Whenever I take a break for more than a few days from any empire-building game such as Civ or Total War, when I restart, I’m just not into my former empire any more so I start over.
How long a break do you generally take from any sort of savable long-term strategy computer game before you just don’t feel the same sense of ownership you did before and start over?
What’s the longest break you’ve ever taken from an incomplete strategy game and still came back and finished it? I think it’s a matter of weeks for me.
For 4X games I just binge on them until I’ve won or I don’t want to play any more at all so this isn’t really an issue. For roguelikes though … I have dozens of save games for ToME and Dungeons of Dredmor. Even though I play with permadeath on, it’s far more common for me to get bored than to die.
My sense of “ownership” is lost after 2-3 days away from the game. Sometimes if I don’t have much time to play I will put in 15-20min just to keep it fresh for later.
Maybe a week, tops. After that I just can’t get back into it. Sometimes I’ll really be into a game (like Skyrim) and then work will take me away for extended periods on travel, and then when I get back I just can’t get start up again. Often I’ll buy DLCs for games I enjoyed but I’ll never even play them.
With games like Total War I’ll almost always play again, but as you say I’ll start a new empire instead of continuing on with one I’ve been playing for a while.