First, I'd like to say I absolutely love the game. The combat... the graphics... the music... the look and feel of the interface... lots of good stuff. I also understand the game was just released and will likely need some patches and future expansions to fix/enhance some things.
But regardless, here is a list of some things I find rather pesky and annoying and I'm curious to see how others feel and if they have some of their own they'd like to share. Hopefully Firaxis can address some of these things.
01) Steam. (lol, sorry... had to say it)
02) The cinematic plays at EVERY launch after the initial one. Not only that, but I have to hit Enter or Esc like 5 times before it goes away! (To fix: Go to the folder C:\Documents and Settings\your name\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5 and in file usersettings.ini set SkipIntroVideo = 1. Thanks, Gkey!)
03) Sometimes clicking the icon on my desktop and waiting forever for the Steam dialog box that says, Launching Civ V. Thankfully, it doesn't happen that often.
04) The legal mumbo jumbo stuff at the beginning of every launch that I have to click Continue to before accessing the main menu. Is it necessary? Many other high-quality games from some big-name companies don't do this.
05) Saving the game and not having a default file name available. I have to click an existing file, click on the file name field, press End, press Delete, and then type the next number (Like Japan 06, Japan 07, etc.). It should come with a default name that is already highlighted in case you want to name it something more descriptive like, Just researched Gunpowder.
06) Incomplete Civilopedia; brief descriptions and no links. Sometimes only text with no graphics or symbols. Seems whenever I do a search for legitimate terms (raze, razing, cooperation, secrecy, etc.) it doesnt know what Im talking about.
07) Quirky production queue system. It's a shame simple Shift-clicking and Ctrl-clicking aren't implemented.
08) The Tutorial Messages dont save between game sessions and advisors keep telling you the same things over and over. Cities can bombard enemies no way, really!? Thanks again Mr. Military Advisor, I almost forgot! (Yeah, I know I can disable them, but I'll only do that once I have a good grasp of the game.)
09) No Check for Updates button within the game menu. I heard there was an update released, yet it wasn't installed on mine and I can't find it. /shrug
10) The quick save hotkey (F11) is right next to the quick load hotkey (F12). I already once loaded by accident and lost some turns.
11) Rivers are f-ugly as hell. I dont mind the painted look of the terrain (I like it) or that trees dont sway and stuff (which isnt necessary and eats up memory) but rivers look like total crap, ESPECIALLY when they run into the ocean. Ice looks crappy too and sometimes just looks out of place and overlaps the terrain.
12) There isn't a column for Great Person Points within the city overview screen to compare cities.
13) Trying to figure out what the exact numerical health is of enemies without estimating it from the health bar - am I missing something?
14) Montezumas leader diplomacy graphics. Looks awesome, but a bit over the top and gobbles up memory.
15) Right clicking off spammy message bubbles on the right side of the interface and accidentally queuing up movement for a unit across the screen doh!
16) Hover-over info box (or whatever you call it) on buildings doesn't display any info on how many specialists it provides or what kind. Also, the civilopedia just shows 1 specialist for many of the buildings when they in fact provide 2. Yes, it COULD only be stating the type of specialist the building creates (though I doubt it)... but how hard would it have been to just copy the specialist icon over again for clarity?
17) Food resources are strange (except for Wheat). A farm can usually provide the same bonus as a camp or plantation, yet the farm will eventually be BETTER once Civil Service/Fertilization is researched.
18) Game info for the Factory is incomplete. All it states is its requiremnt of 1 Coal.
19) When using one of the very useful hotkeys, "R" (to toggle resource icon displays, because I hate leaving it on all the time), if you don't notice you have a worker selected you'll build a road by accident and may waste a worker turn. This happens to me a lot. Perhaps, roads should be be on a different hotkey.
20) Alt-tabbing to the desktop or another application seems to be a real pain while playing. Not sure why. (I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit)
21) Not being able to see what kind of buildings/wonders the puppet cities contain. Not being able to see where their next bonus tile will be thru culture.
22) Puppet cities using up your resources for their buildings!! You also can't view these puppet cities so you're not exactly sure which ones built it. They should only focus on population increasing buildings and science ones, commerce buildings, and culture... and nothing that requires a resource. (Example: I all of a sudden didn't have any more coal and couldn't build a Factory in another potential production city. I eventually realized that the puppets were used it all up on their crappy cities that don't even produce units or wonders none the less!)
23) Queued movement paths. Seems to happen with workers a lot for me. They'll stop all of a sudden because their path is blocked or something. That, or maybe I click on them by accident. Anyway, I'm left wondering where the heck he was going because there's no preview of the path the unit was going to take (like in Civ 4 when you selected it).
24) Canceling a movement path. Sometimes you'll go to click on something or scroll somewhere and somehow in some way you have a worker or some other unit selected with a queued path ready to go. You can't hit Esc to cancel it because it just brings up the menu. You have to either follow the dashed path back to the unit or look for the blinking dot on the mini map. And if you DO accidentally move the unit... boy does that suck. Now you have to try and find it or you have many wasted turns of it moving to some random location. Perhaps it's not a problem if you're using the "M" hotkey for movement since that actually toggles. But I have the habit of just holding down the right mouse button for movement.
25) No option for workers to auto improve the nearest city. If you have a big empire your workers may keep going back and forth across your territory or the ocean and get themselves killed by enemy ships in the process. You're stuck building improvements manually.
26) No information on what improvements can be built on a tile before you have a worker there.
27) Within the city overview screen (Economy Overview?) the science column doesn't sort correctly.
28) Again, with regards to the city overview screen... when clicking on columns to sort, in my opinion, it should sort out in descending order (highest up top) on the first click instead of its current form. More often, I'm looking for my biggest production cities, biggest commerce city, etc. not the crappiest one.
Any others?
But regardless, here is a list of some things I find rather pesky and annoying and I'm curious to see how others feel and if they have some of their own they'd like to share. Hopefully Firaxis can address some of these things.
01) Steam. (lol, sorry... had to say it)
02) The cinematic plays at EVERY launch after the initial one. Not only that, but I have to hit Enter or Esc like 5 times before it goes away! (To fix: Go to the folder C:\Documents and Settings\your name\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5 and in file usersettings.ini set SkipIntroVideo = 1. Thanks, Gkey!)
03) Sometimes clicking the icon on my desktop and waiting forever for the Steam dialog box that says, Launching Civ V. Thankfully, it doesn't happen that often.
04) The legal mumbo jumbo stuff at the beginning of every launch that I have to click Continue to before accessing the main menu. Is it necessary? Many other high-quality games from some big-name companies don't do this.
05) Saving the game and not having a default file name available. I have to click an existing file, click on the file name field, press End, press Delete, and then type the next number (Like Japan 06, Japan 07, etc.). It should come with a default name that is already highlighted in case you want to name it something more descriptive like, Just researched Gunpowder.
06) Incomplete Civilopedia; brief descriptions and no links. Sometimes only text with no graphics or symbols. Seems whenever I do a search for legitimate terms (raze, razing, cooperation, secrecy, etc.) it doesnt know what Im talking about.
07) Quirky production queue system. It's a shame simple Shift-clicking and Ctrl-clicking aren't implemented.
08) The Tutorial Messages dont save between game sessions and advisors keep telling you the same things over and over. Cities can bombard enemies no way, really!? Thanks again Mr. Military Advisor, I almost forgot! (Yeah, I know I can disable them, but I'll only do that once I have a good grasp of the game.)
09) No Check for Updates button within the game menu. I heard there was an update released, yet it wasn't installed on mine and I can't find it. /shrug
10) The quick save hotkey (F11) is right next to the quick load hotkey (F12). I already once loaded by accident and lost some turns.
11) Rivers are f-ugly as hell. I dont mind the painted look of the terrain (I like it) or that trees dont sway and stuff (which isnt necessary and eats up memory) but rivers look like total crap, ESPECIALLY when they run into the ocean. Ice looks crappy too and sometimes just looks out of place and overlaps the terrain.
12) There isn't a column for Great Person Points within the city overview screen to compare cities.
13) Trying to figure out what the exact numerical health is of enemies without estimating it from the health bar - am I missing something?
14) Montezumas leader diplomacy graphics. Looks awesome, but a bit over the top and gobbles up memory.
15) Right clicking off spammy message bubbles on the right side of the interface and accidentally queuing up movement for a unit across the screen doh!
16) Hover-over info box (or whatever you call it) on buildings doesn't display any info on how many specialists it provides or what kind. Also, the civilopedia just shows 1 specialist for many of the buildings when they in fact provide 2. Yes, it COULD only be stating the type of specialist the building creates (though I doubt it)... but how hard would it have been to just copy the specialist icon over again for clarity?
17) Food resources are strange (except for Wheat). A farm can usually provide the same bonus as a camp or plantation, yet the farm will eventually be BETTER once Civil Service/Fertilization is researched.
18) Game info for the Factory is incomplete. All it states is its requiremnt of 1 Coal.
19) When using one of the very useful hotkeys, "R" (to toggle resource icon displays, because I hate leaving it on all the time), if you don't notice you have a worker selected you'll build a road by accident and may waste a worker turn. This happens to me a lot. Perhaps, roads should be be on a different hotkey.
20) Alt-tabbing to the desktop or another application seems to be a real pain while playing. Not sure why. (I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit)
21) Not being able to see what kind of buildings/wonders the puppet cities contain. Not being able to see where their next bonus tile will be thru culture.
22) Puppet cities using up your resources for their buildings!! You also can't view these puppet cities so you're not exactly sure which ones built it. They should only focus on population increasing buildings and science ones, commerce buildings, and culture... and nothing that requires a resource. (Example: I all of a sudden didn't have any more coal and couldn't build a Factory in another potential production city. I eventually realized that the puppets were used it all up on their crappy cities that don't even produce units or wonders none the less!)
23) Queued movement paths. Seems to happen with workers a lot for me. They'll stop all of a sudden because their path is blocked or something. That, or maybe I click on them by accident. Anyway, I'm left wondering where the heck he was going because there's no preview of the path the unit was going to take (like in Civ 4 when you selected it).
24) Canceling a movement path. Sometimes you'll go to click on something or scroll somewhere and somehow in some way you have a worker or some other unit selected with a queued path ready to go. You can't hit Esc to cancel it because it just brings up the menu. You have to either follow the dashed path back to the unit or look for the blinking dot on the mini map. And if you DO accidentally move the unit... boy does that suck. Now you have to try and find it or you have many wasted turns of it moving to some random location. Perhaps it's not a problem if you're using the "M" hotkey for movement since that actually toggles. But I have the habit of just holding down the right mouse button for movement.
25) No option for workers to auto improve the nearest city. If you have a big empire your workers may keep going back and forth across your territory or the ocean and get themselves killed by enemy ships in the process. You're stuck building improvements manually.
26) No information on what improvements can be built on a tile before you have a worker there.
27) Within the city overview screen (Economy Overview?) the science column doesn't sort correctly.
28) Again, with regards to the city overview screen... when clicking on columns to sort, in my opinion, it should sort out in descending order (highest up top) on the first click instead of its current form. More often, I'm looking for my biggest production cities, biggest commerce city, etc. not the crappiest one.
Any others?
