Most unfun feature of Civ4?

[C:enter##]

What i hate is the constant stupid deals i get bombarded with. I would like the option of seeing an envoy of another country, instead of it popping on my screen and me accidently trading everything for some stupid technology

There was something like that in CivII.

 

[Iranon]

On the most basic level: Weak AI that requires a huge handicap to stand up to a human player. Let's assume Noble is fair for a minute (it isn't... a few of the AI bonuses are potentially gamebreaking)... exactly how strong is a human player who'd win their fair share of Noble games (i.e. one in 7 on default settings)?
That's the AI without handouts.

To compensate for its shortcomings, it's given bonuses it doesn't leverage. Not only doesn't it rush the poor human with starting archers, it refuses to use obvious exploits - like only building semi-obsolete units and upgrading them (AIs receive upgrade discounts on all levels).
I don't know... I'd rather give a weak opponent rook odds and have them play to the best of their ability than giving them queen odds and telling them not to use their queen because that would be unfair.

***

About the diplomacy complaints... I think a few of them aren't legitimate. Fundamentalist religious leaders disliking you unless you accept their faith only seems reasonable. 'Just adopt mine and let's be best buds!' somehow seems unlikely to work.
Having relations sour if you turn down requests for aid also seems reasonable. If you can't milk your good friend who happens to be militarily weak you might end up attacking anyway... so I suppose refusing tribute dropped you down to cautious

One thing I'm curious about though... does Tokugawa avoid diplomatic penalties for refusing tribute because technologies aren't available period, or will an AI still demand them and automatically get a mutual diplomatic penalty?
If this is possible, the redding out isn't unequal treatment... and even if it does, the tight-fisted AIs don't tend to be more popular (which would make no sense) so any problem from this is relatively minor compared to the usual handicaps.

 

[vhhawk]

I hate micromanaging every dang worker, every dang city. I've the CEO of this bidness for goodness sakes. I want a text interface where I can say, "You, Moron142, I want you to execute this set of if/then statements, then pop up and tell me what you've done and ask for further instructions. You City7, build yourself to pop5 by whatever means then spam 3 workers. Report when done."

I've wanted this ever since Civ1. Guess I never learn. I'm also guessing that not liking the micromanagement puts me in the minority here. I just want to create a plan, watch it grow, and sit back and tune it once in a while, or throw it out and start a new one when the situation calls for it.

 

[Joecoolyo]

For some strange reason, even after all my "nuclear" games I have only experienced global warming once, and that was playing the Road to War WWII mod. Though it seems annoying in what it does. I'd have to place the nagging of the other A.I.'s as the most "unfun" feature of CivIV. Every turn... just SHUT UP! No I will not do X, but I get penalized with XX hatred for not doing X! I like Rhye's way of handling it in Rhye's and Fall, if the A.I. isn't in your visibility, then they can't talk to you.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Oh and I forgot two things:
1) The extreme diplomatic penalty for being of a different faith
2) Theocracy in AI's makes it so you can't even attempt to become freinds via missionaries then convert rel. with them.

My solution: Make the diplomatic gain and penalty half lower.

Unless you're using an unofficial patch you can just gift them missionaries and they'll spread it for you .

 

[TheMeInTeam]

On the most basic level: Weak AI that requires a huge handicap to stand up to a human player. Let's assume Noble is fair for a minute (it isn't... a few of the AI bonuses are potentially gamebreaking)... exactly how strong is a human player who'd win their fair share of Noble games (i.e. one in 7 on default settings)?
That's the AI without handouts.

To compensate for its shortcomings, it's given bonuses it doesn't leverage. Not only doesn't it rush the poor human with starting archers, it refuses to use obvious exploits - like only building semi-obsolete units and upgrading them (AIs receive upgrade discounts on all levels).
I don't know... I'd rather give a weak opponent rook odds and have them play to the best of their ability than giving them queen odds and telling them not to use their queen because that would be unfair.

***

About the diplomacy complaints... I think a few of them aren't legitimate. Fundamentalist religious leaders disliking you unless you accept their faith only seems reasonable. 'Just adopt mine and let's be best buds!' somehow seems unlikely to work.
Having relations sour if you turn down requests for aid also seems reasonable. If you can't milk your good friend who happens to be militarily weak you might end up attacking anyway... so I suppose refusing tribute dropped you down to cautious

One thing I'm curious about though... does Tokugawa avoid diplomatic penalties for refusing tribute because technologies aren't available period, or will an AI still demand them and automatically get a mutual diplomatic penalty?
If this is possible, the redding out isn't unequal treatment... and even if it does, the tight-fisted AIs don't tend to be more popular (which would make no sense) so any problem from this is relatively minor compared to the usual handicaps.

I don't think AIs demand tribute from each other. I don't recall seeing diplo merits or demerits between AIs for that sort of thing outside of perhaps vassal situations/gifting techs. The redding out goes for everyone though. Toku won't open borders or trade with someone unless pleased with them, although occasionally he gets there due to shared religion, mutual wars, etc. This is why he usually sucks however - this limitation greatly nerfs him. He makes a good ally though. Even though he declares at pleased he usually hates other people more, he can be bribed to declare on others at pleased, and will even sign DP's at pleased. Ridiculous.

I have no qualms with the diplo system at all, except that you can illogically become a worst enemy by trading with a worst enemy. That's completely ridiculous. Annoyed over it, sure, but it should be capped so that you can't have them switch worst enemies over it!

I agree on the AI bonuses vs its strength issue. I think they took a nap with this. I'm no programmer but it seems to me the AI could certainly be stronger.

 

[King of Town]

I hate when vassals are trying to get you to cancel deals with their masters. I agree with barbarian galleys too. I won't even be paying attention and my whole fishing industry is suddenly in shambles, then I have to make two galleys because one never does the job. I hate to say it but i will sometimes just world builder a destroyer and use it only for those things. it is too much of a bother.

 

[r_rolo1]

@TMIT

AI-AI deals aren't atempted... so only "just" deals will ever come out of there ( in the sometimes twisted sense of justice that Civ IV coding has ). So AI-AI relations will never have demerits for refused demand ( because AI don't demand to AI, just to humans ), but also they will never have the "fair deal" ( aka ripped off ) diplo merit with no one. If those two cancel or not, i'll let you be the judge.... I don't think they do

 

[btgwynn]

Being stuck on an island when I wasn't hoping to be, not being able to get a start on an island when I do... That's my number one for future iterations, make options in custom game to say 'near stone,' 'isolated,' 'semi-isolated,' etc.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I guess I'd have to say 3.17 style global warming which bothered me so much that I wouldn't play until someone did something about what I didn't like, and when no one did, I did it myself with no previous experience working with C++.

 

[nbcman]

Hidden Diplo modifiers and the AI-AI diplo advantages. GW never bothers me since I either win or abandon my games before GW strikes.

 

[neckface]

How about the 4000 year old -1 "You declared war on our friend!" Modifier?
You're really still upset in 2050 AD that I axe-rushed Gilgamesh in 2000 BC?
Really??

"What do you think of this deal?" AI offers: Fish You offer: Uranium

And then there's having to cycle through all of my cities every 10 turns to check for the spy specialist that inevitably gets assigned, even though I don't have the governer turned on.

And of course, global warming, hidden modifiers, and AI pestering. Damn the -diplo modifiers, I want an auto-ignore request button!

 

[Sciguy001]

I know, especialy when it is -4. This is horrible on 18 civ maps whenever you declare war on anyone like 8 other civs get offend.
And when I played earth 18 civs on settler:
Scientific Method + combustion+ rifeling + two other techs I forget FOR 50 gold!

 

[Onionsoilder]

Global Warming sucks, but it's very easy to disable or even mod so it's more fun. Once I actually made it so Global Warming created Forests on every tile. I could either re-chop the new forests, or keep them(they didn't destroy the improvement that was there, even if it was something like a Plantation or Mine) and get the extra and .

Because of that, my vote goes to Diplomacy. I don't care if you have to give the A.I. more handicaps to make them more challenging, just make them less stupid! I can't make an A.I. go to war unless I give them 2-3 technologies as payment, so when I help them out, they better give me something, even if it's just a few hundred gold.

Same thing goes with trading. I'm trading Banana for Wheat with Mali. I need that 1 or half my cities turn into cesspools. Japan comes up, "We damand you stop trading with Mali!". Okay, I accept. Hmm... Japan has 3 Cows. That would give me that 1 back. But wait! When I go to propose a trade wiht Japan... "We just don't like you enough!"

Basically, I'm tired of the lose/lose diplomacy. I'm fine with trade-offs, where you lose one thing and gain another, but when you have to take a -3 diplomacy hit with one of two civilizations, and you gain NOTHING, that is wrong.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

And then there's having to cycle through all of my cities every 10 turns to check for the spy specialist that inevitably gets assigned, even though I don't have the governer turned on.

Yes!!!! My single biggest pet peeve.

 

[feralminded]

#1. Better worker commanding would be gold.

I would love for a logical command system for workers. Since you can't automate them it would be nice to be able to click out a list of actions that looks like.

#1: Build a mine on this tile.
#2: Build a road from here to here.
#3: Build a farm here.
#4: Build a windmill here.

It would be really nice if the roadbuilding was a little better too ... sort of like google maps where you can specify more waypoints than just start/end.

You can queue up cities which is nice but by mid-end game I am pretty fed up with having to micro my workers. Its probably the biggest annoyance for me. While I am definitely too anal to let them automate I do tire of commanding them every little thing. They need a command queue that is easy to manipulate and is explicit.


#2. Similar to #1 but in regards to boats. We need some interface to command a boat to act as a ferry between a couple of points and it needs to automatically pick up whatever is sent to it and drop it off at the next point. It doesn't even need to be super smart as you could tell it the following.

"Take off when any unit lands on you."
"Take off when 2 units land on you"

Or whatever threshold. If they wanted to get smart they could also make it so that it will leave as soon as full or if no units have a pending final destination of that boat. It goes and drops off the units and returns.


#3. I would like an option to enable the city screen to pop up every time the city's population changes so instead of the automatic governor taking over I can do the changes necessary. This is specifically the kind of micro I would like to be able to opt into as opposed to having a lot of crazy annoying micro that I can't opt out of.

 

[btgwynn]

Oh, yah, and also, getting water maps from goody huts. Like the natives have been sailing out into the ocean to get a map.

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Forgot the improved version of "Help us destroying X".

That's when they ask for war help post-optics and pre-astro, from a different landmass. Mmm ok, we are at war now. Look at me doing bad gestures and throwing profanities in his general direction. Swimming knights are coming soon, don't worry.

 

[Mesodius]

Basically, I'm tired of the lose/lose diplomacy. I'm fine with trade-offs, where you lose one thing and gain another, but when you have to take a -3 diplomacy hit with one of two civilizations, and you gain NOTHING, that is wrong.

QFT. My single biggest beef with this game. For all the things I love about Civ 4 over previous titles, Civ 4 has a worse diplomacy system than both Civ 3 and Civ 2. Easily.

 

[Onionsoilder]

#1. Better worker commanding would be gold.

I would love for a logical command system for workers. Since you can't automate them it would be nice to be able to click out a list of actions that looks like.

#1: Build a mine on this tile.
#2: Build a road from here to here.
#3: Build a farm here.
#4: Build a windmill here.

It would be really nice if the roadbuilding was a little better too ... sort of like google maps where you can specify more waypoints than just start/end.

You can queue up cities which is nice but by mid-end game I am pretty fed up with having to micro my workers. Its probably the biggest annoyance for me. While I am definitely too anal to let them automate I do tire of commanding them every little thing. They need a command queue that is easy to manipulate and is explicit.

They already have this... You can queue up commands for all units. Simply press 'shift' when selecting commands and it'll line them up. You can also do this for setting waypoints for building roads...

#2. Similar to #1 but in regards to boats. We need some interface to command a boat to act as a ferry between a couple of points and it needs to automatically pick up whatever is sent to it and drop it off at the next point. It doesn't even need to be super smart as you could tell it the following.

"Take off when any unit lands on you."
"Take off when 2 units land on you"

Or whatever threshold. If they wanted to get smart they could also make it so that it will leave as soon as full or if no units have a pending final destination of that boat. It goes and drops off the units and returns.


#3. I would like an option to enable the city screen to pop up every time the city's population changes so instead of the automatic governor taking over I can do the changes necessary. This is specifically the kind of micro I would like to be able to opt into as opposed to having a lot of crazy annoying micro that I can't opt out of.

I don't really see the point with #2, but I do agree with #3, that would be nice(as long as it is toggleable).