Please, please, please, please, please have a better designed main/new game menu.

[h4ppy]

So, one thing that I have never been able to get used to in Civ IV was how unintuitive and obtuse the menu system was. This extended from little things (such as starting a "custom" game not be the default new game setting) to huge ones like being unable to access the Civilopedia in order to find out what the things you are selecting actually mean.

I'll start off with the little things that should really be fixed. As I mentioned I don't agree with the layout for the new game settings, I mean surely the most used features would be the custom game setting and the load game setting, so why are neither the default placement? Another little problem is when adding new civs you have to constantly click the scroll bar downward every two civs, which is quite the pain if you want to play with eighteen of them. Remember in CIv III when you could see and set all of what you wanted without any scrolling? Please go back to that, much easier to use, system. I've also found that selecting certain world conditions will reset all of your civ choices that you had made, this too is highly annoying and should be done away with. Finally, as mentioned, the lack of Civilopedia access (and worse the lack of Civilopedia descriptions of what each setting does once you do gain Civilopedia access) means that when starting a game with different settings I am often either shooting into the dark or minimizing the window to look the terms up on a Civ fansite. Which is really quite a ridiculous step back from the useful, fun to read and easily accessible while retaining vast amounts of info Civilopedia in Civ III.

 

[Camikaze]

I didn't think it was too bad. The order of the list doesn't necessarily imply what the default options are, and a lot of people probably don't customise anyway. It is kinda odd that you can't go from menus to civilopedia as you can in game, but it isn't diabolical or anything.

 

[TheDS]

I've got one word that needs to be pounded into Firaxians:

SCROLL-WHEEL!!!

For God's sake, why are there so many scrolling functions in-game that DON'T allow the use of the scroll wheel on my mouse?

I'll also agree with OP about the obnoxion of selecting additional civs to add to a game. Why is it so hard to add more people? I shouldn't have to go to so much effort to set up a game.

Something they seem to have done right is leaving all your settings the way you last had them, with the exception of the number of civs in the game, and probably which civs, but I always choose random civs.

I'm really not sure why Alliances aren't part of the default game, either.

 

[h4ppy]

Actually as a trackball user I too hate the scroll functions and their inability to be mapped elsewhere. I have a mouse sitting on my table that I only use to map scroll with, which is incredibly lame.

 

[Camikaze]

How exactly could the mouse scroll be used with different features at the same time as keeping it's other function? Would you have to hold down some key whilst scrolling to prevent your map from zooming in and out?

And now that I think of it, it is quite tedious to add civs. A simple type in option of 'how many civs do you want' would suffice for automatically opening up the required number of slots.