Playing to have fun vs. playing to win

Probably because success and failure are both positive feedback loops. You build an army, conquer a city, which gives you more resources so you build a second army, so you conquer two more cities...etc. failure is you lose a city, so you can't support as many armies, so you can't defend as many cities, so this time you lose two..

Positive feedback loops are not good for gameplay. On the other hand, it's hard to avoid them because why would invade another city, if not to gain a further advantage?

I'm playing GalCiv3 and I couldn't tell you how the mechanics brought this on, but capturing colonies isn't producing a massive runaway effect like it does in Civ VI. They're a boon to be sure, but even now that I've taken a third of the map, while I'm the leading faction, I haven't reach god tier either. The corollary is that if I were to suffer a reversal, it wouldn't automatically spell my doom I'd have a chance of stopping the rot and reversing the tide.

Of course, the other issue is time. You spend hours building up your civ, if you lose it tona substantial degree, frustration is inevitable.

 

I could win much faster if I wanted to. Typically, by midgame I have huge reserves of gold and faith, and if I spent it all effectively I would win more quickly, but I enjoy pottering along.

 

For the fun and modding.

 

I play a bit of both. When I couldn't get past better, I looked for Youtube videos and found Potato McWhiskey and learned how to settle and micromanage tiles. It was literally a gamechanger! But ever since he told me (I tweeted him to thank him for the vids) that Emperor was the last level that was challenging and fun enough, I set that as my goal and have no interest in Immortal and Deity

Thing is: even in real life, I can't handle too many things at the same time, so when playing, I never manage to settle more than 5-7 cities (and only later learned this is called "playing tall")

This weekend I tried a challenge that someone mentioned on the comments of one of Potato McWhiskey's streams: build all wonders on settler level. After failing twice around turn 80, I decided I was going to go for it and instead see how many wonders I can build. Golden Gate I couldn't, because there wasn't a suitable location on the whole map. And the AI snagged 4 wonders from under me. But I had fund.

(And before Civ 6, I only played Sims 4 and old 80's/90's games on DosBox, so it's kind of no wonder, I guess XD )

 

Well I don't know what to vote.

I agree with all these:

I would even not forgive (specially backstab) and focus my game to conquer all of their cities, to the last one, no matter the consequences on how the world sees me.

same for me with useless wonders, just to have the animation sometimes (although would be faster to look for it on youtube )

That's something that is fun and challenging and a source of motivation for me as well.





Therefore according to this:

I'm not a speed-run at all.



BUT, reading this:

I'm confused how to choose again, so, well, I think I'm both.

Soooooo... there are many ways to enjoy the game.

RFC

 

Winning any game of civ is a decidedly underwhelming experience - usually I play untill a particular "problem" is solved - be it the challenging starting position or defeating my biggest rival, dominating my home continent etc.

Some rare games continue with modern wars but ultimately very few...

 

My favorite part of any game is the first 50-60 turns. I restart frequently. So...

 

If I played 100% to win without any focus on fun, I would just win by domination victory in the first 100 turns about 90% of the time, because that's almost always optimal. I hate playing that way though. I just want to have fun exploring and civ-citying.

 

It's actually superbly difficult for me to win Domination because I'm constantly taunted by all of the infrastructure and extra yields I could get if I stopped building units... I also get easily discouraged from having to slowly traverse my units cumbersomely across terrain that consumes all their movement in a single turn. Micromanaging supreme...

 

That combined with UPT is torture

 

Yeah, I think I have won about five domination games in earnest out of like 400 games that I"ve won, both across civ 5 and 6. And even so they were mostly on small-ish maps. Sometimes I start a game intending to do it but I always quit once I conquer about half the world and realize that I'm in for another 5 hours of clicking to move people around even though I've basically already won.

 

I agree with Uberfrog. I quit games when I'm in a hopeless losing position. If an AI has captured my capitol, I'm not going to endure the game until they wipe out my minor cities. I quit early at least half the games I start.

Although, note that everyone plays the game to have fun. That's the point of a game. So the real underlying question is how important winning, or being able to win, to your having fun. My best friend likes new content, and gets excited to play with each new release, and while he likes doing better than the AI, he never finishes games.

Alas, I have temporarily stopped playing Civ. Apparently, being able to win is rather important to me, and I've discovered that's currently not possible, at least at Diety level on a standard-size map. The game will crash first -- you can see my thread under Bug Reports. In one of those four games, I was less than 30 turns away from victory. I don't know why, but I just find it less satisfying knowing that I would have won than getting to that final Win screen.

 

Go to GDR and nukes for domination if you don't want to micromanage a domination victory. It's very late-game but very different than conquering earlier. Also if you play on a map like Archipelago, boats don't have the same issue of moving slowly. And as you only have to capture the opponents capital (not all their cities, don't fall into that trap, I often do because of roleplay and because I enjoy it more than a quick win), you can sometimes plan to declare war to all and win within 5 turns.

 

Ehh, if I get that late in the game and still have a chance of winning a domination victory, I'd just go to space instead, which is a lot less stressful and you're practically at that level anyway.

 

I definitely lean towards "Performer". I like to win, of course, and it is at the back of my mind during the game.....but I don't go out of my way to "meta-game", nor do I obsess too much over the various victory conditions. I mostly enjoy the Roleplay aspect of the game, & have frequently made decisions that made sense, from a role-playing perspective, but actually ham-strung me from the point of view of winning the game.

 

lol I suspect the poll was worded incorrectly

 

Of course I like to win but I play for fun. I can win on Deity but I don't play optimally or micromanage or over strategize and plan things out. That's what put me off increasing the difficulty levels for so long because I thought those things were necessary to play on higher difficulties but I have since learned that isn't the case. I'm always impressed by players who can play that way but I don't have the brain for it. I'm like that with all games I play, while I like to improve my game and push myself to do better, I'm also not the sort who will abandon my whole play style to achieve it or sacrifice my fun to do it.

 

I play mostly for fun/RP reasons.

The nice thing about this game is the different difficulty levels really lend themselved to very different styles of play

 

Whether I'm losing or winning it's for the fun. Otherwise I wouldn't even bother to launch the game