What makes you keeping coming back to the game?

[Spiffor]

I'm now at a point with GalCiv where the interest is fading away. At heart, I play "builder" strategies, and I found GalCiv greatly satisfying for this Fairly complex economy, good diplomacy

However, now that I won the different builder victories (always with the Terrans, they fit my playing style perfectly), I don't know what to do to find original challenges. I'm not a fan of wars, as I consider them to be more button-pushing than real tactical challenges.

And yet, in this forum, there are people who have played this game much much more than me, and who keep coming back to it

So, this thread is an open question: after all those games, what do you do to get new surprises, new challenges and a renewed fun from the game?

[Hydro]

I tend to get in a rut. For instance, with other favorite games like Birth of the Federation or Alpha Centauri I’ll play the same race and use more or less the same strategy all the time. In BOTF I’ve never played the Cardassians, Ferengi, or Klingons, and when I did see a friend playing the Klingons I thought he was playing a different game! Likewise for SMAC. I play Gaians, or maybe one of the other ‘good’ races and have precious little interest in branching out. It can be…stultifying, even if it is pretty darn comfortable.

GC2 has been different, though. Since I don’t have a ‘love’ of any given race I have been more open to playing each of them. Now, why this might may be speaks to a weakness of GC2 – it doesn’t have the same emotional hook for me that other games have. What I have found has been rather satisfying is that each race does play differently, especially with the advent of Super Abilities and DA.

What has happened is that I’ve come to enjoy exploring the game with respect to the races and strategies. I’ve played nice-guy Feds, who seek a neutral path toward enlightenment. I’ve played blood-makes-grass-grow Korath, and the hyper expansive Thalians.

The other thing I’ve done is share my exploration with others as AARs. This makes me think about the game since I know I’m going to write a blurb about it, and it strokes the analytical (but not terribly strategic or insightful) part of my makeup. Sometimes this will pull pearls of wisdom from others, too, which is enlightening. The experienced players have a lot to offer, if you can draw them out.

Also, I didn’t even try GC2 until very late (I think it was November 2006), so even GC2: DL was new. When DA came around I still hadn’t finished exploring DL, but DA is pretty darn good so I didn’t mind too much.

GC2 is still very interesting to me. Whether it will stay interesting as long as my other favorite games remains to be seen.

Hydro

[Solver]

I can agree with most of Hydro's points here.

I feel that GalCiv2 is a game with enough options and strategic depth, so there's enough in that sense to keep coming back. See how I can do by ignoring defenses on my ships. Observe the effects of keeping a very happy population. I had much joy when I discovered planetary specialization.

So, simply put, like any strategy game worthy of the name, GalCiv2 has enough strategic depth and different ways to play to make it worthy for a while. Of course, I also switch back and forth between games, and I do even get periods of time when I don't play strategy games at all.

[Island Dog]

I can also agree with the above points.

When I first started playing I would basically only play with one race. I then started branching out to others and discovering the differences between them.

I also challenge myself to "win" differently. Not always defeating others militarily.

[tetley]

I try out different strategies, too, but it's in search of the best strategy. Like I played Thalan Hive for the longest time, but then I tried to do better by playing the Korath spore rush. Now it's been suggested that Torians can be quite powerful if you play a lot with the tax bar, so I'm going to try that.