Long time lurker and first time poster.
I've been playing the glorious Civilization franchise since the beginning: Civ1!! I have logged god knows how many total hours. Steam says 4197 hours on Civ4 (in addition to my probably 2000+ more hours prior to Steam) and looks like I unknowingly passed a milestone on Civ5 recently as I have now logged over 2057 hours!! And, believe it or not, I think I've easily logged more hours in Civ2 than Civ4 and probably Civ5 combined. Can you say, "Call To Power: Hotseat," anyone??? hahaha! At the inaugural Firaxicon my two friends and I were the only three attendees to stay up all night and play the newly released Beyond Earth for over 8 hours straight. I am still shocked by this fact BTW. What the hell was everyone else doing? Sleeping??? It's CIV - ONE MORE TURN guys!!!
I say all this bravado only to reference that I am by no means a noob player, despite my lack of online presence. I also don't play to break the sound barrier with my Science Victories or max out my leverage for an early Diplo- win/Conquest/whatEver! I play for fun; without the need incessant calculations, math, and micromanagement.
But, I can stay online-silent no more!!!
I've owned Civ6 for months but have only logged 76 hours. Civ6 has made some monumental changes, therefore, I still do believe it has great potential and a huge upside. But, I fear it's going to need some Expansion help (see Civ5) to get it to where it needs to be. That said, I've been logging problems that have forced me into returning to a predominately Civ5 player. Sorry if some of my thoughts seem faded but I do not remember all the specifics from each individual incident that prompted me to jot down a few notes. Most of the issues listed below are more interface and notification related than anything else. To me that's what also makes them so egregious. Lastly, I'm sure that there are other threads discussing many of these issues so I apologize in advance if I am duplicating efforts!
Without further ado; The Deficiencies!
MISSING FEATURES: and mostly easy fixes I would think
1) PRODUCTION QUEUE - The lack of a queue is by far the most egregious omissions in Civ 6. How you release a game without this feature is beyond me. It's even been patched once and this still doesn't exist!!
2) Hotkey for (H)ealing - A real WTF moment here. Minor, I know, but annoying nonetheless.
3) Pregame Launch screen lacks Information - "A unique building"; "A unique land unit"; "A unique air unit"; COME ON! How much effort would it take to display the information on their characteristics and requirements?!?
4) There is no Back or Forward buttons in the Civilopedia
5) Center-to-unit hotkey - Took me a while to realize you can click on the image of your unit on the bottom of the screen to center on it. Would love the C hotkey back though too.
6) The Tech Tree does not graphically show the bonuses from the tech (ie: Plastics +1 food to fishing boats). The "Improved Tech Tree MOD" does solve this, at least in the Tech tree itself. The overlay during gameplay, however, does not in that MOD.
7) No lasts deployed (previous) Trade Route notifications when reassigning - At least there is finally a "notification" for those City-states requesting a Trade Route. But where'd the "previous" option go?
8) Keyboard movement unavailable - Used to be able to use the numperpad/pgup/pgdn/home/end to move units. I like having the option especially early on. Although with all the Eurekas and other such popups the mouse comes as a necessity very early in the game.
9) When playing an "Advanced Setup" single player game it does not save the last used configurations (map size, difficulty, etc) - Just annoying really. And, easily fixed with a configuration file.
10) Unable to sort the "City Reports" overlay - just.... WOW! And, you can't see anything - Reports need to collapse to just city names without their specific contributions from buildings and such. You can't see anything useful from an empire-wide perspective. It's borderline useless.
SNAFUS?
1) Cannot move a unit after being fortified... or even skipped! - And, cannot even upgrade the unit at that point either! To quote Sid, "ARGHH!"
2) Upgrading Spies is absurd - First, you are not allowed to from outside of a city. And thats horrible enough to leave your industrial zone unprotected for one turn that just happens to be a sabbotage. But even worse it also leaves the city in a state of "no active protection that turn" while it takes it's upgrade. Ridiculous.
3) In the City Screen (if we can even call it that anymore) it is hard to go back and forth between cities - You also cannot see all the detailed city information because the production overlay is on top of it. Also, it'd be nice to have the ability to use the arrow keys to toggle through the cities,
4) "Sleep"ing issues - You are not allowed to sleep normal units? Only Specialists? ... and those don't wake up anyways???!!
5) District repairing is a nightmare (not to mention expensive) - Sometimes you can no longer repair them because you can no longer support that quantity of districts. Because you went ahead and built an "extra" one. Because the damaged one no longer counts towards your total. Because there is no warning that if you build another new district you will not be able to repair the damaged one. Because there is no information as to why you can't repair the district in the first place!!!
6) Envoy Assignments get buggy when "End Of Turn" button not showing - Basically the "Send Envoy" button ends your turn as it toggles the F2 overlay for City-States. Then you have to wait for the next turn to begin to actually assign the envoy. If you just press F2 you can bypass that. Still very frustrating when you forget!
7) You lose the religion overlay after an Apostle moves and that ends the turn - The overlay is kinda bright anyway. And it also keeps blinking the overlay and centering on the Apostle, if it was the last unit moved the turn before, inbetween moving other units. I think it actually happens with all special units? It did the same with a Great Scientist (Janaki Ammal - highlighted Campus Districts instead)!!
8) Unit cycling is a real problem - Units blink then change back to same unit. It might be the first unit active that turn that it blinks up to, but I'm not sure. Either way its annoying and it creates a lag, at minimum.
9) Barbarian encampments count YOUR resources that are within their radius - This is REALLY unfair. Civ in general is "unfair" but this may actually take the cake. Those early horsemen raids... with your own horses?!?!!?! Crafty bastards!
DISPLAY ISSUES/REQUESTS
1) The Mini-Map is way to small and/or lacking clarity
2) I would really like a wider range-of-view when fully zoomed out.
3) I cannot, for the life of me, see all them damn hills! AT ALL!!!
4) Tribal Villages are also ninja-like. I never see them either. And, btw, the notification system leaves something to be desired!
5) The "papyrus" map is awful! It's impossible to determine the difference between plains/undiscovered map tiles/dessert tiles
QUESTIONS/COMMENTS:
Are Settlers are allowed for a City-States? - This has probably been discussed but how do they get one? Can they build them? Was it captured? Either way I call Shenanigans!
Is there an issue as to how "Continents" are defined? - I once started in the middle of a giant continent when I get the bonus for finding a second continent on turn 2. I know Asia/Europe divide is kinda that way but something seems off there...
CONCLUSION:
These complaints, compounded by numerous gameplay, balance, and other shortcomings lead me to finding the game too cumbersome and frustrating to consistently play. I hope Civ6 v.2 (whenever and whatever that is going to be) addresses some of these issues, and more! Maybe a patch for some of the "simpler" problems before that? Ultimately I'm waiting for some of the more annoying issues to be fixed before I put in a couple of thousands of hours into this game!
Regardless. I am now, always have been and always will be a Fanatical Civ player for life!
I've been playing the glorious Civilization franchise since the beginning: Civ1!! I have logged god knows how many total hours. Steam says 4197 hours on Civ4 (in addition to my probably 2000+ more hours prior to Steam) and looks like I unknowingly passed a milestone on Civ5 recently as I have now logged over 2057 hours!! And, believe it or not, I think I've easily logged more hours in Civ2 than Civ4 and probably Civ5 combined. Can you say, "Call To Power: Hotseat," anyone??? hahaha! At the inaugural Firaxicon my two friends and I were the only three attendees to stay up all night and play the newly released Beyond Earth for over 8 hours straight. I am still shocked by this fact BTW. What the hell was everyone else doing? Sleeping??? It's CIV - ONE MORE TURN guys!!!
I say all this bravado only to reference that I am by no means a noob player, despite my lack of online presence. I also don't play to break the sound barrier with my Science Victories or max out my leverage for an early Diplo- win/Conquest/whatEver! I play for fun; without the need incessant calculations, math, and micromanagement.
But, I can stay online-silent no more!!!
I've owned Civ6 for months but have only logged 76 hours. Civ6 has made some monumental changes, therefore, I still do believe it has great potential and a huge upside. But, I fear it's going to need some Expansion help (see Civ5) to get it to where it needs to be. That said, I've been logging problems that have forced me into returning to a predominately Civ5 player. Sorry if some of my thoughts seem faded but I do not remember all the specifics from each individual incident that prompted me to jot down a few notes. Most of the issues listed below are more interface and notification related than anything else. To me that's what also makes them so egregious. Lastly, I'm sure that there are other threads discussing many of these issues so I apologize in advance if I am duplicating efforts!
Without further ado; The Deficiencies!
MISSING FEATURES: and mostly easy fixes I would think
1) PRODUCTION QUEUE - The lack of a queue is by far the most egregious omissions in Civ 6. How you release a game without this feature is beyond me. It's even been patched once and this still doesn't exist!!
2) Hotkey for (H)ealing - A real WTF moment here. Minor, I know, but annoying nonetheless.
3) Pregame Launch screen lacks Information - "A unique building"; "A unique land unit"; "A unique air unit"; COME ON! How much effort would it take to display the information on their characteristics and requirements?!?
4) There is no Back or Forward buttons in the Civilopedia
A) The cursor should start in search box field when you open the Civilopedia - Makes it easier to search quickly if you can type right in.
5) Center-to-unit hotkey - Took me a while to realize you can click on the image of your unit on the bottom of the screen to center on it. Would love the C hotkey back though too.
6) The Tech Tree does not graphically show the bonuses from the tech (ie: Plastics +1 food to fishing boats). The "Improved Tech Tree MOD" does solve this, at least in the Tech tree itself. The overlay during gameplay, however, does not in that MOD.
7) No lasts deployed (previous) Trade Route notifications when reassigning - At least there is finally a "notification" for those City-states requesting a Trade Route. But where'd the "previous" option go?
8) Keyboard movement unavailable - Used to be able to use the numperpad/pgup/pgdn/home/end to move units. I like having the option especially early on. Although with all the Eurekas and other such popups the mouse comes as a necessity very early in the game.
9) When playing an "Advanced Setup" single player game it does not save the last used configurations (map size, difficulty, etc) - Just annoying really. And, easily fixed with a configuration file.
10) Unable to sort the "City Reports" overlay - just.... WOW! And, you can't see anything - Reports need to collapse to just city names without their specific contributions from buildings and such. You can't see anything useful from an empire-wide perspective. It's borderline useless.
SNAFUS?
1) Cannot move a unit after being fortified... or even skipped! - And, cannot even upgrade the unit at that point either! To quote Sid, "ARGHH!"
2) Upgrading Spies is absurd - First, you are not allowed to from outside of a city. And thats horrible enough to leave your industrial zone unprotected for one turn that just happens to be a sabbotage. But even worse it also leaves the city in a state of "no active protection that turn" while it takes it's upgrade. Ridiculous.
A) Placing counterspys every X turns (What is it? 30? It seems quicker) - Why do you have to keep placing them? If the effects weren't so damaging without them I wouldn't even bother...
3) In the City Screen (if we can even call it that anymore) it is hard to go back and forth between cities - You also cannot see all the detailed city information because the production overlay is on top of it. Also, it'd be nice to have the ability to use the arrow keys to toggle through the cities,
4) "Sleep"ing issues - You are not allowed to sleep normal units? Only Specialists? ... and those don't wake up anyways???!!
A) Can't fortify great units? ONLY sleep! UGH. At least make it the same shortcut key as specialists then. Pick one or the other.
5) District repairing is a nightmare (not to mention expensive) - Sometimes you can no longer repair them because you can no longer support that quantity of districts. Because you went ahead and built an "extra" one. Because the damaged one no longer counts towards your total. Because there is no warning that if you build another new district you will not be able to repair the damaged one. Because there is no information as to why you can't repair the district in the first place!!!
6) Envoy Assignments get buggy when "End Of Turn" button not showing - Basically the "Send Envoy" button ends your turn as it toggles the F2 overlay for City-States. Then you have to wait for the next turn to begin to actually assign the envoy. If you just press F2 you can bypass that. Still very frustrating when you forget!
7) You lose the religion overlay after an Apostle moves and that ends the turn - The overlay is kinda bright anyway. And it also keeps blinking the overlay and centering on the Apostle, if it was the last unit moved the turn before, inbetween moving other units. I think it actually happens with all special units? It did the same with a Great Scientist (Janaki Ammal - highlighted Campus Districts instead)!!
8) Unit cycling is a real problem - Units blink then change back to same unit. It might be the first unit active that turn that it blinks up to, but I'm not sure. Either way its annoying and it creates a lag, at minimum.
9) Barbarian encampments count YOUR resources that are within their radius - This is REALLY unfair. Civ in general is "unfair" but this may actually take the cake. Those early horsemen raids... with your own horses?!?!!?! Crafty bastards!
DISPLAY ISSUES/REQUESTS
1) The Mini-Map is way to small and/or lacking clarity
2) I would really like a wider range-of-view when fully zoomed out.
3) I cannot, for the life of me, see all them damn hills! AT ALL!!!
4) Tribal Villages are also ninja-like. I never see them either. And, btw, the notification system leaves something to be desired!
5) The "papyrus" map is awful! It's impossible to determine the difference between plains/undiscovered map tiles/dessert tiles
QUESTIONS/COMMENTS:
Are Settlers are allowed for a City-States? - This has probably been discussed but how do they get one? Can they build them? Was it captured? Either way I call Shenanigans!
Is there an issue as to how "Continents" are defined? - I once started in the middle of a giant continent when I get the bonus for finding a second continent on turn 2. I know Asia/Europe divide is kinda that way but something seems off there...
CONCLUSION:
These complaints, compounded by numerous gameplay, balance, and other shortcomings lead me to finding the game too cumbersome and frustrating to consistently play. I hope Civ6 v.2 (whenever and whatever that is going to be) addresses some of these issues, and more! Maybe a patch for some of the "simpler" problems before that? Ultimately I'm waiting for some of the more annoying issues to be fixed before I put in a couple of thousands of hours into this game!
Regardless. I am now, always have been and always will be a Fanatical Civ player for life!
