Firaxis, guys... listen...

[Mustakrakish]

I'm not going to rant about what firaxis did or didn't do. That is done all over the forums and for good reason. I'm going to suggest a few things to improve the game a fair bit ASAP.

1. Bring back the information. Don't hate on it. Simple. We want to see a list of units we have, the production - energy - science output of our cities listed, some kind of demographics - it is always good, essential to compare our colony to others, it's part of the thrill for Pete's sake. Finally, let us see what we just build, okay? That is... come on!

2. Simple solution to the madness, that is trade routes (I'm getting nightmares already, seriously). Make a dedicated, ALWAYS accessible (see number 1) trade routes screen with every city and their trade routes clearly visible. Let the trade routes run nonstop as much as they will until there's a hiccup such as war, plundering etc. Instead, when they run their mandatory number of turns (was it 30?), there will be an icon in the trade screen, indicating that this trade route is available to reassing should you wish so... all while continuing to run. please. PLEASE. PLEASE!

3. There's no reason for workers to construct mag rails soooo long. None. Especially when you can't continue to build roads. There's no reason for them to build everything so slow in general. Please just reconsider this one. Oh and terrascape's price to final product ratio is off.

And that is all! Like I said, just a few things to improve the game fast, without rebalancing etc. if number 3 is just taken into future consideration.

So guys? Firaxis, come on.

 

[Kutuzov]

Me, personally, I would redo trade routes as follows.

One trade route per city but two from the capital city. Certain buildings would offer you the decision whether to add their bonus to a certain type of improvement or to the city's dedicated trade route(s). Example, some building might offer you the chance to generate 1 energy per turn from all your biowells or add 3 energy to the city's trade route. If the city is geared to produce food it might be more cost-effective to choose the biowell option. And so on.

With health, I'd have it hurt far more than it does presently. Negative health should be a bad thing. For example, I would have pretty much all city growth come to a halt were health to go negative. When I'm sick, my libido tends to drop off as well and I live on good old planet Earth. Living on a new planet would be very dangerous indeed for the first couple of generations but eventually, we would start to pass on the genes to the next generation to enable them to survive better. So I'd have a generational +5 increase in health every twenty turns to help players to grow faster, or some rate like that.

With negative health, I'd also have a 10% chance per turn that a population point would die in my city. -2 health = 20% and -16 health would mean one dies every turn with a 60% chance of a second. Of course, dead population would reduce the negative health too.

Heh heh. Not quite tweaks to the system, I know, but something for the future.

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions.

 

[Mustakrakish]

It seems I was wrong about some lack of info. There is trade, military and city screens. They are hiding behind a little tiny "+", which I barely found by accident. That says something! Nevertheless, the rest still stands. Still no demographics, still can't see what just built and trade routes still a nightmare. So I hope firaxis would hear the feedback.

 

[stiefel_ss]

Devs made workers build everything slowly to encourage the building of more workers. They said so in the livestreams made before release. If you want to criticize the decision to make tile improvement take longer, you must first criticize the decision to incentivize larger quantities of workers.

 

[Masquerouge]

Devs made workers build everything slowly to encourage the building of more workers. They said so in the livestreams made before release. If you want to criticize the decision to make tile improvement take longer, you must first criticize the decision to incentivize larger quantities of workers.

Exactly. Now I'm actually keeping the enemy workers I capture.

 

[Human Crouton]

I'm not going to rant about what firaxis did or didn't do. That is done all over the forums and for good reason. I'm going to suggest a few things to improve the game a fair bit ASAP.

1. Bring back the information. Don't hate on it. Simple. We want to see a list of units we have, the production - energy - science output of our cities listed, some kind of demographics - it is always good, essential to compare our colony to others, it's part of the thrill for Pete's sake. Finally, let us see what we just build, okay? That is... come on!

2. Simple solution to the madness, that is trade routes (I'm getting nightmares already, seriously). Make a dedicated, ALWAYS accessible (see number 1) trade routes screen with every city and their trade routes clearly visible. Let the trade routes run nonstop as much as they will until there's a hiccup such as war, plundering etc. Instead, when they run their mandatory number of turns (was it 30?), there will be an icon in the trade screen, indicating that this trade route is available to reassing should you wish so... all while continuing to run. please. PLEASE. PLEASE!

Points 1 and 2 bother me the most. Why are civ games so against giving us information?

Why can't I see which factions are at war with which other factions when someone approaches me for a friendship agreement or request to go to war?

And I wouldn't mind trade routes only lasting X turns before having to be renewed if the screen you describe existed. The annoyance of trade routes right now is that I have to click all over the map to reassess my routes every time.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Alright, after playing a few games I came to the conclusion that I really really hate trade routes. Something must be done about it! Had 3 routes per city and it was a nightmare! Every goddamn turn or so I had to renew 1 or 2 of them. That is NOT good design! Firaxis or modder should fix that as soon as possible. Make them run nonstop until war or other obsticles comes their way, with possibility to reassign in trade routes screen, should you want to! I haven't even finished a single game, with an honest 70% of reason being because of tediousness of reassigning them trade routes. THis sounds funny and ridiculous but it's true. Once I start to get annoyed by something so unnecessary as reassigning trade routes all the time, everything starts to annoy and eventually you quit.

 

[GhostSalsa]

it is always good, essential to compare our colony to others, it's part of the thrill

Yes - stumbling around in the dark is really disengaging.

I like that they added more spies - in CiV I always wished I could spare a spy to see if I was making cities under siege starve, and stuff like that haha - but a few more city views at the cost of no empire stat views? Whyyyyyyy

 

[Bezurn]

As for the information screens you can access them easily by pressing F2 for city list and stats, and F3 for unit list and stats. Also trade overview is accessible by F9 or F10. The Function keys have a lot of useful menus.

The one missing is demographics, which personally I don't miss really, as the diplomacy screen and their score tells me all I need to know. You can tell how strong someone's military units are just by looking at their affinity score.

Here's my idea to make trade routes more bearable.

Trade Unit Hotkeys
[T] Activate Trade mission menu

Right now I have to hit the icon on the bottom left, which invariably makes the map scroll in that direction and this is annoying.​

[SHIFT+T] Carry out last trade route (NEW)

disabled if target city has changed factions, city does not exist or route is blocked by misasma​

[C] Change City

Brings up the change city interface for the trade unit​

[F] Find best trade route (NEW)

A new feature I thought of to make trade management much easier. Since trade units have no range limitation the list in the mid / late game can become daunting, especially on larger maps. I describe its possible implementation below.

Brings up a new UI where you select which factions you want this trade unit to take its mission. The icons of the factions could be displayed on the side with check boxes next to them. Your own faction and stations would also be present. There should be check boxes or a drop down list for which yield is important to you (gold, science, food, hammers, culture). Once you have selected the factions and desired yields the user clicks generate list where the top city for each checked faction is shown. The user clicks the city of choice and confirmation dialog is shown. Once confirmed the trade unit is finished with his turn until the route expires again.
​

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

We can't even sort trade routes by yield anymore. Use the sum of incoming science and energy for international, and the sum of all production and food for domestic.