Mezase Master
Chieftain
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2013
- Messages
- 1
Hello,
I am a regular Civilization V player. Ever since the game's release, it's been one of my favorite multiplayer games and I've enjoyed all of the updates and expansions - particularly the recent Brave New World expansion, which made the game less of a hobby and more of an obsession. Over 90% of my playtime probably comes from LAN games with my brother where we play on a team against the AI (mostly because our computers are positioned right next to one another, so playing against each other would be impractical). With all of our playtime, we have encountered a few issues, some of which come to mind and I'd like to note here:
1. Stuck on "Change Production"
Now, when I search for this issue there are plenty of people stating that they can't proceed due to their orders being stuck on Change Production. However, I have not seen anyone else mention this particular circumstance that happened to us last night, and is what prompted me to make a post in the first place. What happened is that during our current game, my brother captured Paris from the French, and then we made peace. Later in the game, we went to war with England, and while we were distracted with that, France made a surprise attack declaring war on us and attempting to reclaim Paris. They succeeded, but after they re-captured it, my brother couldn't end his turn with a constant "Choose Production" notification that did nothing when clicked. It's quite apparent what caused the issue: just before France re-captured the city, he was one turn away from completing a building, so the game assumed he would have to choose his next production for Paris that turn, but because he no longer had the city, it thus made him unable to proceed (Shift + Enter didn't work either). We're certain this is why because when we went back a turn and changed production, we could properly continue afterwards. It seems that what the game should have done is, after all of the AIs performed their actions, sort of "refreshed" the current status of everything and realized that the city was no longer in his possession. Alternatively, an easier quick fix might be to simply make it so that if you hit "Choose Production" and the game is unable to locate the city in the player's possession, it determines that the city no longer exists under the player's control and skips that action.
2. Poland's AI is stupidly overpowered
Since me and my brother tend to play the game on higher difficulties, usually when it comes to technology, we'll be at the same level or just before that of the more powerful computer players, and surpass that of the weaker computer players in any game. Our scores reflect this position in the scoreboard as well. However, in our two games against Poland, they will have an EXTREME edge over everybody else in the game. Their score alone is nearly double the COMBINED score of my brother and I, making it very, very significantly higher than everyone else throughout the entire game. Their power reflects this - they'll always have huge armies, far superior technological advancements (they found the World Congress and an ideology sickeningly early), and, worst of all, an impossibly high tourism output that essentially says "you lose" if you choose a different ideological tree from them. In the first game we played against them, we kind of assumed it was a fluke and they just got extraordinarily lucky with their starting location and resources, but when the same thing happened in the next game we played against them (and considering that it has never happened with any other AI player) we realized that was probably not the case. I don't think it has to do with the civilization being inherently overpowered, either; while their social policy bonus is probably one of the better unique abilities in the game, it doesn't seem to be a game breaker, and when I played as the Polish I was not significantly further ahead than anyone else either (you could attribute it to poor playing ability, but I feel that I am pretty decent at the game and can usually compete with computers on the highest difficulties). It just seems to be some odd quirk in the Polish AI, like they're playing as perfectly as anybody possibly could. If this were intentional, then I'd at least like it if there were some indication in the game that they're of greater playing ability (my brother joked that one of the programmers may be a Polish nationalist
). Because of this oddity, however, we never play against the Polish AI in our games anymore, and since our last game with them was a few months ago they may have been fixed by now. That said, I regularly check the patch notes and never saw anything to indicate this.
3. Having to fight the camera
Although this is not a bug (at least I assumed it's not), there have been many issues with the camera that I have taken issue with since the initial release of the game, things that I always expected to be fixed but never were. The first is problematic screen scrolling that mostly affects you when playing on a less capable computer - while the next turn is processing, if your cursor touches a corner of the screen, then when it gets to the next turn the camera will scroll up in that direction constantly until you click elsewhere and fight it enough. A second issue comes from combat in multiplayer games, where if Quick Combat is turned off, the camera will ALWAYS focus on and make you watch every single fight that occurs. Couldn't the animations just play without forcing the player to focus on the action? Not only is this a big time waster, but the worst problem is that if the player is in the process of moving a unit and the camera suddenly focuses onto a fight, you're very likely to make an unintended action and move the unit in some undesired way. Now, I understand that the programmers were likely aware of this due to the fact that Multiplayer Quick Combat is checked by default, but the fact is that with those camera movements it makes it absolutely impossible to play through a simultaneous/hybrid game without committing a few errors as a result, and so if they can't fix this abundant problem it'd make more sense to not even give you the option of turning off Quick Combat for games that aren't turn-based. Finally, although this one is more of an annoyance and doesn't hinder gameplay like the other two, is that when you need to choose your production, you can move the camera a bit, but after it moves for a while it just jumps right back to being centered on the city. All that would need to be done is to either allow free movement when the production menu's open, or lock the camera completely in place so that you can't move the camera at all, much like when you have the city screen open. It's irritating because it basically tricks you into thinking you can move the camera around, which you sometimes want to do when deciding what to produce, but then just as you're deciding it suddenly jumps back onto the city so then you have to exit the production menu, look around, then go back into the production menu in a very inconvenient manner.
4. "Unit died of attrition!"
Here's a problem we never encountered until Brave New World - every time a unit is killed, at least when it is killed by another civilization, you'll get the standard "unit was killed" notification, but then you'll also get a second notification for the exact same unit that says "unit died of attrition!" It's annoying getting two of what is essentially the same notification and having to hear the death jingle twice in a row for one unit. What is the point of this? I mean, I guess it's a bug, but it's so abundant I can't believe they wouldn't have noticed it by now. Also, the message itself perplexes me because I thought the only way to die of attrition was in the New World scenario when a ship can be lost from scurvy.
5. Shaky World Congress deals
Just something I'm a little confused about, in our most recent game we made two deals with AIs regarding World Congress delegates that seem to have been undone later on in the game. The first one was when we were attempting to set a World Ideology, we traded with the Aztecs to make them vote for Autocracy. However, before the World Congress, they had chosen to adopt Order. At first we figured this had no bearing on the assigned delegates, but when we tried trading with him again, we noticed we could select World Congress votes for him again. We did do another trade to get him to vote yea on Autocracy, but it was kind of odd how it got undone; I guess because he chose a different tenet he suddenly absolved himself from the vote he committed to? That seems somewhat odd, but maybe it's intentional. Also, later in the game, we traded with France to vote yea on an embargo for England. However, before the World Congress vote took place, they declared war on us, and then in the World Congress they actually voted "nay" on it. That one makes a little more sense since I guess deals are totally off once war is declared and diplomats have to flee, but with the Aztecs we had never declared war nor did we ever remove our diplomat from his capitol.
Anyways, sorry for all the whining and walls of text, it's just that I love the game so much and would love to see these issues fixed, or at least addressed so maybe I can understand them better.
Thanks!
I am a regular Civilization V player. Ever since the game's release, it's been one of my favorite multiplayer games and I've enjoyed all of the updates and expansions - particularly the recent Brave New World expansion, which made the game less of a hobby and more of an obsession. Over 90% of my playtime probably comes from LAN games with my brother where we play on a team against the AI (mostly because our computers are positioned right next to one another, so playing against each other would be impractical). With all of our playtime, we have encountered a few issues, some of which come to mind and I'd like to note here:
1. Stuck on "Change Production"
Now, when I search for this issue there are plenty of people stating that they can't proceed due to their orders being stuck on Change Production. However, I have not seen anyone else mention this particular circumstance that happened to us last night, and is what prompted me to make a post in the first place. What happened is that during our current game, my brother captured Paris from the French, and then we made peace. Later in the game, we went to war with England, and while we were distracted with that, France made a surprise attack declaring war on us and attempting to reclaim Paris. They succeeded, but after they re-captured it, my brother couldn't end his turn with a constant "Choose Production" notification that did nothing when clicked. It's quite apparent what caused the issue: just before France re-captured the city, he was one turn away from completing a building, so the game assumed he would have to choose his next production for Paris that turn, but because he no longer had the city, it thus made him unable to proceed (Shift + Enter didn't work either). We're certain this is why because when we went back a turn and changed production, we could properly continue afterwards. It seems that what the game should have done is, after all of the AIs performed their actions, sort of "refreshed" the current status of everything and realized that the city was no longer in his possession. Alternatively, an easier quick fix might be to simply make it so that if you hit "Choose Production" and the game is unable to locate the city in the player's possession, it determines that the city no longer exists under the player's control and skips that action.
2. Poland's AI is stupidly overpowered
Since me and my brother tend to play the game on higher difficulties, usually when it comes to technology, we'll be at the same level or just before that of the more powerful computer players, and surpass that of the weaker computer players in any game. Our scores reflect this position in the scoreboard as well. However, in our two games against Poland, they will have an EXTREME edge over everybody else in the game. Their score alone is nearly double the COMBINED score of my brother and I, making it very, very significantly higher than everyone else throughout the entire game. Their power reflects this - they'll always have huge armies, far superior technological advancements (they found the World Congress and an ideology sickeningly early), and, worst of all, an impossibly high tourism output that essentially says "you lose" if you choose a different ideological tree from them. In the first game we played against them, we kind of assumed it was a fluke and they just got extraordinarily lucky with their starting location and resources, but when the same thing happened in the next game we played against them (and considering that it has never happened with any other AI player) we realized that was probably not the case. I don't think it has to do with the civilization being inherently overpowered, either; while their social policy bonus is probably one of the better unique abilities in the game, it doesn't seem to be a game breaker, and when I played as the Polish I was not significantly further ahead than anyone else either (you could attribute it to poor playing ability, but I feel that I am pretty decent at the game and can usually compete with computers on the highest difficulties). It just seems to be some odd quirk in the Polish AI, like they're playing as perfectly as anybody possibly could. If this were intentional, then I'd at least like it if there were some indication in the game that they're of greater playing ability (my brother joked that one of the programmers may be a Polish nationalist
). Because of this oddity, however, we never play against the Polish AI in our games anymore, and since our last game with them was a few months ago they may have been fixed by now. That said, I regularly check the patch notes and never saw anything to indicate this.3. Having to fight the camera
Although this is not a bug (at least I assumed it's not), there have been many issues with the camera that I have taken issue with since the initial release of the game, things that I always expected to be fixed but never were. The first is problematic screen scrolling that mostly affects you when playing on a less capable computer - while the next turn is processing, if your cursor touches a corner of the screen, then when it gets to the next turn the camera will scroll up in that direction constantly until you click elsewhere and fight it enough. A second issue comes from combat in multiplayer games, where if Quick Combat is turned off, the camera will ALWAYS focus on and make you watch every single fight that occurs. Couldn't the animations just play without forcing the player to focus on the action? Not only is this a big time waster, but the worst problem is that if the player is in the process of moving a unit and the camera suddenly focuses onto a fight, you're very likely to make an unintended action and move the unit in some undesired way. Now, I understand that the programmers were likely aware of this due to the fact that Multiplayer Quick Combat is checked by default, but the fact is that with those camera movements it makes it absolutely impossible to play through a simultaneous/hybrid game without committing a few errors as a result, and so if they can't fix this abundant problem it'd make more sense to not even give you the option of turning off Quick Combat for games that aren't turn-based. Finally, although this one is more of an annoyance and doesn't hinder gameplay like the other two, is that when you need to choose your production, you can move the camera a bit, but after it moves for a while it just jumps right back to being centered on the city. All that would need to be done is to either allow free movement when the production menu's open, or lock the camera completely in place so that you can't move the camera at all, much like when you have the city screen open. It's irritating because it basically tricks you into thinking you can move the camera around, which you sometimes want to do when deciding what to produce, but then just as you're deciding it suddenly jumps back onto the city so then you have to exit the production menu, look around, then go back into the production menu in a very inconvenient manner.
4. "Unit died of attrition!"
Here's a problem we never encountered until Brave New World - every time a unit is killed, at least when it is killed by another civilization, you'll get the standard "unit was killed" notification, but then you'll also get a second notification for the exact same unit that says "unit died of attrition!" It's annoying getting two of what is essentially the same notification and having to hear the death jingle twice in a row for one unit. What is the point of this? I mean, I guess it's a bug, but it's so abundant I can't believe they wouldn't have noticed it by now. Also, the message itself perplexes me because I thought the only way to die of attrition was in the New World scenario when a ship can be lost from scurvy.
5. Shaky World Congress deals
Just something I'm a little confused about, in our most recent game we made two deals with AIs regarding World Congress delegates that seem to have been undone later on in the game. The first one was when we were attempting to set a World Ideology, we traded with the Aztecs to make them vote for Autocracy. However, before the World Congress, they had chosen to adopt Order. At first we figured this had no bearing on the assigned delegates, but when we tried trading with him again, we noticed we could select World Congress votes for him again. We did do another trade to get him to vote yea on Autocracy, but it was kind of odd how it got undone; I guess because he chose a different tenet he suddenly absolved himself from the vote he committed to? That seems somewhat odd, but maybe it's intentional. Also, later in the game, we traded with France to vote yea on an embargo for England. However, before the World Congress vote took place, they declared war on us, and then in the World Congress they actually voted "nay" on it. That one makes a little more sense since I guess deals are totally off once war is declared and diplomats have to flee, but with the Aztecs we had never declared war nor did we ever remove our diplomat from his capitol.
Anyways, sorry for all the whining and walls of text, it's just that I love the game so much and would love to see these issues fixed, or at least addressed so maybe I can understand them better.
Thanks!