I'm having a hard time playing all the way through a game.

[xguild]

And I'm not sure why.

I'm really into the game during the ancient/middle ages, every decision seems so important, where to move that worker, which improvments to build, which buildings when, and timing it all to coincide with tech discoveries. But by the time I hit the classical age, I've got my 7-10 cities in place, have improved every tile, and find none of the techs seem worth persuing. Each turn seem uneventful. Unless I go out and start a war, I usualy lose interest completly and exit out to the main menu to start a new game - only to repeat the process all over again.

Help?

Sounds to me like you need to bump up the difficulty level. If you have 7-10 cities by the classical age and are more or less ahead of the curve against the PC's you are playing at a difficulty setting below your skill level. I gurantee you that if you play above your skill level you won't get bored. I agree with you that the Ancient to Renessance ages are usually the most exciting (as they were in real history), but if you play at a substantial difficulty you will find that their is plenty to do in the game.

Another thing I suggest is starting the game at a later age to begin with, this has made for some interesting games and allowed me to play in era's I haven't been able to play as a result of the "can't load saved games" bug I've been experiancing.

 

[potto]

I think that this is a problem with the majority of these conquer and develop type of strategy games: you reach the stage when you find yourself upgrading everything without thought and there seems to be no more danger, I think that more random disasters should be implemented, earthquakes, random sized asteroids hitting the map, sea floods, ice ages, ice melting, volcanos etc

 

[Cironir]

I think that more random disasters should be implemented, earthquakes, random sized asteroids hitting the map, sea floods, ice ages, ice melting, volcanos etc

Oh, eek, no! That's what made me get really fed up with the SimCity series. In strategy games I like things to be logical and transparent -- I want to succeed or fail because of my skill (or the lack there of), not becaue of some completely random events that wipe out half of my army or my empire. Combat does have the element of chance, but it's fairly transparent. If I played well and then an earthquake shattered my carefully constructed civ, I'd probably get incredibly frustrated and stop playing. Happened with various SimCity versions (of course I still bought the next installment!).

 

[jened]

as a long time civ player, i'd be bored with only 7 cities late game too! aren't the 4 Xs done by this point in time? bring back the true epic game firaxis!

 

[insydr]

I agree. The early game is just so much better. I'm thinking about trying multiplayer to see if that gives the game a point again.

 

[potto]

Oh, eek, no! That's what made me get really fed up with the SimCity series. In strategy games I like things to be logical and transparent -- I want to succeed or fail because of my skill (or the lack there of), not becaue of some completely random events that wipe out half of my army or my empire. Combat does have the element of chance, but it's fairly transparent. If I played well and then an earthquake shattered my carefully constructed civ, I'd probably get incredibly frustrated and stop playing. Happened with various SimCity versions (of course I still bought the next installment!).

True, I get your point but I was thinking that these would be quite rare (maybe once every few games?) but quite catastrophic affairs affecting quarterr of a map. I do think that something needs to happen to keep you on your toes when you are clearly a head of the game. I quite like the idea of being cut down to size and then having the oppurtunity to spring back to dominate once again. I suppose that you can increase the difficulty of your foes but that doesnt seem to be realistic as it only ever seems to give them (unfair) special abilities (like discover technolgies twice as fast) rather than more intelligence.

I always liked the idea of internal troubles splitting of fracturing your empire or some other situation generated by being a victim of its own success... calls for independence, people getting lazy, anarchy from the bordem of having everything.

Perhaps another solution to this is to introduce Alien civilisations in the latter stages, other worldy beings who invade peacefully or aggressively depending on how well you have been doing or other worlds for you to reach so the manned spacecraft would be a lattter stage version of the caravel

 

[Bob1475]

We all face this when we play at too low a difficulty level OR when we don't have a strategy. At the beginning there is a lot to do but then you need to really have a plan - are you going to war - spaceship or what? Even then there are times you just have to wait and I hit the old button and watch the other civs run around.

 

[Zeviz]

The best way to make game less boring is to play at higher difficulty. I find every age a challenge, constantly playing catch-up with more advanced AI civs. If the game ever get boring, I'll turn up the difficulty one more notch. I don't think you'll need an earthquake or alien invasion if you have 3 AIs declaring war on you one after another, some of them with armies much larger than yours.

PS As for AI having "unfair" advantage on higher difficulties, the advantage simply compensates for unfair advantages you have as a human. For example, you know which AIs are aggressive and which are peaceful, but AI doesn't know about your aggressiveness. You can easily remember that when you've had open borders, you saw that AI had about 3 riflemen in each city, but many of them were moving away from your border to counter another invader. AI can't remember such things about you.

 

[Garand]

The most fun I ever had in a civ game came in the late part of a Civ III game. Let me recount what happened:

I was the Greeks, and was put on an island continent with the Incans. I wasn't able to expand much, so I colonized a small island continent right nextdoor with three cities. The Persians dominated that continent except for my few cities. Predictably, the Persians went to war with me, and while I had every city fortified with at least 5 hoplites, they were no match for the 40+ immortals thrown at me. I lost my cities on the Persian continent, I was very unhappy, but I knew a prolonged war wasn't wise, so I waited, and formulated a crazy idea in my mind. The idea was to get revenge in a grandiose style.

So I waited several centuries, until I had discovered the secrets of combustion, flight, amphibious warfare, and so on. Then I created the largest navy in the world (over 40 ships) and an enormous invasion fleet. I stormed the beaches of Persia in D-Day fashion with massive naval and air bombardments, followed up with Marines, tanks, infantry and artillery. Xerxes was still trying to wrap his mind around steam power, so my mighty forces fought hopelessly outclassed opponents (cavalry, musketmen). The Persians put up a valiant fight, but I liberated the entire continent from Xerxes' backward tyrranical rule, save one city in the corner of the island which I left to Xerxes (totally cut off from the rest of the continent by some of my crack troops).

At this time, the Hittites were giving me a run for my money in tech, but the real tough nut to crack was the Celts - they controlled two ENORMOUS continents all to themselves after eliminating the English and someone else. They were huge, and while behind me in tech, they had the cities and resources to grind me into dust. I had already fought them once when they tried to invade my island (My mighty navy of recently discovered destroyers made short work of their frigates and galleons) and won a stunning victory, but times had changed and I was at a severe disadvantage because my only two sources of oil were two small towns in the northern wastelands of the Celtic continents, surrounded by Celtic towns (and every city was surrounded by railroads).

The Celts decided to have another go at me, and only by airlifting 15+ infantry into each oil town each turn was I able to hold them against the masses of Celtic cavalry moved up the rails and thrown at me each turn. My oil was saved, but the prolonged war and military expenditures saw me start to fall behind in tech. I resolved a peace, but knew I was in a dire situation as far as winning the game through launching a spaceship. The Hittites had a massive treasury (over 50,000 gold) and beat me to the Seti wonder. In order to get an edge on science and hopefully out-research and out-build the Hittites to the spaceship, I decided a quick, surgical war was required. I gathered my navy and an invasion fleet of the island city that held the Seti wonder, and went to war. My long-range bombers pummeled the Hittite capital for several turns, while my invasion forces fought doggedly to take the island city, when the unthinkable happened - the Celts and Egyptians jump into the war against me!

I was bereft of allies, and while I had a powerful military, I was no match for the combined might of the Celts, Egyptians and Hittites. Upon losing my oil towns to the Celts, I knew the game was lost, and while I retreated from that game never to take it up again, I have to say it was the most challenging, unique, and amazing situation I had ever been in - and it was all in the modern era.

 

[wilebill]

Happens to me with a lot of games against AI. You play to the point where you see how it will go, and there seems no point in playing beyond that.

 

[Efexeye]

As a punishment to myself for quitting early, I always Retire, rather than just starting a new game. All those weak, low scores in the HOF are a good motivator to play through to the end!