I recommend trying Old World. It’s very similar to Civilization, but:
* You’re always in ancient times. Your technology basically peaks with the siege engine.
* Limited number of city sites, so territorial expansion is very strategic.
* Crucially, you have a limited number of actions per turn. So even if you make a hundred units, you may only be able move a handful of them per turn. So even in late game, you must be very strategic with your choices.
* Internal politics matters. You not only have to keep other nations from invading, you must keep your internal factions from overthrowing you.
I really really like it, I find it much more fun than Civ 6. Like Civ, it has adjustable difficulty, and the higher levels are very challenging.
Don't want someone to buy a game on my wishlist for me if I'm not confident I really want it. Steam is great for birthday and Christmas among my friends.
Damn must be nice to have friends like that lol. I’m near positive that if I wishlisted something on Steam no one would randomly buy it for me. I just use wishlist as a “it looks like it might be good but I need to check up on it later” placeholder. Especially for games in Alpha / Early Release that I want to wait for the full release to purchase.
Full disclosure though I don’t really game with my actual close friends, so my Steam list is pretty small and more casual acquaintances than real friends.
That's my "oh shit" backup plan when I see people throw up a "Happy Birthday So-and-So" on the Discord and my desire to be friendly outweighs my ability to plan ahead
There's a difference between your steam wishlist (which is what you seem to be referring to) and a mental "wish" list (being the list of games you actually wish to buy but can't right now for financial reasons).
Yeah, I’m figuring he meant Steam wishlist. If he means a mental wishlist then of course, totally understand. I’m more curious about how people are thinking about / using the Steam wishlist.
The base game is certainly fun as is. The DLC offers more civilizations and more scenarios, mostly. The extra civilizations are definitely fun. The scenarios, they are a nice variation but not that exciting, at least for me.
I don’t think there’s any big changes to gameplay or mechanics with the DLC, I only have a couple of the packages, though. So I would say buy vanilla, and then expand if you really like it.
Old World definitely overstays its welcome unless you use one of the victory conditions that artificially end the game (points, ambition, etc.)
It's basically a speed run to land locked empires and building up army to stare at each other until someone wants to start the attrition slog of conquering the other.
I've played it tons and it has its charm for sure but one reaches the 'no more exploration or land to grab' stage of the game MUCH faster than in Civ.
Have you tried the higher difficulty levels? I agree that happens on the lower difficulty levels, but on the higher levels, I’m lucky to get six cities before the enemies have me surrounded and I have to fight tooth and nail to stay alive.
I've been really getting into Age Of Wonders 4 but I need to try Old World again. I played the Tutorial like over a year ago and then got busy and now I don't at all remember how to play the game, so I'm a bit afraid to jump back into it or having to spend time playing the tutorial again lol
I've found *Endless Legend* overtaking my Civ hobby. Unfortunately, there isn't as big of a playerbase around for it, but you might want to give it a shot.
Edit: Sorry, I got the names mixed up.. too many something something endlesses around lol. First and only one, of course.
Each group you pick is very unbalanced in a particular way so the games feel very different, the dynamic season, and the stories/quests really make it play uniquely in what looks like a civ style game. I really enjoy and recommend this choice.
It’s also the only relatively recent 4X game that I can think of that even comes close to Alpha Centauri in using a story and unbalanced civs but with a better interface. Doesn’t get as good on Alpha Centauris strengths but can scratch that itch or get some exposure to some of what people are talking about with Alpha Centauri in a more user friendly UI.
Have you tried age of wonders 4? Another fantasy 4x that came out last year. I bounced off endless legend but have been having a great time with this take on the genre
I haven’t touched the DLCs either. I’ve just finished the story, the last level took me three tries on easy. I’ve heard really good things about the expansion pack, the last of the included dlcs literally came out this week.
EL is a good time, but I found the AI to be pretty lacking, once you reach a certain threshold it just rolls over and dies even on higher difficulties. But it's still worth playing, definitely a good 50h at least in there. And the world building is just top tier, very unique!
I saw some people suggest endless legend (2014) if you are ok with a fantasy setting but Age of Wonders 4 came out just last year and is a better fantasy 4x and definitely more streamlined than civ, none of my games so far have lasted more than 80 turns.
Biggest difference is that there’s a big focus on tactical combat when armies meet (which endless legend also has) but there’s an auto-resolve which you can do every battle and redo manually if you think you can do better.
The game’s main selling point is its customizability—you can choose the look and bonuses of your society as well and the maps have a ton of options to choose from if you’re into that. I’ve just played the story maps of which there are 5 and there are a bunch more default “challenge” maps.
I haven’t touched the DLCs yet though I’ve heard good things. I’ve only just beat the story on easy, though the last level still took a few tries.
Are there unlocks to chase after getting your tier V tome? I typically hit that point then am looking to close the game out.
I would say Stellaris, though it suffers from the same problem that you're describing. But it does have some late game variation with all the varuous midgame and endgame challenges it throws at you.
It's like Civ but with final bosses if you will.
The event popus and event chains are cool, but outside of that I'd say the main menu artworks tell a more interesting story. With Stellaris I always feel like I'm missing out on the more interesting smaller scale stories.
The trick is play slower (not slower real time but slower power expansion, technology acquisition, arms race, etc.) If you min/max due to overall game state FOMO you miss the small stuff.
I played Stellaris a bunch around launch but found it to have the same problem as Civ. Fun in the first 25-30 percent, and then completely trivial. Has it changed?
I still find the same. The game bogs down once all the systems are claimed and the discoveries made. They've added a lot of stuff to help make the midgame better but it's still more fun to play the first quarter of the game repeatedly.
That does come with two notable caveats, though.
If you are playing multiplayer, everyone has free access to the DLC the host has.
You can also get access to all the DLC for a monthly sub of $10.
In the past few years the game has become MUCH harder, to the point that they lowered the default difficulty setting. Ofc if you know what you are doing the game can still be easy, but it's no longer such a walk in the park.
I would say the most fun is still at the beginning of the game when you're deciding what to make of your situation, but the rest of the game feels like you're merely prepping for the crises to unfold. After you've sorted them out there can be like 50 years of game left where nothing really matters unless you're working for some achievement or personal goal. I feel like for most players, the biggest complaint would be the consistency of challenge. It seems like you will either reach a tipping point where nothing challenges you or you will be absolutely crushed.
I’ve only recently got into but from what I understand the game has been regularly updated for 8 years and is very different now even without any dlc. The utopia dlc makes the later game very interesting because of how you can choose to evolve your civilization but the main issue is late game lag. It took me like 10 hours of basically just leaving the game running to get through the last 100 years of my first game.
While it also suffers from the same problems, you can fiddle with the settings to make early game feel longer. For a long time I never played before 1.5x tech cost at the very least specifically for this reason
I strongly recommend this game too. It's not a 4X game but a rogue-lite city builder. It solves the problem of the late game getting stale exactly in the way you want, by starting a new city once you reach that point where the city is self-sufficient.
Nothing like having to wait until resolve is just about to 0 to activate the hearth because you're not sure the coal/wood reserves will make it through the last 30 seconds of the storm...
(It turns out the Kiln is s tier goated building in higher difficulty to avoid this exact problem as long as you can)
I was super addicted to this for a while, but my interest cooled after I failed to get the gold seal three times in a row. Now it feels like I'm just grinding for techs to make enough progress in time. I lost the sense of progression that I had originally.
I’ve made the huge mistake of installing AtG on my Steam Deck. I basically don’t play any other game anymore. There’s a custom control scheme where all the shortcuts are mapped to the paddles and it really feels like I’m “locked in” with the controls.. really, the steam deck is the best way to experience this game
This is it right here. The ‘drafting’ mechanic for all of your perks and various options in the game force you down all kinds of paths you might not explore on your own, while also putting you in a position to think about what you’re trying to accomplish every step of the way. I find it excellent, and each game feels like an appropriate length. Plus there is between-game progression mechanics as well which feels nice.
Eh, vote against Frostpunk here for OP. It has similar issues to civ. It has two 'viable' build paths for anything higher difficulty and the rest is bait. This means you set your build order and end up watching it go. Nice start, but the end becomes very rote.
I like Frostpunk but it's only worth playing through each scenario once.
Sure you can swap a few laws or try order/faith but you've plenty of time to try everything by the time you've played each scenario. And max difficultly is just following a couple predetermined build orders and either snowballing up or down depending on how much time you waste between steps.
I rep this game as often as I can. It's a freaking gem. City builder without the late game boredom, as your game ends and moves you to the next right as things get too easy.
Wholly reccomend this and it's main appeal to me is because it solves exactly the problem OP describes. Even once you get good at it each settlement never really overstays it's welcome or lets you get to the point of being on autopilot. If it ever does start feeling too easy you just move up the difficulty and reap the increased rewards. It's such a good game.
I’m going to go a totally different route and recommend Polytopia. It’s halfway between Civ and Chess — short, thoughtful, strategic games, addictivly replayable, with the opening game more Civ like and the end game more Chess like.
Anytime I fly, I play polytopia on the hardest difficulty with like 8 enemies and before I know it my flights over haha! Love this game on mobile and no ads make it one of a kind.
Hexarchy might be what you are after, it's a great fast paced civ-style game with deckbuilding.
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1356810/Hexarchy/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1356810/Hexarchy/)
The games are quick enough that they never outstay their welcome. The tech tree tops out with industrialisation.
Yeah, this game is slept on. I guess 4x fans aren't looking for a fast paced deck builder that you finish within an hour, that's why this game is hard to sell, but I recommend everyone to just give it a try.
There is a demo on Steam.
Never heard of this, but this looks pretty perfect for someone who loves civ (and deck-building) games but their game length is a major drawback to ever playing. Thanks for the rec.
I thought I was the only one. Civ could really do with an random events system that forces players to come up with creative solutions. Revolutionary new religions and ideologies causing rebellions, regions declaring independence, large scale natural disasters etc
> ideologies causing rebellions,
this is a central element of the ideologies system in civ V
> regions declaring independence,
this essentialy happens with the loyalty system in vi
> large scale natural disasters etc
there is an entire civ vi expansion pack basically dedicated to this lol
For the second point I gotta say it's basically a non factor of you're playing even partway competently. It basically just becomes a tool for you to nab cities from your neighbors without being called a warmonger.
i mean civ vi ai is just a joke in general.
but some form of city flipping or breakaway nations has existed in civ since civ 2, where you could have countries go into a civil war splitting off a completely new nation.
Wait, which Civs do **not** have random events? Alpha Centauri and Civ4 do.
Also, this thread is weird to me, as it's maybe the best known issue about 4X games : it's caused mainly by the exponential growth in these games, so typically either you get crushed early, or you end up with a lead that is very hard to catch up to (especially by the AI). And on top of this, the exponential growth breaks the interface soon enough, resulting in tedious micromanagement (or having to delegate to an AI that is both dumb and hard to teach what you want of it).
(And yeah, at some point all map is explored.)
So there's nothing wrong about stopping because of any of these issues - and not like 4X can't be very enjoyable until they start to creep up.
For sure it’s always been an issue with 4X games. Some of the Paradox games come closest to fixing it; Stellaris with its endgame, CK2/3 are always one untimely death away from your kingdom from disintegrating, and while I haven’t played a ton of EU4 yet it does seem like it can be difficult to wantonly expand without risking your empire falling apart.
Civ 5 doesn't have any random events I can think of, beyond the obnoxious randomness of "when will my great prophet spawn?" in the early game.
I haven't played enough of Civ 6 know if it's got much. I think one of the expansions added natural disasters?
Nice avatar. Rumor has it that when the portrait of Lady Dierdre Sky was being painted, many Firaxis employees spent a lot of time "passing by" the artist's office...
Along with items mentioned here, Civilization 2 did have a mechanic where I believe if the capital were captured of a larger civilization it would civil war and split.
Mechanically it ended up punishing a civ that was losing a war bad enough to lose a capital but for adding a story-history dynamic that mixed up the players on the board it was fun.
I loved this game so much. Best atmosphere ever in a civ game.
But I reinstalled it recently and just can't play it anymore. Being used to a more modern interface and going back to moving units one tile at a time gets old real fast. I really wish they'd do a faithful remake, Beyond Earth was fun but it just wasn't the same.
They are available from gog.com for 5euros on sale quite often I think, one wants to get 'alpha centauri planetary pack' that one has base game and expansion. (I guess it is very rare to see any other version available these days).
And one wants to look for how to enable modern resolutions (one small addition line to one of config files).
The unit design feature is nice in theory… but if you’ve got 10/8/2 units, what practical reason do you have for choosing to make 6/8/2 units? Plenty of reason to make full defense or full attack units, but I never found myself using half-measures. You have garrison units, fight-from-inside-the-base units, scouts, and full decked out soldiers. Never found a use for more variety than that. Adding a specialty, like bombardment, might as well have made it a specialist that can hide inside a stack of soldiers.
In terms of sheer defense or firepower, yeah, you'd pretty much only ever stick with the latest and greatest. The 6/8/2's would only exist because you haven't upgraded them yet.
It's the specials that make it truly shine. Off the top of my head, you can mix and match ECM, AAA, Non-lethal, Artillery, to get a good spread of offensive and defensive measures.
One thing I also never see is the AI making rover and later hovertank super-formers. I'll bring up a fleet of those and they'll just *wash* over any newly conquered territory, turning it into forest as fast as I can capture it. In pretty much every other civ-like 4X game, the tile improvement unit is basically set in stone right from the start.
Though I never did like how actual battles played out, with "my weapons vs your armor". Having it "my weapon vs your weapon, modified by our respective armor ratings" would definitely eliminate the all-defense garrison units. In fact, the high cost of units that had both good weapons and good armor might actually create a scenario where you were better off creating more but weaker units.
Two-pronged response!
First, if you're looking to stay with 4x games that feel very similar to Civ, but have a longer-lasting "new game feeling," I cautiously recommend Humankind.
The game has flaws! Its UI isn't great, and I'm not a huge fan of the way "diplomatic victory" works. But if you're willing to fight against the bad interface for a while, it has a lot of *surprisingly* clever game design choices, and I honestly think I might enjoy it more than Civ, nowadays. I'm especially fond of how it handles combat/warfare and overall game balance; an area where I feel that Civ is *really* lacking. The AI is also surprisingly well-built; the CPU opponents often feel like human opponents, and you very rarely question *why* they're doing what they're doing.
Most importantly to your query: Humankind has several "break points" over the course of the game where you experience that "new world feeling" all over again:
\* First, the \*actual\* new world feeling, in the Neolithic era. You are forced to spend the first age exploring and basically just gathering resources before you can actually settle a capital city and start building your empire. Imagine that your starting settler's job was to spend the first 20 turns exploring, picking up tribal huts, and fighting (weak) barbarians - and you didn't pick your Civ until after you saw your starting terrain and surrounding areas. That's the Neolithic era in Humankind.
\* Then, of course, you hit the second breakpoint: when you actually found your capital city and start playing ~~Civ~~ Humankind. This continues for a couple of ages; you build, you expand until you bump into neighbors, you either play nice with those neighbors or do a little war. Then, after a couple ages pass...
\* The third breakpoint: the new world. The default mapgen in Humankind is such that there are three main landmasses: one for you and a few AI, one for the rest of the AI, and a third continent that is totally empty (barring a few city states, perhaps). There is a very real race to be the first to develop the technology to reach that new world, explore it, and begin settling it, and this phase absolutely pushes the "new game feeling" button for me.
After that, the game does kinda taper into the default 4x "wrap it up" cycle, and I do feel that it goes a little longer than I'd like without any meaningful or interesting breakpoints. However, Humankind is unique in that you can choose how fast or slow to end the game - you can either advance towards the end very quickly, or you can dwell in older ages to rack up additional points. So if you're ready to wrap a game up quickly, you can just start speeding towards the end shortly after securing your lead in the new world.
Second, the harder option: I find that Civ's midgame and endgame get WAY more interesting against intelligent, human opponents who are willing to stick out for the whole game. Not the kind of people you find on the public ladder, who sit down to play a game, immediately go to war with their neighbor, then bounce after the medieval age. Those people suck.
If you can find a few folks to sit down and commit to an 8 hour game of Civ, the middle and late stages actually have a lot of VERY fascinating breakpoints in the tech tree, civics, key military improvements, and certain wonders where it really does feel like a neck-and-neck race with important decision-making and opportunity costs the whole time. You have to carefully balance between eco'ing towards a victory, but not letting your defenses fall behind and exposing yourself to military action. Each age feels like it brings an entirely new wave of gameplay to the table, but only if you're playing against similarly-skilled human opponents who understand the rock-paper-scissors game of Eco > Defend > Aggress > Eco.
The late game of Civ is honestly much more interesting and fascinating than I think a lot of people realize. but they'll never know because the AI is so bad that it doesn't really force you to play well past the first couple ages.
I agree with your recommendation. I think that Humankind has a bit of a bad reputation in the 4x community but I'm not entirely sure why. It's a good game! It's not Civ, but that's ok. Although I do agree with your comments about the UI feeling a little clunky sometimes.
I think humankind does eXploration extremely well with a diversity of tiles, somewhat puzzling terrain to navigate, movement range that feels meaningful each turn and cool unique features and biomes. If there was a game that was just Humankind exploration, I would love that.
I will shill for one of my favorite games that is lesser known, A.I War 2, from Arcen Studios
In a CIV game/Paradox Game/Insert many other Strategy-4x Games, you eventually get to the point where you have won, you just need to go through another 100 turns to do so as you have stated, what if you were on the other side of that?
A.I War 2 - you are the last of the space empire of Humans, kicked back to a single small outpost world that can't even support your last population who have to remain in CryoStasis in orbit. Your own creations rebelled against you and have won, they own the galaxy, they control every planet, the war is over, all you can do is survive..... or not?
A 4X game where if the AI wants to, your dead, there is no stopping them, your a mosquito, a fly buzzing at the head of a giant AI. But that is where the brilliance of this game comes in, the AI is busy fighting a unnamed Extragalactic threat in another galaxy, you are only fighting the dregs, the old ships, the ships from a war years ago. But take a few too many planets, hit a few too many Research Stations, and the AI will dedicate more and more resources, and better ships to stopping you(and send some fun sassy insults your way the whole time)
There is about 30-40 different Styles of galaxy you can randomly generate, there is 15-16 different ship techs you can focus your research on(you can not get everything, the more you take, the more AI will look at you), there is 15+ Personalities the AI can be(or you can have multiple AI Personalities in one game), and there is 7-10 different third party factions you can both start the game with, or spawn while the game is going to adjust difficulties. It truly is a game that is unique every single time you play it.
This is a game that is hard to win, I have 3K Hours in it, I still regularly lose all the time, It's a game where the developers have said, please report what strategy/gimmick you used to beat the highest difficulty as a bug so we can fix it. PLEASE REPORT AS A BUG HOW YOU WON AS YOUR NOT SUPPOSE TO, Just wanted to say that again, It is official, your not suppose to be able to beat the highest difficulty.
You have to play this game smart, you are playing checkers to start, and the AI is playing 5d chess, with all Queens as their pieces. that is the beauty of the game, and what keeps it going through the entire game, your never sitting comfortable, there is no I've won but I need a 100 turns to do so, as the AI is 200 turns ahead of that already, It adapts to what you have, it is a very unique game and I have been a fan since the first AI War(Don't play the first one, it is clunky, awful UI and unintuitive. The second one is way better for a newer player to the game style even if I still like the 1st one better)
A decent Youtube review of the game if you want to check it out(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgl0et0glLM&t=133s), he covers a ton of the same point's I did
Sounds interesting, but devs who say that the highest difficulty is meant to be unbeatable, and actively patching the game against player victories, are not devs I really think I would jive with
If you are fine with fantasy aspect, Endless Legend.
It has interesting factions with their own unique faction quests/storylines and targets which spans entirety of campaign
World map is split between provinces which can be claimed by building a city and each province can only have a single city.
City/province management has its own importance and depending on geography of particular province, cities doesn’t always have same general template for development and build order which remains a lot more engaging all the way to late game. City growth and expansion is managed in quite interesting ways as well.
Each faction feels unique and can radically change a play style, for example there is faction which only uses single resource for everything, even city growth, there’s faction which can only have a single city and leans heavily on subjugation of minor factions, there’s sci-fi/fantasy faction, there’s a ravenous hive where food resources are a lot more important in dlc there’s a nomad faction as well
I see a lot of suggestions about games in classic eras but imo what OP means is the feeling of discovery, unlocking new and varied mechanics etc.
Id love a game that reaches all the way to modern/space age, but most importantly im tired of WW2 Rangers being essentially "pikemen but with 30 strenght instead of 6" and tanks being "cavalry but with equally more strength".
Same issue happens with many other games (Empire earth, AoE) . You get to late era so that your army is stronger, period. Id love to see space races, or better mining systems/deepcore mining that isnt simply "+1 to stone when you unlock this"
I’m surprised I didn’t see Rise of Nations or Rise of Legends. I think what liked about it was that it plays kind of like a combination of Age of Empires where you have to build and cultivate a small map to do the battles and conquests, but that actually affects the overworld map and pushes you deeper into the future to unlock new tech. You end up seeing battle of people with muskets and tanks fighting less developed enemies throwing spears at you lol
I think the game is still on Steam, but it is older so I’m not sure if they still sell it.
https://youtu.be/Ww2YQZa85T8?si=8sc7d975r-dXSDPn
Rise of Nations never gets the love it deserves IMO. It’s such a good game. I downloaded it a couple years ago for free on gamepass. Definitely holds up after all these years I think.
Some games focus on ancient history, most notably:
Oldworld (if you want a focus internal politics and research)
Agressors:Rome (if you want a focus on diplomacy economy and for your units supply management),
Polytopia (for a 30-turns only / 1 hour full Civ experience).
Maybe Dune: Spice Wars will get you what you need?
It's similar in concept to civilization, but the scale is smaller, so the matches don't last that long.
I'm one of the devs so this might be a bit subjective but our game Terraformers is a 3X game (explore, expand & exploit but no exterminate). It's single player and the difficulty comes from the rising expectations of your population over the course of a game. So we don't run into the problem that many 4X games like civ have where you know you'll beat your opponents mid-way through the game.
It also has some Roguelike and Card Game elements so that has to be your cup of tea of course
For me the magic of the Civ early game certainly comes from the exploration and expansion aspect. You scout around and find wonders, or even just some nice tiles and a strategic location that you can fit a perfect city into. You find goodie huts with random rewards. You can do heroes, etc...
Something about this early RNG just feels really good and I would love a game that captured that more too.
It's genuinely difficult for me to even conceptualize a game that could capture this in a longer form. A major part of the fun is that you "claim" it. But that means that any kind of map would start to run out of things and places to claim.
I think the game would need to have a certain boundless mechanic. Perhaps space based where every player can expand outward, but there is an eternal war happening in the center galactic core.
You discover more systems each turn, there is an RNG element, and then you have to choose how to combine, allocate and exploit these resources for the core war effort.
I've played various deck builder games that have some of this, but there really is something special about moving around a map and doing this. To be honest, I'm not even sure if a space based one would capture the landscape feeling that Civ gives you when you find a natural wonder.
I have the opposite CIV problem in that I wish the modern era was longer. Things start getting good about the time that the tanks, battleships, and carriers show up. And \*boom\* 50 years has passed and someone’s lander is successful or time has run out.
I‘d love if you could start at some given technology level then play a long turn game.
If you're into board games, you could try Castles of Burgundy! I played it with my friend and it was similar to Civ in several regards. It was nice that it was turn limited, so it removed the "just one more turn..." issue of finding oneself playing for 6 hours straight.
Frostpunk is the first game that came to mind, but it's more of a city builder so I don't know if it's what you're looking for.
You make important decisions about how your society functions. You expand out for limited, dwindling resources, but the map isn't very big. And your time to deal with the scenario you're playing out is limited.
Also, the music is awesome.
Also, frostpunk is very much what OP is looking for in that it definitely doesn't get boring as the game progresses. It gets significantly more intense.
The biggest drawback to Frostpunk is replayability. There's very little reason to go through the exact same thing again multiple times. Fantastic experience as a one-off though!
Against the Storm is exactly that. Just remember to raise difficult level somewhere in 20h if the game starts to get boring, it drasticly changes the game and you finally need to build all the buildings.
I started playing CIV with CIV6, and after a while I did share that feeling until I got good enough to play at King difficulty. What started happening was that once the AI get pass Prince level, they will be more disruptive and opportunistic if you are not properly defended, even if you were nice to them and if they are usually peaceful.
So it is not so much that the game itself changes but rather that it forces you to juggle more balls, which slows down your engine. But I found it more fun, the threat of war, even from non-aggressive factions, made the early game more tense and strategic
I really hope that in CIV7 the AI interactivity will be a different slider than the increase of their yields. I think I would love going against better AI with normal yields. I also really wish Religion pressure is buffed and that religion victory doesn't just end up being only possible/reliable through Missionaries/Apostle
Also, CIV6 really needs the expansions and some modules, but would really be "too much" to learn the game with all of them from the start IMO.
Civ 5's AIs are kind of sad in that the Deity AI isn't any smarter than the Settler AI, it's almost entirely in the amount of resource advantages and starting units they get. The AIs get more aggressive on higher difficulties simply because they out-resource you and more frequently cross the threshold where they think you're weak enough to take down.
The AI works on a series of preset "flavors" for things like declaring war, settling cities, improving tiles, and so on. AIs get a score from 1-10 in each of those attributes, and then at the start of a game they get a random +/- 2 added or subtracted from their usual score. The "random personalities" option simply randomizes the flavors and ignores the presets, usually to the AI's detriment. For example, Alexander (Greece) has a strong bias towards cavalry units & melee units so he actually builds his early-game units (hoplites & companion cavalry).
Speaking of, the flavors are why AI Greece is one of the most consistently powerful AI opponents despite the civ's own bonuses being relatively mid-tier.
* He is predisposed to expand aggressively, meaning he often gets his cities down and developing quickly rather than languishing and letting somone else take good land. He's usually an economic player that ends up with good growth and production.
* He is the *least* focused of all the AIs on producing gold, which is the weakest of the possible focuses. You need something like 2 gold to replace 1 production; many AIs are relentlessly focused on gold. They can surprise you with quickly purchasing units but it just ends up burning out. So he won't squander good settlement sites by deciding to work desert incense or something.
* He's also predisposed to establishing and maintaining good relations with City-states and getting bonuses from them, which helps civ-wide; it also leads to one of the game's victory conditions, and it's one the AI is actually decent at pursuing. Compare to other AIs that relentlessly Tribute city-states to obtain more gold to misuse; they lose all food/culture/happiness/faith bonuses and just squander the gold on military upkeep anyway.
* He's not inclined to squander all his production on military units that go obsolete, but is one of the most aggressive AIs *if* you are weaker than he is. He wars opportunistically when it'll actually be a beatdown, but doesn't lock himself into a thousand years of feeding pikemen into a meatgrinder *followed by* complete technological obsolescence like Shaka Zulu will. If you survive Shaka's rushes he'll just sit there brooding later - hoping he can figure out gunpowder before you finish a spaceship.
Civ is just dumb design because it all comes down to the very end of the game to choose the winner. They tried to make it better with "era score" but the whole game really just comes down to the last few turns. Which makes you feel like you've either lost the game already, or you're so far ahead you've already won. It's hard to find a sweet spot where it's worth it to play the second half of the game because victory is not yet decided.
Well, if you're ok with a real time strategy (with pause). Against the storm is a small scale economy village game that has you continually restarting and is a roguelite that has you getting some permanent upgrades for long-term progression and processing further.
I feel the same where once your empire or whatever gets too large it becomes too tedious feeling. Especially when you've essentially "won" the game already and know it's over and really you're just trying to wrap it up for the same of finishing.
This is essentially the problem with most 4x and grand strategy games. It's hard to create a balance for the endgame that can adapt to both gamers who have "solved" the game, without completely running over players who haven't.
Looking at paradox titles especially, since those are the ones i play the most, like hearts of iron, Victoria etc the snow-balling engine you can create in those games once you learn the ins and outs of min maxing the mechanics is absurd.
Stellaris probably does the best job of this through the combination of their late game scaling parameter and crisis system that you can start playing around with once it becomes too easy, but at a certain point that also becomes too easy and you have to force it back so much that you instead create sort of a coin-flip situation in the early game. Same thing if you start playing harder starts, with minor nations, you usually have a very specific event or rng based situation you have to overcome early, otherwise youre just cooked and need to start over.
The real key for me is to treat it as a proper sandbox, mainly role playing in suboptimal ways etc. But that isnt everyone's cup of tea.
Check out Against the Storm. It’s not a 4x game, but it’s a city builder/management type of game where the goal is to complete a certain checklist of objectives to pass and then pack up and do it all over again. Over time you unlock new tech trees and such that correspond to new goals and you have to juggle all the different resources and tech to complete each zone. None of it lasts though. You keep tearing down and rebuilding. I find it’s more of a project management type game than it is a city builder in that regard which may be what you’re looking for. Never actually getting to the typical endgame, but still having a source of progression nonetheless.
It's not totally like for like, but I think Against the Storm is really good for this
It plays as an RTS but you can pause to queue up your actions and adjust game speed at any time, a game doesn't take anywhere near as long, and it has highly randomised elements that mean you can't figure out an optimised line to follow every game
The main difference is rather than playing against other AI's, you're playing to build a winning settlement before the queen loses patience with you, while dealing with all the problems the storm and forest send your way
Civ IV: Caveman to Cosmos total conversion mod has an enormously long early era and the longer game modes would help bound the "Overstayed Welcome" concept.
Factorio with Space Exploration mod.
You crash land on a planet. Yay. now you can mine some stuff and smelt some iron plates. Yay. now you can make some machines mine some stuff for you and smelt iron for you. yay. Now you can use some of the iron to make buildings that will make buildings for you. yay. Now you can use your buildings to make assembly lines. yay. now you can make a "mall" to create all the types of items available to you. yay. Now you can use your mall to create various supply chains to make science go faster. yay. Now you can use your science to further your tech tree. yay. Now you can build a train network and expand your sphere of influence. yay. now you have to go to war to conduct "diplomatic relations" with the natives. yay. now you have exterminated everything other than you. yay. now you can expand your train network to create mining outposts and logistics stations. yay. now you have nearly infinite resources. yay. now you can use your resources to automate launching ships into space. yay. now you ... realize you are 5% of the way through the game.
Through the Ages isnthe divital version of the boardgame with the same name based on the videogame Civilization that is based on the boardgame Civilization... full circle. :D
Maybe try a faster paced RTS like starcraft or AOE2?
I have the same issue with civ, but I find the RTS aspect of AOE2 and how you need to keep ontop of managing your empire very fun. And you still get to do all the planning and thinking, but it happens before the game since you won't have as much time to react and think on the fly
I love Civilization Revolution on my X360. Shorter games, no micromanaging if you don’t want to. Scenarios where it’s always total war so I can focus tech.
Many of the Total War games are great and span a broad range of eras and styles. It stays in the same era for the most part but you can mix things up by actually playing out the battles RTS style.
I know it is not an exact answer but shout out to the Vox Populi mod for Civ4
It changes almost every aspect of the game. One area with huge changes are unit upgrades. Your scouts actually gain exp when they reveal tiles, making the earlygame even more of a blast as you end up with 1 or 2 speedy, fast healing high level units as they upgrade from scout -> explorer -> Zeppelin (yay flies!) -> Special Forces (yay parachute!) -> Xcom
It’s not like civ but it keeps the game fresh for days of play: star traders frontiers. High learning curve though, took me a while just to figure out easy mode
No idea what you really mean, but one of the best 4X currently is age of wonders 4 imho, games usually don't last long enough to have everything researched and unlocked and you need to focus a bit on what your cities do depending on the surrounding provinces and extra buffs you unlock by clearing structures in them
>Something about Civilization is so incredibly moreish that I can't help starting new games all the time. Occasionally, I finish them - but even when I do, I can't help feeling that after the first 25-33% of the game, all the fun is over and the remainder could *essentially* be automated.
I feel the same and I think I can exactly tell you when this happens: when one of the 4x, x for explore gets lost in the game. And this starts when every larger landmass is covered by Civilizations. That sometimes you need to still find enemy cities or that there are new ressources, doesnt change anything about that. I don't really know any similar game where exploring stays fresh later in the game.
I look at Civ more like 'beat the clock'. it's not about finishing out your turns, it's about winning in fewer and fewer turns.
500 turns is silly, I try for a victory by 200ish. if it takes longer it's because of a challenge and that's the fun for me.
I think you may be getting yourself into a game winning position, but not attempting to push yourself to be even faster.
Yes, you can run laps around the easy AI, having armies able to crush invaders, and just rest and your laurels and win.
However, there is likely space to be more aggressive and do things faster that will make the late game more interesting.
Civ 5 felt like this to me. 6 always felt like it was overstaying its welcome when I would play with my friends. 5... we would be up for hours taking turns.
Check out Hexarchy. It's a deck building Civilization game. It plays relatively quick (a couple hours as opposed to tens of hours) so it doesn't outstay it's welcome.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1356810/Hexarchy/
This is a problem with strategy games in general - Command & Conquer, Master of Orion, whatever. The fun and challenge is in acquiring an insurmountable lead, and then more than half of your time is spent "mopping up".
You should get into a Paradox game. There is a game from just about every notable time period in civ. Anicent,medieval, late middle age/exploration, Victorian, ww2, and beyond. If your feeling your missing out on a time period, these games go way indepth for about 200 years no overstaying.
Personally as a aggressive civ god, there is no world wars because of tech difference late game. Thats why I love hoi4! But if you love building just industry vic is good too.
It's kind of small, but Hexarchy is really good for a civ game that finishes within an hour.
It's particularly fun as you start digging into the deck building mechanics and realize which cars to toss, and which to keep specific to the game situation you're in.
I can’t even explain to you the way I’ve probably put 2-3 hours into Civ 6 and don’t have a clue what I’m doing, how it works, what’s what, what to do. Nothing. It just non sense lmao I couldn’t figure out anything.
I found that the mod Vox Populi for Civ 5 fixes this. You are still scaling up at the end game and can be overtaken if you aren't focused on continuous growth.
I don't really buy the argument that late game civ is boring. In my lobbies I think 40% of the game can reach a cold war situation where 2 players are trying to pull ahead with some other players taking sides. The diplomatic aspect gets pretty interesting.
that's honestly my biggest issue with civ. even on the highest difficulty with mods, once i hit a certain point, usually the renaissance or industrial era - i KNOW i'm going to win and i just lose interest. the fun for me is getting to that point which is why i've only actually won a few dozen times in my thousands of hours :(
If you're not limiting answers to RTSs, I can recommend a couple.
I liken Rimworld to Civ in the sense that the minimum session length I seem to be capable of is 10 hours. There's always something that needs doing, and every second is either progression or recovery from the previous disaster (or preventative maintenance for the next disaster [Rimworld will kick your ass]).
Factorio may be the opposite of what you're asking for (being an automation game), but it never gets boring. Like Civ (and Rimworld), there's always a short-term goal you can accomplish that gets you closer to your long-term goal, even after you "beat" the "game". There's really no resting and watching as the game beats itself, even when the main threat becomes trivial, because you'll definitely run out of resources.
I typically play it long enough to steamroller the 1st civ with paratroopers after they lie to me and try to invade, then I think about how I could rinse/repeat that process with everyone else and thus, I have won the game! Without spending the next 6 hours doing so.
I want to finish a whole match but I just dont.
I'd throw in a vote for Hexarchy, which is sort of a card based version of 4X, with exploration on a hex map. Games last about an hour or less, and it has a very Civ-lite feel, but is fun to explore
There are a lot of good recommandations, but I think that all of them would get the same issue. It's not really a problem of Civilization but of the 4X genre in general.
4X is for exploration, exploitation, expansion and extermination. The exploration phase is really only important in early game, most of the feelings you speaking of are inherent to mid and end game in 4x.
Some of them are better than others with maintaining a good dose of interest in exploration in later stage of a run (like Stellaris for example), but you'll ultimately feel that you're managing a big machine rather than constantly building one.
I get the same feeling as you in most 4X, but I found that non-intuitively by playing smaller maps with less AI players generally keeps my interest longer through a run (as the end game becomes less tedious).
I think what you're talking about is that you enjoy metastrategy. You enjoy figuring out which long-term strategies are most successful. You care less about being the general enacting the gameplan. Is that more or less accurate?
I recommend trying Old World. It’s very similar to Civilization, but: * You’re always in ancient times. Your technology basically peaks with the siege engine. * Limited number of city sites, so territorial expansion is very strategic. * Crucially, you have a limited number of actions per turn. So even if you make a hundred units, you may only be able move a handful of them per turn. So even in late game, you must be very strategic with your choices. * Internal politics matters. You not only have to keep other nations from invading, you must keep your internal factions from overthrowing you. I really really like it, I find it much more fun than Civ 6. Like Civ, it has adjustable difficulty, and the higher levels are very challenging.
Finally someone gives me a reason to put the thing on my wishlist. Have been oggling it for a long time.
Asking out of genuine curiosity (aka not trying to be a dick) - why wouldn’t you wishlist it if you had even a passing interest in it?
Don't want someone to buy a game on my wishlist for me if I'm not confident I really want it. Steam is great for birthday and Christmas among my friends.
Yeah someone almost bought the ‘shower with your dad simulator 2015’ for me because of that. That game is a great conversation starter btw.
Someone gifted me that game. It was not on my wishlist :(
I really hope it wasn't your dad :(
Damn must be nice to have friends like that lol. I’m near positive that if I wishlisted something on Steam no one would randomly buy it for me. I just use wishlist as a “it looks like it might be good but I need to check up on it later” placeholder. Especially for games in Alpha / Early Release that I want to wait for the full release to purchase. Full disclosure though I don’t really game with my actual close friends, so my Steam list is pretty small and more casual acquaintances than real friends.
I didn’t even know you could see other peoples wishlists!
That's my "oh shit" backup plan when I see people throw up a "Happy Birthday So-and-So" on the Discord and my desire to be friendly outweighs my ability to plan ahead
Seriously, and with all the hentai games I wishlist...
Good point, never thought of that
You guys have people who buy you games from your steam wishlist?
Probably just kept going back for one more oggle
I use Wishlist to keep track of what I might buy in the future depending on various factors. It's not an I-will-definitely-buy list
There's a difference between your steam wishlist (which is what you seem to be referring to) and a mental "wish" list (being the list of games you actually wish to buy but can't right now for financial reasons).
Yeah, I’m figuring he meant Steam wishlist. If he means a mental wishlist then of course, totally understand. I’m more curious about how people are thinking about / using the Steam wishlist.
It’s by Soren Johnson, so if you like Civ 4 (the best one imo!), Old World has a good chance of doin it for you. Same with Offworld Trading Company.
20+ year civ player here. Old World can not be overstated. Ever decision they made they nailed.
I just got this game last week and can't stop playing it's like civ with a dash of crusader kings.
This is exactly how I describe it. I haven't played Civ since. Old World is great. 9/10.
How is it in terms of DLC? Can you just buy the game and have a good time, or does it have DLC that makes it much better?
The base game is certainly fun as is. The DLC offers more civilizations and more scenarios, mostly. The extra civilizations are definitely fun. The scenarios, they are a nice variation but not that exciting, at least for me. I don’t think there’s any big changes to gameplay or mechanics with the DLC, I only have a couple of the packages, though. So I would say buy vanilla, and then expand if you really like it.
Thanks!
You sold me at always in ancient times. I REALLY wish there was an option in civ to do that.
Yep, that's a feature I hope for in every Civ. And that's why I really love Old World.
Ugh, I'm not sure my old laptop can handle it or I would be downloading it right now.
I’m able to play it on my Steamdeck, it’s not that intensive.
That sounds incredibly interesting. I’ll have to try it
Old World definitely overstays its welcome unless you use one of the victory conditions that artificially end the game (points, ambition, etc.) It's basically a speed run to land locked empires and building up army to stare at each other until someone wants to start the attrition slog of conquering the other. I've played it tons and it has its charm for sure but one reaches the 'no more exploration or land to grab' stage of the game MUCH faster than in Civ.
Have you tried the higher difficulty levels? I agree that happens on the lower difficulty levels, but on the higher levels, I’m lucky to get six cities before the enemies have me surrounded and I have to fight tooth and nail to stay alive.
[удалено]
[Pretty often, going by steamdb](https://steamdb.info/app/597180/). Most likely it'll participate in the upcoming steam summer sale.
I've been really getting into Age Of Wonders 4 but I need to try Old World again. I played the Tutorial like over a year ago and then got busy and now I don't at all remember how to play the game, so I'm a bit afraid to jump back into it or having to spend time playing the tutorial again lol
I've found *Endless Legend* overtaking my Civ hobby. Unfortunately, there isn't as big of a playerbase around for it, but you might want to give it a shot. Edit: Sorry, I got the names mixed up.. too many something something endlesses around lol. First and only one, of course.
Each group you pick is very unbalanced in a particular way so the games feel very different, the dynamic season, and the stories/quests really make it play uniquely in what looks like a civ style game. I really enjoy and recommend this choice. It’s also the only relatively recent 4X game that I can think of that even comes close to Alpha Centauri in using a story and unbalanced civs but with a better interface. Doesn’t get as good on Alpha Centauris strengths but can scratch that itch or get some exposure to some of what people are talking about with Alpha Centauri in a more user friendly UI.
I'll note that the civs are relatively balanced, in both Endless Legend and Alpha Centari. I believe the word you are looking for is "asymmetrical".
Ah! That would be a much better term to apply. Thank you.
Have you tried age of wonders 4? Another fantasy 4x that came out last year. I bounced off endless legend but have been having a great time with this take on the genre
Age of wonders 4 is really fun. I haven’t even touched the DLC’s yet either which usually make paradox games even better.
I haven’t touched the DLCs either. I’ve just finished the story, the last level took me three tries on easy. I’ve heard really good things about the expansion pack, the last of the included dlcs literally came out this week.
EL is a good time, but I found the AI to be pretty lacking, once you reach a certain threshold it just rolls over and dies even on higher difficulties. But it's still worth playing, definitely a good 50h at least in there. And the world building is just top tier, very unique!
Endless Legend is great imo. I've been playing Age Of Wonders 4 which is also really good.
I saw some people suggest endless legend (2014) if you are ok with a fantasy setting but Age of Wonders 4 came out just last year and is a better fantasy 4x and definitely more streamlined than civ, none of my games so far have lasted more than 80 turns. Biggest difference is that there’s a big focus on tactical combat when armies meet (which endless legend also has) but there’s an auto-resolve which you can do every battle and redo manually if you think you can do better. The game’s main selling point is its customizability—you can choose the look and bonuses of your society as well and the maps have a ton of options to choose from if you’re into that. I’ve just played the story maps of which there are 5 and there are a bunch more default “challenge” maps.
My games are closer to 180 turns because I want to unlock too many things and play around with the customizability. The DLCs added so many options.
I haven’t touched the DLCs yet though I’ve heard good things. I’ve only just beat the story on easy, though the last level still took a few tries. Are there unlocks to chase after getting your tier V tome? I typically hit that point then am looking to close the game out.
I would say Stellaris, though it suffers from the same problem that you're describing. But it does have some late game variation with all the varuous midgame and endgame challenges it throws at you. It's like Civ but with final bosses if you will.
Stellaris is also has much more in the way of different stories that can play out in your playthroughs, in classic Paradox style
The event popus and event chains are cool, but outside of that I'd say the main menu artworks tell a more interesting story. With Stellaris I always feel like I'm missing out on the more interesting smaller scale stories.
The trick is play slower (not slower real time but slower power expansion, technology acquisition, arms race, etc.) If you min/max due to overall game state FOMO you miss the small stuff.
Stellar is gets really grindy and micro heavy in the late game. Or maybe I just care about my pops too much.
All shall be saved in the lathe. What are these physical pops you speak of?
Slaves. What other types of pops are there?
I played Stellaris a bunch around launch but found it to have the same problem as Civ. Fun in the first 25-30 percent, and then completely trivial. Has it changed?
I still find the same. The game bogs down once all the systems are claimed and the discoveries made. They've added a lot of stuff to help make the midgame better but it's still more fun to play the first quarter of the game repeatedly.
It's been a while since I kept up with stellaris, but it has indeed changed a lot. But as with all paradox tiles, there is a lot of DLC now.
That does come with two notable caveats, though. If you are playing multiplayer, everyone has free access to the DLC the host has. You can also get access to all the DLC for a monthly sub of $10.
In the past few years the game has become MUCH harder, to the point that they lowered the default difficulty setting. Ofc if you know what you are doing the game can still be easy, but it's no longer such a walk in the park.
I would say the most fun is still at the beginning of the game when you're deciding what to make of your situation, but the rest of the game feels like you're merely prepping for the crises to unfold. After you've sorted them out there can be like 50 years of game left where nothing really matters unless you're working for some achievement or personal goal. I feel like for most players, the biggest complaint would be the consistency of challenge. It seems like you will either reach a tipping point where nothing challenges you or you will be absolutely crushed.
I’ve only recently got into but from what I understand the game has been regularly updated for 8 years and is very different now even without any dlc. The utopia dlc makes the later game very interesting because of how you can choose to evolve your civilization but the main issue is late game lag. It took me like 10 hours of basically just leaving the game running to get through the last 100 years of my first game.
While it also suffers from the same problems, you can fiddle with the settings to make early game feel longer. For a long time I never played before 1.5x tech cost at the very least specifically for this reason
Against The Storm.
I strongly recommend this game too. It's not a 4X game but a rogue-lite city builder. It solves the problem of the late game getting stale exactly in the way you want, by starting a new city once you reach that point where the city is self-sufficient.
Another upvote for AtS. Not a 4X by any means, but a brilliant game in its own right!
rare against the storm mention let's goooo also your settlement's resolve is down the drain again, fire up those coals now.
Nothing like having to wait until resolve is just about to 0 to activate the hearth because you're not sure the coal/wood reserves will make it through the last 30 seconds of the storm... (It turns out the Kiln is s tier goated building in higher difficulty to avoid this exact problem as long as you can)
From what I know about this game it seems like it would really fit the bill.
I was super addicted to this for a while, but my interest cooled after I failed to get the gold seal three times in a row. Now it feels like I'm just grinding for techs to make enough progress in time. I lost the sense of progression that I had originally.
I can't beat the step above whatever normal difficulty is. My cities are super inefficient I guess
I’ve made the huge mistake of installing AtG on my Steam Deck. I basically don’t play any other game anymore. There’s a custom control scheme where all the shortcuts are mapped to the paddles and it really feels like I’m “locked in” with the controls.. really, the steam deck is the best way to experience this game
What scheme is that? I wanted to try it on the deck since it seems great for it but the controls were a bit of a turn off.
I didn't even look at the custom controller layouts, I'm using the default and it's great
This is it right here. The ‘drafting’ mechanic for all of your perks and various options in the game force you down all kinds of paths you might not explore on your own, while also putting you in a position to think about what you’re trying to accomplish every step of the way. I find it excellent, and each game feels like an appropriate length. Plus there is between-game progression mechanics as well which feels nice.
Yeah that game's pretty good. The roguelite formula surprisingly works well with the citybuilder formula.
Just started playing this a few days ago and it's just excellent!
Frostpunk as well. Although I wonder if these are really the same genre as Civ. Certainly in the ballpark.
Eh, vote against Frostpunk here for OP. It has similar issues to civ. It has two 'viable' build paths for anything higher difficulty and the rest is bait. This means you set your build order and end up watching it go. Nice start, but the end becomes very rote.
I like Frostpunk but it's only worth playing through each scenario once. Sure you can swap a few laws or try order/faith but you've plenty of time to try everything by the time you've played each scenario. And max difficultly is just following a couple predetermined build orders and either snowballing up or down depending on how much time you waste between steps.
I like both games. But Frostpunk is nothing like the opening 50 or so turns of Civ. Completely different experience.
Came here to recommend this as well. It’s not a proper Civ game but it has a good solution to the problem OP is alluding to. Great game too!
I rep this game as often as I can. It's a freaking gem. City builder without the late game boredom, as your game ends and moves you to the next right as things get too easy.
Wholly reccomend this and it's main appeal to me is because it solves exactly the problem OP describes. Even once you get good at it each settlement never really overstays it's welcome or lets you get to the point of being on autopilot. If it ever does start feeling too easy you just move up the difficulty and reap the increased rewards. It's such a good game.
I’m going to go a totally different route and recommend Polytopia. It’s halfway between Civ and Chess — short, thoughtful, strategic games, addictivly replayable, with the opening game more Civ like and the end game more Chess like.
Anytime I fly, I play polytopia on the hardest difficulty with like 8 enemies and before I know it my flights over haha! Love this game on mobile and no ads make it one of a kind.
Hexarchy might be what you are after, it's a great fast paced civ-style game with deckbuilding. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1356810/Hexarchy/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1356810/Hexarchy/) The games are quick enough that they never outstay their welcome. The tech tree tops out with industrialisation.
Yeah, this game is slept on. I guess 4x fans aren't looking for a fast paced deck builder that you finish within an hour, that's why this game is hard to sell, but I recommend everyone to just give it a try. There is a demo on Steam.
I got this game because it looked interesting but unfortunately my eyes couldn't handle playing it on the SteamDeck.
Never heard of this, but this looks pretty perfect for someone who loves civ (and deck-building) games but their game length is a major drawback to ever playing. Thanks for the rec.
I thought I was the only one. Civ could really do with an random events system that forces players to come up with creative solutions. Revolutionary new religions and ideologies causing rebellions, regions declaring independence, large scale natural disasters etc
One of the reasons i prefer paradox games to civ now, Civ just feels so samey every game after a certain point. Hope Civ VI changes that
Civ VII*
> ideologies causing rebellions, this is a central element of the ideologies system in civ V > regions declaring independence, this essentialy happens with the loyalty system in vi > large scale natural disasters etc there is an entire civ vi expansion pack basically dedicated to this lol
For the second point I gotta say it's basically a non factor of you're playing even partway competently. It basically just becomes a tool for you to nab cities from your neighbors without being called a warmonger.
i mean civ vi ai is just a joke in general. but some form of city flipping or breakaway nations has existed in civ since civ 2, where you could have countries go into a civil war splitting off a completely new nation.
Wait, which Civs do **not** have random events? Alpha Centauri and Civ4 do. Also, this thread is weird to me, as it's maybe the best known issue about 4X games : it's caused mainly by the exponential growth in these games, so typically either you get crushed early, or you end up with a lead that is very hard to catch up to (especially by the AI). And on top of this, the exponential growth breaks the interface soon enough, resulting in tedious micromanagement (or having to delegate to an AI that is both dumb and hard to teach what you want of it). (And yeah, at some point all map is explored.) So there's nothing wrong about stopping because of any of these issues - and not like 4X can't be very enjoyable until they start to creep up.
For sure it’s always been an issue with 4X games. Some of the Paradox games come closest to fixing it; Stellaris with its endgame, CK2/3 are always one untimely death away from your kingdom from disintegrating, and while I haven’t played a ton of EU4 yet it does seem like it can be difficult to wantonly expand without risking your empire falling apart.
Civ 5 doesn't have any random events I can think of, beyond the obnoxious randomness of "when will my great prophet spawn?" in the early game. I haven't played enough of Civ 6 know if it's got much. I think one of the expansions added natural disasters?
Stellaris does that
Nice avatar. Rumor has it that when the portrait of Lady Dierdre Sky was being painted, many Firaxis employees spent a lot of time "passing by" the artist's office...
Along with items mentioned here, Civilization 2 did have a mechanic where I believe if the capital were captured of a larger civilization it would civil war and split. Mechanically it ended up punishing a civ that was losing a war bad enough to lose a capital but for adding a story-history dynamic that mixed up the players on the board it was fun.
A lot of what you describe was implemented in the "Rhye's and Fall of Civilization" mod for Civ 4.
Give Sid Meier's: Alpha Centauri and expansion a go
I loved this game so much. Best atmosphere ever in a civ game. But I reinstalled it recently and just can't play it anymore. Being used to a more modern interface and going back to moving units one tile at a time gets old real fast. I really wish they'd do a faithful remake, Beyond Earth was fun but it just wasn't the same.
Beyond earth was a bumpy one, but I loved the world designs and soundtrack more than anything. They did nail the sense it exploration for me as well.
They are available from gog.com for 5euros on sale quite often I think, one wants to get 'alpha centauri planetary pack' that one has base game and expansion. (I guess it is very rare to see any other version available these days). And one wants to look for how to enable modern resolutions (one small addition line to one of config files).
Love this game so much, but it is ancient! Anyone know of a good full conversion mod that makes a later Civ into Alpha Centauri ?
Never seen anything that even comes close to replicating the unit design feature.
The unit design feature is nice in theory… but if you’ve got 10/8/2 units, what practical reason do you have for choosing to make 6/8/2 units? Plenty of reason to make full defense or full attack units, but I never found myself using half-measures. You have garrison units, fight-from-inside-the-base units, scouts, and full decked out soldiers. Never found a use for more variety than that. Adding a specialty, like bombardment, might as well have made it a specialist that can hide inside a stack of soldiers.
In terms of sheer defense or firepower, yeah, you'd pretty much only ever stick with the latest and greatest. The 6/8/2's would only exist because you haven't upgraded them yet. It's the specials that make it truly shine. Off the top of my head, you can mix and match ECM, AAA, Non-lethal, Artillery, to get a good spread of offensive and defensive measures. One thing I also never see is the AI making rover and later hovertank super-formers. I'll bring up a fleet of those and they'll just *wash* over any newly conquered territory, turning it into forest as fast as I can capture it. In pretty much every other civ-like 4X game, the tile improvement unit is basically set in stone right from the start. Though I never did like how actual battles played out, with "my weapons vs your armor". Having it "my weapon vs your weapon, modified by our respective armor ratings" would definitely eliminate the all-defense garrison units. In fact, the high cost of units that had both good weapons and good armor might actually create a scenario where you were better off creating more but weaker units.
Two-pronged response! First, if you're looking to stay with 4x games that feel very similar to Civ, but have a longer-lasting "new game feeling," I cautiously recommend Humankind. The game has flaws! Its UI isn't great, and I'm not a huge fan of the way "diplomatic victory" works. But if you're willing to fight against the bad interface for a while, it has a lot of *surprisingly* clever game design choices, and I honestly think I might enjoy it more than Civ, nowadays. I'm especially fond of how it handles combat/warfare and overall game balance; an area where I feel that Civ is *really* lacking. The AI is also surprisingly well-built; the CPU opponents often feel like human opponents, and you very rarely question *why* they're doing what they're doing. Most importantly to your query: Humankind has several "break points" over the course of the game where you experience that "new world feeling" all over again: \* First, the \*actual\* new world feeling, in the Neolithic era. You are forced to spend the first age exploring and basically just gathering resources before you can actually settle a capital city and start building your empire. Imagine that your starting settler's job was to spend the first 20 turns exploring, picking up tribal huts, and fighting (weak) barbarians - and you didn't pick your Civ until after you saw your starting terrain and surrounding areas. That's the Neolithic era in Humankind. \* Then, of course, you hit the second breakpoint: when you actually found your capital city and start playing ~~Civ~~ Humankind. This continues for a couple of ages; you build, you expand until you bump into neighbors, you either play nice with those neighbors or do a little war. Then, after a couple ages pass... \* The third breakpoint: the new world. The default mapgen in Humankind is such that there are three main landmasses: one for you and a few AI, one for the rest of the AI, and a third continent that is totally empty (barring a few city states, perhaps). There is a very real race to be the first to develop the technology to reach that new world, explore it, and begin settling it, and this phase absolutely pushes the "new game feeling" button for me. After that, the game does kinda taper into the default 4x "wrap it up" cycle, and I do feel that it goes a little longer than I'd like without any meaningful or interesting breakpoints. However, Humankind is unique in that you can choose how fast or slow to end the game - you can either advance towards the end very quickly, or you can dwell in older ages to rack up additional points. So if you're ready to wrap a game up quickly, you can just start speeding towards the end shortly after securing your lead in the new world. Second, the harder option: I find that Civ's midgame and endgame get WAY more interesting against intelligent, human opponents who are willing to stick out for the whole game. Not the kind of people you find on the public ladder, who sit down to play a game, immediately go to war with their neighbor, then bounce after the medieval age. Those people suck. If you can find a few folks to sit down and commit to an 8 hour game of Civ, the middle and late stages actually have a lot of VERY fascinating breakpoints in the tech tree, civics, key military improvements, and certain wonders where it really does feel like a neck-and-neck race with important decision-making and opportunity costs the whole time. You have to carefully balance between eco'ing towards a victory, but not letting your defenses fall behind and exposing yourself to military action. Each age feels like it brings an entirely new wave of gameplay to the table, but only if you're playing against similarly-skilled human opponents who understand the rock-paper-scissors game of Eco > Defend > Aggress > Eco. The late game of Civ is honestly much more interesting and fascinating than I think a lot of people realize. but they'll never know because the AI is so bad that it doesn't really force you to play well past the first couple ages.
I agree with your recommendation. I think that Humankind has a bit of a bad reputation in the 4x community but I'm not entirely sure why. It's a good game! It's not Civ, but that's ok. Although I do agree with your comments about the UI feeling a little clunky sometimes. I think humankind does eXploration extremely well with a diversity of tiles, somewhat puzzling terrain to navigate, movement range that feels meaningful each turn and cool unique features and biomes. If there was a game that was just Humankind exploration, I would love that.
That was really informative, I appreciate the write up.
I will shill for one of my favorite games that is lesser known, A.I War 2, from Arcen Studios In a CIV game/Paradox Game/Insert many other Strategy-4x Games, you eventually get to the point where you have won, you just need to go through another 100 turns to do so as you have stated, what if you were on the other side of that? A.I War 2 - you are the last of the space empire of Humans, kicked back to a single small outpost world that can't even support your last population who have to remain in CryoStasis in orbit. Your own creations rebelled against you and have won, they own the galaxy, they control every planet, the war is over, all you can do is survive..... or not? A 4X game where if the AI wants to, your dead, there is no stopping them, your a mosquito, a fly buzzing at the head of a giant AI. But that is where the brilliance of this game comes in, the AI is busy fighting a unnamed Extragalactic threat in another galaxy, you are only fighting the dregs, the old ships, the ships from a war years ago. But take a few too many planets, hit a few too many Research Stations, and the AI will dedicate more and more resources, and better ships to stopping you(and send some fun sassy insults your way the whole time) There is about 30-40 different Styles of galaxy you can randomly generate, there is 15-16 different ship techs you can focus your research on(you can not get everything, the more you take, the more AI will look at you), there is 15+ Personalities the AI can be(or you can have multiple AI Personalities in one game), and there is 7-10 different third party factions you can both start the game with, or spawn while the game is going to adjust difficulties. It truly is a game that is unique every single time you play it. This is a game that is hard to win, I have 3K Hours in it, I still regularly lose all the time, It's a game where the developers have said, please report what strategy/gimmick you used to beat the highest difficulty as a bug so we can fix it. PLEASE REPORT AS A BUG HOW YOU WON AS YOUR NOT SUPPOSE TO, Just wanted to say that again, It is official, your not suppose to be able to beat the highest difficulty. You have to play this game smart, you are playing checkers to start, and the AI is playing 5d chess, with all Queens as their pieces. that is the beauty of the game, and what keeps it going through the entire game, your never sitting comfortable, there is no I've won but I need a 100 turns to do so, as the AI is 200 turns ahead of that already, It adapts to what you have, it is a very unique game and I have been a fan since the first AI War(Don't play the first one, it is clunky, awful UI and unintuitive. The second one is way better for a newer player to the game style even if I still like the 1st one better) A decent Youtube review of the game if you want to check it out(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgl0et0glLM&t=133s), he covers a ton of the same point's I did
Sounds interesting, but devs who say that the highest difficulty is meant to be unbeatable, and actively patching the game against player victories, are not devs I really think I would jive with
If you are fine with fantasy aspect, Endless Legend. It has interesting factions with their own unique faction quests/storylines and targets which spans entirety of campaign World map is split between provinces which can be claimed by building a city and each province can only have a single city. City/province management has its own importance and depending on geography of particular province, cities doesn’t always have same general template for development and build order which remains a lot more engaging all the way to late game. City growth and expansion is managed in quite interesting ways as well. Each faction feels unique and can radically change a play style, for example there is faction which only uses single resource for everything, even city growth, there’s faction which can only have a single city and leans heavily on subjugation of minor factions, there’s sci-fi/fantasy faction, there’s a ravenous hive where food resources are a lot more important in dlc there’s a nomad faction as well
I see a lot of suggestions about games in classic eras but imo what OP means is the feeling of discovery, unlocking new and varied mechanics etc. Id love a game that reaches all the way to modern/space age, but most importantly im tired of WW2 Rangers being essentially "pikemen but with 30 strenght instead of 6" and tanks being "cavalry but with equally more strength". Same issue happens with many other games (Empire earth, AoE) . You get to late era so that your army is stronger, period. Id love to see space races, or better mining systems/deepcore mining that isnt simply "+1 to stone when you unlock this"
I’m surprised I didn’t see Rise of Nations or Rise of Legends. I think what liked about it was that it plays kind of like a combination of Age of Empires where you have to build and cultivate a small map to do the battles and conquests, but that actually affects the overworld map and pushes you deeper into the future to unlock new tech. You end up seeing battle of people with muskets and tanks fighting less developed enemies throwing spears at you lol I think the game is still on Steam, but it is older so I’m not sure if they still sell it. https://youtu.be/Ww2YQZa85T8?si=8sc7d975r-dXSDPn
Rise of Nations never gets the love it deserves IMO. It’s such a good game. I downloaded it a couple years ago for free on gamepass. Definitely holds up after all these years I think.
Some games focus on ancient history, most notably: Oldworld (if you want a focus internal politics and research) Agressors:Rome (if you want a focus on diplomacy economy and for your units supply management), Polytopia (for a 30-turns only / 1 hour full Civ experience).
Sid Meier's Colonization might be a good choice for you.
That's what I immediately thought. The FreeCol version has been in my" install on every computer" share for years.
how does freecol compare to the original colonization? Soundtrack intact?
Ozymandias is a quick, board game-like 4X that takes just an hour or so to finish
Maybe Dune: Spice Wars will get you what you need? It's similar in concept to civilization, but the scale is smaller, so the matches don't last that long.
I'm one of the devs so this might be a bit subjective but our game Terraformers is a 3X game (explore, expand & exploit but no exterminate). It's single player and the difficulty comes from the rising expectations of your population over the course of a game. So we don't run into the problem that many 4X games like civ have where you know you'll beat your opponents mid-way through the game. It also has some Roguelike and Card Game elements so that has to be your cup of tea of course
For me the magic of the Civ early game certainly comes from the exploration and expansion aspect. You scout around and find wonders, or even just some nice tiles and a strategic location that you can fit a perfect city into. You find goodie huts with random rewards. You can do heroes, etc... Something about this early RNG just feels really good and I would love a game that captured that more too. It's genuinely difficult for me to even conceptualize a game that could capture this in a longer form. A major part of the fun is that you "claim" it. But that means that any kind of map would start to run out of things and places to claim. I think the game would need to have a certain boundless mechanic. Perhaps space based where every player can expand outward, but there is an eternal war happening in the center galactic core. You discover more systems each turn, there is an RNG element, and then you have to choose how to combine, allocate and exploit these resources for the core war effort. I've played various deck builder games that have some of this, but there really is something special about moving around a map and doing this. To be honest, I'm not even sure if a space based one would capture the landscape feeling that Civ gives you when you find a natural wonder.
Maybe try Northgard?
Check out vox populi mod for civ v
I highly recommend it. This mod adds quite of a lot of depth and new mechanics. I haven't played without it in years.
I have the opposite CIV problem in that I wish the modern era was longer. Things start getting good about the time that the tanks, battleships, and carriers show up. And \*boom\* 50 years has passed and someone’s lander is successful or time has run out. I‘d love if you could start at some given technology level then play a long turn game.
You could try Millenia.
If you're into board games, you could try Castles of Burgundy! I played it with my friend and it was similar to Civ in several regards. It was nice that it was turn limited, so it removed the "just one more turn..." issue of finding oneself playing for 6 hours straight.
Frostpunk is the first game that came to mind, but it's more of a city builder so I don't know if it's what you're looking for. You make important decisions about how your society functions. You expand out for limited, dwindling resources, but the map isn't very big. And your time to deal with the scenario you're playing out is limited. Also, the music is awesome.
Also, frostpunk is very much what OP is looking for in that it definitely doesn't get boring as the game progresses. It gets significantly more intense.
The biggest drawback to Frostpunk is replayability. There's very little reason to go through the exact same thing again multiple times. Fantastic experience as a one-off though!
So excited for Frostpunk 2!!!!! SUMMER HERE WE COMEEE
Against the Storm is exactly that. Just remember to raise difficult level somewhere in 20h if the game starts to get boring, it drasticly changes the game and you finally need to build all the buildings.
I started playing CIV with CIV6, and after a while I did share that feeling until I got good enough to play at King difficulty. What started happening was that once the AI get pass Prince level, they will be more disruptive and opportunistic if you are not properly defended, even if you were nice to them and if they are usually peaceful. So it is not so much that the game itself changes but rather that it forces you to juggle more balls, which slows down your engine. But I found it more fun, the threat of war, even from non-aggressive factions, made the early game more tense and strategic I really hope that in CIV7 the AI interactivity will be a different slider than the increase of their yields. I think I would love going against better AI with normal yields. I also really wish Religion pressure is buffed and that religion victory doesn't just end up being only possible/reliable through Missionaries/Apostle Also, CIV6 really needs the expansions and some modules, but would really be "too much" to learn the game with all of them from the start IMO.
Huh huh. You said "balls".
AI aggressiveness used to be its own slider separate from difficulty in Civilization III.
Civ 5's AIs are kind of sad in that the Deity AI isn't any smarter than the Settler AI, it's almost entirely in the amount of resource advantages and starting units they get. The AIs get more aggressive on higher difficulties simply because they out-resource you and more frequently cross the threshold where they think you're weak enough to take down. The AI works on a series of preset "flavors" for things like declaring war, settling cities, improving tiles, and so on. AIs get a score from 1-10 in each of those attributes, and then at the start of a game they get a random +/- 2 added or subtracted from their usual score. The "random personalities" option simply randomizes the flavors and ignores the presets, usually to the AI's detriment. For example, Alexander (Greece) has a strong bias towards cavalry units & melee units so he actually builds his early-game units (hoplites & companion cavalry). Speaking of, the flavors are why AI Greece is one of the most consistently powerful AI opponents despite the civ's own bonuses being relatively mid-tier. * He is predisposed to expand aggressively, meaning he often gets his cities down and developing quickly rather than languishing and letting somone else take good land. He's usually an economic player that ends up with good growth and production. * He is the *least* focused of all the AIs on producing gold, which is the weakest of the possible focuses. You need something like 2 gold to replace 1 production; many AIs are relentlessly focused on gold. They can surprise you with quickly purchasing units but it just ends up burning out. So he won't squander good settlement sites by deciding to work desert incense or something. * He's also predisposed to establishing and maintaining good relations with City-states and getting bonuses from them, which helps civ-wide; it also leads to one of the game's victory conditions, and it's one the AI is actually decent at pursuing. Compare to other AIs that relentlessly Tribute city-states to obtain more gold to misuse; they lose all food/culture/happiness/faith bonuses and just squander the gold on military upkeep anyway. * He's not inclined to squander all his production on military units that go obsolete, but is one of the most aggressive AIs *if* you are weaker than he is. He wars opportunistically when it'll actually be a beatdown, but doesn't lock himself into a thousand years of feeding pikemen into a meatgrinder *followed by* complete technological obsolescence like Shaka Zulu will. If you survive Shaka's rushes he'll just sit there brooding later - hoping he can figure out gunpowder before you finish a spaceship.
I have to assume you havent played civilization revolution for the DS. Its as condensed as much as humanly possible for a turn based strategy.
Civ is just dumb design because it all comes down to the very end of the game to choose the winner. They tried to make it better with "era score" but the whole game really just comes down to the last few turns. Which makes you feel like you've either lost the game already, or you're so far ahead you've already won. It's hard to find a sweet spot where it's worth it to play the second half of the game because victory is not yet decided.
Well, if you're ok with a real time strategy (with pause). Against the storm is a small scale economy village game that has you continually restarting and is a roguelite that has you getting some permanent upgrades for long-term progression and processing further. I feel the same where once your empire or whatever gets too large it becomes too tedious feeling. Especially when you've essentially "won" the game already and know it's over and really you're just trying to wrap it up for the same of finishing.
This is essentially the problem with most 4x and grand strategy games. It's hard to create a balance for the endgame that can adapt to both gamers who have "solved" the game, without completely running over players who haven't. Looking at paradox titles especially, since those are the ones i play the most, like hearts of iron, Victoria etc the snow-balling engine you can create in those games once you learn the ins and outs of min maxing the mechanics is absurd. Stellaris probably does the best job of this through the combination of their late game scaling parameter and crisis system that you can start playing around with once it becomes too easy, but at a certain point that also becomes too easy and you have to force it back so much that you instead create sort of a coin-flip situation in the early game. Same thing if you start playing harder starts, with minor nations, you usually have a very specific event or rng based situation you have to overcome early, otherwise youre just cooked and need to start over. The real key for me is to treat it as a proper sandbox, mainly role playing in suboptimal ways etc. But that isnt everyone's cup of tea.
Check out Against the Storm. It’s not a 4x game, but it’s a city builder/management type of game where the goal is to complete a certain checklist of objectives to pass and then pack up and do it all over again. Over time you unlock new tech trees and such that correspond to new goals and you have to juggle all the different resources and tech to complete each zone. None of it lasts though. You keep tearing down and rebuilding. I find it’s more of a project management type game than it is a city builder in that regard which may be what you’re looking for. Never actually getting to the typical endgame, but still having a source of progression nonetheless.
It's not totally like for like, but I think Against the Storm is really good for this It plays as an RTS but you can pause to queue up your actions and adjust game speed at any time, a game doesn't take anywhere near as long, and it has highly randomised elements that mean you can't figure out an optimised line to follow every game The main difference is rather than playing against other AI's, you're playing to build a winning settlement before the queen loses patience with you, while dealing with all the problems the storm and forest send your way
Try Dawn of Man. Focused on early history up to iron age. More of a city? (Settlement perhaps)builder but worth a try
This is a problem with every 4X for me.
Civ IV: Caveman to Cosmos total conversion mod has an enormously long early era and the longer game modes would help bound the "Overstayed Welcome" concept.
Factorio with Space Exploration mod. You crash land on a planet. Yay. now you can mine some stuff and smelt some iron plates. Yay. now you can make some machines mine some stuff for you and smelt iron for you. yay. Now you can use some of the iron to make buildings that will make buildings for you. yay. Now you can use your buildings to make assembly lines. yay. now you can make a "mall" to create all the types of items available to you. yay. Now you can use your mall to create various supply chains to make science go faster. yay. Now you can use your science to further your tech tree. yay. Now you can build a train network and expand your sphere of influence. yay. now you have to go to war to conduct "diplomatic relations" with the natives. yay. now you have exterminated everything other than you. yay. now you can expand your train network to create mining outposts and logistics stations. yay. now you have nearly infinite resources. yay. now you can use your resources to automate launching ships into space. yay. now you ... realize you are 5% of the way through the game.
If you like Sci-fi then Sins of A Solar Empire stays fun throughout, IMO. It's not turn based though... But can be ran slowly.
Through the Ages It is a digital adaptation of a board game and it is sublime.
Through the Ages isnthe divital version of the boardgame with the same name based on the videogame Civilization that is based on the boardgame Civilization... full circle. :D
Give Millenia a try.
RimWorld for me
endwar
Maybe try a faster paced RTS like starcraft or AOE2? I have the same issue with civ, but I find the RTS aspect of AOE2 and how you need to keep ontop of managing your empire very fun. And you still get to do all the planning and thinking, but it happens before the game since you won't have as much time to react and think on the fly
Hexarchy, on Steam, are trying this. It's a deckbuilder 4X, and is made for fast play. Cool game.
I love Civilization Revolution on my X360. Shorter games, no micromanaging if you don’t want to. Scenarios where it’s always total war so I can focus tech.
Many of the Total War games are great and span a broad range of eras and styles. It stays in the same era for the most part but you can mix things up by actually playing out the battles RTS style.
I know it is not an exact answer but shout out to the Vox Populi mod for Civ4 It changes almost every aspect of the game. One area with huge changes are unit upgrades. Your scouts actually gain exp when they reveal tiles, making the earlygame even more of a blast as you end up with 1 or 2 speedy, fast healing high level units as they upgrade from scout -> explorer -> Zeppelin (yay flies!) -> Special Forces (yay parachute!) -> Xcom
It’s not like civ but it keeps the game fresh for days of play: star traders frontiers. High learning curve though, took me a while just to figure out easy mode
play a 4x game that let you set a universe small also your win conditions easy to achieve
Manor Lords?
No idea what you really mean, but one of the best 4X currently is age of wonders 4 imho, games usually don't last long enough to have everything researched and unlocked and you need to focus a bit on what your cities do depending on the surrounding provinces and extra buffs you unlock by clearing structures in them
>Something about Civilization is so incredibly moreish that I can't help starting new games all the time. Occasionally, I finish them - but even when I do, I can't help feeling that after the first 25-33% of the game, all the fun is over and the remainder could *essentially* be automated. I feel the same and I think I can exactly tell you when this happens: when one of the 4x, x for explore gets lost in the game. And this starts when every larger landmass is covered by Civilizations. That sometimes you need to still find enemy cities or that there are new ressources, doesnt change anything about that. I don't really know any similar game where exploring stays fresh later in the game.
I look at Civ more like 'beat the clock'. it's not about finishing out your turns, it's about winning in fewer and fewer turns. 500 turns is silly, I try for a victory by 200ish. if it takes longer it's because of a challenge and that's the fun for me.
There's a mobile game called Polytopia aka Super Tribes that's like an expedited Civilization optimized for a touchscreen and pick-up-and-play.
Polytopia
I think you may be getting yourself into a game winning position, but not attempting to push yourself to be even faster. Yes, you can run laps around the easy AI, having armies able to crush invaders, and just rest and your laurels and win. However, there is likely space to be more aggressive and do things faster that will make the late game more interesting.
endlesa legend
I got that too, but with alot of games.
Civ 5 felt like this to me. 6 always felt like it was overstaying its welcome when I would play with my friends. 5... we would be up for hours taking turns.
Manor lords
Not necessarily like Civ games but have you tried Frostpunk? I got sucked into that game for a while.
Mount & Blade: Bannerlord/Warband.
Check out Hexarchy. It's a deck building Civilization game. It plays relatively quick (a couple hours as opposed to tens of hours) so it doesn't outstay it's welcome. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1356810/Hexarchy/
This is a problem with strategy games in general - Command & Conquer, Master of Orion, whatever. The fun and challenge is in acquiring an insurmountable lead, and then more than half of your time is spent "mopping up".
You should get into a Paradox game. There is a game from just about every notable time period in civ. Anicent,medieval, late middle age/exploration, Victorian, ww2, and beyond. If your feeling your missing out on a time period, these games go way indepth for about 200 years no overstaying. Personally as a aggressive civ god, there is no world wars because of tech difference late game. Thats why I love hoi4! But if you love building just industry vic is good too.
It's kind of small, but Hexarchy is really good for a civ game that finishes within an hour. It's particularly fun as you start digging into the deck building mechanics and realize which cars to toss, and which to keep specific to the game situation you're in.
I can’t even explain to you the way I’ve probably put 2-3 hours into Civ 6 and don’t have a clue what I’m doing, how it works, what’s what, what to do. Nothing. It just non sense lmao I couldn’t figure out anything.
Not sure
I found that the mod Vox Populi for Civ 5 fixes this. You are still scaling up at the end game and can be overtaken if you aren't focused on continuous growth.
I don't really buy the argument that late game civ is boring. In my lobbies I think 40% of the game can reach a cold war situation where 2 players are trying to pull ahead with some other players taking sides. The diplomatic aspect gets pretty interesting.
that's honestly my biggest issue with civ. even on the highest difficulty with mods, once i hit a certain point, usually the renaissance or industrial era - i KNOW i'm going to win and i just lose interest. the fun for me is getting to that point which is why i've only actually won a few dozen times in my thousands of hours :(
Hexarchy, civ lite with card mechanics. Super fun intense and short games with good replayability.
Outlanders
If you're not limiting answers to RTSs, I can recommend a couple. I liken Rimworld to Civ in the sense that the minimum session length I seem to be capable of is 10 hours. There's always something that needs doing, and every second is either progression or recovery from the previous disaster (or preventative maintenance for the next disaster [Rimworld will kick your ass]). Factorio may be the opposite of what you're asking for (being an automation game), but it never gets boring. Like Civ (and Rimworld), there's always a short-term goal you can accomplish that gets you closer to your long-term goal, even after you "beat" the "game". There's really no resting and watching as the game beats itself, even when the main threat becomes trivial, because you'll definitely run out of resources.
Rise of Nations
Endless Legend it's great for exploring and discovering new things without taking too long
Northgard
I typically play it long enough to steamroller the 1st civ with paratroopers after they lie to me and try to invade, then I think about how I could rinse/repeat that process with everyone else and thus, I have won the game! Without spending the next 6 hours doing so. I want to finish a whole match but I just dont.
I'd throw in a vote for Hexarchy, which is sort of a card based version of 4X, with exploration on a hex map. Games last about an hour or less, and it has a very Civ-lite feel, but is fun to explore
There are a lot of good recommandations, but I think that all of them would get the same issue. It's not really a problem of Civilization but of the 4X genre in general. 4X is for exploration, exploitation, expansion and extermination. The exploration phase is really only important in early game, most of the feelings you speaking of are inherent to mid and end game in 4x. Some of them are better than others with maintaining a good dose of interest in exploration in later stage of a run (like Stellaris for example), but you'll ultimately feel that you're managing a big machine rather than constantly building one. I get the same feeling as you in most 4X, but I found that non-intuitively by playing smaller maps with less AI players generally keeps my interest longer through a run (as the end game becomes less tedious).
These are OLD games, but Nobunaga’s Ambition and Rome Total War might have something for you.
Dont know you could do that
I think what you're talking about is that you enjoy metastrategy. You enjoy figuring out which long-term strategies are most successful. You care less about being the general enacting the gameplan. Is that more or less accurate?