How can I avoid a tedious end-game?

civilization-5

I find the early and mid-game great fun: there's excitement and challenge as I explore the world, found cities, and challenge the other players. But then the end-game almost always turns into mind-numbing slog.

For example, right now I'm playing 8-player vs. AI. I've reached the point I always seem to reach: it's basically inevitable that I'll win now, but I still have to give repetitive orders to tens of cities for a hundred or more turns to wrap it up. I go in hoping for an interesting victory condition, but I usually fall back on Conquest since that ends the monotony a little quicker.

A friend of mine has the same experience. Are we doing something wrong, or do we just lack the needed patience? Are Civ end-games usually longer and less challenging than the openings?

Solution 1:

Tedium comes from feelings that you're making a lot of decisions that don't really impact anything. So...

Minimize how many decisions you have to make:

(Of course, try to get rid of the decisions that don't matter, and keep the ones that do.)

Automate! If you're bored with workers, set them to automate, and make them stop pestering you. There's also an auto-explore.
Move your units where you really want them to go, not just this turns movement points.
Fortify or dismiss unit when they're really not helping anymore. They stop asking for orders!
Set build queue for cities. (thanks @Colen)
Open the tech tree and tell it to research to something late in the tree. I think with shift or ctrl you can queue up techs as well.
Puppet Cities - Rather than controlling every city yourself, take over a few, and leave them as puppets. They benefit your civilization, without costing your decision making time.
City States - For that matter, don't take over city states if you don't have to. They'll help you just fine as they are, with the right convincing.
Play on faster speeds - This minimizes the extra turns you make decisions for only units, often needlessly.
Play on a smaller map - Getting places doesn't take a long, and there will be less cities/units overall.
Play against less opponents - This is best accomplished as a consequence of playing on a smaller map, and the benefits are the same: less decisions to be made.

From my experience, quick games on average are just more fun, because even if the game is bad, its over quickly. Then you start a new game and have a chance to learn from mistakes all the sooner!

Solution 2:

If you're sure you're going to win, why keep playing? You've already won.

*poof* tedious endgame gone!

Solution 3:

In general, if you've reached the point where you're sure you're going to win, it's not worth playing it out. Get the military victory if you want "credit" for the win, then move on to a new game.

Some ideas on how to keep multiple games from feeling repetitive

Play on a higher difficulty level. This will make it harder to get out to a big lead early, but if you have a good game it can still happen.
Try starting the game in a later age. This lets you have all the advanced weapons before you're in a situation where you're already the de facto winner.
Play on a different map type. Continents plays much different than Pangaea or small islands.
Try for the different Civ-specific achievements, especially the ones like Bollywood
Rather than trying for a space victory and settling for Dominance, go for the Dominance victory from the beginning and challenge yourself on how fast you can get it.
Try a one-city challenge game. This greatly increase the challenge, and also speeds up the game by reducing the number of decisions you need to make.

Solution 4:

What difficulty level are you playing on? Both the AI and Computer Handicaps increase pretty heavily on the higher-end difficulties. If you're looking for more of a challenge (to lengthen the time before the "tediousness" sets in) kick the difficulty up a notch.

You could also try games against other humans. Ain't nothin' like a surprise coalition of the other seven players to make life interestin'.

Solution 5:

The new domination victory condition should minimize this problem. If you are truly far enough ahead that the AI players are incapable of winning then you should be able to take and hold all of the capitals. You may even be able to pull that off in 50 turns or less. Just build at least 1 superior unit per AI player, and on a map with significant oceans at least 1 ship per player to escort the unit. I would expect that you find it more interesting than spending hours steamrolling the AI civilizations, as was the frequent ending to Civ IV.