Small, doable changes before release

[footslogger]

Now that we have had a chance to see quite a lot of gameplay (early and mid game anyway) and with less than two months to release, I thought it might be a good idea to list a few things that bug us and we would like to see changed. I mean small, sensible, doable changes, not 'please change the graphical style' or (God help us) 'please include the following civs'. We know the devs read this board and, who knows, they might even agree with one or two suggestions and act on them. The more slimline Teddy possibly came about this way. Here are a couple of thoughts of my own:
1) When players have acquired works of art other civ leaders pop up at frequent intervals offering to buy them. This would drive me nuts after a while. Can they please take no for an answer, at least for a much longer period than seems to be the case at present.
2) Combat AI is important to me. We've mainly seen barb combat up to now and it does seem smarter and a decent challenge early on. What city attacks we have seen have not been well done though, just units arriving in dribs and drabs. I'd like there to be a minimum of about 6 units and a support unit or two arriving in force when a city attack (rather than just pillaging) is intended, so that at least there is the possibility of success. From what I understand this kind of programming can be done quite close to release.
3) Some messages have flashed on and off the screen too quickly to be read, so a bit longer on screen please.
4) I haven't seen notification when a trader unit gets captured or destroyed, ending a trade route. It would be useful to hear about it immediately and not find out by chance. Apologies if this is already in the game, but I haven't seen it.

 

[Haig]

In Spain video, two warships combined into fleet still show one ship unit.

I hope that fleets and armies show more units in them than normal.

(note: could be that this is indeed the case in the final release but isnt shown in the video yet)

 

[shyPiano]

Really small, really nitpicky thing:

Switch the colors of the borders around. Taking America as an example, instead of having the outside Blue and the inside White, make the outside White and the inside Blue (while keeping everything else the same).
In other words, have the outside color be the color of the civ icon, and the inside color be the color of the civ background.
It's how it worked in Civ V and it makes much more sense.

 

[Deggial]

Please add a 'Resume last game' button at the start menu.
It might be just a QoL-improvement, but oh man, how my quality of life would be improved!
The start screen is soooo big and empty. This one little button will surely fit in!

--

@Haig: The number of ships displayed is related to their type, though. Melee ships are displayed as multiple units, range ships as single unit. Displaying fleets with multiple ships might cause confusion.
Having said this, visually I would prefer large multi-unit-fleets, too.

 

[Sansa_Stark]

1) When players have acquired works of art other civ leaders pop up at frequent intervals offering to buy them. This would drive me nuts after a while. Can they please take no for an answer, at least for a much longer period than seems to be the case at present.

Excellent point. This should be really easy to fix. I have two more regarding UI:

1. Make continents visible on the map all the time, with some discreet (not sure if good word) border. Keep lenses for better look if needed.
2. When changing civics, highlight newly acquired ones.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Make totally unexplored and merely unvisible terrain more distinct from each other (i.e., change the tone/color of either 'pergament'). (I'm fairly confident they'll actually make this change, as there's been a sizable hubbub about it on Reddit.)

Make it possible to regenerate the map with the same settings after any number of moves (more important than ever with the new spread-out cities!).

Make strategic view have straight civ borders (the 'craggly' border lines are an unnecessary clutter).

Make it possible to exclude certain civs from a game in the starting menu (the counterpoint to hand-picking civs that will surely appear in the game).

I think it's too late to ask for AI changes... But I second the one in the op (and for the love of God, don't have them embark in the water unless they're moving to another continent! ).

 

[Ebrim]

2) Combat AI is important to me. We've mainly seen barb combat up to now and it does seem smarter and a decent challenge early on. What city attacks we have seen have not been well done though, just units arriving in dribs and drabs. I'd like there to be a minimum of about 6 units and a support unit or two arriving in force when a city attack (rather than just pillaging) is intended, so that at least there is the possibility of success. From what I understand this kind of programming can be done quite close to release.

Do we know for sure that the AI's intention was to capture the city? They may have just been seeking to raid or look for a fight.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

The minimap's default undiscovered backgrounds needs to be much darker so it doesn't clash so harshly and make the rest of the minimap confusing.

The Religion Lense is still missing visible pressure, I would presume that seeing how far a religion pressure reaches would be cool, and you could make the color less transparent the more pressure there is on a tile. This would also give it a cool blending effect with other religions.

 

[Ebrim]

I'd like a toggle (not a lens) where a simple border of continents is put onto the map.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

This has turned into quite the suggestions thread

Another thing I still want is to see each cities borders, so you know what area belongs to which city, something akin to counties.

 

[jekke]

Make it possible to regenerate the map with the same settings after any number of moves (more important than ever with the new spread-out cities!).

This.

 

[Haggbart]

Make it possible to regenerate the map with the same settings after any number of moves (more important than ever with the new spread-out cities!).

Didn't quite understand the connection to spread out cities, but a re-roll option would be great!

 

[Martinus]

I assumed that the AI spamming trade requests in the recent playthrough was related to the fact that the trading AI wasn't finished (it also agreed to any deals proposed by the player).

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions.

 

[Amrunril]

I'd like to see straight hex borders in strategic view and the minimap. The jagged ones add a lot of visual noise in places that are intended to be easily readable.

 

[Ebrim]

Rename Freedom to "Representation". It avoids that whole murky positive vs negative freedoms business and sounds less cheesy.

 

[j51]

Team Color: I haven't seen it in any of the builds yet, but I do hope they add it. It just adds nice flavor.