People, write down please what you absolutely DONT like of civ4, so far as all pre-release info has shown us.

I dont like the following:


1. The graphics are really COOL, but the units seem too big..

2. I am afraid too that the terrain is too .. how u say.. squarish.. Mountains seemed to converge in civ3. Now it just looks like one bump next to another bump. I hope I am wrong.

3. And what totally annoyes me about the graphics, are the stupid childish leaderheads. Man those are cartoons. Gimme some realism please!!

4. Multi-units... Not necessary to build all units as multi units I think.. But yeah, who am I.

5. I am afraid the 3d graphics will make modding much more difficult :(


Thats it.. What do you think?

I like most of what I've seen, but I agree on the leaderheads. I really liked them in Civ3, with the subtle movements.

I'm also unsure about the units. They look a bit big, and multi-units tend to overcrowd the map IMO..

But this is really just small potatoes, overall I'm really excited about the info so far :)

i know this will sound weird but i hate the graphics

not because i think theyre ugly but because theyre TOO pretty

my comp will crash

guess ill just have to upgrade :(

btw has Firaxis released sys. req.?

the main thing that i dont really like is the way they have described the RELIGION. I just dont like that line of sight idea with converting and all.
I also dont care for the cartoonish leaderheads.

What I don't like thus far are the randomly generated maps. They look far worse than anything I've seen for civ3 which did an OK job at map generation. Too many islands and not enough hills & mountains. But, it may just be that the maps seen are island worlds at 5 billion years old, with wet climate, etc. I'll just have to wait until I see more maps.

Second is the leaderheads. I like photorealism, not the childish looking cartoons they had in civ3 - and they've made them much more childish/cartoony looking than before. But this is not a major problem. I can live with it... but I'd rather not have to.

I don't like the national borders

The game looks hard to play, i liked the "pick up and play"ness of civ3, then you got into it, and got good, but the first time you play, you could do ok on chieftain

The graphics look cartoonish\

Could someone show me what their talking about with the leaderheads?

Hang on, how do you KNOW the random map generator will be bad-we haven't actually seen any genuine maps yet-just the ones that they have probably made themselves in order to present the game at E3. Until I see some real 'in-game' shots, then I will judge.
Now, what I don't like-so far I might add-is:

1) Unit based Espionage. It just feels like a huge step backwards. Civ3 Espionage was definitely lacking, but was a step in the right direction (i.e. moving towards strategic, not tactical)

2) Not completely happy with religion as it currently stands, though I hope they will improve upon it in future expansions (hint, hint guys).

Other than that, I think the game looks BRILLIANT!!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

The first two times I played on Chieftain I lost miserably :D. They're talking bout the leaderheads shown in that Gamespot video, particularly Ghandi I believe.

There is nothing I absolutely DON'T like of Civ4. It's good, although I'm also worried about the system requirements. The map could use some work though.

Hang on, how do you KNOW the random map generator will be bad-we haven't actually seen any genuine maps yet-just the ones that they have probably made themselves in order to present the game at E3. Until I see some real 'in-game' shots, then I will judge.


I didn't say I KNOW it will be bad. I said it looks bad from what I've seen thus far (the screenshots since that is the only full world map that I've seen thus far), and obviously I assume it is randomly generated. I doubt they would have went to the trouble to make that map by hand to show off the game. They probably generated a random map and placed a few units & cities - or just used a saved game to show it off at E3 - which I find even more likely. Again though, it's probably just an island world at 5 billion years old. It would explain the lack of mountains and the lack of "continent-sized" land masses. I'm fairly certain I'll be fine with it set on 'continents' and '4 billion' years old. In fact, if any Firaxian happens to spot this post, I'd be very grateful if you were to "leak" a screenshot of such a world in the next round of press releases.

The units are way too big, makes them stand out more than the cities, and that looks goofy.

One thing I don't like about the game is how all these people seem to hate what the game is going to look like in the end. Too many are forgetting that the game is in a pre-alpha stage (or are they in alpha now). I think the leaderheads are great. In civ 3 the only thing that changed was the mouth. WOW, how lifelike. Now the head actually moves, eyes are blinking, there's a lil body language in there; much more of a pleasure to see. Of course the maps look like crap; they've probably spent most of their time programming the AI, rather than worrying about how cute and cuddly the map looks. I won't be making judgments until I see a very late stage version of beta, or I'm playing the retail version.

The unit size I don't see as a problem. The bigger the better. I get to see more detail. With all the people not liking the unit size, I recommend adding a toggle in the options menu to change the size of the units from small, to regular, to large.

I've got full faith in you Sid, and I know you won't let me down.

Just a thought but couldnt you just zoom out to see smaller units

What I dont like is how the units are been propoused. I think that some units are going to get a starting bonus (like spearmen getting city defence bonus -i hope some day they are going to realize that archer were more defencive-) but, are this unit are going to be upgraded? are trhey loosing their speciual abilities? too many cuestions now.

And those mountains look ugly. The rest seems to be in the right direction.

Units start with bonuses-as in archers and spearmen are good at defending cities. But units can also gain additional abilities through promotions-via the gaining of experience points. As far as I have heard, this does not REPLACE any existing abilities, merely compliments them.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

One thing I don't like about the game is how all these people seem to hate what the game is going to look like in the end. Too many are forgetting that the game is in a pre-alpha stage (or are they in alpha now). I think the leaderheads are great. In civ 3 the only thing that changed was the mouth. WOW, how lifelike. Now the head actually moves, eyes are blinking, there's a lil body language in there; much more of a pleasure to see. Of course the maps look like crap; they've probably spent most of their time programming the AI, rather than worrying about how cute and cuddly the map looks. I won't be making judgments until I see a very late stage version of beta, or I'm playing the retail version.

The unit size I don't see as a problem. The bigger the better. I get to see more detail. With all the people not liking the unit size, I recommend adding a toggle in the options menu to change the size of the units from small, to regular, to large.
Why do game companies show their unfinished games in events like E3? To see what people think about the game, before it is released. So, hearing some criticals and ideas is not bad, as there may be time to correct and tweak a lot of things. People are putting here most of their complains, so someone at Firaxis could read it (I don't know if any Firaxian reading this forum these days) or someone would collect most complains and send it to Firaxis' e-mail.

I agree with some points already written and I wll add some more:
- Units are too big in the map, while horsemen are even bigger;
- Leaderheads really look cartoonish, as their heads look big - maybe reworking proportions they can look better;
- Mountains are terribly ugly - I think mountais don't reaaly need to be so high and rounded as they appear;
- Forests must have more variety of trees - tree species could vary accordingly to latitudes;
- Few civilizations, comparing to Conquests - ok, it's hard to set all of them, make them have different traits etc, but everyone has at least one existing civilization avaiable in C3C that wishes in Civ4. Known "missing civs" that I would like to see again: Incans, Celts, Portugueses, Carthagians, Ottomans.

Ok, you'll say that some of these civs will appear in a very possible expansion pack, right? I don't want to buy a game knowing that it will have an expansion, because it looks like "the game is not finished". Civ3 had two expansion packs and it's unfinished yet, because there are several bugs that must be fixed. I bought Civ3 only when PTW was released - bought Civ3 and PTW together. While the game will be released here one or two month after most countries, I'll have time to see first impressions in this forum, which will surely have influence in my decision to buy the game when it is released or to wait the release of a expansion pack, as I did before.

In my opinion, expansion packs must exist only when they are really required, adding many features of the game, most of them requests of consumers - not like game industry is doing now: releasing an unfinished product to sell its "missing parts" (pay half game now and half game next year). In PTW, the main "feature" was the missing support for multiplayer. In C3C, there were some good features, like AA units and the scenario pack, called "conquests". Of course, new civs and units appear in both exps. But as far as I know, nothing is said about Civ4 having AA units or scenarios like in C3C.

My biggest concern is that it might not run on my computer. I hope the graphics aren't too demanding on the videocard and that Civ IV is laptop compatible.

I'll tell you once it's released and I played it a few months. Until then, it's all conjecture and whining ;)

My biggest concern is that it might not run on my computer. I hope the graphics aren't too demanding on the videocard and that Civ IV is laptop compatible.
Didn't they say that it uses the same graphics engine as pirates? If so, then minimum specs for that will probably be similar.

You can see those here (http://www.atari.com/pirates/pirates/sysreq.php).

Appears to be a 64 MB videocard that supports Directx 9.0b.

My biggest concern is that it might not run on my computer. I hope the graphics aren't too demanding on the videocard and that Civ IV is laptop compatible.

In the E3 video, Soren used a laptop to demonstrate Civ4, so I assume it is laptop-compatible! However he might have some super-mega custom-made laptop.

The main thing I don't like about Civ4 is that graphics are too cluttered - not only the units are huge, but they are multi-units which makes things even worse. I would also prefer hitpoint represented abstractly rather than the number of actual guys on the screen. Possibly if they got rid of multi-units, the current unit size would be fine. I just hope that there is an option to turn off the multi-units.

I dont like that theres fewer units in civ IV than civ III... but I guess they need something for the addons.

Where did you hear that?

Anyway...

I don't like the graphics that much. The unit movement just seems...weird, the units are too big, the cities are too small, it's hard to distinguish the civilization borders, and it's kind of hard to get an overall look of the terrain (ie, it's hard to distinguish the map into seperate parts). The leaderheads also look stupid. I'm not exactly fond of the idea that you can see all the cities of the same religion as you. However, these are minor complaints. I absolutely love the way the game is turning out overall. EDIT: After looking over the full Civilization IV info known so far, I've decided that I don't exactly like the unit grouping thing, or the fact that the game is only going to be 400 turns long. However, overall, the game still is looking great.

I personally will not like moving my units with mouse only. I guess, becouse of changing anything to 3D, there will be no option moving units with keypad any longer. If it will be possible changing the angle of view from isometric (civ2, civ3) to square (civ1) or "free" at any time, it seems to make no sence using keypad control for moving units. Well, may be, there will be an option to define keypad-control, but I'm afraid, there won't.

Since all the views we know of should work nicely with the keypad I don't see why they would not have the game change the keypad controls to correspond to the view. Unless the view angle is completely free, or they have some weird view that would not work with the keypad, which I rather doubt.

I'm worried the world map is going to be generally smaller. I want BIG worlds. I see the units and their movement range, and I worry that the worlds are smaller.

2. I am afraid too that the terrain is too .. how u say.. squarish.. Mountains seemed to converge in civ3. Now it just looks like one bump next to another bump. I hope I am wrong.
I am disturbed by this also. It especially causes the coastlines to look awful. This is due to two things, one the squares are squares as opposed to diamonds (I know you can rotate the view, but the map is still composed of squares and you are just looking at it from a funy angle), and two, the terrains do not appear to blend into each other much (one of the screenshots showed plains separated from grasslands by a ugly grey band), this may be due to requirments of the 3D engine or because they haven't bothered to get around to it yet.

Ah yes, the terrain didn't seem to transition or blend into each other much. If it stays that way, I'm looking for all your terrain modders to make something nicer. ;)

I think the units are way too large compared with the environment.
Furthermore, their movements don't look good. Have you seem them "hopping" forward?
Next, I don't like that still each battle seems to be lethal for one unit.
Next, I don't have seen any stacked combat. Together with the information about armies would have gone, this would mark a definitive step backwards
Next, I don't see how the graphical presentation of stacked units should work now. Imagine a stack of 1 sword (3 units), 2 spears (2*3 units), 1 crossbow (2 units after battle) and 1 horse... how would you be able to identify who is who?
Next (already mentioned), mountains just look bad.

I am not convinced of the line of sight idea, either. Of course, I haven't seen it in the game, yet, but it seems funny to have the chance to see city surroundings on the other edge of the world.

By mentioning the missionars and spys, I got the impression that it might be even more unit-based than Civ3 - leading directly into another micromanagement mess (m³ (tm) :p )

Somebody already mentioned the icon-oriented display of what seems to be the new civilopedia. How to put in new elements (in particular, new improvements) when you miss the appropriate icon? Currently, you just can do a alphanumeric search...

After all, the graphical interface doesn't look very promising to me. It seems to be made for kids - a lot of moving items, but low content. In turn, this seems to indicate less strategy, in the worst case even less tactics... but full usage of the CPU and graphics card.

I have some amount of faith that stack combat is in-based on their talk about 'combined arms' tactics. After all, how can you have 'combined arms' if you still fight one on one. Still, I WOULD like to see for certain if stack combat is in.
Also, I don't think combat is lethal for all units, as units with the 'flanking' promotion have a % chance of retreating. I have a feeling that ALL units in Civ4 will now have SOME chance of retreating. Of course, I can't prove that, but we can hope ;)!
I agree that mountains should look nicer, but I didn't like civ3 graphics either-and instead relied on Snoopy's graphics instead.
So, as I said above, that leaves my current beefs as Spies, Missionaries and the overall religion model. I hope they work very hard on making these all micromanagement free!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I think I need to wait and play the game for a week or two before I can answer this question.

Any dislike of the graphics is moot, since they've admitted they're still tweaking it all and haven't finished the graphics... I'd wager the same goes for streamlined 3D animation.

I haven't been let down yet. I don't think this will be the first Civ to disappoint.

I think I need to wait and play the game for a week or two before I can answer this question.
I think everyone should.

I'm tired of all the complaining when there's still about half a year before the game comes out.

Blocky coastlines. Argh. The E3 video worldview looked like Civ1 with a new graphics engine. I want it to look like real landforms, not just randomly generated blocko-land. Ah well..........

Units too big. They seem to have gone all warcraft III on us with this game, it looks on first glance like an RPG now until the familiar civ gameplay kicks in. I would have preferred they went the ultra-real route as far as graphics are concerned, not the cartoony-artsy direction civ4 looks heading to judging by the newest visuals. Small, detailed units that don't dwarf cities would be nice. But then again so would realistic terrain. Ah well........ ;)

All in all though, looks like a great game. I'll be the first in line the morning it comes out, guaranteed. I'm still getting enjoyment out of civ3 to be honest, just goes to show how good a buy this game is.

My biggest concern is that it might not run on my computer. I hope the graphics aren't too demanding on the videocard and that Civ IV is laptop compatible.
I agree . My PC is starting to show it's age.
I want the units to be bigger than cities and terrian so I can easily identify them. I hope it stays this way.( even the ships in Civ3 was the almost the size of the cities)

Just about everything except Civics and Mali so far.

In my opinion, expansion packs must exist only when they are really required, adding many features of the game, most of them requests of consumers - not like game industry is doing now: releasing an unfinished product to sell its "missing parts" (pay half game now and half game next year).
But unfortunately that is the business model of the industry now...expansion packs are here to stay. And not just for fixes, but because the companies can make a lot of money with an expansion pack as a sequal- (same as in the Movie industry - you will see sequals galore until no one goes to see the sequals - then they will stop. As long as the demand is there they will produce a product to capitilize on it and make $$$$$.) Only way the consumer could stop the practive is organize and never buy an expansion pack at all...and that is just not going to happen.

My constructive critism for the game so far:
1)The leaderheads - I agree they are too cartoony. IMO they are ugly.
2) One on one combat still seems to be the mechanism - hope the demos were just that..demos. True multi unit combat system on a strategic level would be great.
3)I dislike using real religions - but, if they are going to do that, please please please fix things like Jewish or Buddhist or Daoist "cathedrals" - gotta be a way to have the correct name of the building for each religion.

Overall the game looks very good. BTW, it is important that they hear criticisms - they want to make the best product they can and consumer input - negative and positive - is so important in this. If they don't hear it, the chances of releasing a product that will miss it's mark is greatly increased, and no one wants that.

I just read in PC Gamer (current issue has a huge article about Civ4) that if a stack of units attacks, or is attacked, damage will not be done to only the first unit in the stack. That makes sense, but they go on to say that ALL units in the stack will be damaged. Now, that seems like going a bit too far. Why would ALL units be damaged? Perhaps some units should be damaged, or even half should be damaged, but why ALL?

No, what they said is that all units MAY be damaged. In other words, no unit in the stack is 100% safe from the attack.

Reply to dacar:
That would be bad. As a minimum, rather see the stack act like the Army does now in Civ3; but hope it is better than that.

-i think the graphics look bloody ugly. the maps just look like a jumbled mess, not unlike how Alpha Centauri starts to look when you get close to the end of a game. ugg! please delay the game and rework the graphics.

The first two times I played on Chieftain I lost miserably :D. They're talking bout the leaderheads shown in that Gamespot video, particularly Ghandi I believe.

I remember my first game on chieftan. roughly 2000 AD.... ive got a couple of musketeers and only 3 contacts of the possible 8. I was invdaed by tanks ovewr the border and lost. As i think back i realize how far ive come. Lol

oldStatesman, several people here talk about an expansion for Civ4, as it is almost (99%) certain. These people know that it will bring a lot of new civs, units, maybe some new resources, buildings and wonders. This is my point: to release only a few things that could ship in vanilla version, release it in a patch. Here are some examples:
- Blizzard gave new mercenary heroes in one patch for Warcraft 3 (ok, it's just 2 heroes, but it added a "bonus" to the game);
- Top Pop released a "free expansion pack" (Coast to Coast) for Railroad Tycoon 3, with new maps, new locomotives, some skinning tools and the last patch. Well, for me this "expansion" is only a "big patch" (the patch released after this "expansion" is the same, no matter if people have CtC).

New heroes and new locomotives could be equivalent as new units or even new civs for Civilization series. These things didn't really affect gameplay too much, so there's no need to release an expansion pack to sell (make us spent money) these things. More, these smaller things could be modded, so why will we buy an expansion pack which only brings "16 new civs and their UUs" if these things could be modded by anyone? My main point is: things that doesn't affect gameplay too much doesn't deserve an expansion pack.

If Firaxis release an expansion for Civ4 having only new civs, units and other smaller things, they will lose a lot of reputation. It already happened when they released PTW, because it brought mainly only new civs and the multiplayer mode, that should be shipped in vanilla version. Most things in PTW could appear in a patch, as they didn't really affect gameplay too much. C3C was released with things that affect gameplay, like AA units, feudalism & fascism, plague and flavour (even people didn't really used it too much). Conquests (the scenarios) was also a good idea. For me, it looks like Civ 3 was half game, PTW was another half and then C3C was the expansion pack. But most people bought 2 expansion packs. PTW cd is nearly useless now, as almost everything (except some mods and scenarios) reappear in C3C cd.

But we all know that C3C is still an unfinished game, as there's a lot of bugs yet - the most incredible is the submarine bug, which was corrected in PTW and returned in C3C :(. Generating games with a lot of American civilizations is also boring, it happens to me almost all the time (even after reinstalling the whole game again and again).

People at Firaxis know that these problems affected their reputation. In this forum there were several people blaming the "final patch", because a lot of bugs still exist and bother us. You can see a lot of people saying "I'll buy after some patches to fix most bugs". Also, I think you noticed that Civ4 will bring a multiplayer mode (at least Firaxis learnt a lesson :rolleyes: ). I think Firaxis should release Civ4 only when it was really finished, without several bugs which make the game unplayable.

You can see several people here who aren't exactly excited with Civ4, these are potential non-consumers. If people cross their arms, accept everything as they do and think "that is the business model of the industry now", the game (and movie) industry will still abuse their consumers. If people (mainly fan-sites) write a lot of e-mails, blaming several aspects and, of course, don't buying these products, so game industry will began to take care.

I still wish Firaxis doing a "real final patch" for C3C, as some people will continue playing this game after Civ4 release. Maybe a "nice surprise for civ-community" as a patch for C3C could bring some reputation back (let's cross our fingers :D). There are still people who play Civ2, some of them because "it's better than Civ3".

Well, let me finish here, it's too long :lol:. Maybe someone will tell Firaxians to read this :).

oldStatesman, several people here talk about an expansion for Civ4, as it is almost (99%) certain. These people know that it will bring a lot of new civs, units, maybe some new resources, buildings and wonders. This is my point: to release only a few things that could ship in vanilla version, release it in a patch. Here are some examples:
- Blizzard gave new mercenary heroes in one patch for Warcraft 3 (ok, it's just 2 heroes, but it added a "bonus" to the game);
- Top Pop released a "free expansion pack" (Coast to Coast) for Railroad Tycoon 3, with new maps, new locomotives, some skinning tools and the last patch. Well, for me this "expansion" is only a "big patch" (the patch released after this "expansion" is the same, no matter if people have CtC).

I do agree with you on all your points -

- unfortunalty in the real world that will not change anything. Software companies exist for one reason only: to make money. And development costs are so high, it only makes sense for them to release endless expansion packs. They HAVE to release Civ4 BEFORE the Xmas buying season. 75-80% of total annual revenues are generated in those few months before the holiday of most all retail business. If they miss that, they wil lose literally millions. So their choice is to wait and put out a slightly better product, satisfying the hard core but losing money; or put out the best they can do in the time allocated, knowing there will be problems, making some people mad but not losing money and then putting out a patch and expansion pack later.

Reputation? It will not be hurt in the long run as long as they eventually fix major things and seem to listen to the fan base. If the product is appealing, people will buy it. Most will put it down after a few months at most; the die hards will not. A year later, the expansion pack will come out, the casual gamer will buy it and dust off the original - play for a while until the next big game is released and then forget about it again. [Edit - just like in movies - LOR was always going to be released in at least 3 parts - as was Star Wars, etc. Less people will go to see a very very very long movie - more will go to see it if it is in sequential format. The same with games - the average person gets bored with a game quickly; if they gave everything out in one shot, that person would never play the game again.] Companies know these consumer habits - they use them to make more money. Only the die hards will complain a lot - and as long as the production company makes an attempt to listen by appearing occasionally on sites like this, makes fixes in a reasonable amount of time; even they will be mollified.

True that Ramalhão I don't think we had to live with this many unfixed bugs in civ2, and I would go so far and say Civ3 wasn't that much more complicated than civ2.

Now what I don't like is that they won't have "terrorism" in. They already took it outof CIV3 before it was released. Thats not fair! How is the underdog supposed to take a crack at the bigboss? Tell me that it wasn't fun to drop a Nuke in an opponents city in civ 2 and get away with it! or suck the Morganites dry of energy in SMAC. It can add a wonderful dimension to the game which is left untapped because of One incident... geeezz Either I'm going to have to begg or Mod
Oh yea I also dislike the proportions of the Units the way they are now, but I guess that is something to live with, no game seems to have gotten this right though, most games from Empire Earth to Civ3 the horses look smaler than the Dragooner, or a Spearman the size of big bertha)

Terrorism can just as easily be in through renaming it to partisans/rebels/guerilla, etc. (freedom fighters if one wanted to be trully PC about it)

I am really worried about the unit-based manaagement..although it might make sense if say a spy / merchant / missionary has to get to a civ to set up a spy network, trade route, or local church, and then the activities can be done through that in the civ 3 manner. Essentially for nonmilitary foreign functions, if the units were used to establish contact, and then the 'contact' is used.

(overall it makes more sense for the ancient age than the modern age)

Terrorism can just as easily be in through renaming it to partisans/rebels/guerilla, etc. (freedom fighters if one wanted to be trully PC about it)


Well, if they included terrorists but named them "freedom fighters", then some people might get the feeling that Firaxis is likening all terrorists to "freedom fighters". So this approach wouldn't work. They should have included terrorism and called it by its own name. In C3C they had human sacrifice - that's not much better than terrorism.

Again, I hope that using the SDK, terrorists can modded in.

I just really hope that this unrealistic One vs. One combat system is scrapped. This combined arms idea does sound promising.

Also I'd like to see resources a little better represented. I just don't like that 1 resource is enough for your entire empire. ONe source of iron shouldn't be enough for a humongous empire and be able to continually build everything your heart desires based on just one occurance of a resource. I'd rather see a source produce say 1000 units total of a resource and then that's it (unless you can develop a tech to improve the amount) and each thing you build require a certain amount. And you can trade excess of it if you desire.

Also I think that it would be more fun strategically. Right now, you (and your opponents) just have to secure one source of resource. If, however, you had to keep finding new sources, it would be much more difficult to sustain your empire and would be make it harder and more fun to find new sources.

First off, given the whole debate over whether or not peoplee should complain, I want to say that I realize what we've seen so far isn't a finished product. I give the following complaints hoping the Firaxis will fix these things, and provide a better game when it actually hits the shelves, so we can bask in the warming glow of Civ's warm glow.

That said, I'm dismayed by what I've seen so far.

1) I can look at any Civ III screen and tell what's going on. I can tell where the units are, who they belong to, what the borders of the cities are, which cities have been improved, tiles roaded and irrigated, what terrain the units are on, etc. I can't say the same for Civ IV. Clutter, as mentioned before, is a big reason for this. Certain elements grab the eye while others fade into the background. The multi-units add to this, to the point where I'm not exactly sure what terrain their on. Yes, it's more realistic looking (aside from the aforementioned issues such as blocky coastlines and none-converging mountains which I hope will be eliminated when the game is being refined), but it's far less helpful.

2) The units look awful. The units in Civ III weren't totally detailed or realistic, but I felt they did the job. When I saw my first warrior actually *run* to the next tile, my jaw hung open. When he defeated his first barb camp and gave a triumphant yell, I squealed with glee (it was a MANLY squeal). The point is, I connected with him and my other units. They were MINE and any AI that thought they could kill them would have pain put to them. I don't feel the same connection to the Civ IV units. These blank faced wonders don't feel like actual virtual people to me... they're just generic 3/d models.

Part of both to these elements is partly due to the 2-d to 3-d switch. In all previous Civ installments, the team was building on what came before. Now, it's all been brushed aside and they're essentially started from scratch in building this 3-d environment. It's sort of like going back to Civ I again.

3) Leaders - I feel this transition is going to be like the transition from Civ I to Civ II. The graphics in Civ I weren't great. You essentially had flat panel leaders with the same advisors depending on their government and five expressions that affected nothing but their face while everything else was frozen. In Civ II, you had a standing 3-d Model for that civ's emissary. In every technical way, that model was an improvement over the leader screen in Civ I. 3-d over 2-d. Whole body movement over just the face. But I like it so much less. I felt it looked ugly, it didn't tell me much about the civ, and it just felt like they did what they did because they could do it (albeit, not very well), not because it fit with the game. I began to loathe diplomacy, because I never wanted to see that marionette-like figure. I preferred the screen of Civ I. I feel like we're getting the same thing here. Technically, better leaders but far less enjoyable/aesthetically pleasing.

4) Unit promotion - I like the underlying concept, but from what I've heard I feel like this is going to create too much micromanagement. The benefits are weak and varied. I like knowing that an elite unit Sipahi is an elite Sipahi and what it will do. I like being able to quickly figure out how to distribute my forces. With the promotion (and don't get me wrong, I like the idea of integrating a RPG like system), I feel like I'm going to spend my time thinking "Okay, I could attack with this unit here, and defend with this unit here because it has the guerilla 1 bonus... or wait, should I defend with this one because it has a higher retreat ability and I don't want to lose units over this... or maybe I can get this one really strong unit that I had on my eastern front over in time... wait a second, didn't I have a unit somewhere that had blah blah... <goes searching>" Unless unit promotion is a LOT more common in Civ IV, we'll have to spend a lot more time micromanaging our units to make the one with the right attribute is in the right place at the right time. Plus, some of them are very weak. Do I really want to spend 10 minutes looking for the exact pikeman that has a 30% defense bonus on hills? Or am I just going to shrug my shoulders, not waste the time, and play as though all my pikemen are equal and use them en-masse (in which case, the whole idea of promotion is wasted).

5) Religion. This really rubs me the wrong way. Yes, religion is a one of the big forces in the definition of history. But I don't really feel like this is one of the main forces that world leaders had at their disposal, at least not in the way they've described it so far. It just sounds like it's going to add a lot of complication to the game with little benefit. Of course, I was skeptical about Culture in Civ III too, so who knows, maybe once I play, it'll all come together and I'll see the error of my ways. But, right now, I remain skeptical.

The multi-units would look better in proportion with the terrain.
They look a litte cartoonish, and I'm guessing that's to keep them relatively easy to mod.

I bet the terrain will be rather hard to mod, at least in 3d.

And I'm wondering too what's with the cartoony LH's, unless that's just to help make modding easier. Realistically, you'll probably be able to scan in a medieval portrait and animate, so not an issue.

I'm leaning towards "I may hate the graphics overhead, but it'll be balanced by how plastic it is"

I'm hoping it won't be a case of "I thought it'd be easy to mod in Python, but it ain't". Modding small gameplay tweaks directly, and base improvements to the game logic will probably be what's makes it shine.

Crazy Eskimo -- well put, I agree with you. :)

I don't like that I can't play it and form my own opinions yet. :(

The rest...well, most of it is still unknown, so I wish to withhold judgment.

Arathorn

- The interface: It seems too a la RTS, with somany icons.

- To few civs: After the 31 civs of C3C it sounds too little of what I'm used to, but since the game it was design from the beggining, could be a matter of balance the game. If not an ha-game utcome.

- The eras: Put the emphasis on 2 early eras, with more techs and more time spend on it, where the game is already strong. It seems too RaR mod and possibly a consequence of so many complains about modern era. But if the 2 later eras outcome more worked in an espansion so we have an half-game.

- Economic tile-based: More roads and mines or whatever in every single tile? Why not, if people don't want change things too much, focus the wealth on cities instead in the whole map? Given foods and shields/hammers related to # of citizens a city have, with a bonus once achieved 3, 6, 9 or something. This # boost with some city improvs (marketplaces, banks, stock exchange, workshops, factories, plants). The commerce also increase by 2, 3, 4 gld if 2, 3, 4 cities are connected by roads or harbours.

- Sinthetized oil: This could be a way to balance the game, provide oil to civs to civs who don't had this resources without start a war or made trade to achieve them. Once again the modern era are worked in the simpliest way possibly. It was a much better way if we could make an agreement with a civ who has oil, rubber or aluminium in their territory to exploit them against the payment of gold and add in the search of discovery the tech, included the pre-req techs that allow that civ to exploit the resource. The advanced civ send also workers and miltary units to defend the resource and once workers are not need they could joi to the nearist city of resource. Some kind of neocolonialism.

- Shields => hammers: Shields is so civ-like, it's a trade mark, a distinctive sign, its tradition. How nice it would be tell to my grand grandchild when he was learn Civ10 and he ask me why CIV use shields instead of hammers like the others games, and I respond to that The others games are others games, but CIV is CIV, and the reason, well, it stand te test of time, its lost in the darkness of history.