Yup, its true. Its a really bad habit. But I find myself never completely finishing a game. Aside from that tempting Ctrl+N option to get an optimal placing/setting, I find that I get bored too easily with any single game.

I more often than not do a Gigantic map, occasional habitables, normal research, common stars and tight clusters with all nine civs at normal. I usually play the terrans along a neutral trading strategy(though ive tried all the other civs at one point or another), and usually stick with universalist party and diplomacy, luck, morale/loyalty, research and trade bonuses. i stay out of all wars by building good relations with most civs on trade routes and the occasional tech trade all the while slowly advancing through the tech tree and building/upgrading my fleet. To the point that i can hold my own with the top civs of that particular game and then ill jump in and mess things up a bit by taking a weaker neutral civ to stay in the top five or to get revenge on someone who bullied me earlier but who i can match now.

Problem is that, any single game takes so long to get to that point that i find myself bored and ready to start over with another game. As if just the initial planet rush and staying out of conflict in the begining are the most exciting of the game. Until now I have not even tried anything above normal intelligence except for a few games with a challenging hostile drengin or neutral acrean to try and get out of this slump. but every time i do half way through the game i can see that theres no way to beat them and give up.

For instance, my last really interesting game i had all the settings i had mentioned before and those two challenging civs. I had taken out the Yor fairly early, because they were close by and weak and then not too long afterwards had the remainder of the torians surrender to me from a brutal drengin war effectively giving me twice as many planets as any other civ though only third in influence. I beefed up defenses on my new planets as they were now closer to the drengin and researched/upgraded as many ships as i could afford to match the drengin as best i could with phasors and duranthium armor. The drengin were continuing to blow through the other civs (or trying too) the drath surrendered all their worlds to me before the drengin got 'em and the altarians were next, however no worlds had been invaded yet and they hadnt surrendered. I jumped in and took two minor civs from the drengin to try and hault their influence which just pissed them off as well as a few strategically placed maxed-out influence bases which i had to destroy to keep from going to war with them. it was too late though, after keeping them at bay with some groveling and tech trading they had enough and came after me. after only a few turns and half my fleet gone, i saw that my ships were doing no damage at all and that there was no way to keep my worlds and stay alive. game over.

so long story short(sorry, didnt realize how long this was going to end up and i doubt anyone will even read the whole thing), am i missing something in my strategy or initial game settings that is keeping me from a truely exciting and challenging game? i have a feeling that its the fact that i try and go with the terrans all the time who seem to start off so slow? back track a bit, i dont want a diplomatic or research victory cause those are just boring..so i suppose ultimately im going for a masked neutral military victory. i read some posts about people saying that the top intelligence levels are too easy and i wonder to myself how they even got passed normal?!

Ok, enough of my ranting...any input would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
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