How many games do you abandon?

[CIVPhilzilla]

Never abandon games.

 

[Hakim]

In Civ II I abandoned an extreme lot of games becuse I wanted a perfect start and thought late game was boring. That changed with CivIII, though.

I'm a bit picky about city locations, so if I get a map where I'll loose tiles and be forced to place cities too close together I'll restart.

 

[Fanatica]

I've found that designing and making game maps keeps me interested in seeing most games through and adds a new dimension to the game. Not only is there normal game strategy, but the additional interest of seeing just how the map design pans out.

 

[Sparrow3]

I hate to abandon a game.

My curent game: C3C, Sumeria, Warlord, Continents, 3 billion yrs.
It took me about three turns to find a place to settle. This put me behind in the tech race. Trading was not an option since the AI's wanted Lux plus 1/2-3/4 my gold supply per tech. Next the Babylonians demanded tribute. I said no and they declared war. Worse yet, two turns later the Mongols did the same thing. I spend the next ten to fifteen turns rushing archers, eckudu warriors, and horsemen to my southern most city (Der). The Mongols destroyed the southeastern most city and the Egyptians immediately moved in to settle there.

I ended up paying Spain 45 gold tribute, about this time; so they would not declare war on me. I finally gave up and let the Spanish run about my northern territory at will; at least they were killing barbarians, not Summerians.

I am still 3-5 Techs behind, at this point. My econmy is shot (too many units to support). Switching to Monarchy helped; but I still have about twice as many units as I am allowed. Der is still beseiged by Babylonians and Mongols so I've got to keep building units. One bright note: I built the Pyraimids. It is the only wonder that I managed to get.

I made peace with the Babylonians; it cost me ten gold. Two turns later I tell them to get out of my territory or declare war. They declare war. I make peace with the Mongols and settle down to fight it out with the Babylonians. At least, I have destroyed enough of their units that they can not mount an effective invasion. About ten turns later, I offer them a peace treaty and they accept.

Next problem: My econmy is still in the toilet, Research is at 10%, treasury is like 10 gold, absolutely noone will trade with me, and settlers of four Civs are wandering around my territory looking for a place to plant.

I still have not abandoned!

More later; Maybe!

 

[Giotto]

I abandon the vast majority of my games. I usually start one, then decide on settings I'd rather play. Like one moment I'll want a standard map random everything game on monarch, then an hour later I'll want to abandon it to play a huge map chieftain game to see if I have what it takes to "milk" a game. It's frusterating sometimes that I've had the game for years and have only gotten past the midevil age once.

 

[Zardnaar]

I abandon alot of games but I had no intention of finishing them anyway. I practice starts alot and experiment with different terrain/civs/build orders. Or I just play until a Civ gets its UU for me to test out. I suppose I abandon practice games.

I occasionally abandon a game I can't be bothered with- ie I have already won but can't be bothered spending 10-30 hours making it official. If I'm losing I never abandon a game. You'll never learn how to catch up if you quit when you get 6 techs or more behind or how to fight a war when you're outnumbered, out teched or both.

 

[benben]

I have abandoned many games, most of the games were when the expansion phase is over.

 

[Greyhawk1]

Wow! Thats a bit worrying that the game fails to keep so many people interested through the entire history arc

Maybe thats something Firaxis should take note of in the event they get around to Civ 4.

Getting through the Ancient Expansion period reasonably well placed is always the hardest part of the game for me. On Conquests it seems far harder than it was for some reason

 

[zerksees]

Originally posted by homeyg
How often do you lose your games? What difficulty level do you play at?

I have lost a total of 3 games I can remember.

The first was my first emperor game. I was playing Persia on a standard map against 7 AI. I was not prepared.

The other two were on tiny conquest games I was playing trying for the high score HOF. I took some chances and lost my capital in the early game.

Right now I play deity on PTW. I am milking the game I am currently playing - going to put myself and Rome in the high score HOF on small map next month. This will make me 2-0 on deity when it's done.

I was close to quitting the second game listed in my sig, but I finished it too.

I have one unfinished monarch game. Huge map and in milking phase. I have not decided if I will finish milking or just zap the remaining AI city to end it quickly.

My next game might be more practice on deity, or I might pick up another challenged game from CFC.

Never quit. Strive to win no matter what the AI throws at me.

 

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by zerksees


I have lost a total of 3 games I can remember.

The first was my first emperor game. I was playing Persia on a standard map against 7 AI. I was not prepared.

The other two were on tiny conquest games I was playing trying for the high score HOF. I took some chances and lost my capital in the early game.

Right now I play deity on PTW. I am milking the game I am currently playing - going to put myself and Rome in the high score HOF on small map next month. This will make me 2-0 on deity when it's done.

2-0 on deity, huh? I'm kind of skeptical when I see numbers like that. i.e., do you reload for a good start often? Or play with what you have?

 

[zerksees]

Originally posted by Chieftess


2-0 on deity, huh? I'm kind of skeptical when I see numbers like that. i.e., do you reload for a good start often? Or play with what you have?

Both times took exactly what the computer dished out when I said "start game". No reloads. I am trying to prove to myself that I can beat deity. Reloading for a good start would be cheating myself.

Please understand that I am "easing" myself into deity. For the first deity game I wanted to beat deity, so I chose a tiny panagea map with 2 random rivals. I chose America to get the scouts out and get faster workers. With only 2 rivals I was able to use palace prebuild and get the Great Library. Nonetheless it was still real scary at the beginning. The randomly selected AI were Iriquois and Vikings. No scientific trait so tech pace wasn't too bad.

Second game I went to small continents map with 3 AI rivals. I chose Rome because militaristic trait would get me some GL's and commercial might net some extra gold. Plus I wanted to try out the legionary. As luck would have it the three AI were Ottomans, Persia and the Zulu - about as scary a bunch as I would want to face. But they were all on the other continent! All I had to deal with for a long time were the roaming barbs. The Great Library strategy failed this time, but I got a couple nice grassland cow tiles in cities near the capital and started cranking out settlers. I had so much cash built up when the AI found me I went on a tech buying spree.

I'll probably go to standard map next with more rivals.

 

[sealman]

none

 

[homeyg]

Man, zerksees, I can't even remember the amount of times I have lost the game. It is unbelievable that you have lost ONLY 3 games. How do you do it?

 

[Gengis Khan]

selective memory span

 

[homeyg]

And that means... What?

 

[wlievens]

I almost never finish one

 

[casual_moose]

i play lots of games, then save them, and start another. sometimes ill play one to the finish but it doesnt happen often, I now have a lot of saved games.

 

[Berrern]

I only finish about 1 in 20 games..

I almost always abandon my games when they've been decided (i.e. I know that I will win, or I know that I've lost ) - unless there's something very special with them (like if I've spent hours building up a huge huge invasion army, waiting to strike).
Most times the games will be abandoned shortly after discovering Synthetic Fibers - cause then I get MA and it's a breeze smashing the opponents to pieces..

IMO Civ needs to be much more dynamic, with lots of more units (and unit types), more technologies etc. - to keep the game interesting in the late stages.
There should be much more happening when tearing down rival civilizations, with a lot of different consequences/outcomes. It's just to boring to pound an enemy city with artillery & bombers, finish off the defenders with your tanks, take over the city, quell the resistance, build city improvements, and move on to the next city.

It's a big shame to see that so many people abandon the majority of their games - I hope Firaxis does something with Civ4 to re-ignite the interest for finishing the game.
I remember back in the days of original Civilization, I never abandoned a game. Ever.

Initiatives like GOTM (Game Of The Month) makes the games more competitive, and keeps people interested in finishing them. We need more stuff like this imo

 

[zerksees]

Originally posted by homeyg
Man, zerksees, I can't even remember the amount of times I have lost the game. It is unbelievable that you have lost ONLY 3 games. How do you do it?

The short answer: Attention to detail, and the CFC web site

The long answer:

My friend John got me started on this game. I played a few games of Civ II – lost the first one because my settler got killed. I played Civ II with no manual, and no preparation. I called John and got some pointers to get going. I did not like having so little information.

When I got Civ 3 I spent a long time reading the manual. It was not very well organized IMO but there was a lot of info in there. In my first Civ III game I played America and beat the game on chieftain with a histograph win – barely (I laugh about this now when I think about it). I played this and all the games through emperor on standard map with 7 AI, with all the normal victory conditions on and roaming barbs.

I then found CFC, and started learning. I am a systems analyst by day, so I put these analyst skills to work to learn about the game and devise a plan to beat it. I spent a lot of time looking at the CFC web site. I discovered the Persians, and then I played warlord. I beat that level the first time with a domination victory, in a much more convincing fashion than I did on chieftain. Love that war academy. I repeated the read, learn, play and win routine at regent and monarch, scoring diplo victories on those the first time.

Then I went to emperor – feeling confident. And I got crushed. Back to war academy, read articles on winning at emperor and deity. Came back with the Zulu, and beat the AI again. All the while my games are getting longer and longer. This one took 60+ hours to finish. I played a second game on emperor to prove it wasn’t a fluke, and won again – this game is in the high score HOF for standard maps.

At deity, I did a lot of thinking before I started at that level and decided on a modified approach to the game. It has worked for both games I have played so far. As I mentioned above I plan harder challenges at deity next.

I don’t play a lot of games because they take so long, but I put my best effort into the games I do play. I always decide what my cities are going to build, I control the workers manually for a good part of the game. I handle diplomacy fairly well. I avoid fighting wars by myself until I have at least 2/3 of the power bar (this makes the game sooooo much easier). I take advantage of AI stupidity whenever I can. So far I have never quit a game due to a bad map at the start. This is part of the challenge.

I shared my thoughts and approach with everyone on CFC in the Regent game I picked up from a thread on CFC and bailed out. See first thread in my sig – if you haven’t already. This should give you an idea of the kind of detailed analysis I use for strategy and the tactics I use. Every game requires adjustments to the conditions of that game – what is important in that thread is how many times I adjust, not necessarily the detail of the adjustment, since the detail of adjustments will vary from game to game.

Make sure you read the strategy articles, and I also recommend checking out the HOF forum as you can sometimes learn quite a bit from what the Civvers post about their attempts to get into the HOF.

I don’t think my approach is good for everyone, because many gamers just don’t want to be bothered with the details. I am not even sure how much of my approach is overkill.

I am serious about winning so I pay attention to as many details as I need to win. The real reason I started playing this game was to beat my friend John in play by email games. I was impressed at first that he could sometimes win at monarch level. I thought I would be satisfied beating the game at emperor, but my addiction would not let me stop there. Those games are going so slow, yet I can tell just by his city placement and the tech lead I have that I will beat him as he does not understand some of the fundamentals needed to win at the higher levels of the game.

Originally posted by Gengis Khan
selective memory span

I should probably be insulted by this If you've spent 144 hours on a single game then you can be a good judge of this.

 

[Pook]

Originally posted by SesnOfWthr
I'll abandon a game if it is really tough going and isn't working out by 1000 bc or so. (insert "but those games make you a better player" comment here) However, once I get a game going, I feel I've invested too much time and energy to not finish and get a score.

If I were to give a ratio, probably 3 out of 4 games never see 10 AD.

My numbers are about the same. 3 out of 4 never get out of BC.