fate of civilizations

The game Civilization IV basis its premise of winning the game around supporting a society through the ages and preventing it from collapsing from domestic or international conflict. However for me simply creating a civilization that stands the test of time is just boring, I just simply can not sit at a computer for a few hours just to sustain life. So throughout playing the game I picked up different strategies and employed different tactics to make the game more interesting and exciting for me. Most civilizations of mine that collapsed fell apart because of my bizarre and insane military tactics that I used in order for me to stay entertained. However the more I study actual civilizations that have collapsed in the past I am realizing that my tactics were relatively mild and conservative compared to tactics used by some societies before their collapse or demise.
For example many times I would spend a few generations creating a food surplus and improving my society’s infrastructure, in order to prepare my civilization for war. After years of build up I would go to war against all my neighbors and battle on many different front trying to gain as much power and territory as possible. This may seem absurd and may look like just a way I used the game to entertain myself, however when looking back in history one can draw many parallels between my fictional gaming war and actually societies. Once Hitler took power it took him less than a decade to create a World War and have Germany fighting a multi-front war that would drain a nation of its resources, prosperity, and young men dying in a vane effort. Also Napoleon of France built up a huge military and marched a million men to Moscow to show he could conquer everyone and anything. Sadly on a very small fraction of his men returned alive to tell stories of food and supply shortages, as well as under preparation for the cold weather that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of good men. Showing that my strategy of military build up then blitzing the enemy with everything I had was not madness nor an entertaining tactic, but a reality, a very similar scenarios to other civilizations that once were grand but eventually poor decision making led to their collapse.
One lesson that the game Civilization IV taught me was it only take one person, one totalitarian ruler to make poor decisions for a powerful world power to collapse. Normally when thinking about the collapse of a society and regarding Jared Diamond’s Guns Germs and Steel as well as Collapse you only think about a civilization as a whole collapsing. But what if the people really do nothing to contribute to that collapse it’s purely the work of abusive rulers who are motivated by personal gain and do not wish to serve the people. For example in Nazi Germany the average farmer worker and laborer increased productivity during the build up of Germany however that did not save the society, 99% of the population could be doing everything perfectly but it only takes a select few to decide the fate of a society.