I've noticed the AI is a very aggressive expansionist, regardless of culture. You've got to throw up villages quickly at key points to block them in. It's not until late game that they start rudely attacking you, though they WILL cross your borders to plant settlers, even if it's just one tile that you've got surrounded but not contained within your borders. Much better to just wait then and let your culture absorb em, particularly if you've got a decent size empire there already.

I've gone through the manual, but I can't seem to find any screens where you can just browse a rival empire for information. I'd like to see THEIR demographics, known advances, treasury, and government type. All of that stuff seems to be moved to advisor comments, which is pretty annoying. I don't like cycling through that to get the info I need.

Zone of control doesn't seem to always work. I just watched my musketeers sit in a castle on a mountain overlooking what I felt was a key pass while someone else marched through. We weren't at war, but they didn't have a right of passage either so I would have preferred the defensive units stop them at my borders.

Give me an option in preferences to turn off viewing other civ's movement, both enemy and ally. It's not enough to just turn off the animations because it's still going to take forever. SMAC was much more beautifully designed in this.

Brian Reynolds was claimed the king of automation because of SMAC. That game had MUCH fewer units and options than this one, but it was easier to run the empire because you could automate so many things at such a granular level.

Mr.Reynolds, where were you in the Civ3 design phase? I've got a ton of units to mess with now and it's overwhelming. It becomes a point and click nightmare every turn while I try to remember which of my troops were moving where, or which settlers I had doing X and which doing Y. Save me, automation king!

The game is great. There are no show stoppers, but quite a few little annoyances that I feel should have been resolved. In a lot of ways it seems like they were so proud of their interface for certain things, they force you to go through it repeatedly instead of making a one-click process.

It's a very tough game that will keep me occupied for a very long time. I give up often as soon as I've explored my immediate surroundings and even more often get my butt beat down in the modern age when everyone seems to want my head for some reason. The perfect, player-humbling game.

Some pointers:

1. To view other Civs' data, you have to set up an embassy once you have writing, then investigate their cities through the espionage menu.

2. They took out Zones of Control in Civ 3, so you can't put units down and stop other units from passing anymore.

Some units exert a 'Zone of Control' that gives them a free fire at you as you pass; this is random, and doesn't occur everytime. I know Cavalry do this, I believe Armies do, also, and a few other units.

If you don't want them walking through your territory, you can tell them to get out, or you can just block them off with your units. In fact, signing a Right of Passage (ROP), and then blocking their units from coming in is a good way to do more scouting early on.

The preferences option menu can turn off animation only, or all movement, whether automated, friend or enemy. It's not often wise to completely turn off viewing the AI's movement, though.

Archer I believe do this too.

So do tanks and mech infantry AFAIK.