Programming advice for Civ 5

[ArathornIsGod]

This post probably won't get to the right person, but I have some thoughts on how Civilization 5 was designed from a code basis.

Based on my experience playing the game, it seems like the code written for Civ 5 used all the bad ideas in object oriented design that are all too common in the industry. There seems to be a lot of issues created by the use of threading in the game (not that threading is necessarily the issue, just the implementation), leading me to the belief that the program was written by coders who don't understand the most basic principal of coding that is KISS (i.e. keep it simple stupid). I've worked with many large projects and from what I've seen of Civ 5, I'm guessing there are a lot of problems debugging issues that take an inordinate amount of time to fix because of wrong coding practices. Also I'm betting that any changes they want to make take much longer than they should. Coding is a practical art which many people, especially those educated with higher degrees in a University, don't understand. My advice on future projects (hopefully Civ 6 ) is to ditch what you have and start over.

That all being said, Civ 5 is the best designed strategy game I've ever played from a gameplay standpoint, other issues such as generally controlling things and serious lag are a step back from the beginning at Civ 1... and I've been playing Civ since the beginning. An example being that when I want to have a unit do nothing at the end of the turn, I have to hit the space bar 4 times, WHY!!!. Civ 5 has more usability issues than any previous version of the game which is a major step backwards from what they had before.

Sorry for the rant but I hope, mostly in vain, that this message gets to the right person AND THINGS GET FIXED... eventually.

 

[ArathornIsGod]

Gonna post some additional annoyances in Civ5 I believe are related to bad programming and the inability to make changes.

Can't view status of diplomatic deals. This is a problem I've seen a lot of people complain about, and it should be simple to make viewable. How many turns you have on each current deal.

Memory leaks. When I run the game for a long time, it chews up more and more memory until I have to restart the game.

When the AI tries to take a city, seems like a simple thing to make it try to get 1 melee unit close to the city to take it.

Both of these problems are symptoms of bad coding. The first is a feature request that should be easy to implement, the second is just bad coding. In the first few Civ games, things were very predictable, you perform an action and something happened. Now if I attack someone, I have to wait a few seconds before another action can be performed. This is bad design and implementation.

Again I rant but I see the problems with the incredibly bad implementation of this great game and can't refrain from speaking out.

 

[ArathornIsGod]

On the new release there are basic functionality issues:

1st on the culture overview the antiquity sites not yet excavated ... doesn't seem to update until an AI discovers one.

2nd still no overview on current trades (this is f-ing pathetic). This has been a needed feature to be implemented in the game for a long damn time.

 

[Gedemon]

The code is available, what are you waiting to fix it ?

 

[Naokaukodem]

Can't view status of diplomatic deals. This is a problem I've seen a lot of people complain about, and it should be simple to make viewable. How many turns you have on each current deal.

Actually it's there.