Ah man, this thread moves really quickly so I miss out on a lot of discussion.
If you want people to finish a game, then you need to improve the end of the game, so that it is thoroughly entertaining to the end, and not simply a dull grind, where the ending is known in perspective.
As others have said, it's not even strictly a problem. But if it was there are ways to fix it that do not include resetting the player and forcing them to change their game throughout.
Let me say that could technically work in some type of strategy games, for example, playing multiple Football matches includes 'Resetting the score' at each match.
Though the fix doesn't work with Civilization because it's commonly understood amongst critics that it interrupts the flow of the game. You're still technically playing the same 'match' when you reset.
You're supposed to feel like you're building to a climatic Modern Era, but this is not the case, because the progress is interrupted and the identity gets swapped.
It's sort of like playing a Football match as England vs France. You're 3:1. Then halfway, you switch to America vs Spain, and the score is changed to 2:2. Then let's say it becomes 4:3 in the second match.
At the third match you get reset to 3:3. And when you win the third match as an entirely different team from the team you started with, then the feeling is hollow and the progress feels weirdly artificial and abrupt.
This is how I feel about it but perhaps others can see it differently.
It never made sense to play as Canada from start to finish. But when you win at the end, you're saying "Well I took Canada from start to finish, that's my team and I built them up and won fair and square."
This sort of simplistic logic resonated more with common players than the system that we got in the end with Civilization VII.
Back to the original topic: improving the end game and the difficulty of opponents.
We've highlighted the (supposed) issue - the end of the game is boring and obvious who will win.
The solution is improving the stakes in the end of the game. I don't need to present the Civilization V Ideology system because you're all aware how much I advocate for it.
If wielded correctly, I also believe the Global Warming system could be used for this reason. Also, a Global Pandemic at the end of the game could work.
The 'Crisis' as a concept is not strictly a bad idea. If turned into an end-game exclusive event, this would change up the end-game every time and create something to look forward to for most players.
Imagine reaching the end of the game and having a City State turn into a Rogue Dictatorship.
Or as occasionally mentioned: global pandemics, global warming, international political disputes, ideology disputes, cyber warfare (Internet misinformation), nuclear warfare, space races and so on.
About the opponents. If they were almost the same difficulty as human players, we wouldn't even really need to have this discussion.
Various strategy games have tense gameplay throughout, as long as you're actually playing a competent opponent of similar skill, or a competent AI of similar skill.
End of story on that front. It needs work.
The idea that the Modern age is boring is really flawed - the times we live in now are some of the most rapidly evolving turbulent times in History.
In contrast, Civilization Modern Age is commonly a flat and unchanging type of gameplay.
We need to aim squarely at adding wildcards to the end of the game, and even improving the capacity for losing players to 'steal' a Victory.
