General Annoyances List

Just a few quick annoyances, nothing big, I find when playing civ with the game itself:

1) No automatic warning when I have 0 or low happiness and a city is about to grow next turn, so you end up going into unhappiness inadvertently and have to load auto save. Wish they had this. Wish they also had this for when trades are about to expire and/or you can renew before.

2) No alert before the WC as to when city states and diplomats must be secured for delegates. Can't count how many times I end up one turn away flipping a CS only to not get their votes for the WC. Likewise for the WC host votes.

3) AIs being dumb with post industrial city spamming. I don't know why they do this, but they seem to settle cities in the later part of the game, which for me as a player, would mess up my ability o build national wonders. Not to mention, they do it in really dumb places....like with minimal land tiles or within 4 tiles of my or other cities.

1) Not really a big deal going into -1 or -2 happiness for a few turns. Just don't let it go below 5 if it bothers you so much going into negative.

2) There is a counter at the top right of the screen that tells you when the next WC vote is. Host votes do come as a surprise sometimes, I'll admit, but it only happens once an era.

3) That really is kinda asinine and annoying, and it is only harming them to spam cities everyone in dumb places. I noticed though that it is only certain AI that do this.

I really don't see how 1) and 2) are valid points at all. Would you also like an alert to tell you when to rush-buy your Science Buildings? When to bribe an opponent into war?

The game also won't tell you "you have 10.000 gold to spend", because spending gold, for example on CS, is your job. Watching when a CS ally is going to fade is your job. Knowing when an AI is about to declare war on you and doing lump-sum trading or bribing a CS the turn before is your job. Those are the intricacies of Civ, they are what make the game interesting.

As for 3) you are completely right. They settle cities even in the info-era and it cripples them immensely. It hurts their science, their culture, their happiness (irrelevant on higher difficulties) and the production could be used on something much more important.

yung.carl.jung said:

I really don't see how 1) and 2) are valid points at all. Would you also like an alert to tell you when to rush-buy your Science Buildings? When to bribe an opponent into war?

The game also won't tell you "you have 10.000 gold to spend", because spending gold, for example on CS, is your job. Watching when a CS ally is going to fade is your job. Knowing when an AI is about to declare war on you and doing lump-sum trading or bribing a CS the turn before is your job. Those are the intricacies of Civ, they are what make the game interesting.

As for 3) you are completely right. They settle cities even in the info-era and it cripples them immensely. It hurts their science, their culture, their happiness (irrelevant on higher difficulties) and the production could be used on something much more important.

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I just don't understand why they do it.

rover6695 said:

I just don't understand why they do it.

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Happiness is shown at the top of the screen.

Each city displays it's turns to growth on the counter.

The information is there for you, you're just ignoring it.

Plus, if you're reloading whenever you dip one face into unhappiness you're doing something wrong.

rover6695 said:

I just don't understand why they do it.

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they do it because they were coded to do it. there are no humans behind the screen besides you. yes, it is a poor idea. it drags them down. a lot of mods fix this issue by making later expansion more profitable, try them out.

yung.carl.jung said:

they do it because they were coded to do it. there are no humans behind the screen besides you. yes, it is a poor idea. it drags them down. a lot of mods fix this issue by making later expansion more profitable, try them out.

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The AI is coded to play against the human player not the other AIs. An AI will never try to stop another AI from winning. They will try to stop you. Grabbing up every available tile on the map and forward settling cities on your borders hinders the human player and AI faction doing it...but it doesnt effect the other AIs in the games chances of winning.

yung.carl.jung said:

they do it because they were coded to do it. there are no humans behind the screen besides you. yes, it is a poor idea. it drags them down. a lot of mods fix this issue by making later expansion more profitable, try them out.

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Which specific mods, and how do I know they won't cause errors lol?

1. I can issue orders faster than the game can keep up while above recommended specifications. I'm not Boxer playing StarCraft. I don't even have 100 apm. This shouldn't be possible to do.

2. Unit cycling will still force switch you off units you select that have movement points remaining sometimes.

3. Turn times are still pretty bad.

4. In our (mostly) co-op MP games, having more than 4 players in the game turns it into a cesspool of desync and rehost, including the majority of 5 man combos tried.

5. However, rehosts are not reliable and can somewhat frequently result in "game over", as in being incapable of getting all 5 players back into the game and resuming it.

6. Tall vs wide is still a game-long consideration, and people consider the non-tradeoff to be valid design.

7. The game has input buffering, but applies it inconsistently. This is worse than useless; it leads to situations where you don't know which of your 3-6 previously issued orders will count and can result in unintended moves where either competent input buffering or even no input buffering would outperform it from a design perspective. On rare occasions it results in "ranged attack = move" which is reload-worthy (no tolerance for unit doing something other than ordered).

8. Betraying friends causes everyone to hate you, even people who have absolutely no way of detecting that it happened.

9. Dropping/rejoining into a game makes the AI issue orders for you, even if the turn isn't rolled.

TheMeInTeam said:

9. Dropping/rejoining into a game makes the AI issue orders for you, even if the turn isn't rolled.

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They pop every great person, including key saved artists, writers, scientists, and engineers.

Probably not in the same class, but it really bugs me when I issue a go to order to move a unit 7-8 hexes away, and he stops after a few turns just because an AI unit steps into the destination hex on it's way somewhere.

Now I have to remember where my unit was was supposed to go and start it again

I figure the AI's unit will be gone by the time my unit gets there, so I think my unit should keep on trucking without canceling the order.

Only if the final hex is still blocked when my unit gets there should the computer tell me

Hoss said:

Probably not in the same class, but it really bugs me when I issue a go to order to move a unit 7-8 hexes away, and he stops after a few turns just because an AI unit steps into the destination hex on it's way somewhere.

Now I have to remember where my unit was was supposed to go and start it again

I figure the AI's unit will be gone by the time my unit gets there, so I think my unit should keep on trucking without canceling the order.

Only if the final hex is still blocked when my unit gets there should the computer tell me

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I agree here. I don't usually go for "here's what's wrong with the game" threads, but my biggest pet peeve about ciV is unit movement. Ryika said it best awhile ago (I will now butcher her quote) - when you win a war, you should be basking in your own cleverness. Instead you are filled with dread as you micromanage every stupid unit. I have many games where I don't really consider war just because I don't have an hour to spend per turn. On mindless movement. The automated movement function is worse than aweful. If you play as Carthage it will gladly kill your units on a mountain for you.

At least I haven't experienced the Civ2 thing of a unit 'jitterbugging' between two tiles over multiple turns because the long-range-move autopathing took the unit to a position where it cannot make up its 'mind' which of two possible path-choices is optimal.

Course, in civ5, the unit would probably just go embark itself...

1. automating scout exploration effectively translates to "i would like my scouts to run into barbarians and die now please". this isn't an issue i experience much since i micro my scouts for much of the game but you would think they would code scouts to at least avoid hostile units. unless they already do and i am just mistaken

2. city state spawn locations can be really clunky. i've started games where i am almost entirely surrounded by city states, which stunts growth even for tall play, and capturing them makes everyone hate you so options are very limited

You cannot correct your typing errors, or add to your keyboard requests,..

Pretty Ridiculous actually,...

Example: If I type Karikatoa into Civilopedia, or Satonism for a custom religion name, it is not a option to cursor into the word to change one letter,...Why?

The search in Civilopedia is pretty dumb,...normally you have to have the Exact Title with exact spelling of the topic your looking for,....

Should also be able to save custom names for units, religion, etc. - Instead of having to type it every single time.

Doesn't really make or break a game, it's just annoying and a time waster!

miaasma said:

1. automating scout exploration effectively translates to "i would like my scouts to run into barbarians and die now please". this isn't an issue i experience much since i micro my scouts for much of the game but you would think they would code scouts to at least avoid hostile units. unless they already do and i am just mistaken

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Likewise, automating ship exploration effectively translates to "I would like my ships to explore every nook and cranny of the poles now please."

Im always annoyed at how the map functions. I want it to function like an actual globe. Now we can only traverse the map from east to west. Travel far enough in one direction and you pop up on the opposite side...as if you went around a globe like planet.

However this doesnt function for north to south. Why not?

If you travel to the north pole and then proceed a few more miles you do not arrive at the South Pole. You just arrive elsewhere in the neighborhood of the North Pole. So if you were to model that on a 2-D screen, when you got to the top of the map and continued a bit further on, you would pop out on the other side of the map, but still at the top of the screen (just as if you headed North from the northern tip of Greenland and crossed the North Pole -- you don't pop out at the South Pole, you pop out somewhere north of Eastern Siberia. That's fine, and I suppose you could build a 2-D map that when traveled north far enough you pop out somewhere else in the North, but now headed south, but how would that enhance game play?

There was a map type, "toroidal" in cIV that let you do this.