My take on BNW and things I'd still like to see improved

[simonthesinner]

I really wish that Civ 5 would add more `in your face` screens for important world events.

1. For example if two Civs go to war you should get at least a half screen size display of `Russia declares war on England!`. It could pop up at first like a scroll, then as a newspaper and and even as a photo-image on an ipod to show the later eras.

2. There should also be splash screens for important inventions discovered like: `Flight discovered by Ethiopia!" or `Nuclear weapons in the hands of India!"

3. I also liked the element in the early Civ game where you saw your victorious army marching through the enemy city.

4. Leaders clothing should change with the era, but still keep the original theme. Backgrounds should also change from Ancient to Modern. It never makes much sense to bump into a Civ in the ancient era with all the modern stuff in their room that hasn`t been invented yet!

5. Have Leader screen backgrounds change if they are doing badly in a war, so that if they have only one or two cities left and are under attack have the leader background show smoke outside or shake slightly from bombardment with shouts of soldiers and people running about in the background.

6. Finally, just make the wording more immersive. Instead of Player `Use Civ`, and make better use of the Leaders so they actually TALK all the other negotiation stuff, not just `Hello`, `goodbye` `i`m angry`.



All this would add to the longevity and flavour of the game. Meh.

I agree with all of this.

 

[EgyptRaider]

I really wish that Civ 5 would add more `in your face` screens for important world events.

1. For example if two Civs go to war you should get at least a half screen size display of `Russia declares war on England!`. It could pop up at first like a scroll, then as a newspaper and and even as a photo-image on an ipod to show the later eras.

2. There should also be splash screens for important inventions discovered like: `Flight discovered by Ethiopia!" or `Nuclear weapons in the hands of India!"

3. I also liked the element in the early Civ game where you saw your victorious army marching through the enemy city.

4. Leaders clothing should change with the era, but still keep the original theme. Backgrounds should also change from Ancient to Modern. It never makes much sense to bump into a Civ in the ancient era with all the modern stuff in their room that hasn`t been invented yet!

5. Have Leader screen backgrounds change if they are doing badly in a war, so that if they have only one or two cities left and are under attack have the leader background show smoke outside or shake slightly from bombardment with shouts of soldiers and people running about in the background.

6. Finally, just make the wording more immersive. Instead of Player `Use Civ`, and make better use of the Leaders so they actually TALK all the other negotiation stuff, not just `Hello`, `goodbye` `i`m angry`.



All this would add to the longevity and flavour of the game. Meh.

Altough I find them all great ideas I do think most of them (except the first two) probably won't be able to make Civ V and will probably be good suggestions to point out the directions the devs should take for Civ VI.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I agree on all accounts OP!

I'm particularly frustrated by the lack of war atm, i've been trying and trying to give the game a chance, but i'm finding it near unplayable in its current state :/

Emperor and below I am finding next to no warfare early on, and still very little afterwards. Warmongers are shooting themselves in the foot by failing to make any kind of impression on the world with the large armies they build up. Games are static and linear now as civs who get ahead stay ahead. It's just so predictable now

Immortal and above it seems as mental as ever, but i'm not an immortal level player yet, i never have been. I made the move up to emperor in G&K and i was having a good time of it, getting regular wins but not all the time. The level of warfare was enough to keep me on my toes and i loved it! On immortal i just cannot win yet though, and i can't practice for it on emperor anymore because it's so vastly different

 

[PhilBowles]

I really wish that Civ 5 would add more `in your face` screens for important world events.

1. For example if two Civs go to war you should get at least a half screen size display of `Russia declares war on England!`. It could pop up at first like a scroll, then as a newspaper and and even as a photo-image on an ipod to show the later eras.

I really like this idea, but it should probably be handled like Total War notifications to avoid being intrusive - it pops up as a typical bubble, but when clicked opens into the full size notification.

2. There should also be splash screens for important inventions discovered like: `Flight discovered by Ethiopia!" or `Nuclear weapons in the hands of India!"

"X has nuclear weapons" should certainly be a notification, and the AIs all know the instant you get them (and become Afraid, a nice touch). The era notifications achieve something similar to the former - but if they can add a notification about proving the world is round, they can certainly do so with specific techs (again, take a leaf out of Total War - Medieval II had essentially pointless notifications about technologies being discovered that had no game effect but added to immersion).

4. Leaders clothing should change with the era, but still keep the original theme. Backgrounds should also change from Ancient to Modern. It never makes much sense to bump into a Civ in the ancient era with all the modern stuff in their room that hasn`t been invented yet!

5. Have Leader screen backgrounds change if they are doing badly in a war, so that if they have only one or two cities left and are under attack have the leader background show smoke outside or shake slightly from bombardment with shouts of soldiers and people running about in the background.

That would be awkward to achieve with the current types of leaderscreen, I suspect.

Though I do continually get irritated that Askia has a building burning in his background that wasn't built in that form until 1907. Not to mention that it's made of mud and wouldn't burn anyway...

6. Finally, just make the wording more immersive. Instead of Player `Use Civ`, and make better use of the Leaders so they actually TALK all the other negotiation stuff, not just `Hello`, `goodbye` `i`m angry`.

They evidently did that to cut down on voice acting requirements, and they've already run into difficulties when adding features for earlier civs that have no associated voiceover and leader pose (so that civs show their defeated screen when caught spying, for example, because the vanilla civs have no appropriate graphics or voiceover for that feature).

I'm particularly frustrated by the lack of war atm, i've been trying and trying to give the game a chance, but i'm finding it near unplayable in its current state :/

Not quite sure what changed, but I've found that in every one of my past half dozen games I've been involved in at least one early to mid-game war, and it's playing much more like an improved version of G&K than an incomplete BNW as a result. AIs still get very upset about you having territory they want in particular. There may be a difficulty level effect: all of these games have been on Immortal while the early peaceful BNW games I played were on Emperor.