Things I don't like of Civilization V

Hello
I've been playing Civilization V: Brave new world recentely, and I want to point out some major things I don't really like of it.

In random order:

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Diplomacy, military advisor:
"We should create our units in XXX city because there are buildings suitable for bla bla bla"
In short:He advises you to create military units in a certain city because there are buildings that would enhance it(giving starting exp I suppose). OK. no problem.
Oh wait, there IS actually a problem.
WHY in the world, if I have 15+ cities upgraded with almost all the buildings, this guy would make 15+ messages ALL saying
"We should build units in city #001"
"We should build units in city #002"
"We should build units in city #003"
"We should build units in city #004"
OH MY gawd shut up already you don't have to list ALL my frigging cities you could just point out the best of all (like one with a wonder that gives even more exp than standard cities to new units), or just name the 2-3 best cities and that's it....NOPE you had to list all my frigging cities.
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Mountains
Oh my gawd, why in the world I can't remove mountains? I could do that in Civilization II for Playstation 1(first Civ title I played), but not here, WHY? don't tell me we don't have the technology because WE DO HAVE, depending of the city of the mountain, a nation can completely make a flat land out of it in like 10 years, I am fine with even with 50 years (50 game turns), but no, the mountains (and hills) are there and are untouchable, right.
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The so-called giant robots of death (because the idea of putting giant robots in a official civilization game alone wasn't stupid already, you had to give them a stupid name too), receive no bonus from terrains SO why the heck they can learn terrain-based abilities ? (+% combat power in plains/rough terrain/etc), and how come if they have terrain-ignore ability they still get penalty for attacking from behind a river?
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In a single player game I had some enemy missionaries coming into my territory and happily converting my cities, OK, I call their frigging nation leader, I "discuss" to him to NOT sending his lame missionaries to me, he said "ok bla bla bla", then what? the next turn a missionary converts yet another city, and the next turn also, and the next also, I go back to the diplomacy screen, BUT THERE WAS NO OPTION WHATSOEVER to say "WTF are you doing you son of Pac Man you just told me you won't send your missionaries bla bla bla and you still do it bla bla bla", nothing at all.
There isn't an option to arrest enemy missionaries or just keep em away for some legal reason, nope, only thing I can do is to capture them and WAGE A WAR to their nation, thank you diplomacy for being useless.
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Diplomacy, OH MY GAWD how stupid diplomacy is? its 2013 and they still can't put up an half decent artificial intelligence. I had this nation completely wiped of his 15+ cities to just one city left (capital was already captured), I accept a peace treaty, that nation had no more military units and just a single city left, so I called their leader and for the sake of trolling I told him to not create cities near my borders, and what he says? uhmp! we place our cities wherever we like! LOL what the heck? you should kiss my feet and beg me on your knees after I wiped your 6 thousand year old civilization in like 20 turns, but you still act arrogant and all big like you can even talk back to me; YOU should give me all your gold and resources just for persuade me not to crush your last city, but off course not, the so-called artificial intelligence its an artificial .
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Shape your world NOT
Nope, in Civilization 2 you could obviously change deserts to green plains, remove mountains and hills, turning tundras to plains, but here, nope.
We do have the technology to turn deserts into green land, it takes years off course, but its perfectly possible in real life, and I don't see why you can't do it in game. The only thing you can change are forests and jungles, those you can cut down, but that's all the "world shaping" you can do, you can't even put a forest back, again, you can do that in real life but not in game, Game Devs hate forests and nature, you can eradicate entire forests but not putting a single title of forest land back.
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The world never change, ever.
Forests never grow larger, nor smaller.
Marshes never dry up, or spread.
A tile of tundra will always be a tile of tundra.
Not a single tile of forest grows.
Sea level its always the same.
The world doesn't seem to live at all, its like the time stops when you start the game and everything remains the same.
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Oh my GAWD where's pollution?, how you could remove pollution? what the ? I have no words for this its just unrealistic and stupid.
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"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
You known what I am talking about? when you research ALL possible researches you're only left to discover a "future research", which always need a fixed amount of research points, and so...
....
....
Every 5 OR LESS turns (depends on how many cities you have), you have this HUGE WINDOW screen appearing on your face with the frigging
I THINK WE AGREE, THE PAST IS OVER
5 turns later
I THINK WE AGREE, THE PAST IS OVER
5 turns later
I THINK WE AGREE, THE PAST IS OVER
I THINK WE AGREE, THE PAST IS OVER
I THINK WE AGREE, THE PAST IS OVER
I THINK WE AGREE, THE PAST IS OVER
I THINK WE AGREE, THE PAST IS OVER
I THINK WE AGREE, THE PAST IS OVER

OH MY GAWD SHUT THE HECK UP BUSH! SERIOUSLY
Who is the TOTAL who didn't put an option to show up this useless trash? sure! I could just go delete every single +research building on ALL my cities, but its a very annoying and long operation especially if you have 15+ cities, and WHY THE HECK in other civilizations you could just have cut down the research investments to a point where you would need 4000 turns to research the next technology but not here? you can't finance OR de-finance technology , you simply can't.
"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
SHUT UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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World congress

OH MAY GODDESS
WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?

Never saw something more useless and stupid in all civilization titles I ever played, every 10 FRIGGING turns you have this farce where you can make a some useless proposal that doesn't really benefits anyone, and off course NO ONE THOUGHT that MAYBE I have all my proposals already passed and I DO NOT WANT TO MAKE ANY MORE PROPOSALS, nope! you HAVE TO select some idiocy-shaped proposal just not to give a single vote to it.

AND ALSO why I discovered the other day that, if you edit some xml file in some Civ 5 folder you can make a "No world congress" option to appear on the set up game screen? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY the option is there but not enabled??? WHY IN THE WORLD you would hide such an useful option? why ? WHY????

ALSO
Why civilizations with A SINGLE UNIT left hiding somewhere in the world(damn I'll find you someday!) can vote at the world congress like they're actual civilizations and not some left-overs of a wiped out civilization?
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You can't remove your own cities.
The other day I placed a city in the wrong title of land OK I can just remove it somehow.....somehow......somehow..... I CANT? WHAT THE? I have the power to fund cities all around the world but I can't move a single one? In other civilizations there were a way to make your own cities starve to the point they would disappear, but not here thanks to the non-existing terrain shaping.
The only way you can remove a city is to donate it to someone then declare war to him and take back and raze the city you just donated. Lame.
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You can't raze capital cities....insert reason here
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Settlers are atheists, they're created in a city with a certain religion, they're actually people from that city, but for some random reason no one carry that religion with him, the moment they become settlers, its the moment they become atheist.
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Limited number of trade routes....why?
A modern city in the modern era its theoretically connected with the whole world, why they can't have trade routes with other all other existing cities?
Why the caravan's range its fixed?, it can be increased with technology and buildings (caravanism ? wut?), but its FIXED, HOW?
20 titles of ground between 2 cities are apparently the same if the 2 cities are connected with a railroad OR if they're divided by an enormous forest surrounded by swamps/marshes; makes sense!
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There is no"Unit's protection" command. If I have a non military unity that I have to escort from place X to place Y, I have to MANUALLY move a military unit over it each turn to prevent the unit from being captured by barbarians.
Just how complicated is to implement a command to make a military unit automatically move over a settler or whatever unit to protect it at the end of every turn? image having to protect +10 workers in a raging barbarians map,try to protect them from the barbaric hordes,the hell.
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Barbarians are based on the map size rather on the actual number of players.
I have played a game some time ago with 2 players (me and another civilization), map was formed by 2 big continents, a big island and some small islands there and there. In my home continent there was a new barbarian encampment spawning every turn, I spent like half of the time running around the continent with my units to chase down the barbs, what was my computer opponent doing anyway?
When I reached the other continent, my computer opponent was way behind me in terms of technology and number of cities, and his continent was FILLED LIKE AN EGG by barbarians....wait, what?
The stupid barbarian's spawning system its not based on the actual number of playing civilizations rather on the map's size, so my stupid computer opponent was drowning in a sea of barbs filling almost each title of land in there....how crazy is that? why there is no limits to the number of barbarians spawning? why there is no difference in the spawn rate of barbs in ancient and in the future era?, shouldn't barbarians be almost non-existent in the modern era?
Note that in the game mentioned no such "raging barbarians" option was enabled! I wouldn't even dare to play a game with such option, its already insane like this.
And don't get me wrong, barbarians aren't a real threat, they're just ANNOYING as hell, they spawn, they get into your territory, they pillage some camp or road before getting wiped by the closest military unit. What's exactly the purpose of barbarians?,to frustrate a player?,to keep him awake?,they're just an annoyance, they're either too annoying or non-existent if you just disable them,they couldn't balance them to be reasonably annoying.
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Set up a game...must have another civilization.....WHY? why I can't play alone in world so I am free to build my own civilization without the hassle of dealing with some ******ed opponent?
Explain me why why why why?,why I can't start a game with me as the only player??
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Conclusion:
In over 15 years of development this series hasn't really evolved,just like many other games out there,there's only a care on the graphics and the effects but there haven't been any real improvements in game mechanics or in the artificial intelligence, which is as dull and flat as it was almost 15 years ago.A real delusion.

Cool.

This is just another rant thread. If you dislike the mechanics in this game so much, then don't play it. Problem solved.

Exactly. I mean, OP, what did you think was going to be the response to this? You come onto a forum full of people who mostly like the game, and at least like the franchise, and then blast both in a long, tedious and needless rant. If you're looking for some sympathy for not clicking with the game, you've come to the wrong place. Sorry.

How I can expect a game to get better without any critics to being with?

edit : If telling the truth is "trolling" I'm removing any of my context to this user. If you censor part of my thought, you get none of it.

Look around; the forum is overflowing with critics. The difference is, they express criticism in a clear, effective way, and they are obvious in wanting to be constructive in their criticism. What you've done is write a blog post.

Posting in existing threads or starting threads each with a singular focus would be a more helpful way to get your message across, in my opinion.

Also, welcome to the forums.

There are many valid points in it, but it's basically a long, bitter rant, so no discussion can come out of it.

I don't see the big deal of adding obvious "constructivism" in my critics, since is, as I mentioned, obvious.

Examples:

Diplomacy military advisor - Only list 2 or 3 cities where you could build units instead of ALL your cities -- Obvious.

Mountains - Make modern era worker able to tear down mountains to hills and hills to plains -- Obvious.

Giant Robots thing issue - Don't give them abilities they can't use -- Super obvious

Missionary thing -- Make possible to arrest missionaries after you've warned their civilization to NOT spread the religion on your cities. This would not cause a war instead just some attrition. -- Obvious

Diplomacy thing -- Is a player has 100 times the military forces of an AI civilization, he should obey to any request he make, for obvious reasons. - Obvious

Shape the world ... make the world more "plastic" with modern workers -- Obvious

World's change... this can be a bit complicated to implement, but the suggestion itself it more than obvious.

Pollution....bleh

Research thing...add research funds management so in end game you can save your money and spend it on other things. - Obvious

World congress - Make it useful or remove it or make the "No world congress" option viewable without some silly file editing - Obvious

Moving cities...make cities with lv.1 population able to create a settler to migrate somewhere else - Obvious

Raze the enemy's capital cities....\

Settlers shouldn't be atheist...\\

Trade routes...atomic/modern era shouldn't have any limits in number or range (you can trade stuff from all over the world) -- obvious

Units protection command... already said

Barbarians...tune them down to the actual number of players AND cities. - Obvious

Set up a game solo....super obvious

Was really necessary to write obvious stuff?

Its also fun how people downgrade other's "opinions" to "rants" so they can simply get away with that.

Moderator Action: Trolling removed, please do not get personal with other members, stick to the subject of the thread.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

ADVISOR COUNSEL

The military one needs works. The foreign relations one could like quests City States want.
The science one is just annoying. He just says everything is efficient. Itd be nice if he could benchmark every 50 turns to how ur doing close to the world like the military one.

RE-SHAPING the WORLD

I personally am fine with this change AS LONG as there are consequences. Remove a mountain? Tile next to it gets more rainfall etc. Remove a forest? theres more runoff so u get a marsh. It sounds complex but changing geography should have sound consequences.

Usually win before GDRs but it does sound silly.

Missionaries

Usually I cover my city with units, buy and inquisitor, OR just DOW if its a far away nation - we'll never really fight Ill just take and kill missionaries.

Diplomacy

Lol there are arrogant leaders in the face of defeat. Thats fine as is.

Pollution

Goes back to reshaping - should be a consequence for factories for sure.

World Congress

More international pursuits? Maybe a vote per request? In real life if the UNSC needs to embargo -they meet soon to decide. They dont wait 30 years and meet.

CITIES

I disagree - capitals should be around for future liberation.

CARRYING RELIGION

Definitely carry religion. Heck I wished soldier carried religion when they conquered. Crusades anyone?

TRADE

Trade route limit is good. Keeps the game from not going crazy. If you want unlimited there should be a check like devote a city etc.

Also Trade routes should help a city. Constantinople became trade central and grew fast so maybe a policy/building thats +1 food per trade route?

BARBARIANS

I actually wish there were barbarian Kings. They could collect tribute and carry out raids. Itd be nice to give a king like 200 gold to go attack a neighboring civ.

I had to stop reading after about the 5th OH MY gawd


From what I did get through, I think the answer to your problems is to play Civ2. Different games are different.

Back when I played Civ 2, I liked the idea of terraforming. It was another strategic decision, balancing short-term and long-term thinking. Founding a city here will be a challenge, but later I can make the terrain more hospitable. Indeed, since Civ2 had unit support *by city*, instead of support from the whole civilization, one had to decide whether one could afford supporting that engineer unit while it spent all those turns changing the terrain.

My bigger gripe in this area (and it applied to Civ4, also) was the idea of "no one can cross mountains, ever" OK, except helicopters. That's stupid. Once you have discovered dynamite and steam power, your civ should be able to build railroad tunnels through the mountains. It's a game mechanic, and it's unnecessary.

Diplomacy, military advisor:

What? Advisor? Oh, yeah, there he is somewhere, I clicked on advisor button like year ago, yep they are useless for everyone excepting very beginning players, so what?

Mountains
Oh my gawd, why in the world I can't remove mountains? I could do that in Civilization II for Playstation 1(first Civ title I played), but not here, WHY? don't tell me we don't have the technology because WE DO HAVE, depending of the city of the mountain, a nation can completely make a flat land out of it in like 10 years, I am fine with even with 50 years (50 game turns), but no, the mountains (and hills) are there and are untouchable, right.

1) Oh boy, this is pretty terrifying gameplay problem.
2) If point 1 is true, then, well, download Tunnel Digging mod (or something called like that) or In Game Editor, and edit mountains.

receive no bonus from terrains SO why the heck they can learn terrain-based abilities ? (+% combat power in plains/rough terrain/etc

Because they will still receive bonus attack on that terrain.

In a single player game I had some enemy missionaries coming into my territory and happily converting my cities, OK, I call their frigging nation leader, I "discuss" to him to NOT sending his lame missionaries to me, he said "ok bla bla bla", then what? the next turn a missionary converts yet another city, and the next turn also, and the next also, I go back to the diplomacy screen, BUT THERE WAS NO OPTION WHATSOEVER to say "WTF are you doing you son of Pac Man you just told me you won't send your missionaries bla bla bla and you still do it bla bla bla", nothing at all.

Yep, this is one of few annoying little & nitpicky aspects of this game, so?

Diplomacy, OH MY GAWD how stupid diplomacy is?

...As problematic as always in Civ5, currently I would call this one main downside of that game. Still I prefer it over mathematically predictable diplomacy of EU.

Shape your world NOT
Nope, in Civilization 2 you could obviously change deserts to green plains, remove mountains and hills, turning tundras to plains, but here, nope.
We do have the technology to turn deserts into green land, it takes years off course, but its perfectly possible in real life, and I don't see why you can't do it in game. The only thing you can change are forests and jungles, those you can cut down, but that's all the "world shaping" you can do, you can't even put a forest back, again, you can do that in real life but not in game, Game Devs hate forests and nature, you can eradicate entire forests but not putting a single title of forest land back.
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1) Game engine doesn't allow for terraforming. Firaxis guy said it in the interview and mentioned, that they were trying to give the Dutch ability to make coastal tiles marsh tiles, but it didn't work well.
2) For easy solutions which are possible to being implemented with the current graphic engine, download Reforestation/Tree Growth/Global Warming mods.

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"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
"I think we agree, the past is over"
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In the setting window there is a button which allows technology/wonder pop ups NOT to appear, the end.

World congress

OH MAY GODDESS
WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?

Never saw something more useless and stupid in all civilization titles I ever played, every 10 FRIGGING turns you have this farce where you can make a some useless proposal that doesn't really benefits anyone,

In multiplayer world congress has powerful impact. In singleplayer too.

AND ALSO why I discovered the other day that, if you edit some xml file in some Civ 5 folder you can make a "No world congress" option to appear on the set up game screen? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY the option is there but not enabled??? WHY IN THE WORLD you would hide such an useful option? why ? WHY????

Little problem, fast solution, hilariously big fury.

ALSO
Why civilizations with A SINGLE UNIT left hiding somewhere in the world(damn I'll find you someday!) can vote at the world congress like they're actual civilizations and not some left-overs of a wiped out civilization?

Because you enabled option which makes civs with no cities still alive.

You can't remove your own cities.
The other day I placed a city in the wrong title of land OK I can just remove it somehow.....somehow......somehow..... I CANT? WHAT THE? I have the power to fund cities all around the world but I can't move a single one? In other civilizations there were a way to make your own cities starve to the point they would disappear, but not here thanks to the non-existing terrain shaping.
The only way you can remove a city is to donate it to someone then declare war to him and take back and raze the city you just donated. Lame.

To be honest I have never thought of burning my own cities during my 900 hours of playing and never met with players complaining over that, so this entire rant is pretty strange for me.

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You can't raze capital cities....insert reason here
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1) Download mod "raze capital cities".
2) The reason - it would probably break domination victory type.

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Settlers are atheists, they're created in a city with a certain religion, they're actually people from that city, but for some random reason no one carry that religion with him, the moment they become settlers, its the moment they become atheist.
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I guess here we have balance reasons.

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Limited number of trade routes....why?
A modern city in the modern era its theoretically connected with the whole world, why they can't have trade routes with other all other existing cities?
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1) Good luck with making balanced economy in which each civilisation can make unlimited number of free and extremely useful trade routes
2) Good luck with turn processing, when each of the 200 cities in the large map is connected via trade route with each other (oh my God)

There is no"Unit's protection" command. If I have a non military unity that I have to escort from place X to place Y, I have to MANUALLY move a military unit over it each turn to prevent the unit from being captured by barbarians.

If I remember properly, there is a mod which adds that option.

[#]
Set up a game...must have another civilization.....WHY? why I can't play alone in world so I am free to build my own civilization without the hassle of dealing with some ******ed opponent?
Explain me why why why why?,why I can't start a game with me as the only player??
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Well, I have never ever met with player complaining over that, nor I can understand why Firaxis has to create game with each option designed specifically for your and your exotic tastes.

Conclusion:
In over 15 years of development this series hasn't really evolved,just like many other games out there,there's only a care on the graphics and the effects but there haven't been any real improvements in game mechanics or in the artificial intelligence, which is as dull and flat as it was almost 15 years ago.A real delusion.[/QUOTE]

Conclusion:
half of your rants are your own ridiculously specific and nitpicky expectations touching pretty little aspects of the giant game, while second half is very easy to repair. To be honest, I think that hating so big and complex game because of silly advisor text and atheist settlers is hilarious.

I want to point out that, if the post was full of "oh my gawd" and "why why why" and all the rest it was for a mere communication choice- style whatever its called.
Maybe, and I say *maybe* I have emphasized some issues a bit, but I see here half of the people are more concerned about the communication style rather than the actual content.

Good to known about all the mods out there, but that doesn't really save much of the game as many of the things I have pointed out could have been enabled by some option like "no world congress" they could have added "no capital cities razing" or "no land shaping", and such.

Good to known about the option to turn off the silly research window, I'll go uncheck that right now.

Edit:

Also I want to point out to some people here that I called this thread
"Things I don't like of Civilization V"
Not
"Things that are wrong in Civilization V"

Think about that.

Alyssa McNeil said:

I see here half of the people are more concerned about the communication style rather than the actual content.

Click to expand...

That's a good life lesson. The way in which your message is delivered has a direct impact on how it is received, or in some cases, if it is read at all.

Dralix said:

That's a good life lesson. The way in which your message is delivered has a direct impact on how it is received, or in some cases, if it is read at all.

Click to expand...

As if someone who has a degree in psychology (me) didn't known that.

Well I for one and guessing many on this site have started with Civ I back in College in the early 1990's. Each expansion or new version Civ II etc. has been exciting because we all remember how damn slow it was to move your troops from China to Western Europe. Felt like it took well over a hour or more. I look at how Civ I only took two floppy discs' 1.2 megs each? Now the game is about what in size with all the DLC and expansions and the graphics...come on. The game size must be around 3-5 GIGS. Unreal. This alone is what I love about the game. I remember how I got hooked over 20 years a go and continue to love the game more each time I play. I just got BNW and the new Map DLC's from the Steam Sale last week for 13 dollars or so and looking to add Bison when it hits a sale at 75 percent off? Love all that we can have and enjoy and enjoy how it's connected to Steam too.

For those who complain about the game I would like to think you did not start with Civ I and how damn slow it was yet you could not stop playing.

Brew God

I agree with Dralix (about your presentation being difficult to read). You definitely have a lot of real criticisms with civ in this post, but your original post is difficult to read effectively, and the overwhelming negativity in it makes me want to look away before I finish reading it. There is nothing particularly wrong with this, just think more closely at how your posts are going to be received in the future.

As for the actual content, I definitely agree with you for a lot of it.

The advisor system is pretty bad. I think most people just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist though. I really don't like that I can't ask about a certain civ, especially ones that are next to me. I hate reading through "Egypt, poland, and The Iroquois can wipe me off the map," when I really want to know about the Zulu, but my advisor doesn't have a report on them.

AI civ promises are messed up. Other civs don't keep their promises, and that's a big problem with this game.

Future tech is weird. I have no idea why we need to research it every few turns. I think tech should stop and we should get a gold/production bonus from our science for reaching it. Most of my games don't go on to reach future tech anymore though, so I don't experience this problem too often.

Atheist settlers is a weird concept. I suppose I can justify that though by the government just expelling my non religious citizens from the city. "You guys are weird. Move out!"

Things I sort of agree with:
Creating a really good AI for this game is hard. I agree the AI is pretty bad, but Civ is such a complicated game that this is actually just a super hard programming problem. In a lot of games the AI's incompetence (in Starcraft for instance) is covered up by the fact that they can have infinite APM, but since civ is a strategy game, that naturally favors the human player. I agree that there are simple fixes they could use though, such as city state troop movement.

Removing your own cities is an interesting thought, but if you want to implement that, I would at least create a massive temporary happiness penalty for it. The people who were formerly living in the city would be pretty upset that you did this.

I've never played any of the civs beforehand, so everything about Civ II is an interesting idea, but also stuff I can live without. Having the world change over time is an interesting idea, but it would be difficult to implement in a hex based system. I'm not sure how I would do it.

Right now there are a limited number of everything else in the game. Having an unlimited amount of trade routes might be interesting, but they need to be implemented very differently for that to work.

Things I disagree with:
I find giant death robots kind of cool. They are late game enough that I'm ok with the developers having a bit of fun with this.

I personally love the world congress. If you can't find anything to propose either your military is too small and you can't risk anyone declaring war on you (happened to me before), or you just aren't looking at the proposals hard enough in my opinion. I always find awesome uses for it. This is probably my favorite addition of BNW.

Civ is specifically designed for you to have interaction with other civs. You'll run in to lots of unhappiness problems if you play with no other civs around. It could be kind of cool I suppose, but that's not the way the game was meant to play. Still, I wonder if you could mod add in a civ who starts without a settler and try it out that way if you want.