thelibra
Future World Dictator
My apologies if a thread of this type already exists. I found a few vaguely related threads, but nothing specifically requesting general fixes/additions for updates/expansions to Civ5. Also, please don't mistake this for a "this game sucks" thread. Frankly, I love Civ5, but would like to see some things fixed or polished.
* No apparent ability to turn on the resource icons short of editing the INI file. This makes either finding the resources a painful process of hovering over hundreds of tiles one at a time, or having to see the icons the entire game and losing the graphics immersion. Please fix the CTRL-R hotkey, or add a menu option that works.
* No ability to skip the intro video short of editing the INI file.
* The 3D map graphics of the cities themselves are kind of dull and lifeless. The cities of previous Civ versions were far more interesting. I realize this affects gameplay in no fashion, but part of the appeal was watching your city grow into something spectacular and huge...not a sad collection of uncolored blocks.
* The "Quick" pace in Civ5 takes as long or longer than "Normal" pace on Civ4. I'd like to see a faster mode.
* The info popups are severely lacking. When I am choosing an empire, and I see an icon for the UU or UB, I expect to be able to hover or click on it to get info on it. Instead, I can only see this information after I've started the game and the map has loaded. I would like to see it during leader selection. When I see a unit, mine or an enemy's, I would like to be able to hover over it and see what it's default stats are (eg. Spearman has power 7, etc.). Instead, I can only see if there's a combat unit close enough to attack. Well, sometimes I want to know the relative strength of a unit before I move into attack range. I understand not showing promotions, or other special addons, but at least give me the default stats and info, like "Spearman, Power 7, Bonus v. Mounted." Similarly, with resources, I would like their bonus (like "+1 food with plantation") to hover-pop, which I don't believe they do in all cases. Same with the quantity of strategic resources at a given site. I don't want to get into a huge war or ruin an alliance over a vein of only 2 iron. The more hover-ups the better, provided I can set the hover-timer to long enough they aren't constantly popping up by accident.
* The current rarity of iron in-game is rather extreme. In reality, is no more a rarity than fresh water. Iron is either the most or second-most plentiful metal on Earth, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a region on Earth where you couldn't mine it within just about any large country's borders. Historically, lack of iron has never been a problem, only the methods to effectively smelt and forge it. The idea that I can literally find 5 magically unlimited silver mines for every one sad patch of 2-4 iron, is ridiculous. I understand it is a vital (if unrealistic) part of the balancing game dynamic, but please iclude an option to make it a little less rare.
* The leader abilities seem rather unbalanced, but this could be due to my relative inexperience with Civ5's potential. So far I have played America, Aztecs, and France. And aside from those, only a couple seem to have truly useful benefits. Some abilities seem more of a joke to persuade the player NOT to use it. "50% chance to convert barbarian ships" for instance, is just sad. At least, it appears that way. In fact, anything dealing with Barbarians, like 3x gold from pillaging encampments, seems so limited in timeframe and number of uses, that the special ability seems like it would hardly ever get used, and pales in comparison to the more or less free Social Policies that France gets for over half the game, or the 25% tile purchase discount for America. If I pillage 5 encampments throughout the first quarter of the game or so (when they can still be found), I might get upwards of 250 gold out of it with the 3x pillage. In the same first quarter of the game, I may buy upwards of 20 tiles, at an average cost of about 120/tile. With my 25% savings, that's upwards of 800 gold saved. After the first quarter of the game, there's likely no barbs, and even if there are, 45 gold is unlikely to make any difference, whereas I'll be buying tiles all the way up till the end-game.
* The city-states are an interesting concept, but seem to lack any real personality, and the implementation seems lacking in terms of my ability to empathize with prima donnas who provide minimal benefit in exchange for far too much gold and not being able to directly use their primo land. In future expansions, I would like to see them given more personality, to make them an integral part of the game. Maybe throw some tough moral choices in there, like: "Genoa has a slave-based economy. If you befriend them, you get these resources and conscripted military units for free (but lose a point of culture), if you conquer them, you get +1 population and culture in all of your cities)." Or "Monaco has been found to be conducting terrible experiments on their population. Befriend them and gain 5 science per turn. Defeat them and gain one free technology plus diplomatic relations bonus with other non-evil states..." Or something like that. Give me a reason to want to interact one way or another with the City-States. I love the concept of them, but they could do so much more.
Please feel free to add your own posts to the thread suggesting improvements within the given framework of the game. This is not a thread to say how much you hate the game, or Steam, or 1UPT, etc. Assume the basic mechanics of the game will all stay the same, because they will. Think in terms of fixes and polish.
* No apparent ability to turn on the resource icons short of editing the INI file. This makes either finding the resources a painful process of hovering over hundreds of tiles one at a time, or having to see the icons the entire game and losing the graphics immersion. Please fix the CTRL-R hotkey, or add a menu option that works.
* No ability to skip the intro video short of editing the INI file.
* The 3D map graphics of the cities themselves are kind of dull and lifeless. The cities of previous Civ versions were far more interesting. I realize this affects gameplay in no fashion, but part of the appeal was watching your city grow into something spectacular and huge...not a sad collection of uncolored blocks.
* The "Quick" pace in Civ5 takes as long or longer than "Normal" pace on Civ4. I'd like to see a faster mode.
* The info popups are severely lacking. When I am choosing an empire, and I see an icon for the UU or UB, I expect to be able to hover or click on it to get info on it. Instead, I can only see this information after I've started the game and the map has loaded. I would like to see it during leader selection. When I see a unit, mine or an enemy's, I would like to be able to hover over it and see what it's default stats are (eg. Spearman has power 7, etc.). Instead, I can only see if there's a combat unit close enough to attack. Well, sometimes I want to know the relative strength of a unit before I move into attack range. I understand not showing promotions, or other special addons, but at least give me the default stats and info, like "Spearman, Power 7, Bonus v. Mounted." Similarly, with resources, I would like their bonus (like "+1 food with plantation") to hover-pop, which I don't believe they do in all cases. Same with the quantity of strategic resources at a given site. I don't want to get into a huge war or ruin an alliance over a vein of only 2 iron. The more hover-ups the better, provided I can set the hover-timer to long enough they aren't constantly popping up by accident.
* The current rarity of iron in-game is rather extreme. In reality, is no more a rarity than fresh water. Iron is either the most or second-most plentiful metal on Earth, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a region on Earth where you couldn't mine it within just about any large country's borders. Historically, lack of iron has never been a problem, only the methods to effectively smelt and forge it. The idea that I can literally find 5 magically unlimited silver mines for every one sad patch of 2-4 iron, is ridiculous. I understand it is a vital (if unrealistic) part of the balancing game dynamic, but please iclude an option to make it a little less rare.
* The leader abilities seem rather unbalanced, but this could be due to my relative inexperience with Civ5's potential. So far I have played America, Aztecs, and France. And aside from those, only a couple seem to have truly useful benefits. Some abilities seem more of a joke to persuade the player NOT to use it. "50% chance to convert barbarian ships" for instance, is just sad. At least, it appears that way. In fact, anything dealing with Barbarians, like 3x gold from pillaging encampments, seems so limited in timeframe and number of uses, that the special ability seems like it would hardly ever get used, and pales in comparison to the more or less free Social Policies that France gets for over half the game, or the 25% tile purchase discount for America. If I pillage 5 encampments throughout the first quarter of the game or so (when they can still be found), I might get upwards of 250 gold out of it with the 3x pillage. In the same first quarter of the game, I may buy upwards of 20 tiles, at an average cost of about 120/tile. With my 25% savings, that's upwards of 800 gold saved. After the first quarter of the game, there's likely no barbs, and even if there are, 45 gold is unlikely to make any difference, whereas I'll be buying tiles all the way up till the end-game.
* The city-states are an interesting concept, but seem to lack any real personality, and the implementation seems lacking in terms of my ability to empathize with prima donnas who provide minimal benefit in exchange for far too much gold and not being able to directly use their primo land. In future expansions, I would like to see them given more personality, to make them an integral part of the game. Maybe throw some tough moral choices in there, like: "Genoa has a slave-based economy. If you befriend them, you get these resources and conscripted military units for free (but lose a point of culture), if you conquer them, you get +1 population and culture in all of your cities)." Or "Monaco has been found to be conducting terrible experiments on their population. Befriend them and gain 5 science per turn. Defeat them and gain one free technology plus diplomatic relations bonus with other non-evil states..." Or something like that. Give me a reason to want to interact one way or another with the City-States. I love the concept of them, but they could do so much more.
Please feel free to add your own posts to the thread suggesting improvements within the given framework of the game. This is not a thread to say how much you hate the game, or Steam, or 1UPT, etc. Assume the basic mechanics of the game will all stay the same, because they will. Think in terms of fixes and polish.
