Boring end games

[The Priest]

Is it just me?

Often I find that a game reaches a point when it is perfectly obviously that I have won, and yet is still takes ages before I officially win.

On a large world, you can be twice or three times as big as your nearest rival, and ahead in tech, and yet it takes ages to steadily crush the other powers to enable domination. The space race is no good - you can be well ahead at the point that infantry are appearing, and its a long long wait to get the final components of the race.

OK i know that the answer may be play on a higher level - I am normally on emperor or monarch - but that is not quite the point. Whatever level you are playing on, you can get to a point of being dominant and clearly going to win, but it still take hours to get there.

Does anyone else think that the victory conditions could do with altering to recognise these situtions where 'its all over but the slogging'?

[LDiCesare]

The domination victory actually helped a bit in this way. One way to do it would be to make the time victory available earlier, maybe by building a wonder, but I agree with you that it's sometimes uninteresting to finish the game.
Galciv had some options which helped a bit, like civilizations that were doing badly surrendering to another civ, which would, in civ terms, give you a boost towards domination or provide you with a decent enemy.

[ColdPhoenix]

Civ has that now too with capitulation.

[LDiCesare]

No. Capitulation is not at all like Galciv's version. In galciv, when you fight the Drengin, they may give you all their planets, but they may also give them to your neighbour the Yor. They may also capitulate without being at war with anyone. In Galciv, this sped the end game. In Civ, it doesn't. Maybe if vassals counted for 100% of their population and territory towards domination victory they would. The only way vassals compare to the galciv capitulation is through the UN, where they will vote for you, but the UN is often a long and boring way to victory when you're 1% short in voices and can't see any danger in your current war nor any threat in terms of cultural victory.

[wodan11]

Domination requires significant expense to field a wartime army and suffer war weariness costs. Whereas, if you go for a space victory, you merely have to go through the motions. Thus, changing to a Domination victory actually is not an "easier" route (though it may be more interesting, true, but probably not, given that it, too, is a foregone conclusion... simply one that requires more effort).

Wodan

[frenzyfol]

I get to the same point often.
If I don't just start a new game I'll usually win by cultural victory which is quite an easy victory to pull off when you compare it to domination and space race.

[Yosho]

That's very often true. However, I did have a game recently with a quite exciting endgame, which I never saw in vanillia civ. I was going for the space-race win, my one neighbor was going for the cultural win. We had quite an ugly cold war going; neither of us wanted to start an acutal war, but we were both doing massive amounts of spying; I was poisioning the wells in his three big cultural cities (well, in the two of them that hadn't already gone legendary) and he kept sabatauging my spaceship. Finally, I had to start a war with him just to slow him down, his spies were doing to much damage for me to win a streight race. I fought for a while,went back and fourth, I lost a few cities and he lost a few cities, then I had to make peace just to finish the spaceship without my war weriness completly destroying me. I finished it, I laucnhed it, but he was STILL going to get a cultural win before my ship got to alpha centauri, so I declared war on him again and hit his two cities with 3 ICBM's each, leaving them radiated husks with few people, generating only about 70 culture a turn, so even though American declared war on me and the massive 2 war machines started to conquer me city by city I still managed to squeak out a win, as my ship got there before the cultural win happened and before I got conquered.

By the way, I remember back in an earlier civ game, if you lost your spaceship city before the spaceship got there you lost. Is that true in BtS?

[Virdrago]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
They may also capitulate without being at war with anyone. In Galciv, this sped the end game. In Civ, it doesn't. Maybe if vassals counted for 100% of their population and territory towards domination victory they would. The only way vassals compare to the galciv capitulation is through the UN, where they will vote for you, but the UN is often a long and boring way to victory when you're 1% short in voices and can't see any danger in your current war nor any threat in terms of cultural victory.

I don't know about you, but if, say, Kazakhstan went to the U.S. or Morocco went up to China and said, "We're not doing too well, can we join your country? Here is our land and our people", I think the country they "capitulated" to would laugh and say, "Nice try. We're not solving all your problems for you." Not very realistic. I don't expect a country to capitulate to someone else because they're losing the "Game of Earth".

By the way, I remember back in an earlier civ game, if you lost your spaceship city before the spaceship got there you lost. Is that true in BtS?

I think if you lose your capital, you lose the spaceship. I don't know; I haven't made it there yet.

[mkorin]

I find that with capitulation and the AP I use cheap diplo wins to avoid the boring end games. A perfect example is the game I finished on the train this morning. On prince with 5 AIs. I had the AP and dominate religious votes. I wiped out two AIs and it would just have been a matter of time to finish it. So instead I took a missionary to the two AIs that didn't have any of my religion, the next turn I voted in a diplo win. Granted diplo wins are for hippies, but it avoids the long boring end game when you know what is going to happen.

Mike

[sfeldkamp]

It would be nice if the you could get a victory if you are leading in score when you choose the retire option from the menu. I sometimes choose to do this and start a new game when it's apparent, it would be nice for these to count as victories.

[Crossfire]

I just start a new game. I almost never finish unless I am doing spectacularly good and want to see how high my score is.

Now if it is a really close contest then I might play it out, but I really enjoy the early periods of Civ but not the later ones so I just start over.

[Blaupanzer]

Originally posted by Crossfire
I just start a new game. I almost never finish unless I am doing spectacularly good and want to see how high my score is.

Now if it is a really close contest then I might play it out, but I really enjoy the early periods of Civ but not the later ones so I just start over.

Sadly, it's the same for me. Now that I have figured out how to win, I don't have the patience for a long drawn-out end game.

[Jaybe]

While the end-game can be a drag, there is also the adventure of will someone pull a surprise on me (I leave all victory options available, not only for me to win with, but also to lose by) and HOW will it end (it's the journey, not the destination).

[OliverFA]

Originally posted by Virdrago
I don't know about you, but if, say, Kazakhstan went to the U.S. or Morocco went up to China and said, "We're not doing too well, can we join your country? Here is our land and our people", I think the country they "capitulated" to would laugh and say, "Nice try. We're not solving all your problems for you." Not very realistic. I don't expect a country to capitulate to someone else because they're losing the "Game of Earth".

Yes, it's not very realistic, but would make for more interesting end games.

I think that's the reason why they put speciall effort in adding more options "beyond the sword". However, it is still a bit boring to go through the end of game when playing SP. I haven't got the same feeling in my MP games. I suppose it is because in MP I don't feel like I have already won. But also because at the end of the game there are way too many cities and units to take care of, and much micromanagement.

If they could solve this little problem about boring end of games, Civ would be an even better game than it already is!

[couerdelion]

The only games I’ve ever won were settler level duals. Every other game I lose interest at some point or want to try something else out. Currently five turns from Rocketry with several cities getting ready to start work on a spaceship. That will probably take me a week at normal pace.

Is there any way to “automate everything” and watch the game play itself out to the inevitable victory?

If anything it would be fun to see how the AI would make a mess of my intercontinental war with the Aztecs, bankrupts my economy, drives my people to revolution, reverts to ancient civics and ends up losing to a cultural victory from the neighbouring Americans.