I wish the game didn't last so long. In most games there's one or two and occasionally three civs who have a legitimate chance to win the eras, and thus place higher in the rankings. My experience is that the rest of the players typically just leave when that happens. They jump into a game where they have better teammates, can use some tricks that they learned in the last game that it's too late to use now, or just have a game that is more competitive.
So yeah - lessening the length of games would help a lot. I'm not going to play a week of a lost cause, but I may stick around for a couple of days of it.