How do I combat the 'cannot finish game' sickness?

[ORION11380]

You've got to find that balance between too easy and boring to so challanging that your head hurts. So I play at a easy level (noble or prince), and I "handicap" myself by gifting techs or units to my enemies. Before I invade someone with my 20 tanks, 10 inf, and 10 bombers against their macemen, I give them all my techs to date, and 10 turns to catch up. Then it's steamrolling time!

As for the annoying micromanagement, I don't bother when the game is in the bag. I just set the city's management to whatever it's specialized for, and let it ride. And if I'm too lazy to tell it to build yet another mech inf or to move the units, I just have it produce research or wealth.

If you're so far ahead anyway, do you really care if your cities aren't 100% efficient? (actually, this is EXACTLY why great empires rarely last more than 300 years...but this is only a game)

 

[Stolen Rutters]

It's a game. No foul if you don't like the gameplay after that point. For me, I have automated so much of the micro by then (turned most of the workers to expand trade routes, for example), that I can spend more time fighting and trying to improve my weak diplomatic and espionage games. (I decided I'm not moving past Monarch until I figure these aspects of the game out.)

Another idea: you could try to actually reach a victory condition by 1000AD.

 

[mueller]

Most games in chess do not last till checkmate; at some point (and often early enough) the losing side decides to surrender to spare the tedium of waiting for the inevitable.

Unfortunately, in Civ and other strategic games AI is just not programmed to surrender, but often there is not really any challenge left in the last 50 (100, 150) turns of the game.

So I restart too.

One way to keep up interest is to set up your personal record for the fastest space win, cultural victory or whatever. In this way you are plaing not as much agains AI, but against the clock and this sort of keeps the suspense up. But not all games are feasible for time records, and simple mopping up of surviving AIs is tremendously boring IMO.

 

[Shurdus]

What I like to do as well is trying some new stuff. I never went cultural before, so I moved down a level or two to monarch and took a look at what I could do by then. Of course I had a pretty late cultural win since I was by no means playing an optimal game, but I was having fun doing new stuff that I never did before.

The only aspect of the game that I find tedious is warring, so I keep that to a minimum. I like teching towards space and building the ship, especially if some one beats me to Apollo. Pressing enter all the time is no fun indeed, but surely in the meantime there is plenty of interesting stuff going on, like judging if you can get an AI to DoW on the other space racer and working towards that goal, finding a balance between sabotaging his SS parts and keeping your tech rate up, judging if maybe you can just wait for your opponent to launch and then raze his capital, etc.

Good times.

There are some posts like 'I play noble and it is no fun attacking AI longbows with artillery...' Of course it isn't. If you can do this, move up a level or two and try again. At higher difficulties, it is very possible for a war to start with cannons + maces and last until riflemen + artillery. See if you can completely rip the opponent apart then.

If this does not help either then I guess Civ4 is just not really your game. It is a shame because I think it is the best strategy game ever made, but if you disagree that is cool too.

 

[Zeiter]

There's nothing "wrong" with quitting a game, but it is a sign, perhaps, that the game was not set up with the most appropriate settings.

When you go to start your new game, do a smaller map, at a higher difficulty level. Maybe pick a civ with a later-game UU and/or UB to keep yourself interested in the later game.

My favorite game I ever played was my first monarch win a couple of months ago. It was a real nail-biter all the way until assembly line. I beelined ahead to that, and then I managed to hit my main opponent with arty and infantry while he still had riflemen and cannons. If I hadn't've pulled that off, the outcome of the game might have still been very much undecided. So, after that exciting war, I started to pull away, and I was equally torn between a cultural victory and a conquest victory (both looked equally accessible, yet equally tedious)...so, around the time I got to refrigeration, I said, the hell with it, my score is 3x my nearest opponent's, and I have an overwhelming military advantage and lead on the culture race, so I'm hanging the game up and calling it a win.

So, in a way, I ended up doing the same sort of thing, except just later in the game.

The trick to keeping yourself in the game is to delay that point at which you start to pull away and you know it without a doubt. That's when a lot of the risk and excitement dies in the game. The trick to maintaining this risk and excitement throughout the game is to play at your difficulty level.

Ideally, your difficulty level would be the level at which, on average, you would expect to be neck-and-neck with the top opponent during the last 50 or so turns of the game. Too hard, and the AI will win earlier. Too easy, and you will win earlier. Really, at your difficulty level, you should end up losing a game or two every now and then (ideally, 50%, but that sort of loss rate might get demoralizing, so I usually aim for a difficulty level slightly lower).

 

[Zeiter]

There's nothing "wrong" with quitting a game, but it is a sign, perhaps, that the game was not set up with the most appropriate settings.

When you go to start your new game, do a smaller map, at a higher difficulty level. Maybe pick a civ with a later-game UU and/or UB to keep yourself interested in the later game.

My favorite game I ever played was my first monarch win a couple of months ago. It was a real nail-biter all the way until assembly line. I beelined ahead to that, and then I managed to hit my main opponent with arty and infantry while he still had riflemen and cannons. If I hadn't've pulled that off, the outcome of the game might have still been very much undecided. So, after that exciting war, I started to pull away, and I was equally torn between a cultural victory and a conquest victory (both looked equally accessible, yet equally tedious)...so, around the time I got to refrigeration, I said, the hell with it, my score is 3x my nearest opponent's, and I have an overwhelming military advantage and lead on the culture race, so I'm hanging the game up and calling it a win.

So, in a way, I ended up doing the same sort of thing, except just later in the game.

The trick to keeping yourself in the game is to delay that point at which you start to pull away and you know it without a doubt. That's when a lot of the risk and excitement dies in the game. The trick to maintaining this risk and excitement throughout the game is to play at your difficulty level.

Ideally, your difficulty level would be the level at which, on average, you would expect to be neck-and-neck with the top opponent during the last 50 or so turns of the game. Too hard, and the AI will win earlier. Too easy, and you will win earlier. Really, at your difficulty level, you should end up losing a game or two every now and then (ideally, 50%, but that sort of loss rate might get demoralizing, so I usually aim for a difficulty level slightly lower).

 

[Shurdus]

There's nothing "wrong" with quitting a game, but it is a sign, perhaps, that the game was not set up with the most appropriate settings.

When you go to start your new game, do a smaller map, at a higher difficulty level. Maybe pick a civ with a later-game UU and/or UB to keep yourself interested in the later game.

My favorite game I ever played was my first monarch win a couple of months ago. It was a real nail-biter all the way until assembly line. I beelined ahead to that, and then I managed to hit my main opponent with arty and infantry while he still had riflemen and cannons. If I hadn't've pulled that off, the outcome of the game might have still been very much undecided. So, after that exciting war, I started to pull away, and I was equally torn between a cultural victory and a conquest victory (both looked equally accessible, yet equally tedious)...so, around the time I got to refrigeration, I said, the hell with it, my score is 3x my nearest opponent's, and I have an overwhelming military advantage and lead on the culture race, so I'm hanging the game up and calling it a win.

So, in a way, I ended up doing the same sort of thing, except just later in the game.

The trick to keeping yourself in the game is to delay that point at which you start to pull away and you know it without a doubt. That's when a lot of the risk and excitement dies in the game. The trick to maintaining this risk and excitement throughout the game is to play at your difficulty level.

Ideally, your difficulty level would be the level at which, on average, you would expect to be neck-and-neck with the top opponent during the last 50 or so turns of the game. Too hard, and the AI will win earlier. Too easy, and you will win earlier. Really, at your difficulty level, you should end up losing a game or two every now and then (ideally, 50%, but that sort of loss rate might get demoralizing, so I usually aim for a difficulty level slightly lower).

Why tech towards refrigiration when you want to go conquest or culture? And with a huge advanced and veteran army would it not be way more convenient to simply war the rest of the game and be over with it?

It seems to me like you spend so much time looking up to finishing the game that finishing it becomes a drag by itself. I think the end game is in fact very much fun, especially if you stick around to see it.

At first I thought the interesting part of the game was over by liberalism. The end of the tech tree way way too abscure for me and seemed endlessly complex. Once I got to play the late game more often I found that planning ahead to see your plans flourish and come to a 'do or die' monent a lot of fun. This is what you worked for so hard, now co claim your prize!

After getting to know the end game better I find it more insightful and therefore more interesting. I made the mistake in my prince days that I thought the game lost its appeal because a certain stage had passed. Now I find that once the actual settling and improving the land is done, the more subtle part of the game can really begin!

 

[Zeiter]

Why tech towards refrigiration when you want to go conquest or culture? And with a huge advanced and veteran army would it not be way more convenient to simply war the rest of the game and be over with it?

It seems to me like you spend so much time looking up to finishing the game that finishing it becomes a drag by itself. I think the end game is in fact very much fun, especially if you stick around to see it.

At first I thought the interesting part of the game was over by liberalism. The end of the tech tree way way too abscure for me and seemed endlessly complex. Once I got to play the late game more often I found that planning ahead to see your plans flourish and come to a 'do or die' monent a lot of fun. This is what you worked for so hard, now co claim your prize!

After getting to know the end game better I find it more insightful and therefore more interesting. I made the mistake in my prince days that I thought the game lost its appeal because a certain stage had passed. Now I find that once the actual settling and improving the land is done, the more subtle part of the game can really begin!

To clarify: I wasn't beelining refrigeration, if that's what you mean. I already had industrialism and rocketry and stuff. But refrigeration is quite handy for the extra movement point for naval units.

As far as going on to an easy conquest victory, that was easier said than done because I was playing WolfRevolution with the revolution mod on, so, while it would not have been unlikely for me to get a conquest victory, it would have taken longer to sew things up than otherwise. (The larger and more sprawling your empire, the harder it is to keep it together using the revolutions mod). In any case, I had 100 turns to go on culture, and an added problem was that I was getting memory allocation failures every few turns, so I called it a game. But I might have ended it anyways, because the game was becoming uncompetitive.

I never really consider the game "over" at any particular tech level. For me, it is always when the game starts becoming uncompetitive. That could happen in the classical age, medieval, renaissance, industrial, or future era. In my mind, the key to optimizing the game settings is to set yourself up so that your game will likely still be competitive into the industrial/future eras.