My 2 cents for CIV 4.
If I could only suggest one improvement for CIV 4 (and I apologize if this comment has been made before, I haven't read through all the posts), it would be this:
The end-game, ever since CIV 2, has been hopelessly bogged down in micro-managing your individual cities. The improvement queue helped, the city governers helped, the automated workers helped, and yet it was not enough. Every time I reach the modern era with a large Civ, I'm trying to focus on the big picture and maybe orchestrate a big war somewhere - but every turn ends up being a grueling chore as I have to go to city #34 to create an entertainer, then to city #41 to indicate which new square I want to harvest with my new population point, etc etc. And I spend countless minutes per turn shuttling my dozens of workers around to perform routine tasks. I can't automate them, because when I do, they start doing ridiculous things, like mining grassland in a city that needs more food. I can't even automate a worker to clean pollution, because as soon as there's no more pollution to clear, that worker will run off to go do something foolish.
When a worker has finished improving a terrain sqaure, I usually will need to go into the city to start using that square - a mined hill for instance. This function has not yet been automated.
To be fair now: I quite enjoy the micro-managing of cities when my empire is small. In the ancient era in particular, how well you utilize your terrain and improve it is key to strategy. And with only a handful of cities, it doesn't feel like a never ending chore.
So, really, my big suggestion for CIV 4 is to come up with some way to streamline the micro-managing of cities in the late-game. I don't think it's right that a modern era turn should take six times as long as a middle-ages turn, due only to my need to allocate population points and improve terrain over 50 or 60 cities. It breaks up the natural flow of the game, especially when you want to focus on bigger objectives.
-Estwald
If I could only suggest one improvement for CIV 4 (and I apologize if this comment has been made before, I haven't read through all the posts), it would be this:
The end-game, ever since CIV 2, has been hopelessly bogged down in micro-managing your individual cities. The improvement queue helped, the city governers helped, the automated workers helped, and yet it was not enough. Every time I reach the modern era with a large Civ, I'm trying to focus on the big picture and maybe orchestrate a big war somewhere - but every turn ends up being a grueling chore as I have to go to city #34 to create an entertainer, then to city #41 to indicate which new square I want to harvest with my new population point, etc etc. And I spend countless minutes per turn shuttling my dozens of workers around to perform routine tasks. I can't automate them, because when I do, they start doing ridiculous things, like mining grassland in a city that needs more food. I can't even automate a worker to clean pollution, because as soon as there's no more pollution to clear, that worker will run off to go do something foolish.
When a worker has finished improving a terrain sqaure, I usually will need to go into the city to start using that square - a mined hill for instance. This function has not yet been automated.
To be fair now: I quite enjoy the micro-managing of cities when my empire is small. In the ancient era in particular, how well you utilize your terrain and improve it is key to strategy. And with only a handful of cities, it doesn't feel like a never ending chore.
So, really, my big suggestion for CIV 4 is to come up with some way to streamline the micro-managing of cities in the late-game. I don't think it's right that a modern era turn should take six times as long as a middle-ages turn, due only to my need to allocate population points and improve terrain over 50 or 60 cities. It breaks up the natural flow of the game, especially when you want to focus on bigger objectives.
-Estwald
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