45 bad things with CiV that needs changing

[TowerWizard]

From playing for less than a week, this is what comes to mind just now. I´m sure I have missed a lot of mistakes. Feel free to comment, add, complain or whatever.
EDIT: Thanks for the additions posted in this thread. I will update this post regularly as long as new additions are, you know, added.

1. Starting the game
1.1 To not need to click through two windows asking for what version to play; to be able to save the information for all further games.
1.2 To be able to click past the video in an easy manner. (Make it non-compulsary to watch? maybe put it into a box titled "View Introduction movie" in the start screen?) Edit: Can be disabled in the .ini file, but should still be in the game options (Samael).
1.3 To be able to view civilopedia without having to run a game.
1.4 To be able to skip the intermediate screen when you choose "set up game" and go straight to the more important "Advanced settings" screen.
1.5 On-mouse-over on the settings in the "Advanced settings" screen (to know what the Rainfall setting means, for instance).
1.6 To be able to choose the ratio of City States being Maritime, Warlike and Cultural (to avoid maps with 80% warlike City States, for instance).
1.7 To be able to save choosen options in the "Advanced set up" screen. (Thrax73)
1.8 To be able to regenerate maps a la Civilization IV. (Thrax73)
1.9 To have an option to "Disable Research treaties". (Thrax73)
1.10 To have the option "Aggressive AI" in the "Advanced set up" screen. (Thrax73)

2. Game interface
2.1 To be able to see research when inside the city screen.
2.2 To see on-mouse-over information (worker turns left of improvements, territory ownership, enemy unit strength...).
2.3 To be able to see which tiles are being used without having to go to the city screen.
2.4 Fix the awfully ugly rivers.
2.5a When clicking on a city, to be able to immediately see the buildings it have built, instead of just getting to the "choose production" interface.
2.5b If 2.5a not possible, to at least be able to on-mouse-over production to see details of bonuses and so forth.
2.6 To be able to cue builds.
2.7 To be able to see all relevant information when you on-mouse-over a possible build or when you have selected it as a build (ie to find out whether or not it allows for specialists, if it is needed for other buildings, what a unit can be upgraded to, how many beakers/hammers/gold/culture points a +X% building will provide...)
2.8 To be able to trust the information in the game (for instance, “Free speech” gives +1 Research for Trading posts, not +2. Also, the civilopedia does not always provide correct information.)
2.9 To be able to change production, citizen allocation focus et cetera from the city overview screen (F2). (Inspiration)
2.10 To be able to select a build order for all non-puppet cities with one command in the "City Screen". (For example to make all cities "Build Gold") (Xicivilian)
2.11 To have the option to make the camera jump to the nearest unit on the map (instead of sometimes jumping all over the place, as per the standard setting). (Xicivilian)

3. Game play

3.1 Terrain
3.1.1 To differentiate between resources (ie to not to have Resource 1, Resource 2, … This is a big downer for maps, since there is little difference on different starts (which, of course, mostly suck IMHO) ).
3.1.2 To show in the civilopedia what bonus a resource provides when the relevant improvement is built on top of it (right now it only says what the relevant improvement is).
3.1.3 To differentiate between flood plains and grassland better than at the moment (which is that 1. Flood plains is always near a river 2. Different resources can be found on them. Motivation: Why is it that the Egyptians had flood plains to thank for their greatness if any grassland river would give the same bonus?)
3.1.4 To include in the civilopedia which tile improvements can be built on top of a forest/jungle without cutting it down.
3.1.5 Animated forest/jungle tiles would be nice.
3.1.6 To show hidden bonuses of resources (+25% build time for wonders of Marble (Why does marble affect the build time of EVERY wonder, by the way?)).

3.2 Units
3.2.1 To restrict the “one unit per tile” to only affect military units. (Motivation: Do I need one? Ok, here are a few: To be able to speed building times of improvements, to not have workers block one another or Settlers, to not be able to use one Scout to block a neighbor from connecting a resource, to be able to have commanders on the same tile as a ship, to have multiple Great Persons in the same city for protection, jadda jadda jadda)
3.2.2 When moving units, to have them avoid moving into City State territory when it will anger the City State, unless directly ordered to do so (that is, when moving past the CS, to not end inside the territory unless there is no other choice)
3.2.3 When moving units, to be able to move one (or more, see 3.2.1) civilian unit(s) together with one military unit. (The military unit in effect escorts the unit(s). At the moment you have to move the units one by one, which is a mess when a Worker needs to build a long road through neutral territory, for example).
3.2.3 Unit maintenance
3.2.3.1 To know how much a unit cost in maintenance 1. Before being built 2. When prompted to be upgraded.
3.2.3.2 To be able to find out which units corresponds to what costs in the “Economic advisor” screen.
3.2.3.3 To be able to find out how much more the unit costs in maintenance when in neutral/hostile territory.
3.2.4 Unit actions
3.2.4.1 To be able to know how long it takes for a unit to heal.
3.2.4.2 To see the path of the road/railroad when using “Create path” (or whatever it is called) with a Worker.
3.2.4.3 To able to choose the “Sleep” action on every unit (useful if you know there is an enemy unit in a square, but you don’t really want to be reminded every turn).
3.2.4.4 To be able to disband a unit regardless of whether or not it is “Out of moves”. In general, to be able to see all actions, regardless if you can use them right now or not (to be able to calculate movement times of “Out of moves” units, for example).
3.2.4.5 To know how much a city will cost (in negative Happiness and Gold) when choosing “Settle here” with a Settler.

3.3 Happiness
3.3.1 To NOT be penalized for building multiple cities happiness-wise, especially early in the game. (Should not citizens be happy to live in a large community, rather than the other way around?)
3.3.2 To NOT have a -75% Growth penalty the second you get negative Happiness (It would be MUCH better/more realistic to have like -5% per negative Happiness point.
3.3.3 To NOT have a hard limit on the penalty for Really Angry (or whatever it is called). (This is to avoid the proposed strategy for ignoring negative Happiness; since you have better units the -25% Strenght penalty of units is moot. It would be MUCH better to have -5% Strenght for every negative Happiness point beyond a certain level.)
3.3.4 To have negative Happiness also affect Hammers/Research/Culture/Gold, to counteract the above strategy. (-1 Hammers/Research/Culture/Gold for every negative Happiness beyond a certain point?).
3.3.5 To be able to have a large positive Happiness even with large empires, without being dependent on resources. (IMHO this game is geared towards small empires. Everything seems to get much harder with larger empires, instead of the other way around: large empires will have much lower Happiness, thus getting a lot fewer Golden ages; upkeep gets a lot harder… Maybe I am playing the game wrong)

3.4 Cities
3.4.1 When taking over a new city, the option to "Wait, Let me examine the city first" should be (re)implemented. (WeaselSlapper)
3.4.2 Annexing cities
3.4.2.1 To be able to rush the Courthouse (makes no sense to have singular buildings that cannot be rushed, even though I see the reason for this: to penalize empire growth, thus gearing the player towards making worthless Puppet States).
3.4.2.2 To be able to see how Annexing would affect the empires Happiness, before choosing to annex the city.
3.4.3 Puppet states
3.4.3.1 To be able to be happy to have Puppet states. (Nuff said)
3.4.4 Enemy starting cities.
3.4.4.1 To be able to burn Enemy starting cities. (Again, nuff said)

4. Interactions with other Civilizations
4.1 To have foreign trade routes back in the game! (They are an integral part of Civilization, if you ask me.)
4.2 To have information of how other Civilizations like you or, more importantly, how they like other Civilizations and/or City States.
4.3 To get info about the benefits/penalties/restrictions of the two different Pacts.
4.4 To know the details of signing a Research agreement or Open boarders agreement (that the Research agreement is broken during certain conditions, for instance).
4.5 To NOT be able to get hold of 60% of an enemy’s cities with a Peace treaty. (Also to have information of how this will affect your Economy and/or Happiness).

 

[Samael]

1.1 To not need to click through two windows asking for what version to play; to be able to save the information for all further games.

I love this so much because that screen gives you the option of creating a shortcut to the version you want. I created a Dx11 shortcut and whenever I use it... it takes me to the window that gives me the choice of which version to run.

1.2 To be able to click past the video in an easy manner. (Make it non-compulsary to watch? maybe put it into a box titled "View Introduction movie" in the start screen?)

There's a Skip Intro option in an ini file. Useful... but that should NOT be in just the .ini file. It should be in the options menu.

2.5a When clicking on a city, to be able to immediately see the buildings it have built, instead of just getting to the "choose production" interface.

It's there, in one of the tabs on the right. My problem is that all the text and images are so darn large and, as such, I end up having to close several other tabs to find what I'm looking for. There was room for Specialists, a building queue, a building browser, etc. in the last game without having it all toggleable.

2.6 To be able to cue builds.

In, but a little clumsily implemented. For instance, if I go into the queue building mode, I can bump the current project down the list a bit. If I switch buildings normally, it won't put the current project on hold. I have no idea if it holds hammers over or not.

2.8 To be able to trust the information in the game (for instance, “Free speech” gives +1 Research for Trading posts, not +2. Also, the civilopedia does not always provide correct information.)

Not only this but when the gamespeed is other than Standard, it'd be nice to know how many turns something is going to last. The game has all the mechanical parts for this and hides so many of the details from the playe - how is it getting these wrong?

3.1.1 To differentiate between resources (ie to not to have Resource 1, Resource 2, … This is a big downer for maps, since there is little difference on different starts (which, of course, mostly suck IMHO) ).

What do you mean here? Make the resources provide more different bonuses? Like, say, Luxury resources that provide more or less than 5 Happiness?

3.1.3 To differentiate between flood plains and grassland better than at the moment (which is that 1. Flood plains is always near a river 2. Different resources can be found on them. Motivation: Why is it that the Egyptians had flood plains to thank for their greatness if any grassland river would give the same bonus?)

I think it's something to do with the balance of it. As we don't presently have unhealthiness or disease, pushing the Food too high might break it.

3.1.4 To include in the civilopedia which tile improvements can be built on top of a forest/jungle without cutting it down.

Gotta confess it took me a couple of games to figure out Trade Posts, despite representing a small town or city, could be built on them.

3.1.6 To show hidden bonuses of resources (+25% build time for wonders of Marble (Why does marble affect the build time of EVERY wonder, by the way?)).

If they wanted variety, why didn't they give resources more different bonuses, like that? Say, Marble produces a point of culture. If Stone were still in, aside from a bonuse to some of the appropriate wonders (looking at you, Great Wall), it might provide a defence bonus to cities (Is quality granite tougher than sandstone?)

3.2.1 To restrict the “one unit per tile” to only affect military units. (Motivation: Do I need one? Ok, here are a few: To be able to speed building times of improvements, to not have workers block one another or Settlers, to not be able to use one Scout to block a neighbor from connecting a resource, to be able to have commanders on the same tile as a ship, to have multiple Great Persons in the same city for protection, jadda jadda jadda)

Goodness gracious THIS. Not being able to stack a Great General's boat when embarked with his men doesn't make much sense as is but, considering how many turns some improvements take (especially on slower speed settings) it's painful to not be able to stack Workers. On Marathon, the Pyramids become essential. The only ones who MIGHT have an issue with stacking units is the Songhai, considering their boats defend themselves.

3.2.2 When moving units, to have them avoid moving into City State territory when it will anger the City State, unless directly ordered to do so (that is, when moving past the CS, to not end inside the territory unless there is no other choice)

At first, it bugged me that they were doing this but it quickly became apparent that it didn't matter that much (unless I was planning on getting friendly with that City State). What annoys me more is the announcement, for some reason. A "Respect Borders" button might be nice for units set to Explore.

3.2.3.1 To know how much a unit cost in maintenance 1. Before being built 2. When prompted to be upgraded.

Not only this, but it seems that sometimes you don't lose unit maintenance from the outgoing gold until you disband a few units.

3.2.4.1 To be able to know how long it takes for a unit to heal.
3.2.4.2 To see the path of the road/railroad when using “Create path” (or whatever it is called) with a Worker.
3.2.4.3 To able to choose the “Sleep” action on every unit (useful if you know there is an enemy unit in a square, but you don’t really want to be reminded every turn).
3.2.4.4 To be able to disband a unit regardless of whether or not it is “Out of moves”. In general, to be able to see all actions, regardless if you can use them right now or not (to be able to calculate movement times of “Out of moves” units, for example).
3.2.4.5 To know how much a city will cost (in negative Happiness and Gold) when choosing “Settle here” with a Settler.

Absolutely essential.

3.3.1 To NOT be penalized for building multiple cities happiness-wise, especially early in the game. (Should not citizens be happy to live in a large community, rather than the other way around?)

I think it might be a case of the available resources being stretched thing. Also, if you think of it not just as Happiness but as Order and Stability, it's harder to maintain control of more, further-spread people, I guess. I was going to say that the Center should, perhaps, be better provided for and suffer less unhappiness... but it does, if you follow the Tradition line.

3.3.2 To NOT have a -75% Growth penalty the second you get negative Happiness (It would be MUCH better/more realistic to have like -5% per negative Happiness point

This or the "Anarchy Bucket" idea which leads to an Anti-Golden Age.

3.3.5 To be able to have a large positive Happiness even with large empires, without being dependent on resources. (IMHO this game is geared towards small empires. Everything seems to get muc h harder with larger empires, instead of the other way around: large empires will have much lower Happiness, thus getting a lot fewer Golden ages; upkeep gets a lot harder… Maybe I am playing the game wrong)

I think it's aimed to make small empires more viable. However... it's ended up making large empires much less playable. My problem is largely with the Social Policy cost increasing. A large empire may be less malleable, but there's room for

3.4.1.1 To be able to rush the Courthouse (makes no sense to have singular buildings that cannot be rushed, even though I see the reason for this: to penalize empire growth, thus gearing the player towards making worthless Puppet States).

I think this is the way it is because you could use the money taken from capturing the city to instantly rushbuild the Courthouse. To be honest, I don't get why Courthouses do this. As they assert the laws of the culture, I think that Courthouse should perhaps lower the New City penalty to Social Policies. Something like Local Government or Town Hall might be more appropriate.

3.4.2.1 To be able to be happy to have Puppet states. (Nuff said)

As far as I understand, they count as my cities but don't push up my Social Policy cost or hit happiness to much, and I can connect them up to my trade network. That's okay but they build some really stupid things. If there's a road running to it already, it doesn't need a harbour. Since it can't build wonders, the Garden has less use. Barracks, Armoury and Military Academy? Are you JOKING?!

To have foreign trade routes back in the game! (They are an integral part of Civilization, if you ask me.)

You have to love how City States ask for roads, but after you get that Influence boost, that road's doing nothing but taking your money. Unless it happens to slow Influence decline?

4.3 To get info about the benefits/penalties/restrictions of the two different Pacts.

And to actually have meaningful pacts. It SEEMS that the two we have at the moment are 'Increases Relations' and 'Decreases Relations with another' but since we don't know how good our relations are and, more often than not, they'll refuse the Pact out of hand, they don't seem too valuable. If there were further pacts beyond "Defence Pact", they might actually be good for something.


Everything I didn't mention specifically, I pretty much agree with but didn't have much to say on.

 

[TowerWizard]

What do you mean here? Make the resources provide more different bonuses? Like, say, Luxury resources that provide more or less than 5 Happiness?

I mean that the resources should all be unique. Gold would give the most gold, marble would (as you proposed) give culture (instead of the bonus to ALL wonders), sugar would give less gold but also one food, and so on. Others can figure out the best changes here, I am sure.

Everything I didn't mention specifically, I pretty much agree with but didn't have much to say on.

Thanks! Some of the things I wrote above others have mentioned before, but I just needed to put everything I thought about in one post. And I have not even began talking about the production problems, and the hammer/gold issue, but others have done that, so I won't repeat. Suffice to say that I hope some or all of these problems will be modded out of existence.

Also: There should really be a way to escort workers/settlers, wothout having to move both and make sure the military unit is on the right spot all the time. Joined movement, like in civ IV.

 

[Thrax73]

Under your starting the game category I would like to see added a (SAVE PREVIOUS SETTINGS) since there is no option to regenerate maps in the game. I can't express how infuriating it is to have to redo all the options and or ai civs if you happen to draw a series of bad starts.

As an option selected in game setup I would like to see research treaties disabled. I am probably not the only one who would like longer time spent playing in each era-even with marathon the spamming of these treaties is making the game go too fast.

As an option in selected in game setup I would like to see an Aggressive AI toggle.

 

[Inspiration]

One for the interface: with larger empires it becomes necessary to disable growth, emphasize certain production, buildings etc from the city overview screen (F2 in CIV5 and F1 in CIV4).

Somehow I can't get this done? If it is even possible (doubt it).

 

[TowerWizard]

Inspiration: Good idea. Will update post above.

 

[Xicivilian]

a) Emphasize to for example to gold in all cities at once and not clicking next through all your cities.
b) If you are at war with a few units, then center the camera to the next unit close by the unit for which you just selected an action and not going to the worker at the other side of the world first

 

[Doctor Phibes]

The unit overview screen should locate the unit for you when you click on it, probably by centring the map on it, though I did like the Civ4 minimap that showed whole unit types.

Plus I'd like to be able to zoom out further, very useful for huge maps (as far out as the Civ4 globe view would be favourite).

 

[Xicivilian]

This is real funny. If I let my governor focus on hammers I do 24 a turn. If I focus on culture I do 25 a turn. How is this possible?

EDIT: On food focus it is even 39 hammers... :s

Also, if you move a unit in a city to let him heal faster it is considered fortified and you don't get control over it once it's healed.

 

[poncratias]

signed.

 

[gdmast]

I agree to TowerWizard. May be miss a world builder like civ3 or 4, don't you agree? Why to play something diferent i have to use mod???? anyway to every civ (2,3,4) after few months, many mods are available

 

[kingsfan]

b) If you are at war with a few units, then center the camera to the next unit close by the unit for which you just selected an action and not going to the worker at the other side of the world first

This is the one that can really get me pissed. I have made bad moves because of this.