What keeps you playing?

I ask myself this a lot :lol:

I love 4x game's. But it's one of those genres that once you have put lots of time in, it's very obvious they have problems. It's an imperfect genre of games that despite their problems on some level just work. I love the variety of different strategies, the different randomly generated experiences. The random maps. The random opponents. How you can play peacefully or violently. How you can take massively different approaches game to game.

Lot's of players move onto grand strategy games. But for some reason they never really clicked for me and i just kept coming back to Civ.

For me Vox Populi has taken the throne as my go-to single player Civ experience. While Civ VI is my multiplayer go too. The reason for this is that Civ VI feels much more 'arcady' which seems to just suit a multiplayer game better. This isn't saying that i don't have as much fun with Civ VI. Some multiplayer games are a blast, especially with apocalypse mode. The late game is hilarious fun
 
It's like a giant complicated board game that I can play with my friends. Especially the play-by-cloud feature since we don't have much time to play a full game at one time anymore...
 
I love the sense of satisfaction that comes from putting together a series of plans to achieve short and long terms goals. Find a good Petra spot on turn 15? I have to plan and implement a whole series of eurakas, techs, buildings, units, policy cards etc in order to beat the AI to it. And when I do, I get a lovely little wonder video as a reward.

Basically I love the solving the "puzzle" that is Civ 6. The rules of the game stay the same, but the pieces and the board change every time.
 
Telling a cool story. Whether it is creating the ultimate polder with the Netherlands, huge terrace farms with the Inca or getting huge yields, raiding with Norway, the game still is immense amounts of fun.

My next goal is to get a city to 40 population. :)
 
For me, immersion/roleplaying a civ loosely based on history.

For example: keeping a Dutch/Spanish or English empire small at the beginning and only start worldwide expansions in later era’s of the game.

In my of my more recent games I played Rome on an Inland Sea map against the other ‘classical Mediterranean’ civs. Quite fun!

One day I’ll give playing optimal & going for the quickest wins a chance, but for now using Civ as a alternative history sandbox is what keeps me going.
 
For me it's the endless replayabilty... I try not to keep in memory all the min/max pantheons and civic cards and build order... To always look at them as if it was the first time I was looking at them and decide on my choices very much depending on CIV chosen and the map that is given me for that game. I also tend to VERy rarely chop, to do it mostly when it's a very intelligent decision and not because it's so much more efficient because of Magnus and because of overflow.

all this make my games much harder in general, and much more different experiences most times.
 
To everyone saying roleplay / immersion: can you give some examples and/pr more details? I would love to do that as well since im a huge RP fan, but I always end up inadvertently aiming to play optimally which leads to all games feeling the same.
 
To everyone saying roleplay / immersion: can you give some examples and/pr more details? I would love to do that as well since im a huge RP fan, but I always end up inadvertently aiming to play optimally which leads to all games feeling the same.
I’m going to be honest and I may be in the minority but I don’t play to win. I’ll start up a game with a Civ I’m in the mood with and usually just let history play out. In the later eras if I find myself close to or in the lead I may turn my focus onto that but other than that I just let the game take me wherever
 
To everyone saying roleplay / immersion: can you give some examples and/pr more details? I would love to do that as well since im a huge RP fan, but I always end up inadvertently aiming to play optimally which leads to all games feeling the same.

Forget the numbers and the win conditions. Forget time to win and all that. Focus on what you'd want as someone living in that civilization. Is building a science district in the frozen hinterlands worth it? Hell no. Do the people deserve one? Hell yes! Does planting forests on every available tile actually do anything? No. Does it make your empire a natural paradise? fudge yeah. Same with dismantling lumberyards and such. Does it objectively hurt you? Sure. Does it make everything a much nicer place to live? Absolutely. Should you be running a card life serfdom? Hell yeah it's one of the best there is. Does it imply that your people are living miserable lives as peasant slaves? Ooof yeah, pick something else.

I played a game once where the only use I allowed of industrial districts was carbon recapture. Ended up the game with a carbon footprint of like -5000. Was there any point to it? No. Was the air CLEAN AS HECK. Yes.
 
Forget the numbers and the win conditions. Forget time to win and all that. Focus on what you'd want as someone living in that civilization. Is building a science district in the frozen hinterlands worth it? Hell no. Do the people deserve one? Hell yes! Does planting forests on every available tile actually do anything? No. Does it make your empire a natural paradise? fudge yeah. Same with dismantling lumberyards and such. Does it objectively hurt you? Sure. Does it make everything a much nicer place to live? Absolutely. Should you be running a card life serfdom? Hell yeah it's one of the best there is. Does it imply that your people are living miserable lives as peasant slaves? Ooof yeah, pick something else.

I played a game once where the only use I allowed of industrial districts was carbon recapture. Ended up the game with a carbon footprint of like -5000. Was there any point to it? No. Was the air CLEAN AS HECK. Yes.

Yeah! I like doing things for fun, even if they are suboptimal.

I like building one time island cities in the middle of the ocean and see how big they can get. 19 with one or two trade routes is my record so far.

I specialize in iceball mega cities. Thank you St. Basil's!

A game with no Industrial Zones? Let's see what happens?

Good stuff. :)
 
Why does a dog lick his crotch for hours?
 
Forget the numbers and the win conditions. Forget time to win and all that. Focus on what you'd want as someone living in that civilization. Is building a science district in the frozen hinterlands worth it? Hell no. Do the people deserve one? Hell yes! Does planting forests on every available tile actually do anything? No. Does it make your empire a natural paradise? fudge yeah. Same with dismantling lumberyards and such. Does it objectively hurt you? Sure. Does it make everything a much nicer place to live? Absolutely. Should you be running a card life serfdom? Hell yeah it's one of the best there is. Does it imply that your people are living miserable lives as peasant slaves? Ooof yeah, pick something else.

I played a game once where the only use I allowed of industrial districts was carbon recapture. Ended up the game with a carbon footprint of like -5000. Was there any point to it? No. Was the air CLEAN AS HECK. Yes.

Not looking at the numbers is directly opposite to how I usually play, and just reading your post make me squirm a tiny bit :crazyeye: However, it might be something to try out, so thanks for the reply!

I’m going to be honest and I may be in the minority but I don’t play to win. I’ll start up a game with a Civ I’m in the mood with and usually just let history play out. In the later eras if I find myself close to or in the lead I may turn my focus onto that but other than that I just let the game take me wherever

The bolded parts sounds really interesting, and what I would want. How do you approach a given turn with this mindset? What is the long and short term goals that guide your play?
 
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