck..I struggle now to get through good RPGs.

I kinda see what you are saying about the more you understand the more complex it becomes. I think in part that is because our experience makes us take the game more seriously. We demand excellence from ourselves and; thus, do what we must to maintain it.
 
Set some key goals for yourself, then let other things slide.

For example "Get a Great Scientist by Turn 100," "Beeline Sid's Sushi," or "Capture 3 Cities by 1 AD."

If you have met your goals, then feel happy with your success and don't worry about squeezing out every little bit of juice out of the game.

Sometimes, you end up microing so hard that you miss out on bigger-picture items that could have negated the entire need to micro that hard.

One time, I played a GOTM game so that I'd always work Cottages in my capital such that I'd always get the best multiple for my Flasks. I'd work a Cottage over a Hamlet or a Village just to get a good multiplier. I did so very effectively, and I grew my Cottages really well, but I didn't do very well overall in that game, as I'd focused so much on making the most of my own territory that I put off warring until very late in the game.

Sometimes, I just play to try out something new, regardless of how sub-optimal it was. For example, I started off WOTMs by going for Cultural Victories and was pretty good at getting them. One time, I tried going for Democracy, just to see the effect that it would have. But, it was a game without an Academy and with a small empire, so it literally took me 50 turns to tech Democracy (I ended up shaving off some turns, but that's what the # of turns to complete that technology said when I'd started). I did much poorly than in previous games, and I learned some things while doing so, and yet I still microed my way into getting as much out of my Legendary Cities as possible, getting the most out of my GPP, etc. So, all of that micro that I'd put in got "wasted" due to a sub-optimal tech choice (although I had told myself that I wanted to go through with it regardless of the result, so I don't see the exercise as a failure). What I do see is that sometimes, even the best micro doesn't really matter when other decisions aren't even close to being good ones; I ended up coming in 3rd or 4th in terms of Fastest Cultural Victory in that game, which surprised a lot of players.

So, set some high level goals and if you can meet them, then focus your game on other aspects that you may have neglected or not even thought about, by having "earned" some "extra" turns due to meeting some of your goals more efficiently than you had originally targeted doing.
 
Perfection is sometimes good, but it can be a curse too.

I tend to play Civ 4 very heavily for a while, maybe a few months, then need a break for a few months because I've "burnt out". I get what you're saying about "the more you know, the more complex it gets". Similar to "real life" where "the more knowledge you possess, the more questions you ask". It's the same for me. In the beginning I just played and had fun (but sometimes lost at low levels). Now I know a lot more, but play much slower, because there are so many decisions to make, so many paths, so many considerations, and so much micro to think about. It would be great if I could somehow turn that off in my mind, but I can't. Think this is why the early part of the game, first 100 or so turns (normal speed) is most fun. Major decisions to make, but you have fewer cities and units, so things are naturally less complex, and turns fly by faster. Easier to keep focused on some important goals, like Academy by 1AD, capital at least size 10, start some kind of war (if going for that route), at least 200 beakers by 1AD, and so on.

It can get pretty silly at times. Yesterday I spent several minutes just contemplating where to send a worker. When it gets to that stage for too long, it feels less like a game and more like (boring) work. That's why I need a break for a few months every now and then, to get refreshed.

Not any solutions here I'm afraid, and maybe there isn't one either. Would be grand if one could "forget" about all these details and just play on, hitting end turn much faster, without checking most cities every turn and all that jazz, but once you get to that point, it seems difficult to turn back. It becomes a habit, and you feel like doing something wrong, or missing out, if you don't do it.

In short, perfectionism can be a curse.
 
I wondered if Chess maybe would be a better game than CIV because I thought that while it maybe is simpler (less units) it may even be more complex, because every unit is more important / has more abilities. I googled Kasparov the average length of a chess game aswell as the length of the famous match Kasparov against big blue, and the answers are that those games last "between 2 and 4h" . I'm sry, but this is ridiculous, how can a game be more difficult, if an average game lasts between 2 and 4h? There are exeptions of games, some lastest up to 200 moves instead of the usual 40, great, lets say those games then lastest 20h, that's still ridiculous, GM-137 took me 300h and there are enough examples of other players also playing more than 100h on one game. I think this may be an inherent problem of CIV, it has the complexity of Chess but it's dimensions are like a Chess-board had 200 against 200 instead of 20 against 20 units, and as if the Chess board were 100 times as large as well, only that some units have abilities like to research something, that changes movement of all other units, or to be at one place, and that changes the strength of all other units etc.

From this and your answers I see, that we're basically all having the same problem, and there doesn't seem to be any real solution, human just isn't made for things like that. Maybe we should just go and play Chess to have an easier time and earn money with it on the way. If only Chess were as interesting as CIV ;) :D :goodjob: .

[EDIT]

Maybe we should write "a log of the most ridiculous things we ever did in CIV" . Like the one example, where pangaea thought over 1h on the movement over a Worker. Would probably become a legendary thread.

Here is an example not that long, but very interesting: Yesterday was the first time, that having my 20k savefiles large folder of CIV games. I asked myself a few things, like how I i. e. should research past Sushi. I simply looked in another Spacerace, found "impossible" , so I didn't have to spend hours on thinking on it. I also asked myself, how many GPs I could assume. I only learned yesterday, how much GPs cost and how much each GP costs more, so the formula behind their cost. Opened another game, found out that I was able to create up to 3000 :gp: until 1200 AD. This told me, that getting over 3000 'til later while being PHI on top should be very easy. I still needed at least 1h to go through the scenarios of the different GPs from the different cities, because of all the GP-pollution, that just cannot be avoided, because AIs don't build 100% clean cities of one type, but build so many wonders that it would be madness not to use their cities for 1 or 2 GPs, and because Slavery only allows for so few GPs of one type, that one needs to hire others for various reasons, one i. e. being, that Specialists are very effective compared to tiles sometimes and that reducing food via Specialists with Sushi is often necessary respectively adviseable.
 
I just calculated whether working two tundra-windmills or two grassland workshops would be better. My feeling told me, that the tundra-windmills could be better, because the 1 :commerce: gets heavier multiplied then the :hammers: if the city only has a Forge. My feeling didn't let me down, the Tundra-Windmillws were better, and I gained exactly 0.25 :science: :goodjob: .
 
I played a lot of peaceful OCC when I didn't want to think about lots of cities to manage or lots of wars. Or peaceful culture (non-OCC).
 
The problem is, that the more one understands about the game, the more easy but also the more complicated it becomes. One has ideas and does things one would never have thought, considered or even done, if someone wouldn't have suggested them to you. How do you deal with such situations, is playing CIV to you always fun? What do you do, when it's no fun anymore, play worse?

Seriously looking for help.

Seraiel

Yes, I have run into this problem before also.

The solution for me was to stop playing Deity all the time.
Go cream a BTS game of the month on an easier setting.

Also, you don't have to play every game that comes along.
Skip lots of them and only play the ones you want to play.

Finally, play some other games for a while.
Maybe read a book.
It really brings the shine back onto Civ 4 once you've taken a bit of a break from it.
This forum will be here for a long time. :please:
 
Yes, I have run into this problem before also.

The solution for me was to stop playing Deity all the time.
Go cream a BTS game of the month on an easier setting.

Also, you don't have to play every game that comes along.
Skip lots of them and only play the ones you want to play.

Finally, play some other games for a while.
Maybe read a book.
It really brings the shine back onto Civ 4 once you've taken a bit of a break from it.
This forum will be here for a long time. :please:

@ Kaitzilla:

I just just returned from a 3 months long hiatus without any playing at all and have that problem in a game which's level is so low, that I was actually surprised to get any trades from AI at all ^^ .

The problem doesn't come through Deity, Deity only demands such a playstyle to win, but if one has played 4y non-stop-Deity, that playstyle "inhabits" somehow and one plays 100% optimal not regarding which game one actually plays.

But it's interesting, that the most common answer basically is "play worse" . STW answered like that, Kaitzilla's answer is basically similar, and then there's the answer of "play something different" which doesn't work for me and Dhoomstriker's answer unfortunately doesn't work at all, because I don't play to reach a certain goal, therefore I don't even pay attention to timelines, I just try to play the best I could possibly attain, to reach every goal in the minimum personal time. :borg:
 
Ok fellas, here comes real madness for you.

I'm playing the current GOTM.

I got 6 days left to finish it.

My current speed is 2-3h / turn, so I achieve amazing 5 turns / d.

At that speed, I'm not going to be able to finish in time, but what happens, is that I just thought about, if I'd make a naval invasion of a country, that has absolutely 0 value to me, just because I can! (And because I get 2 additional happy citizens for it in endgame. )

The process of decision for this alone lasted 2 hours, because I needed to evaluate running Burocracy against running Nationhood. That was still quite easy. What took a lot time though, was the movement of the Ships, because as I said, it's an amphibious invasion :faint: .

So the equasion is: 3h of thinking for a maximum gain of 21 :science: / turn :lmao: .

I feel very german right now ^^ :lol: .
 
Ok fellas, here comes real madness for you.

I'm playing the current GOTM.

I got 6 days left to finish it.

My current speed is 2-3h / turn, so I achieve amazing 5 turns / d.

At that speed, I'm not going to be able to finish in time, but what happens, is that I just thought about, if I'd make a naval invasion of a country, that has absolutely 0 value to me, just because I can! (And because I get 2 additional happy citizens for it in endgame. )

The process of decision for this alone lasted 2 hours, because I needed to evaluate running Burocracy against running Nationhood. That was still quite easy. What took a lot time though, was the movement of the Ships, because as I said, it's an amphibious invasion :faint: .

So the equasion is: 3h of thinking for a maximum gain of 21 :science: / turn :lmao: .

I feel very german right now ^^ :lol: .

:ack:, that is SGOTM speed.
Don't have to be so careful to win.
Although this IS the civ Fanatics forum.

TMIT has a guide to playing very very fast.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=301900

Plastic Ducks have a good micro tip.
Never build a Mine.
Ever. :spank:

I think any turn except for 5 million score games can be done in 15 minutes tops.

Just check at the end of turn:

1) Are all units in best spot?
2) Are all cities building what is most beneficial?
3) Is the Teching right?
4) Check for Fist icon
5) Check for enemy units with Military advisor
6) Check trade menu and resource trade menu
7) Use Alt+S to put down some notes

Things that also speed play up is knowing battle odds in your head.
Maybe I play this game too much. :crazyeye:


I can't really give too much advice because I feel your despair.
I avoided SGOTM20 because I knew I'd put too much time and effort into it, or not even play it at all and let the team down like I did in SGOTM19.
My attempt to casually play SGOTM19 ended in disaster because I lost all enthusiasm when I tried to ignore the little details.
It's either play way too hard or nothing for me.

That's why I recommend Emperor/Immortal for solo play.
You can feel that you don't have to play perfect to win, so you can slack a little.
 
15 minutes per turn sounds very little, as it depends on the type of game you are playing. With hundreds of units and maybe 50 cities, making sure they're all doing the 'best' is time-consuming in itself. But for more normal/standard games, it's probably doable, if one could ignore the lure of perfectionism.

That's why I recommend Emperor/Immortal for solo play.
You can feel that you don't have to play perfect to win, so you can slack a little.

Admittedly I only have a handful of Deity wins under my belt, but I'd still agree with this. The step from Immortal to Deity is massive, and for my skill level, it takes max focus and attention to details to win at Deity, and even then I can get in big problems. At Immortal it's easier to deal with unforeseen consequences, but still turn the tide of a sudden DoW for instance. Deity is more about keeping the AIs and events under (near) 100% control, while on Immortal you can much easier get away with "middle finger diplomacy", which I find a lot of fun! :lol:

Little case of "madness" from the recent NC game I just finished.
Don't want to whip the Forge just yet. If I wait 2 more turns, overflow will go from 7 to 13, and I'll get another hammer from the overflow of the then completed Forge. Gah! :crazyeye:

But thankfully, towards the end I managed to ignore the turn-ly "check all cities" and slack a little on worker micro, and even army movement. I find that a decent alternative is to just check the cities that grew that turn (log window), instead of every single one every turn. Of course, this is still torture in Marathon-Huge games with 100 cities... :sad:
 
That's really crazyness ^^ . You would also have gotten the :hammers: if you had whipped the Forge earlier, assuming you could micro the city to a multiple of 4 :hammers: :love: .

And towards what you say in the end Pangaea: What if one has Sushi and every city grows every turn ^^ .
 
In that case microing the tiles wouldn't help, as there were few hammers and few citizens post-whip, plus some nice floodplain cottages I wanted to work.

Wish Sushi it can be different, as lots of cities will grow every one or two turns. With large empires on huge maps, it's also a bit slow to go in and out of cities all the time, as the game will lag. Not much, but a little. There must be some pretty poor coding in the game, considering these lags on modern machines. Another problem with Sushi games is that the game will hire unwanted specialists pretty much every time a city grows, which always drives me mad in those games.

How great would it be with a "Focus on this type of specialists in this city" while still being able to manually select worked tiles... :love:
 
Thanks for the link, hadn't seen that thread (been gone for months on end). One of the reasons I don't use BAT or Blue Marble and such is that is makes the game slower. But mainly because I like the look of the default game better, and it's easier to differentiate plains from grasslands and such without squinting.

RAM Disk sounds like an excellent idea. However, I'm on a Linux system now, and I'm not sure if it would work there. When you mentioned this earlier, I checked out the instruction videos and such, and everything was on a Windows system.

I have an SSD disk at least, so that helps a bit. It's not like it's terribly slow, unless I have played for hours on big maps, or maybe in the late stages of the game. Remember when I played the game on an ancient computer some years ago, and when I got to that mid to late game eras, it would easily take up to a minute between hitting end turn to being able to do anything.... That got boring pretty fast! :lol:

These days I have even put the graphic settings down a fair bit, to help against those late game issues. It's the gameplay I love, and eye candy isn't that important. Probably why I still loving playing old games like Baldur's Gate.
 
Hi, Seraiel. I think I can't help you in this kind of situation. Independent of player's level, I also do all the questions till choose one way (but can't imagine myself with such perfectionism :wow:).

But here's a little advice for the GOTMs: you told that you will do a big write-up for the current BOTM 97. Being your first game, it can be very disappointing for you if there is not an adequate answer (not be matched), or other kind of discussion about (at least the way you expect...). I think the players have to choose: playing or writing long write-ups. So, the games are basicly commented.

So, the suggestion: save your energy for the next Deity. While, play some BOTM (Emperor or Immortal or both) with less perfectionism (much more relaxed) and realize that, even so, your games will be on the top of the table, or with amazing dates (easily winning awards). Don't worry about long write-ups (instead, as Kaitzilla said, go readind a book :mischief:)... Untill the right time :rockon:

So, make your history again, this time in BOTM: start to reunite all (I mean all of them, including the oldest) the top players (sometimes one or another of these players appears) to another memorable and fantastic game (remembering GM-137). Summon them, instigate them to participate. We have an average of 30/40 submissions in a BOTM. I'm sure with your help this Deity BOTM can be amazing, having a hundred of submissions, and massive participation. So your effort in long write-ups will be recompensed. With this idea, even the GOTM staff will stay motivated to prepare a nice game... Well, it stays the idea :yup:
 
Google "ImDisk" , that's RAM Disk is Open Source and should work on Linux.

This appears to be a Windows only application too. But after reading a little bit, it looks like ramdisk is already present in Linux by default, and these programs basically try to copy this for Windows as well :D

I'm not sure how to get it to work in Linux, however, particularly as getting the game to run is a little trickier than in Windows (it was made for Windows after all). If I understood things right, the ramdisk will be cleared upon restart, so copying the game there won't do much, and will probably mess up something anyway. I'm just glad it works now, also with BUFFY, but at least I know that ramdisk is built-in to Linux, which is neat :)
 
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