Analysis Paralysis

Analysis paralysis, often just called AP, is what happens when a turn offers so many reasonable choices that a player freezes trying to find the best one — and the table waits. It’s not a character flaw so much as a design outcome: some games are built with wide-open decision trees on purpose, and certain players’ brains are wired to want to evaluate all of them before committing.

It shows up most in games heavy on optimization, like engine-building or worker placement titles, where every turn genuinely does affect several turns down the line. It’s worth naming out loud rather than letting it quietly sour a night — a soft turn timer, a lower complexity rating game, or just picking a title with fewer live options at once can turn a two-hour slog back into a two-hour game.