:GRAPHICS: First of all, the graphics of Civ4 SUCK if you compare it to the Anno 1701 and there is no excuse for that. If you zoom up close, it just looks like bad craftsmanship. The Civ franchise is big and the game itself is not the most difficult and expensive to develop. They should higher two more visual artists. Over the 5 years it usually takes them to make a new installment, that should be enough for a few improvements
Agreed. But do not worry, Civ5 WILL be appealing graphics-wise, that's for sure. The only thing that should do an exception is about units. They should remain to icons, fast to identify and adapted to the schematic gameplay of Civ.
Each Civ should have unique Units and Cities. It's really not too much to ask. The units could be comparable in stats (or maybe not, I don't care), just look differently.
I disagree here. There should be as few as possible unit types, to facilitate their identification.
And the little things. A fisherboat should ha a real animation of a fisherman in action. If a worker builds an improvement, it should have different animations for each improvement and for each turn.
I was more thinking about adding sun reflections on armor and meteo, with clouds shadows on the ground. I don't care much about fishermen or workers building things, as long as their representation is clear enough (in only one eye throw).
::BORDERS: If you build a city, it should expand its borders regardless of culture, just based on it's size. Until it meets borders of another civ. Then they stay the way they are. Cultural borders is just a moronic concept.
OMG totally agree! I don't like cultural borders a lot myself. I even created a special topic only to express that.
The thing is, if you conquer a city in enemy territory, you have to conquer 2-3 more to be able to exploit its city radius. That just plain sucks, and favor long wars over short term ones. It would be very cool if we could do a short war only for a city, that we could exploit right after that.
Plus, culture should be managed in a different way. It should be similar to Civ4 religions, but with more coherency in its spreading. It could reach far away lands as long as they are connected to various nets (roads, railroads, rivers, plains, air) and reach very far away land in modern era. It would allow a new kind of cultural victory, more easy to do than the actual cultural victory.
::UNHAPPINESS: The way it is now is bonkers. It doesn't really matter. You can manage to have 5 crybabies and still stagnate the city. Either go back to the old way: unhappy cities revolt. If you don't correct this quickly, the defect. Or, make it so that unhappy citizens slowly f*ck up the productivity, increasing corruption or so. But give a REAL bad incentive for the player to correct unhappiness.
Strongly disagree here. Happiness is a tough domain, because it is only a matter of the player's attention. Nothing is more easy to prevent unhappiness in our cities, the fact is that is not handy every time. If you play fast, especially in multiplayer, the city advisor should be able to prevent rebellions alone, without creating any rebellion. That is so easy to put an entertainner in the population in order to prevent it to rebel. The fact is, it is attention and time consuming. In fact, in Civ4, the cities should be able to revolt yet, they just do not have this occasion because city advisors do the work for you. I remember Civ2, it was a pain to click on every city centers or inhabitants in order to convert some pop points into entertainners. That was repetitive and tedious. Now you still can have unhappy faces in Civ4, and still, nothing is more easy to prevent them to appear, by placing you citizen accordingly on the map, or by enabling the "no growth" button. The fact is it is not even handy to do that. Happilly, some times the city will keep from growing even if you didn't activated the no growth button. I think Civ5 city advisor should forbid growth every time there is not enough happy faces.
::UNITS: I prefered the old system. Attack, Defense and Movement, and 2/3/4/5 Hitpoints. I know, most people here like it more complex, but I always felt Civ becomes to much Total War by that.
I do not like much the old system. It obliged you to build specialized units, some to defend your cities, some to attack. With the actual system, you can bring any kind of units in the battle. I disliked the fact that you had to build spearmen for defense, horsemen for attack. Now, a warrior can be either defensive or offensive. It allows for more reversals in multiplayer.
::CIVICS should be balanced out. Some are just useless. But in reality, they are some of the most defining aspects of a society.
Agreed. There should definitely be more choice than heredetary rules the whole game, and we should be able to define the kind of relations the civ has with its population. (giving more or less properties to individuals, affecting cash balance)
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, and avoiding growth, but also 
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, and avoiding GP as well (to make another city's GP production more efficient). Also have buttons that decides whether automated workers must build or change improvements according to those settings.
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bonus cut by 25% once somebody "discovers" Representation, and another 25% cut after Democracy.
boost.
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