Need a new time sink - Civilization or Football Manager?

[Gandalf]

I'm thinking of buying a new game, some sort of single player time sink with lots of replay-ability.

I have Civilization 4, which I love and have got an absurd amount of hours on. Civilization : Beyond Earth is out in a couple of weeks.

Similarly, I have football manager 2008, which I have played through to about 2026 :p Football Manager 2015 is out in 4 weeks, it has a lot of changes from its 7-year old cousin.

But, you know, they're a bit old now... time for a change perhaps. Ideally it will work on my laptop as well as my desktop - both of the above will. Laptop has intel HD 3000 graphics, which will be the choke point.

So, try and convince me one way or the other. Or offer a third option.

[Drakon]

Coming from a person who plays both at the same time on two screens... both. Civ V and FM14.

BUT, if you have to choose one, go for Civ V. I find FM very frustrating sometimes but Civ V is special and eats up a lot of time.

[notjarvis]

FTL sucks up far too much of my time at the moment.

Easier for me to just pick up and play a game than FM, as I don't have to try and remember "Why exactly did I buy that player" if I hadn't played for a couple of weeks.

[Gandalf]

Coming from a person who plays both at the same time on two screens... both. Civ V and FM14.

BUT, if you have to choose one, go for Civ V. I find FM very frustrating sometimes but Civ V is special and eats up a lot of time.

Firstly, seriously, you need to get out more if you're playing both games at the same time, there's more to life than achieving things in computer games. Also, I'm not considering either of those games, Read the post properly :p I prefer Civ 4 to Civ 5 which is why I'm leaning a bit more towards FM15 at the moment.

FTL sucks up far too much of my time at the moment.

Easier for me to just pick up and play a game than FM, as I don't have to try and remember "Why exactly did I buy that player" if I hadn't played for a couple of weeks.

I've had a look at FTL. Can you try and pitch the game to me?

FM15 seems to have so many upgrades since FM08. A lot of the things that seemed a bit cheesy/pointless/one-dimensional have been fleshed out in the intervening years. I like the new scouting system too, where you get given a range for a players stats (eg tackling : 12-16) which becomes more accurate the more you scout. It didn't seem amazingly realistic that you could click "scout player" and you would instantly know everything about him, or that you knew their acceleration was 19 but had no idea what their pace was until you scouted.

[Drakon]

I go to college on weekdays and only get to do this on Friday nights...

FM15 it is then !

[id3nt1ty]

I go to college on weekdays and only get to do this on Friday nights...

Hah, I have fond memories of freshers week at uni when I finally had a whole week to myself of no parents telling me to get off computers and no housemates to socialize with because they were all out drinking. I spent more time playing Modern Warfare 2 than sleeping.

[Drakon]

The temptation to not do homework and just play games all day is strong, but I assure you I have my priorities right side up

[id3nt1ty]

You're playing games then

[Drakon]

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[Gandalf]

Decided that maybe I should play Hearts Of Iron III instead. I bought it a year or 2 ago and hardly played it since.

[Gandalf]

Hearts of Iron III has been fun, but I downloaded FM2015 demo, it's improved quite a bit from its 2008 incarnation, there's a lot more going on and some of the annoyances have been fixed. It's not perfect but I suspect I will be buying the full version before the year is out and leading the mighty Leamington FC to glory!

[Raveen]

Shirley Town or get out!

[Gandalf]

The game only goes down to the 6th tier of English Football (where Leamington play). Shirley Town are so far down, I can't even find their league on the internet

[Raveen]

I think they may be Sunday league. I'm going to have to look it up now...

[FazzBumm]

I have alot of experience with Paradox Games like Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis. Actually HOI3 is a mess to control when you are a big country in a big war. You have to dive deep into the system of command. But next year they will release HOI4 which will probably be much more accessable if you dont like masochist micromanagement.
Europa Universalis 4 actually is a great game and i can only recommend it. When you are common with the normal game you can go for one of the big mods (i recommend Veritas and Fortitudo), they add tons of flavour and historic accuracy. Also they have couple of completely new mechanics, more accurate map and interesting alternate history scenarios. One of the most interesting scenarios is a submod of VeF called Glory of Byzantium: In the 7th century the muslim expansion failed as Persia and the Byzantine Empire allied for a moment to beat em up and now you are 1309 and the world is drastically different: Egypt is a coptic semi-greek kingdom, Persia and Byzantine Empire are superpowers and between them is a christian kingdom of Jerusalem trying to keep the balance. Additionally to that there is Vinland (The colony founded by the vikings in North America). You can play as Vinland in the 14th century in NA and try to survive.

I spend hundreds of hours into Europa Universalis (3 and 4) and for fans of strategic simulations i can only strongly recommend it.