Those who have played Civ5 for thousands of hours: how do you remain interested?

1. Play all the scenarios

2. Get all the achievements

3. Try the Game of the Month (GOTM)

4. Try modding and create your custom game
 
Thinking about it I estimate that I've played the best part of a thousand hours by now, mainly G&K, and I'm still very much learning the game - either that makes me a very slow learner (probably) or shows how much variety there is in the game: there are still one or two civs that I haven't really explored yet (I'm looking at you Arabia)
 
Well I'm due to start a new game so I'll play Arabia then!
 
1. Play all the scenarios

2. Get all the achievements

3. Try the Game of the Month (GOTM)

4. Try modding and create your custom game

Funny, after 1100 hrs I've barely touched scenarios, have about 55% of achievements, never played a GotM and never tried modding. Good tips though.
 
I completely stopped playing the standard strats and started playing my own wacky ones. Here my current one.

Wide faith empire going for science victory with jesuit education on immortal diff, no tradition or liberty policies, full piety and mix of commerce and rationalism. All cities already got public faith schools.

Spoiler :
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I switch back and forth between Civ and SimCity 4.

The only other games I play are Tomb Raider and Elder Scrolls. Both of those franchises kick out anew game often enough to break the routine.

If you are willing to devote ~15gigs of HDD space and about 20 hours setting up all the mods, SimCity 4 is a great change of pace from Civ if you enjoy empire building

I picked up SimCity 4 for $5 during the Steam Summer sale but haven't played it yet. After 300+ hours of Civ I'm taking a break with XCOM (getting ready for the November expansion). SimCity 4 could be next. I haven't played Sim since SimCity 2000. How do you recommend a newbie approach the game (and all those mods)?
 
Well I'm due to start a new game so I'll play Arabia then!

So I did/am, but dropped down to Prince.
I settled next to Monte (oh-oh), Napoleon (oh-oh) and Oda (oh-oh) on a random map. I briefly met Suleiman before Napoleon retired him and there is one other civ to meet. It hasn't been a peaceful game so far - as things stand I am technically still at war with Monte (although no combat for about 50 turns), friends with Napoleon (for what that's worth) and Oda is neutral. I'm just about no.1 tech, with only two (but quite decent size) cities, 2nd in pop and gnp, 3rd in armies and I've just got two camel archers. I've kicked out Petra, Stonehenge and the Great wall along the way, and I'm the only religion (I don't think I've even seen an AI Pantheon yet).

So seeing as I haven't played this civ before, what's my likely forward plan? (G&K)
 
Like Rusty Edge (who I see on Cutlass Isle) I switch over. I'm playing Pirates! now and actually joined the forum to get some info on doing mods on that game. Playing mods and making mods is a challenge itself. If you want a REAL challenge just try making a mod using nifskope, even editing preexisting mods is a super bear.
 
Already mentioned by AlcatrazUK, but nevertheless...

Played quite a lot of civ, but due to my nature I always try to play competitively. But, due to that, I really missed all the achievement staff by /=

So, find a multiplayer game(~ +2000 hours guaranteed) and after go for real "achievements", like playing FFA and calling the first guy you meet a "f*uckface" in a general chat and winning the game after that :) :) :)

Besides that, you can almost always find simply better players or players who have some serious discrepancies with your strategical model. And it's lots of fun to find out which conditions define who's right and who's wrong.

Being rushed by a skilled player who backstabbed you after "may i plz dow you, want to pass through", having your last city with 1 hp and asking random players in game "please 61 gold for archer, imma dying and you'll be next if he takes me" when it's about 10 seconds left at timer, after which doing 3 moves faster than he could do two and seeing "WTH where did that archer come from?" and ultimately coming back into the game, being tightly allianced with the initial agressor and fighting civs like an era ahead toe-o-toe is quite an experience.

And suddenly you understand why +30% city ranged strength pantheon is in game;
and suddenly you rush Oligarchy as you saving grace, while normally you delay taking it for as much as possible.

And the game is interesting again :goodjob:
 
I'm not quite as experienced as some others here, a bit over 600 hours played, but yeah, I've found that sometimes taking a break is required for my sanity. I go through spurts where I play entire days of civ most days for a month, and then I'll go several months without touching the game. In the end though, some expansion or patch will draw me back in to the game.

I'm personally excited for the fall patch, even if I don't play Civ again until winter break. BNW seems like a really good game that fails in a lot of very simple to fix ways, and I'm hoping for a rebalance of the social trees, perhaps a slightly slower shifting ideological unhappiness (still just as devastating, but only changing by 3 a turn until a resting point or something), possibly some changes to a few original warmongering civs (Germany and Japan), and some better world congress diplomacy as a start (like, only the top 3 delegate receivers are eligible to host the world congress. That would be awesome).

So, yeah, I love civ, but sometimes I do need to take a break at times. Don't fear doing that. Taking a break is good for general life productivity anyway :).
 
So I did/am, but dropped down to Prince.
I settled next to Monte (oh-oh), Napoleon (oh-oh) and Oda (oh-oh) on a random map. I briefly met Suleiman before Napoleon retired him and there is one other civ to meet. It hasn't been a peaceful game so far - as things stand I am technically still at war with Monte (although no combat for about 50 turns), friends with Napoleon (for what that's worth) and Oda is neutral. I'm just about no.1 tech, with only two (but quite decent size) cities, 2nd in pop and gnp, 3rd in armies and I've just got two camel archers. I've kicked out Petra, Stonehenge and the Great wall along the way, and I'm the only religion (I don't think I've even seen an AI Pantheon yet).

So seeing as I haven't played this civ before, what's my likely forward plan? (G&K)

Arabia is awesome. The bazaar gives you extra luxury resources that you can sell and camel archers are one of the strongest UUs in the game. Get a ton of camel archers and destroy everyone with them, sell your extra luxuries with the bazaar to your friends, and use the money on mercantile city states to keep your happiness up during your conquests. That's my general advice anyway. Arabia is amazing, and with Petra they're utterly fantastic.
 
Up to 3500 hours.

My #1 reason for so many is, because I rage quite pretty often, or lose interest in a game I've started halfway through. I've probably started at least 500-750 games. Also I got my friend interested in Civ, but he doesn't have a computer powerful enough to run it, so I let him play when I have things to do on the weekends.

I also bought it back on release, and have taken numerous hiatus from it in pursuit of other hobbies. That is the best case of being Cived out, just put it down for a while, and then come back to it. Typically its like a good book, and it gets better with age.
 
I play World of Warcraft and Civilization. When I get bored with one expansion pack I switch to the other game and so forth and so on been that way for 6 years... before that I played civ only.
 
I'm not quite as experienced as some others here, a bit over 600 hours played, but yeah, I've found that sometimes taking a break is required for my sanity. I go through spurts where I play entire days of civ most days for a month, and then I'll go several months without touching the game. In the end though, some expansion or patch will draw me back in to the game.

That's pretty much how I am. That's actually how I know how much I really like Civ, because generally once I stop playing a game I'll never come back to it. I always make it back to Civ though.
 
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