Anyone feel that Sid Meier games are fun for awhile then get boring quickly

[luj1]

I played Civilization II-III, Alpha Centauri and Pirates!

All of them are insanely fun and addicting in the beginning. Mileage may vary. But then you realize how repetitive the gameplay loop is (regardless of game depth).

Anyone else under this impression?

 

[tindrli]

Its because you are getting old. at least that's what happened to me

 

[rusty_shackleford]

civ games are just the gateway drug to grand strategy games

 

[Vic]

increase difficulty

 

[spectre]

increase difficulty

That's actually the opposite. On higher difficulties where (I'm talking mostly about CIV) the AI is cheating like a mofo,
meaning there is very little room for suboptimal play and you need to pull every slingshot and every little bit of cheese to stay in the game.

I'd say you get exactly this feeling when there is one kosher and optimized way to play the game, guaranteeing a win whenever you pull it off.
The fun is in figuring it out, but once you do you're basically done with the game, unless your brain enjoys to autistically go through the motions.

 

[Grauken]

I played Civilization II-III, Alpha Centauri and Pirates!

All of them are insanely fun and addicting in the beginning. Mileage may vary. But then you realize how repetitive the gameplay loop is (regardless of game depth).

Anyone else under this impression?

Depends on how long you have played the game. Despite how good a game is, play it at any length and you start to see how it works, the patterns or the gameplay loop. I don't know any game where this doesn't happen and at least with those games, it takes far longer than with your run of the mill RPG

 

[luj1]

The fun is in figuring it out, but once you do you're basically done with the game

Yes, this is it

 

[luj1]

I don't know any game where this doesn't happen and at least with those games, it takes far longer than with your run of the mill RPG

The opposite for me.

I played these games almost 20 years ago. Pirates! I figured out in 4 days and it became boring quickly. SMAC I needed longer to figure out, maybe a month (?) but the same thing happened. Compare this to Caesar III which is not the same genre perhaps but you can spend years figuring it out and advancing your strategies.

I think Sid Meier games have depth, but they lack variability.

 

[Grauken]

I think Sid Meier games have depth, but they lack variability.

For Civ II and III this is somewhat alleviated by the crazy amount of mods out there

 

[Incognito/STK]

Love the original Civ, still fire it up sometimes with DOSbox and a CRT for maximum member berries. Like to do stupid earth configs at higher difficulties. The AI is predictable, but I don’t think it detracts from the overall fun.

 

[spectre]

Well, I have a sweet spot for Civ1 because it was one of the three games that came with my very first PC.
Funny enough, the best I can remember about the game is not related to the gameplay, but it's when I was figuring out the copy protection (you had to pick which techs lead to which).
It felt more rewarding to pick the answer from memory rather than look it up.

Now, as to the actual discussion, I think one of the factors that might contribute to this feeling of sameness is the importance of land grab in Civ and AC.
Theoretically, these games had a bunch of corruption mechanics in place that should discourage just sprawling all over the map (I remember AC being a bit better in this regard comared to CIV2-3),
but in the end, expansion was always the superior choice.
This lead to your empire being a blanket of noname 1-2 pop cities, with only a bunch standing out... and even those would be same-ish
from game to game, as you discovered the most optimal path through the tech tree and wonders.

Now a game that hasn't come up, but probably should, is Sid Meier's Colonization. I have a bunch of issues with it, but I think mechanically it at least attempted
to fix the above problem, because you had to setup entire production chains based on available resources, the entire logistics chains, as well as a way to dump
the product. This way your cities had to specialize and you couldn't just blindly carpet the entire land and had to account for your neighbors, European powers, etc.

All this was a delicate balancing act where you didn't want to rely too much on Europe, and you also had to to manage your relations with the natives and other europeans.
There was also the ultimate goal of achieving independence you had to keep in mind, which meant keeping the liberty sentiment up (limiting the influx of immigrants),
as well as to prep for the inevitable showdown with the king.

There was one other game I remember which tried something similar, Pandora: First Contact. It's an Alpha Centauri wannabe (it has it's charm), but with an external endgame threat as a twist.
Haven't played this one in ages, and I think I might have missed a DLC for it.

 

[laclongquan]

Possibly because OP get tired of micromanagement in the later part of each runs. Which around that time should be ten times the amount in the beginning.

One would advise to find way to eliminate micromanagement... until you realize it's a very bad advice. Game such as SMAC or Civ is all about micromanagement. Eliminate that and the games just turn into papercard, aka grand stragegy games~

Real advice? Either you get your fun doing micromanagement (aka stay in the kitchen) or get out to try games in other genres.

 

[Axioms]

Sid Meier games all work the same. You have to enjoy breaking the game. RE-rolling for good starts, pushing growth to the limit, optimizing your tech choices, etc. And of course mods.

But the games themselves are pretty simplistic. Like, Paradox is simplistic, but Civ is *way* more simplistic. And it is traditional "gamey" design whereas Paradox was more "toy/sim" design.

The majority of my time in Civ, mostly Civ3 and Civ6, is rolling an awesome start and trying to minmax my way to all wonders in one city and hitting battleships and carriers around 1200-1500. Playng the game as intended is very limited in time spent. Of course when you play your first 4x game it seems way funner and lasts longer because you don't already have extensive knowledge of the genre plays. So mastering your first 4x or GS game always seems more fun.

 

[tindrli]

I played these games almost 20 years ago.

This!

 

[Gregz]

The fun is in figuring it out, but once you do you're basically done with the game

Yes, this is it

This is true of all games.

 

[luj1]

This!

That is my whole point. I felt this way when I played them 20 years ago.

 

[luj1]

This is true of all games.

Yes, but some games take way longer to figure out. Sid Meier games do not take long.

 

[Lady Error]

importance of land grab in Civ and AC.

I know people generally dislike it, but in Civ V it is possible to win without grabbing much land (there are diplomatic and cultural victories, in addition to tech or domination victories). What I like about Civ V is that it has a strategic top-down view which is exactly what I was looking for since Civ 1.

 

[AdamReith]

Master of Orion 2 does this to me. I will play it for an entire weekend or I will randomly hit a point where I just say "meh" and turn it off.

There is a lot of micromanagement but I don't think that's it, once you feel you can predict the remainder of the game it just stops being interesting.

A lot of the let's plays I see are people playing on impossible as a creative race holed up in the corner of the map, it's like watching paint dry.

 

[Induktio]

MOO2 is somewhat easier on impossible because the AI can't handle some rush tactics that well. However, MOO1 is really tricky on impossible from my experience. And the AI gets humongous production bonuses while the combat is more of a numbers game. Most of the time you might as well keep rolling on good starts with a couple of nearby yellow/green planets to expand on, otherwise you'll get stomped on by the AI. Many experienced players might have difficulty winning over half of the impossible starts.

 

[Dr1f7]

The fun is in figuring it out, but once you do you're basically done with the game

Yes, this is it

yeah i like to play a game of civ once every few years then i'm good for a while

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Alpha Centauri

Probably one of the greatest games of all time, if not the greatest.

I've been playing it for decades and haven't gotten bored of it. In fact, I am disappointed that there hasn't been a strategy game since that does a good a job as it does.

The tech tree and unit customizations are world class.

 

[octavius]

Sid's games could have used the secret ingredient that makes Master of Orion stay fresh much longer: unpredictability. In MoO the factions are unbalanced, and which factions and what tech will appear in a game is semi-random, so it makes the game far more replayable than the Civ games IMO. SMAC was a move in the right direction, making it easily superior to Civ 1-3, but not quite enough.

 

[Martyr]

play Master of Orion 3 - honestly.
don't read anything about the game (except the manual ofc, which is pretty damn good btw), don't look at guides, don't install any mods (other than strawberry/tropical) that change anything but bugs. try to figure out the entire game with its micro- and macromanagment yourself, don't let the AI automate ANYTHING. seriously, MoO3 will keep you busy for a long, long time. if you play it the right way, you're going to feel like the ruler of an entire galaxy.

 

[coldcrow]

Then you figure out that you can approach the AI and trade techs and assorted crap for a "worthless" planet inside their empire, build a MOB-center, instantly materialize your deathray-equipped fleet you kept in reserves at said mob-center and proceed to glass their core planets.

AI-exploits besides, I am very fond of Moo3s economic system. It's probably the best in any 4X ever and I have logged hundreds of hours in that game.