What Bugs Me About Euros

After reading the post about Puerto Rico and commenting on it, it finally dawned on me on what bugs me the most about Euros.  It's not the lack of direct conflict or interaction, it's not the lack of luck (although that's an erroneous statement as there is lots of luck in a Euro, just a different sort than dice), it's not even the boring or pasted on theme.  It's the fact that they are finished just as they are getting started.

Most Euros can be played in 2 hours or less but in order to do so, they take alot of the end game that happens in many other games.  It seems like you spend about 90% of the game building up your resources or your position and then you find out that the game is about to end either this turn or the next.  You typically find out there's not alot you can do about.  Take Catan for instance, if you notice that someone has 9 points and are about to win, you can generally take his longest road or largest army away and stall the end for a couple more turns and hopefully get a win out of it.  Try that in Mare Nostrum and the person who is about to win has the Commerce director?  Or try that in Puerto Rico.  It seems that in many Euros, you can force an earlier end but you can't do the opposite.  For Instance, in Puerto Rico, you could pull all your "colonists" off your buildings and then grab Mayor McCheese forcing the ship not being able to be filled.

In many cases, the end seems almost like a pre-mature ejaculation.  You work building up only to find that you're shooting too soon.  Is this a mechanism of trying to get the games to end quicker?  Is it really a good thing?

 I think part of it has to do with trying to get the game to end quicker.  There are plenty of mechanisms that trigger the end of a game.  In Ameritrash games there tend to not be those sorts of mechanisms.  Take Axis and Allies (the older edition), the ending condition is defeat of either the Allies or the Axis.  there is no mushy "Wehn the last victory point is doled out...".  The Pacific version has that and I don't like it there either although there are ways to delay it (bombing for instance).

but then again, Euro games don't have the substance to hold a longer game....