The it's a game argument is not really something I buy when used against interesting gameplay elements. I am not saying the game should have featuer A or B because it would make it more realistic, but because realism have some interesting concepts to be incorporated into games, such as trading bonus resources, that would obviously have other uses than strategic or luxury resources.
Civilization is not just a game, it's a board game.
It's ultimately based on a board game, so is that much of a surprise? Take Avalon Hill's Civilization (not the "Sid Meier's Civilization" board game that is itself based on the Civ games, but the one Sid originally acknowledged inspired the computer game), add a touch of Sim City, finish off with a diplomacy trade screen - and hey presto you have Civilization.
And - Civilization V especially - has a weird focus on tactical warfare for a empire building game.
No moreso than Total War has a "weird" focus on empire-building for a tactical wargame. There's no logic to such arbitrarily rigid categories. In reality most empires expand through warfare - and in reality that warfare is executed at tactical scales. If you're going to have a combat system, it makes sense for it to be tactical, just as if you're going to have an empire-building system it makes sense for it to be strategic. Strategy and tactics aren't rigidly defined by scale, as though strategy is large-scale, tactics small-scale. Strategy is your overall plan; tactics is how you get there. Both exist at all scales.
Yes yes, stacks of doom was a problem earlier, but rather than going all the way down to '1 unit per tile', what about stack limits? A lot of board games use that. And seeing as Civilization already is just a digitalised (and more detailed) board game, then it might not be a bad idea to draw some inspiration from there.
Indeed the original Civ board game had stack limits. But chess has 1UPT. Risk and Britannia have unlimited stacking. Board games are no more homogenous than computer games.
In the Civ V context, as in any specific game context, the key issue is one of how the design fits together and what change X would add/subtract. What value is there to stacking other than partially fixing the AI's abominable pathing system? There's no obvious benefit to having combat in stacks, and being able to protect ranged units with non-ranged units stacked with them makes them too powerful (as indeed does being able to stack multiple ranged units together so that you can attack the same tile with a dozen horse archers). I think there's a tendency for people to dislike stacks, and to perceive issues with 1UPT (particularly movement-related issues such as finding it dull moving units one by one everywhere), and just assume that "limited stacks" would fix both problems rather than inherit the drawbacks of each.
I've actually found myself habitually trying to shift-drag a control box (as in Total War or RTSes) over Civ units before now, and a 'control group' system that allows you to group units into formations that you can move one by one would probably be a better solution than limited stacks. The units would still be 1UPT exactly as now, you could just move them to the same area with a single click. That's an interface rather than a gameplay detail, though.
I am just saying; I just wish there was more to do, and especially late-game. The game often seems to become rather boring by that point.
This was always my experience in past Civ games: Early game you have all the fun of exploring and meeting people. Mid game you have considerations of city management and how to develop your cities and army. Late game you just end up building duplicates of everything (at least in Civ IV, because production times are so fast and the lack of any kind of building-specific maintenance cost or other drawback for having 6 million granaries meant there was no reason not to and precious little else to actually do with your hammers - this was slightly less true of other games in the series, including Civ V, because there are financial limitations on how much you can build) or setting your cities to research production, or spamming more units even if not at war because there's not really anything else to do and it keeps unhappiness down.
Civ V is actually the first Civ game that's cracked this in my view. There's always diplomatic wrangling, there's city-state influence to manipulate throughout, and the fact that AI opponents actually make an effort to win in the end game can make it tense right to the end (unless you're massively in the lead, in which case it tends to become the same rather dull "Next Turn" clickfest Civ late-games always were). It's certainly the only member of the series in which some of my best experiences have been in the late game rather than the exploration phase or during wars.
I thought the idea of advisors were to be there whenever a situation popped up. I like the small makers on units and buildings and technologies from each advisor, but I wish they also included an explanation.
Given all the options for units/buildings that would have to be fairly cursory, but there's no reason the tooltip can't do what it did in Civ IV ("The domestic advisor recommends you build this because it will help your economy"), in much the same way it will recommend you build a city for reason X or Y (although in cases where a city is recommended but it doesn't have resources or whatever you need, it will just say "I recommend you build a city here"...) The city placement advice does seem to have improved since G&K - I've noticed that I'll select a site, build a settler, and when I send him out most of the time the city placement icon will be on or next to the tile I've already selected for him. It will still suggest lots of unsuitable places on the basis that they have resources the AI doesn't know you don't need etc., but it does at least seem to pick up on most of the good spots.
Better tooltips that reflect actual playstyles ("I recommend you build a city here because it is surrounded by terrain that's good for production", for instance) would still be welcome for the benefit of less experienced players - also, if the AI could provide advice on that basis, it could also found its own cities with a similar calculation and would tend to place them better itself.
Though I was thinking of the ever-unhelpful advisor screens themselves, which could and should be a venue for basic advice that you can get other ways but more easily this way. For instance:
Military: The most demonised advisor actually already does a creditable job in terms of military strength with powers at peace, and with suggesting you should build units in City X because that's where you have your Barracks. There's probably not much more info he should provide, except perhaps "Your army is lacking in cavalry - you should produce more mounted units" type observations (and related to that, maybe "If we ally with Sidon, we get access to the Panzer!" once you have the appropriate tech and if the AI deems that tanks are something you need).
He screws up royally in his assessment of war progress, but this is an issue that needs fixing generally with the AI and is not one any Civ game has yet solved. There's hope - Civ V's combat assessment AI is about as bad as the old Total War combat assessment AIs in, say, Medieval II, and for basically the same reason (I won't declare peace even though I'm down to one city and no army because all my allies combined have a greater military strength than you, even if they aren't all at war with you and you're beating them all consistently and taking their cities"), but the system has improved in Shogun 2. So it's not an insoluble problem.
Foreign: Already occasionally gives advice of the form "We have cotton and Arabia doesn't, we should consider trading it with them", but should do so more consistently since this info isn't readily available anywhere else. Should probably advise on:
City-state relations, depending on the particular type of CS the AI determines you most need ("Our civ is unhappy and an alliance with Zurich will provide us with access to new luxuries" if happiness is getting low, "Forming an alliance with Quebec City would help alleviate food shortages in our cities" if your growth is slow etc.)
Which types of deal a civ is perceived likely to accept ("Our relations with Arabia are good, and we have reached a point where we should consider offering a Declaration of Friendship")
What to do about a Civ's attitudes ("Relations with Japan have deteriorated; we should consider offering them tribute as a sign of good faith")
Reminders on current status of some deals ("We have promised to stop spying on Siam")
Espionage advice targeted at specific concerns with each civ ("I don't trust the Huns. We may want to station an agent in one of their cities to gather intelligence on their movements", "Russia has technologies we need, we may want to inflitrate their research labs").
Yes, it's a lot, but arguably more of Civ gameplay, and certainly more of the strategic decision-making, comes down to foreign relations and how they're managed than any of the other advisors' spheres of interest - science and in some contexts military development may be more important, but the decisions you make regarding them tend to be rather more trivial.
Also, an important reason to focus more attention on the advisors than they might seem to warrant is that they're our window on the "AI perspective". The AI plays as though following the advice it's given; improving the way the AI calculates and presents its advice, and the type of advice it presents, amounts to improving the way the AI plays.
Science: Should actually offer some advice...
Domestic: Religious advice ("Our people are sufficiently devout that we can send a missionary to convert the heathens", "The people of Paris yearn for a cathedral", "If we spread our religion to additional cities we will get [reminder of Founder Beliefs]")
Targeted city production advice, based on the assessment the AI is already capable of regarding a city's focus ("Paris has buildings that strengthen our economy. We should develop trading posts in the surrounding area", "London can produce Great Scientists. If we build a University in this city, we will be able to hire more scientist specialists and generate these Great People faster". "Tangier has desert tiles around it, and we have the knowledge to build Petra").
Economic advice ("We are making money!" isn't very helpful...)
Textual city-placement advice that just translates the existing city-placement advice.
