CTH
Prince
First I would like to say that I enjoy Civ 5 and that I only have completed one full game but the things I will take up here is most likely things that is not unique to just the games I have played.
The game I played was a fractal, large size, one AI less than normal (a bit of a mistake, civ 5 seems to be best when it is tight), standard amount of city states and on King difficulty. I usually win on immortal in civ4 and play usually on diety (not winning much though
).
I will list a number of problems and a suggested solutions to them, I hope that you wont take it for whining about the game but as something more constructive to discuss about.
If you disagree with something please comment on that but state why you disagree.
First some easy fix tweaks,
Problem: Lack of graphical and game settings in the game menu. For example "Automated workers leave old improvements" only exist in the config file, and there is some graphical settings that only exist there also. The "dont show enemy/friendly moves" option would be nice to have also. I dont list all possible options that you could want, the point is that there is very few options, hide them in an "advanced settings" menu if necessary but they should be in the game.
Fix: Add those The ones that already exist should be very easy to add
Problem: The game dont show what a worker can do on a tile when you have a worker selected and hover over a tile. Now I have to go to a tile to see possible improvements (sure this is perhaps a newbie problem, experienced players will learn this)
Fix: implement it, should be very easy, add showing a road to arrow and working with workers should be much better.
Problem: When you conquer a city you cant look inside the city before you choose what to do with it. And you cant read the advisor screen that pops up because it is too dark.
Fix: Add a examine city first option. This is also a bit strange problem, almost all other "pop-ups" in civ 5 can wait until you are ready for them but not this one (That is pretty important also). And yes I know that you can raze a city after you have annexed it but it is still irritating.
Problem: Not so much a problem as a suggestion. Advisors could be a bit more useful if they popped up with information that changes, like when you are declaring war on someone and you get the little popup saying, "Are you sure you want to declare war" then the military advisor could pop up and give info about the opponents army.
Ok that was some easy stuff, now to some more game changing suggestions
Problem: You dont know what a puppet city need for kind of improvements, ie it is hard to manage workers for them.
Fix: Just allowing you to open up the puppet city screen.
Problem: Cities are using up all happiness if you dont micro them a lot. Sure you could just choose avoid growth but because your happiness changes quite a lot (a theater could be built somewhere for example) so you have to go in and change each city. And you cant even do that on puppet cities. This creates problems when you are conquering cites and when you want to build new cities.
Fix: Could be several fixes, the least game changing is prob just a function to reserve happiness and then let the cities auto manage take happiness into consideration. When you are reaching a certain happiness, all cities turn on "avoid growth".
Another fix could be a maximum amount of unhappiness from a single city, let say 15 or something like that. I am not sure how this would play out but it would be more fun I think if you can make really large cities. Might also just destroy the whole game mechanic
Problem: Production is too slow. I did prob not make the best production cities possible but a 18 pop city (with hills, lumbermills and iron) should be able to produce a infantry in less than 10 turns.
Fix: Make everything cheaper by 30% or something like that. It just takes a bit to long time now for something to happen every turn, and civ is all about "just one more turn". However the gold cost could be the same for purchasing. Would require some re-balancing.
Problem: Cant hurry with gold. Even if you are almost finished with a building or unit you have to pay the same amount of gold for purchasing it as if you never started building it.
Fix: Make it the same as civ 4:s system.
Problem: Workers has nothing to do. The maintinace cost of roads, the lower number of cities in civ 5 and the slow cultural expansion of city boarders will create scenarios quite early in the game when you have alot of workers that has nothing to do. In late game you need very very few workers (but you prob has alot of them from some wars)
Fix: Tricky, but either giving the workers something to do or create a mechanics for removing workers (join cities perhaps?).
Ok I think that is enough for now. I wont mention anything specific about the AI but I think it might need some adjustment to make it a bit better at waging war.
I hope that you guys dont disagree with to much of what I am saying And I am sure that there is more and better fixes than the ones I have suggested.
The game I played was a fractal, large size, one AI less than normal (a bit of a mistake, civ 5 seems to be best when it is tight), standard amount of city states and on King difficulty. I usually win on immortal in civ4 and play usually on diety (not winning much though
). I will list a number of problems and a suggested solutions to them, I hope that you wont take it for whining about the game but as something more constructive to discuss about.
If you disagree with something please comment on that but state why you disagree.
First some easy fix tweaks,
Problem: Lack of graphical and game settings in the game menu. For example "Automated workers leave old improvements" only exist in the config file, and there is some graphical settings that only exist there also. The "dont show enemy/friendly moves" option would be nice to have also. I dont list all possible options that you could want, the point is that there is very few options, hide them in an "advanced settings" menu if necessary but they should be in the game.
Fix: Add those
The ones that already exist should be very easy to addProblem: The game dont show what a worker can do on a tile when you have a worker selected and hover over a tile. Now I have to go to a tile to see possible improvements (sure this is perhaps a newbie problem, experienced players will learn this)
Fix: implement it, should be very easy, add showing a road to arrow and working with workers should be much better.
Problem: When you conquer a city you cant look inside the city before you choose what to do with it. And you cant read the advisor screen that pops up because it is too dark.
Fix: Add a examine city first option. This is also a bit strange problem, almost all other "pop-ups" in civ 5 can wait until you are ready for them but not this one (That is pretty important also). And yes I know that you can raze a city after you have annexed it but it is still irritating.
Problem: Not so much a problem as a suggestion. Advisors could be a bit more useful if they popped up with information that changes, like when you are declaring war on someone and you get the little popup saying, "Are you sure you want to declare war" then the military advisor could pop up and give info about the opponents army.
Ok that was some easy stuff, now to some more game changing suggestions
Problem: You dont know what a puppet city need for kind of improvements, ie it is hard to manage workers for them.
Fix: Just allowing you to open up the puppet city screen.
Problem: Cities are using up all happiness if you dont micro them a lot. Sure you could just choose avoid growth but because your happiness changes quite a lot (a theater could be built somewhere for example) so you have to go in and change each city. And you cant even do that on puppet cities. This creates problems when you are conquering cites and when you want to build new cities.
Fix: Could be several fixes, the least game changing is prob just a function to reserve happiness and then let the cities auto manage take happiness into consideration. When you are reaching a certain happiness, all cities turn on "avoid growth".
Another fix could be a maximum amount of unhappiness from a single city, let say 15 or something like that. I am not sure how this would play out but it would be more fun I think if you can make really large cities. Might also just destroy the whole game mechanic
Problem: Production is too slow. I did prob not make the best production cities possible but a 18 pop city (with hills, lumbermills and iron) should be able to produce a infantry in less than 10 turns.
Fix: Make everything cheaper by 30% or something like that. It just takes a bit to long time now for something to happen every turn, and civ is all about "just one more turn". However the gold cost could be the same for purchasing. Would require some re-balancing.
Problem: Cant hurry with gold. Even if you are almost finished with a building or unit you have to pay the same amount of gold for purchasing it as if you never started building it.
Fix: Make it the same as civ 4:s system.
Problem: Workers has nothing to do. The maintinace cost of roads, the lower number of cities in civ 5 and the slow cultural expansion of city boarders will create scenarios quite early in the game when you have alot of workers that has nothing to do. In late game you need very very few workers (but you prob has alot of them from some wars)
Fix: Tricky, but either giving the workers something to do or create a mechanics for removing workers (join cities perhaps?).
Ok I think that is enough for now. I wont mention anything specific about the AI but I think it might need some adjustment to make it a bit better at waging war.
I hope that you guys dont disagree with to much of what I am saying
And I am sure that there is more and better fixes than the ones I have suggested.
