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Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

I love playing these kind of "strategy" games (Civ, Total War, to a lesser extent DotA 2, etc). I don't have time anymore, as I am a startup founder, and I simply can't play these for just 1-2 hours a week. I'll play again in a few years :)

What typically annoys me is the AI in these games: never challenging enough, or challenging in the right way. Years and years, and the only hope is that the AI team at Google will figure out a way to apply their ML/DL AI to many games at once. (they did it for DotA 2, with remarkable results).

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I've found that Civ is great to play if you're time poor, if you have the self control for it. It's totally possible to play just one or two turns a day, and play a game out over several weeks.

Total War, on the other hand, is not so good. Too many times I've thought "I'll just finished this turn up", and then when the AI has their turn, I end up stuck in half a dozen battles and 2 hours later I'm still playing.

>If you have the self control for it

Do you remember the commercial ads for this game? Many of us will keep telling ourselves "just one more turn", "no really the next turn is the last one" until day breaks.

I actually find Civ great to play on a long flight (as long as I have access to a power outlet, it chews through my laptop battery). Makes a 6-7 hour flight, er, fly by. But I never finish a game, I just get to somewhere around the Classic era and have to shut my laptop off. And the next flight I take I'm never in the mood to resume a game, so I just start again.

Lots of fun, though.

I've got 18 hours across 2 legs from India to the US later today and playing Civ5 is exactly my plan. The time absolutely flies by playing it on a plane.

I tried a couple of times over the last several years. Somehow I find it very uncomfortable to play a videogame on a flight, where a few people can easily see what I am doing. Not sure why being observed makes me feel awkward.

I feel the same way sometimes. There's something about planes - if you're in an aisle seat you can see everything a person in front of you is doing, but it's next to impossible to know if they're looking.

My preferred solution is to drink a couple of beers while I play, I forget quickly!

Its slightly immersion breaking, but you can save a lot of time by playing on smaller maps. Also quitting after you're 90% sure you've won and skipping the "mop-up" phase.

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