[CIV 5 Issues] - The complete list

This is just one of few issues I have with Civ5 but I notice that when saving games manually, the filename aren't automatically filled in for you like it was in Civ4. Forcing me to fill in savegame names before saving is somewhat inconvenient but not necessarily a great issue. Just something I observed.

Still, I'd appreciate if it can automatically in save name with something like the name of leader or country you're playing and the game year you saved the game in. Something like "Washington-AD1000", etc. This automatic savegame naming is already used for Civ5 autosaves but not for manual saves.

* Civ V doesn't remember my interface settings (english instead of french).

Here are the problems I have found that I havn't seen mentioned here, if there were, sorry I missed them.

-Air units have no scouting ability like in Civ 4. This is an absolutely required ability for air, as you can't bomb what you cant see, and sending in slow land units to die for you planes is moronic.

-American minutemen ability to treat all tiles as 1 move makes it so they cant use roads.. this is a really bad thing. The unit is underpowered even if this is fixed, a knight is 18 and can move 2 times in forest/hills aswell just because it has more movement, who cares if it takes 1-2 more turns to build?

-AI is horrible at defending its workers, workers don't run away, they just stand to be captured 1 by 1.

-AI settlers are often captured by barbarians, and as Lanstro pointed out, barbs are really weak.

-AI is awful at naval combat/getting across the water/founding cities on islands

-AI is awful at combat, they will move ranged units right next to your melee/non ranged so you can an easy kill.

-In my modern era game (king) the AI built no tanks, no modern armor, no mech infantry... only mobile sams and gunships. They had a huge rich empire with all resourses.

-The patch that fixed AI giving everything away when losing a war went too far... now they will never give you any gold/cities no matter how badly you are beating them.

-Units that shouldn't be able to hurt air can... frigates for example.

-Destroyers are way too weak vs frigates... balance is one thing, but come on... a destroyer should be unbeatable vs a frigate.

-Destroyers and battleships bombard is way too weak, they are rather worthless. Personally I'd double the bombard strength on both.

-Helicopter gunships can capture cities, and can use roads.. broken and way over powered.

-AI is very slow to build wonders past the ancient age, I had no trouble getting ever wonder I wanted on King. While I could easily beat the AI in Civ 4 on king/emp I always had to budget my wonders, couldn't get them all. Now its cake.

There's a lot to digest in this, so I'll summarize my issues with Civ 5 with just the most fundamental issues as I see them:

1) I played Civ IV on Monarch - I'm a good player, but I've never been interested in boiling the game down to mathematic science so I'm not a min-maxer . I won most games on Monarch, but there was always someone on the other side of the map with a strong tech and good army that was a threat - militarily or space race. In Civ V, I'm steamrolling Emperor, there's almost no challenge.

2) Further to point 1:
i) the AI always seems to field too many archers/ranged units. My mounted and melee units just mow through them.
ii) the AI is poor in warfare tactics - no elaboration required
iii) the AI, even if they have a strong tech, seem to always field obsolete units. My latest game (Emperor), I was all cavalry steamrolling France and China at the end (at the same time) and China had all crossbowmen and France had the odd Musketeer. Once I amass some units, and do a paid upgrade to the next tier, I've all but won the game every game.
iv) Too easy to become allies with many city states at the same time - they give huge bonuses to happiness, food/growth, and even gifted units. To make matters worse, when you end up in a war with the AI, the AI dumbly throws too many units at your allied city states who are almost exclusively defensive, leaving their empire weakened to the player's army. If that's not bad enough, the AI attacks the city states in so poor a fashion they usually accomplish nothing more than throwing away a lot of units - seldom ever succeeding in taking the city state. Ally with as many city states as possible and then wait for the AIs to bleed themselves to death attacking them - game over.
v) Happiness penalty is a joke.
vi) I've learned that manythe "maintenance buildings" are largely wasted. Focus on gold/economy, even it comes via warfare, and buy what you need.

I've put in about 65 hours so far - I took last week off work in anticipation I have that much respect for the series. I'm not hating the game, but so far it's been a roller coaster. I like aspects of it, but the lack of challenge is SORELY lacking. When I had the game effectively won on Emperor yesterday, at 1000 AD, just a week post release - noticing the overall gameplay issues I've seen - I decided it was probably time to shelf it and wait for a few patches. People can say what they want about comparing this with Civ IV, but I didn't steamroll the AI on Civ IV vanilla when I first got the game. And there were more nuances to that game to keep it interesting even if I did.

Great thread, I hope we can keep this up. The quarrels I have and have noticed with the game has already been mentioned.

poncratias said:

* When open borders expires, I don't need to be told that both ends of the deal were cancelled. A single notice is enough.

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This should not change, when you have a deal and it expires you should get notification both for your part and the other player's part, regardless of how some deals worked in old versions. You don't have open borders as a single item for both sides any more, you can offer to open your borders for cash, or bribe them to let you through their land without letting them through yours.

I've used that a lot in my games, AI civs will usually pay a little money for one-sided open borders, and it doesn't really cost me anything.

1) Taking out Religion was a bad idea. They should have built upon that idea and made it more relevant in the interactions between civilizations.
2) I do not like that we can't put two workers on the same tile. You can have a military unit and a worker on one tile but not two workers - doesn't make sense. I think stacks were fine on their own. They should have worked on making the AI use them in a smarter way. I like the fact that you get limited resources to supply your military with, thus limiting the size and type of military you have based on the resources you can get access to. It should have just been left at that and we wouldn't see 1000s of units like in Civ3. But there was no reason to remove stacks.
3) You cannot see a list of resources anywhere except in diplomacy and when checking the happiness of your empire.
4) Ruins are not realistic at all. It makes the game much more fantasy and realistic.
5) I was not able to embark my spearman across the ocean. I don't remember reading in Civilopedia that spearmans cannot embark. Don't know if others experienced this or if I am missing something. Many times of units don't seem to need the resources you would think they needed. Like War Elephants don't need the ivory resource, and many other similar things.
6) Civilizations are not balanced at all. Some have clear advantages like 2 UUs. Even if the game was made primarily for NA and Europe, I don't think it takes much effort to make Civilizations balanced.
7) Several problems with the diplomacy panel. It closes after making deals with the AI when the AI initiates the dialogue. Pacts of Secracy and Co-operation are of no real use. Pretty much meaningless. I have noticed the AI giving up too easily during wars and offering me everything its got other than cities for peace, which kinda sucks. Don't know if this just has to do with the difficutly levels.

Oh, and I have largly been able to keep my empire going just by conquering the randomly popping barbarian tribes all over the place, and they give a decent bonus even at Prince level.

I think the list looks a lot better now. It also looks like it focuses more on true issues with the game and less about preferences vs Civ IV.

A couple things to add

1) You mentioned building is slow, but I would expand on this a bit. Buildings and units seem to build too long compared to benefit and compared to tech rates (I can often tech faster than the units I'm building).

2) Several buildings seem too costly for their benefits. Granaries and Courthouses are frequently mentioned.

3) A lot of complaints about wonders. I personally though would try to poll for the specific wonders people have problems with, instead of just saying "wonders are bad".

I'm not sure if if it's just me, or is this a bug.

Has anyone else encountered the trade agreement where in order to get a luxury resource, the AI asks for three or even four in return?

I'm okay with this so long as the three or four they ask for are surplus resources, but I've had them take the last copy, so in getting a new resource, I've lost three or four of my own in return.

Now, that could be fixed by being extra careful about what I trade to my opponents, but at one time I made sure I had multiple copies of the resources, and yet the AI still managed to take all of my copies of the ones I traded to him (ie. During trade, I hit the "what would make this deal work" button. I had three furs, two ivories, 3 silks, and in the trade screen it only shows that I'm giving him fur, ivory and silk, but when I complete the trade I take a huge hit to happiness because lo and behold, those three luxes are no longer provided in any of my cities. And this was one of only two active trade agreements I had, where the other was a tech agreement with someone else.)

To make things worse, it's not possible for me to see any resource information from any overview screen, and there was no way to break the trade agreement. Luckily I had some pillaged improvements that I promptly repaired to regain the lost happiness. I had to declare war on my trade partner to get back the rest...

There is only one entry I take issue with on the list and don't think should be included, because IMHO it is a feature and not a bug:

No, they're not. It's a longbow. That's what they do. They are very powerful, yes, just ask the French, but why single out them and not the Greek Comp Cavalry, or Naresuan's Elephants? Or, for that matter, the GDR?

The list should be about things that are clearly wrong, like the ugly rivers or the interface problems, not stuff that is open to argument. We can do that in a second pass once we've got the basics up and running.

Maybe it's just me, but why are all the units white? Shouldn't the African workers and soldiers be black?

The note about longbows was mine, but as it's subjective, should probably be removed.

Perhaps replaced with :

* Some civilization traits and UU/UBs are significantly stronger than others.

But I agree with EmpireofCats that the usability issues should take priority over any gameplay imbalance.

Some things that amaze me (not in a good way) about CiV are:

- a lot of the buildings are pretty much useless, some Wonders as well. As an example, you can put a lot of hammers in a building that makes you build military units a bit faster, but with so few military units in the game there's really no point.

- the XP's and the features they can 'buy' for military units, does not have the impact they should on the battlefield. Specializing your unit to fight better in flat or hilly terrain is an odd choice. This system worked so much better and made a lot more sense in Civ4.

- a game can very fast turn into gold or culture boosting your civ until the very end and not much else, which makes the gameplay quite limited compared to the different approaches in Civ4

- social policies should be more flexible and not 'carved in stone' as it appears now when you have made a choice, or I simply don't know how to get the most out of them at this time.

- I like the strategic element on the battlefield a lot - much more care in lining up your units before declaring war. But the AI is imo pretty bad. It's very easy to overwhelm your enemy with superior tactics. I'm playing CiV at Prince level, Emperor level with Civ4+BTS.

- removing the sliders for gold/science/culture/espionage is a mistake. It gave flexibility in your overall strategy and I didn't know how much I would miss them until I played CiV. Removing espionage as well is also a setback.

Overall I'm not that impressed with CiV compared to Civ4 + BTS. The drawbacks in the game as it appears now, simply outweigh the benefits. I hope too see the light in the time to come but I have my doubts...

Keep subjective stuff and preferences out of this list. This is objective issues and troubles the vast majority of people have... graphical issues, glaring imbalances, missing features, etc.

Agent Cooper said:

- a lot of the buildings are pretty much useless, some Wonders as well. As an example, you can put a lot of hammers in a building that makes you build military units a bit faster, but with so few military units in the game there's really no point.

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This is a fact, and an ongoing discussion is going about how some buildings are not nearly worth their cost.

Agent Cooper said:

- the XP's and the features they can 'buy' for military units, does not have the impact they should on the battlefield. Specializing your unit to fight better in flat or hilly terrain is an odd choice. This system worked so much better and made a lot more sense in Civ4.

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This is subjective. I very much like the choice of focusing units on terrain first and advanced stuff. It requires you to play the game differently. You want to set up specific units for specific areas of combat...
If you are fighting in the plains and deserts of North Eastern Africa and the Middle East, you want to have lots of open Terrain specialized units.
If you are fighting in the jungles of the Amazon in South America, then you want the rough terrain promotions.
It is dynamic and and interesting. Ambigious all purpose promotions that unlock everything tend to end up as a no brainer to just click through with no thought in civ IV.
This does not belong on the list.

Agent Cooper said:

- a game can very fast turn into gold or culture boosting your civ until the very end and not much else, which makes the gameplay quite limited compared to the different approaches in Civ4

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Depends on how you play the game in all honesty... In the end of my last game I was stuggling to keep my happiness and gold production in line with my growing empire, while dealing with the ever growing threat of Gandhi busting out of Africa and invading the rest of the world, so I had to maintain my choke while trying desperately to keep up to the tech of his hugely expanded population with my smaller more specialized diplomatic one. I would say there is a ton to do. Did you try upping your difficulty?

Agent Cooper said:

- social policies should be more flexible and not 'carved in stone' as it appears now when you have made a choice, or I simply don't know how to get the most out of them at this time.

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I played Civ IV for years and in all honesty I was merely given the illusion of choice with Civics... 9/10 times there was a "right" choice for what civic you were supposed to be in. But there was some variance depending on what victory path you choose to pursue.
Civ V has basically the same thing, except it doesn't try to pretend you have the option to switch to something else. I prefer Social Policies to Civics any day of the week. I am still experimenting with different combos of Policies. I find when you decide the path you want to take to win, you actually have a variety of options for every victory path. Do you want oligarchy to fight a more defensive war? Do you want to go for a more cultural diplomatic victory? How about a diplomatic city state conquest victory so they can provide you with units (and WOW they give you a lot when you are friends with all the military ones)?
These are all options with different choices of Policies.
Anyway, this point is more a matter of preference, and not an issue with the game.

Agent Cooper said:

- I like the strategic element on the battlefield a lot - much more care in lining up your units before declaring war. But the AI is imo pretty bad. It's very easy to overwhelm your enemy with superior tactics. I'm playing CiV at Prince level, Emperor level with Civ4+BTS.

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Bad AI is a fact.

Agent Cooper said:

- removing the sliders for gold/science/culture/espionage is a mistake. It gave flexibility in your overall strategy and I didn't know how much I would miss them until I played CiV. Removing espionage as well is also a setback.

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What sliders? Removing sliders? They never had sliders in Civ V...
They did in Civ IV? Well that doesn't really matter, since this isn't Civ IV. The game works very differently... There are other ways to get science and culture that can all be acquired directly with gold. The system is different. If you insist on the slider mentality then think of the slider being at 100% gold and 0% science and culture. How are you going to compete in science and culture? Well get it from other sources, and use your excess gold to get some extra.

Again, this is a matter of preference and does not belong on this list of issues...

I can't find anything about how utterly useless some of the former health resources are, so maybe this can be added! (such as cows, sheep, bananas etc)

Granted they do give a bonus versus "normal" tiles but this is way to low. Right now there's no reason to build a pasture on a cow, for example as it's almost always better to spam a farm.

I don't really care about health being taken away but there should at least be some resource specific bonus such as 1 extra food empire wide or a specific building which requires that resource, i.e. dairyshop etc.

This would actually give the resource a value making it worth trading and fighting for, as well as making you think whether you should farm it for a short term gain och pasture it for long term.

Just a thought, hopefully not repeating someone elses thoughts...

I agree, Bonus Resources do seem to be significantly lacking in quality... Bonus resources probably need to be better. May speed up some of the issues people have with the slow game... only slightly of course, but that's a good thing.

weeee333 said:

I'm not sure if if it's just me, or is this a bug.

Has anyone else encountered the trade agreement where in order to get a luxury resource, the AI asks for three or even four in return?

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I've mainly noticed this when I request a luxury that would give me a we love the king day event...and I have a feeling the AI is trained to notice this as well.

I've had 1 to 1 luxury trades before, and I've been able to purchase non king day luxuries for a decent amount of gold...but get them nonetheless.

This is less a complete list of actual issues Civ V could do with changing and more of a long long list of some ones personal dislikes.

Till someone wants to make an objective list of things that could actually do with fixing I won't participate.

Yeah it is still full of subjectivity... but you should have seen it before a lot of us went over a reivew of it, hah! Help out the OP by pointing out subjectivity.