Free play weekend & the endless list of Civ5 annoyances

[epicivfreak]

I guess this is the best place to put this...

Anyway, I played civ5 finally, over the free play weekend and here's my list of crap that needs fixing (at least from what I recall, I'm sure there's more):

1. I want everyone to shut up. Anything that speaks needs to have an option to turn the speaking off. The initial popup that blabs on about your civilization and its founding, the advisors, the diplomacy screens, the era advancement, the tech blurbs - all of it. I want a "STFU" option because after the first time, if not during the first time, it's just damned annoying to have to listen to.

2. I want to stack military and non-military units, because due to the 2-move+ units, you simply can never be sure when something will come running out of the fog of war and kill off a worker or settler unless you do this. You should be able to attach a military escort, easily and have it auto-follow whatever orders the non-military unit recieves.

3. The resource finder needs to come back (from civ4), the strategic view helps find resources but it sucks in comparison to the civ4 solution.

4. Can we get some auto-bombard? I mean if a barbarian galley comes up in view of a city, do I really need to sit there and attack it every turn until it's dead or can we put that tedium over onto the computer's side? I understand if 8 units pop into view during a war that it needs the player's attention, but even then, the option to auto-bombard a particular unit until it's dead might prove useful.

5. How about showing the city radius when a settler is selected to aid in city placment? Not just the area it will settle immediately, but the full potential radius of it and other cities for, you know, city planning...

6. Those damn messages, I want to turn them all off except the one for research and the one for production. They are utterly annoying and I know I should care about some of the others, but I don't. Most of them are utterly useless and I'd like to get rid of them.

7. Oh, I don't know, how about we show how long it will take for a unit to heal when we click the 'heal until fortified' button?

8. I had an undefended city where two barbarian units politely walked up to the gates and waited to be killed. Can they at least sack the city or not come within killing range unless they can counterattack? Too much to ask?



Ok, done wasting my time typing about this game...
I tell you, it's stupid things like this that make me wonder if anybody at Firaxis ever even bothers playing a Civ game before shipping it out...

 

[DeathFace]

Most of these already have simple solutions or are extremely minor. I'd much rather have AI and other features worked on before ANY of these.

 

[DeathFace]

Ignore

 

[ampmclock]

yeah, your a civ 5 noob.

 

[Ajuga]

I guess this is the best place to put this...

Anyway, I played civ5 finally, over the free play weekend and here's my list of crap that needs fixing (at least from what I recall, I'm sure there's more):

Well at least I'll give you an actual full on reply. But wow, a lot of hate.

1. I want everyone to shut up. Anything that speaks needs to have an option to turn the speaking off. The initial popup that blabs on about your civilization and its founding, the advisors, the diplomacy screens, the era advancement, the tech blurbs - all of it. I want a "STFU" option because after the first time, if not during the first time, it's just damned annoying to have to listen to.

This is a really minor problem, in any case in the options you can turn off the advisors completely. They will no longer pop-up and tell you what they suggest but you can still access them in the upper right screen.
As for the actual civilizations, it's just part of the game. Don't get so stuck up about it.

2. I want to stack military and non-military units, because due to the 2-move+ units, you simply can never be sure when something will come running out of the fog of war and kill off a worker or settler unless you do this. You should be able to attach a military escort, easily and have it auto-follow whatever orders the non-military unit recieves.

You can already stack one military and one none-military unit. You can't have a military unit follow a worker but if you strategically place your army this is not an issue.
You just need to learn how the terrain works in a better way and learn how to place your military.

Also you need to destroy encampments, 2 warriors are enough for that most of the time.

3. The resource finder needs to come back (from civ4), the strategic view helps find resources but it sucks in comparison to the civ4 solution.

This is hardly an issue. Resources within your borders get a notification when you unlock them.
Otherwise you can just turn on resource icons and easily find them (or use strategic view).

4. Can we get some auto-bombard? I mean if a barbarian galley comes up in view of a city, do I really need to sit there and attack it every turn until it's dead or can we put that tedium over onto the computer's side? I understand if 8 units pop into view during a war that it needs the player's attention, but even then, the option to auto-bombard a particular unit until it's dead might prove useful.

A minor issue which you can usually solve by getting at least one ship or an archer.

5. How about showing the city radius when a settler is selected to aid in city placment? Not just the area it will settle immediately, but the full potential radius of it and other cities for, you know, city planning...

Would make the interface too cluttered, once you play the game for more than just a few days you wont need such aid.

6. Those damn messages, I want to turn them all off except the one for research and the one for production. They are utterly annoying and I know I should care about some of the others, but I don't. Most of them are utterly useless and I'd like to get rid of them.

I find them to be very useful, they are small aids that can easily be ignored.
The only real issue is with war declarations and the city state spam that accompanies that. Which was fixed in the expansions as far as I know.

7. Oh, I don't know, how about we show how long it will take for a unit to heal when we click the 'heal until fortified' button?

Useless as units often take damage when they are fortified anyway besides once they are healed they want new orders again.

8. I had an undefended city where two barbarian units politely walked up to the gates and waited to be killed. Can they at least sack the city or not come within killing range unless they can counterattack? Too much to ask?

Barbarians only destroy infrastructure and steal workers. They are a huge pain when you lose resources or they break up roads. They fulfill their duty just fine.

Ok, done wasting my time typing about this game...
I tell you, it's stupid things like this that make me wonder if anybody at Firaxis ever even bothers playing a Civ game before shipping it out...

Most of your issues are caused by a general bad attitude and a severe lack of experience.
Civilizations V is a different game from Civilizations IV, deal with it or don't deal with it but demanding that V is changed to resemble IV is just silly.

 

[Strategia]

Anyway, I played civ5 finally, over the free play weekend and here's my list of crap that needs fixing (at least from what I recall, I'm sure there's more):

Well, as everyone else already said, it's not "crap that needs fixing" so much as "features you don't like" and "stuff you want to change because you've only been playing for two days".

1. I want everyone to shut up. Anything that speaks needs to have an option to turn the speaking off. The initial popup that blabs on about your civilization and its founding, the advisors, the diplomacy screens, the era advancement, the tech blurbs - all of it. I want a "STFU" option because after the first time, if not during the first time, it's just damned annoying to have to listen to.

Like Ajuga said, you can turn off the advisors. As for everything else, yeah, I agree it can get annoying. If you press enter quick enough you can skip tech blurbs and era advancement screens, but personally I quite like the diplomacy screens, they add a lot of personality and character to the AIs.

3. The resource finder needs to come back (from civ4), the strategic view helps find resources but it sucks in comparison to the civ4 solution.

I kinda agree with this. I've had several occasions where I'm just visually scouring the map looking for resource sites.

4. Can we get some auto-bombard? I mean if a barbarian galley comes up in view of a city, do I really need to sit there and attack it every turn until it's dead or can we put that tedium over onto the computer's side? I understand if 8 units pop into view during a war that it needs the player's attention, but even then, the option to auto-bombard a particular unit until it's dead might prove useful.

No, because you don't always want to keep bombarding one particular unit over and over again. If you have an archer in your city, you might want to have it kill the Galley instead of the city, to gain some XP. During a siege, it's important to pick which unit you want to hit; it's better to take 3HP off the 9-health Longswordsman than it is to finish off his 1HP counterpart you've already hit a few times.

5. How about showing the city radius when a settler is selected to aid in city placment? Not just the area it will settle immediately, but the full potential radius of it and other cities for, you know, city planning...

I can't remember exactly where the option is, but showing tile yields with a civilian selected is basically this. You can see the yield of all tiles within a radius of 2 from the Settler, and the maximum city radius is 3. It's quite easy to visually identify a city's maximum radius with a bit of experience.

6. Those damn messages, I want to turn them all off except the one for research and the one for production. They are utterly annoying and I know I should care about some of the others, but I don't. Most of them are utterly useless and I'd like to get rid of them.

You can right-click them to make them disappear, useful for getting rid of city-state spam. Apart from that, they're all useful and they all serve a purpose; for one, as Ajuga said, they reveal newly discovered resources within your borders, they notify you when a city-state gives you a quest (which could be an easy way to get them to Friendly or Allied), and they, I dunno, tell you when there's an enemy invasion going on. Those notifications keep you up-to-date on what's happening with your empire from turn to turn. Turning them off except for research and production would mean you could easily miss major events, such as other civs building a wonder you're going for or an important resource site getting pillaged (which, in the case of strategic resources, means the units that require it take a -50% combat strength hit because of shortage; in the case of luxuries, it could plunge your empire into unhappiness and slow growth tremendously).

7. Oh, I don't know, how about we show how long it will take for a unit to heal when we click the 'heal until fortified' button?

1HP per turn outside your borders, unless they have Survivalism 1. 2HP in your borders, or outside with Survivalism I. 3HP in a City, I believe. Just mouseover the unit's health bar and do a quick calculation, barring enemies attacking the fortified unit.

8. I had an undefended city where two barbarian units politely walked up to the gates and waited to be killed. Can they at least sack the city or not come within killing range unless they can counterattack? Too much to ask?

Cities are much, MUCH tougher than in any previous Civ game, and two Barbarians attacking one have a greater than 90% chance of dying, and that's if you don't bombard or counterattack. Instead, they pillage the countryside, which actually hurts you and takes time to recover from, as opposed to just walking up to a city and getting killed, which, if anything, only gives you Culture and/or Gold depending on whether or not you have Honour. At higher difficulties, they do attack cities, but only if they actually stand something of a chance against it.

Ok, done wasting my time typing about this game...

Wow. Just..... wow.

I tell you, it's stupid things like this that make me wonder if anybody at Firaxis ever even bothers playing a Civ game before shipping it out...

And it's threads like this that make me wonder how many people will actually play the game for more than a few hours (I'm assuming) before they declare what's wrong with it and how the devs suck for not realising that. Seriously, most of the stuff you've posted are intentional, sometimes essential, features!

 

[Reacher52]

I always wonder when one cant find one thing positive about a game that has so many to offer.

 

[shaglio]

1. I want everyone to shut up. Anything that speaks needs to have an option to turn the speaking off. The initial popup that blabs on about your civilization and its founding, the advisors, the diplomacy screens, the era advancement, the tech blurbs - all of it. I want a "STFU" option because after the first time, if not during the first time, it's just damned annoying to have to listen to.

In the "Audio" section of the Options Menu, you can turn off the different sounds (including speech).

 

[epicivfreak]

Most of these already have simple solutions or are extremely minor. I'd much rather have AI and other features worked on before ANY of these.

Yeah, you really can't get more than a few scratches from the surface when you just play one game can you? I mean, there's a hell of a lot more I didn't type and that was from just one game - can you imagine the list of gripes if I actually played the thing more than once? Which brought the comment about Firaxis not playing their own games - if I as someone who has played ever version (1-4) can immediately spot such simple things that should not have made it to production on one play - what about them?

yeah, your a civ 5 noob.

As I said when I said that "I finally played Civ5" - so why'd you post?

I always wonder when one cant find one thing positive about a game that has so many to offer.

It does have hex tiles, love that... ...but it's not enough to make it worth playing the game.

In the "Audio" section of the Options Menu, you can turn off the different sounds (including speech).

That's what I did, but given it was the first time playing, I didn't know if I was turning anything useful off by doing that...

 

[epicivfreak]

This is a really minor problem, in any case in the options you can turn off the advisors completely. They will no longer pop-up and tell you what they suggest but you can still access them in the upper right screen.
As for the actual civilizations, it's just part of the game. Don't get so stuck up about it.

Just because you consider it a minor problem doesn't make it a minor problem - it's a problem and it's a huge problem for me.

You can already stack one military and one none-military unit. You can't have a military unit follow a worker but if you strategically place your army this is not an issue.
You just need to learn how the terrain works in a better way and learn how to place your military.

Also you need to destroy encampments, 2 warriors are enough for that most of the time.

You mean I have to destroy the barbarians!?! Genius, I never would have figured that out if it weren't for you, thanks.
Dismissing the idea of a stacking command that has the military unit follow the worker doesn't mean it's not a good idea. It's a tedious thing that's better relegated to a computer than a player. In this specific case there was only one military unit at home to defend the one worker, which I forgot to move into place this one turn, the other military units were fighting barbarian encampments.

Technically there already is a stack command for settlers if you put them on the same tile and move them, but you have to actually put them on the same tile first, not entirely obvious as a unit command button is...

This is hardly an issue. Resources within your borders get a notification when you unlock them.
Otherwise you can just turn on resource icons and easily find them (or use strategic view).

Again, dismissing something you consider to not be a problem doesn't mean that civ4 didn't have the superior solution to what is a problem for me.

A minor issue which you can usually solve by getting at least one ship or an archer.

again...see above...

No, because you don't always want to keep bombarding one particular unit over and over again. If you have an archer in your city, you might want to have it kill the Galley instead of the city, to gain some XP. During a siege, it's important to pick which unit you want to hit; it's better to take 3HP off the 9-health Longswordsman than it is to finish off his 1HP counterpart you've already hit a few times.

True, you don't always want the same bombardment, and sometimes you want to use the unit over the city, but that doesn't invalidate the idea of auto-bombardment totally. What if you could turn on auto-bombard single units, it's an option that removes some tedium from the player's side and you don't have to use it if you're that worried about a few XP. As for picking which unit to hit, having an option to kill a single unit was just one suggestion of the many I could have offered but chose not to. You could also put in an option to hit each unit once, reduce to a certain strength, etc. - You haven't invalidated the idea, only showed other ways in which it would be useful.

Would make the interface too cluttered, once you play the game for more than just a few days you wont need such aid.

I can't remember exactly where the option is, but showing tile yields with a civilian selected is basically this. You can see the yield of all tiles within a radius of 2 from the Settler, and the maximum city radius is 3. It's quite easy to visually identify a city's maximum radius with a bit of experience.

Not at all. This was a feature you can toggle on/off in civ4 (maybe via the BUG mod and not in default, I'm not sure), which just makes things that much easier on the player. Why not make the computer (a tool) actually help the player - I know it's a revolutionary idea, making tools work to help you, but trust me, it'll be ok...
Also, why rely on experience when a proven superior solution (from civ4 no less) already exists? Just use that.

I find them to be very useful, they are small aids that can easily be ignored.
The only real issue is with war declarations and the city state spam that accompanies that. Which was fixed in the expansions as far as I know.

Ignoring them and not having them in the first place are the options? I'll take #2. How about all the messages from unmet players advancing eras - useless...
All the messages from the minor civs - useless...
All the messages about the encampments - useless...
the ruins - useless...
the "enemy spotted" and AT THE SAME TIME "Our city can bombard" messages - useless...

Useless as units often take damage when they are fortified anyway besides once they are healed they want new orders again.

1HP per turn outside your borders, unless they have Survivalism 1. 2HP in your borders, or outside with Survivalism I. 3HP in a City, I believe. Just mouseover the unit's health bar and do a quick calculation, barring enemies attacking the fortified unit.

A minor thing that should give you an indication of how long it will take to heal, yes I could calculate it, but why do that when I have this big, fancy, expensive, calculating device I'm sitting in front of? Sure the initial value might change if something damages the unit, but its such a minor thing to implement and a useful little tool in planning - it just makes no sense not to do it.

Barbarians only destroy infrastructure and steal workers. They are a huge pain when you lose resources or they break up roads. They fulfill their duty just fine.

Cities are much, MUCH tougher than in any previous Civ game, and two Barbarians attacking one have a greater than 90% chance of dying, and that's if you don't bombard or counterattack. Instead, they pillage the countryside, which actually hurts you and takes time to recover from, as opposed to just walking up to a city and getting killed, which, if anything, only gives you Culture and/or Gold depending on whether or not you have Honour. At higher difficulties, they do attack cities, but only if they actually stand something of a chance against it.

You're missing the point - they walked up to be killed. They didn't pillage (granted the city was just built so there was nothing to pillage). They didn't do anything useful gameplay-wise except force annoying messages that I could bombard them, which I did til they died, thus making me tediously bombard them until they died and they did nothing useful...

See how annoying that repeating thing can be?

Most of your issues are caused by a general bad attitude and a severe lack of experience.
Civilizations V is a different game from Civilizations IV, deal with it or don't deal with it but demanding that V is changed to resemble IV is just silly.

Ha, that's funny, me wanting Civ5 to be more like Civ4 - No - Civ4 sucks as bad as civ5 does, just in different ways, but at least now with civ4 I can try to make it playable with all the community made improvements (working on that). What I'm doing is offering superior solutions to problems (yes even if they are very minor - but those are the worst kind IMO as they should have been fixed by the first patch at least) that exist in civ5, had the solutions come from Civ1, Civ2, or Civ3 - or even another game - the answer would be the same because superior solutions are by the definition, better. That's all.