In traditional 4X there's a very big gap between "I am going to win" and "I have won", as you say. I find that is slightly improved by a habit drummed into me by the civfanatics forums; when I'm going to win, go out and win.
Oh, I don't regard this as necessarily a problem, myself; I've always far preferred the building side of such games, and find it quite satisfying to get far enough ahead to be able to focus on goals of that sort.
This matters more at the higher difficulty levels where being first to Rifling might not mean _being_ first to the spaceship (especially if I beelined Rifling to start the aforementioned crushing process, or if I'm playing One-City Challenge where producing spaceship parts takes forever), but also it does get the game over with sooner and gives me more to do than press Next Turn a lot.
Getting the game over with sooner is rarely something that strikes me as a positive, when I am in the mood for such a thing at all; and if it does, I can at this point usually complete a one-city spaceship victory in Civ 1 in about 90 minutes, modulo the sort of strokes of bad luck that make it unwinnable very early. I have played very little Civ 4, a moderate amount of Civ 5, and as yet no Civ 6 at all, and most of what keeps me preferentially coming back to the earlier games is not liking the feeling that a dozen cities is what the later games think of as a large civilisation and a hundred-city empire is not something they are really thinking in terms of.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-21 03:00 pm (UTC)Oh, I don't regard this as necessarily a problem, myself; I've always far preferred the building side of such games, and find it quite satisfying to get far enough ahead to be able to focus on goals of that sort.
This matters more at the higher difficulty levels where being first to Rifling might not mean _being_ first to the spaceship (especially if I beelined Rifling to start the aforementioned crushing process, or if I'm playing One-City Challenge where producing spaceship parts takes forever), but also it does get the game over with sooner and gives me more to do than press Next Turn a lot.
Getting the game over with sooner is rarely something that strikes me as a positive, when I am in the mood for such a thing at all; and if it does, I can at this point usually complete a one-city spaceship victory in Civ 1 in about 90 minutes, modulo the sort of strokes of bad luck that make it unwinnable very early. I have played very little Civ 4, a moderate amount of Civ 5, and as yet no Civ 6 at all, and most of what keeps me preferentially coming back to the earlier games is not liking the feeling that a dozen cities is what the later games think of as a large civilisation and a hundred-city empire is not something they are really thinking in terms of.