Things in this game that annoy you to no end

[Xurr]

For me it's gotta be global warming.

Yep thats my pet peeve too. What I've never understood is why global warming means desert and not tropical rain forest? Warmer temps means more water evaporation and more rain.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Global warming means more than a simple transformation from one thing to the other. Yeah, rain forests may appear in places, but deserts surely would too. And against intuition, some places on earth would even cool down. So, it's hard to implement in a simple way in the game. One thing for sure is that a nuclear bomb has nothing to do with that.

 

[warpus]

My 2 main annoyances:

1. Bad grammar everywhere - this would be easily fixed with like.. 1 line of code. "You have destroyed a American battleship". No.. No I haven't. I've destroyed an American battleship

2. When you get attacked by animals and they are referred to as "Barbarian bears". Barbarian bears? Really? Just make it say "bear", you lazy developers!

 

[one2tieyourshoe]

When you get attacked by animals and they are referred to as "Barbarian bears". Barbarian bears? Really? Just make it say "bear", you lazy developers!

It's to differentiate the Barbarian Bears from the Assimilated Bears that are friendly and entertain your people.

 

[djvandrake]

How about when I ask Caesar what he thinks of that hottie Boudica and his response is....."I like HIM".

Um,....... Caesar? Are you blind!?

 

[one2tieyourshoe]

How about when I ask Caesar what he thinks of that hottie Boudica and his response is....."I like HIM".

Um,....... Caesar? Are you blind!?

Maybe Caesar has seen things we haven't. MAybe Boudica went and visited Thailand for awhile. Who are we to judge.

 

[Big Roy]

It's nothing to do with being good at the game. It's to do with not being a pathetic cheat. Do you reload when YOU win a 5% battle? I don't think so. Drop down a level if you can't win without crying and cheating

Crying and Cheating - my original post was about showing how the AI doens't use it's own game mechanics but instead uses particular events. People here call it cheating by the AI. It was an example to prove it.

Incidently, if you reload it does not change the outcome of any battle that is already insite, the AI is smart enough to calculate all the odds of all the individual units before the battle. Consequently, reloading just does exactly what it did before. So a 5% battle that you loose, reload and you'll loose again.

I'm looking forward to your game post in the Hall of Fame - anyone resorting to your pathetic sledging surely will have us all amazed at a settler level win, with no reloading!!!!! - of Course!

 

[PieceOfMind]

Incidently, if you reload it does not change the outcome of any battle that is already insite, the AI is smart enough to calculate all the odds of all the individual units before the battle. Consequently, reloading just does exactly what it did before. So a 5% battle that you loose, reload and you'll loose again.

Sorry but that's inaccurate. The reason the battle results don't change is because the random seed is saved in the savegame. There is even an option in custom game to not preserve the random seed. So no, the AIs are not able to calculate battle results in advance - they do no cheating of that sort.

In fact, you'll find you can get different results after a reload by doing some other things which call the random number generator. One suggestion I read once was to take a few units and put them on explore. This requires the rng I think and so battle results will then be different. Hope that makes sense.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I have a question about unit selection... How do you "unselect" a unit... More specifically in this situation:

I often accidentally select a fortified unit in a town. Now, I see that green button flashing in the corner and know that there are more units to move somewhere on the map. So I want to go to the next available ready unit, but I'm stuck on my selected FORTIFIED unit in my city that I don't want to unfortify. It seems the only way to skip that unit is to unfortify/refortify it (doesn't that make it lose a defense bonus?), or to press space bar, in which case it becomes unfortified NEXT TURN and is ready to move again (argh). I just want to leave it alone and go to my next green guy!

Just wake them then issue the previous sleep/fortify order. I tested this in game, they wont lose their turn-based fortification bonus.

Even better, just press "w". This orders a unit to wait and you'll select the next unit in the move queue. I actually disable the auto selection of the next unit (it's in the options menu) so I never get the situation of jumping across the world unless I press w. If I'm in battle, I just give an order then pick another unit. You could argue this involves more clicking and pressing of the w button but it's a godsend in multiplayer and I prefer it now even in single player. I think there would be very few people who'd know of this or would opt for this.

Also, there are two hotkeys for "select next/previous unit in stack" which you might find handy. I can't remember what the default keys are however.

 

[Big Roy]

Sorry but that's inaccurate. The reason the battle results don't change is because the random seed is saved in the savegame. There is even an option in custom game to not preserve the random seed. So no, the AIs are not able to calculate battle results in advance - they do no cheating of that sort.

Personnally I wouln't call it cheating if it did it the way I thought it worked. Even as you have put it i'd call it a great feature.

If I were to reload - so that I could continue to enjoy an enjoyable game that had just been upset by an oversight, it would be to rush an extra troop not to change the outcome of a battle - theKurgen, don't even both to reply to this, we've all done it and so have you - give it up goose!

Having said that your post does make sense and thank you for the info.

 

[gettingfat]

The stupid "repect for warlike leaders" dip bonus. I'm just playing a game. I'm on the same continent with Montsy and Alex. There is a jungle separating my land and these two guys, which are supposed to be fighting for similar stretch of land. Instead they are pleased with each other, and declaring war on me, which has similar power rating and is giving freebies to these two guys. This is just stupid.

 

[Arkatakor]

- Neverending requests by AIs to "stop trading with this" or "join the war against that" AI. I would accept this if the AIs gave EACH OTHER negative hits for "you refused to give us tribute/help us during war-time/etc.", but the only such thing I have ever recalled seeing is a "you stopped trading with us" hit when YOU actively tell someone to stop trading with another. This is VERY unfair.

Yes and its just the tip of the ice berg of whats wrong with the AI in this game. For now, I am only quoting you, but there have been countless other posts in this thread pointing towards the anti human bias. Some people call it "challenging". Clearly you must be lacking imagination to call cheating a challenge.

The AI issues have been known about for YEARS now and Firaxis has done nothing to remedy it. I have given up on Civ4 altogether as Firaxis is not supporting this game and its issues properly.

 

[auldian]

Probably here somewhere but I shake my head when the path my units take is not the one that was displayed when I gave the order. No issue if the final destination is reached same turn, but if it's 2-3 turns away, then sometimes their "shortcut" leaves them in reach of the enemy.

 

[r_rolo1]

The stupid "repect for warlike leaders" dip bonus. I'm just playing a game. I'm on the same continent with Montsy and Alex. There is a jungle separating my land and these two guys, which are supposed to be fighting for similar stretch of land. Instead they are pleased with each other, and declaring war on me, which has similar power rating and is giving freebies to these two guys. This is just stupid.

Warmonger's respect is not my favourite feature to say the least ( at least it should not be hidden ).... but unfortunately it is necessary some kind of it in the game: if it didn't existed it would give a unfair advantage to peaceniks, because if a more agreesive LH ticked another one of the same kind, they would enter in a spiral of violence, leving the rest of the world alone ( yes ,sometimes that would be bad... )

Now if that is the best solution possible... ... ( I could easily think on a greed-kind mechanism: ok this guy pisses me off ,but Gandhi over there has a rich holy city.... let's forget our divergences and attack Gandhi... then we'll resume our fight )

In fact some of Civ IV features show a lack of finesse in terms of the implemented solutions..... like the 3.13 diplo win restriction, the diplo ( it causes AI gangbanding against humans because of some badly implemented features (some were already talked here ) ), the siege units ( I bet that they will be completely diferent in Civ V, because this system already showed their flaws to the extreme ),......

 

[Rub'Rum]

The AI bias against human, well, maybe it makes the game more challenging for some really competitive people, but for me it kills the whole mood of the game sometimes. It's because I want to feel like I'm part of the world in which the game is going on, and not its inexplicable center and focus. Sometimes being the center of attention makes sense I suppose (like when you're in the mid-late game and you own 50% of the world, I think the other AIs might be able to sense that something is amiss).

 

[Titus]

My 2 main annoyances:

1. Bad grammar everywhere - this would be easily fixed with like.. 1 line of code. "You have destroyed a American battleship". No.. No I haven't. I've destroyed an American battleship

That is annoying, for sure, but even worse for me is the excessive use of exclamation marks, which just looks childish.

"Sounds like a deal!!!", etc. "Burn baby burn!!!" is particularly atrocious. What is this, written by 12-year olds?

 

[gettingfat]

Warmonger's respect is not my favourite feature to say the least ( at least it should not be hidden ).... but unfortunately it is necessary some kind of it in the game: if it didn't existed it would give a unfair advantage to peaceniks, because if a more agreesive LH ticked another one of the same kind, they would enter in a spiral of violence, leving the rest of the world alone ( yes ,sometimes that would be bad... )

Now if that is the best solution possible... ... ( I could easily think on a greed-kind mechanism: ok this guy pisses me off ,but Gandhi over there has a rich holy city.... let's forget our divergences and attack Gandhi... then we'll resume our fight )

In fact some of Civ IV features show a lack of finesse in terms of the implemented solutions..... like the 3.13 diplo win restriction, the diplo ( it causes AI gangbanding against humans because of some badly implemented features (some were already talked here ) ), the siege units ( I bet that they will be completely diferent in Civ V, because this system already showed their flaws to the extreme ),......

I agree with you, particularly on that "greed-kind mechanism". I'll think it's more reasonable if they simply get jealous of me for pulling way ahead of them in the tech race, so they will start to demand more for my techs, and dip penalties are tagged if I don't give freebie techs out to reduce the tech parity, or if my score is too high, they demand compensation, or even gang up on me, etc. That I can accept.

However, to achieve that the AIs should be programmed in a way they also make demands among themselves so they will receive the dip penalties against each other as well, which is not the case right now. I also think they are much more tolerant to other AIs for "border too close". While human players almost always get that -2 "border too close sparks tension" thing.

The warmonger respect is so arbitrary. It's particularly ridiculous when considering Toku, who is so hard for us to get him open-border, will easily take off his armour vs aggressors like Montsy. This changes the whole dynamic because by opening Toku's border, those AIs can convert him to their state religion and further upgrade their friendship. It turns out they will almost always gang up on the human players. The worst thing is AIs like Toku usually don't attack right away, they like to build stacks of units and force you into an arm race. I'm not a pure builder, but still, it's very annoying to keep building unit after unit and have no time to take care of the city infrastructure, not even mentioning wonders. And how fun a game can be if you keep hearing one after one great wonder "built far away" by those 2 archers per city Huayna guys hiding somewhere on the planet?

 

[Rub'Rum]

The worst thing is AIs like Toku usually don't attack right away, they like to build stacks of units and force you to an arm race. I'm not a pure builder, but still, it's very annoying to keep building unit after unit and have no time to take care of the city infrastructure, not even mentioning wonders. And how fun a game can be if you keep hearing one after one great wonder "built far away" by those 2 archers per city Huayna guys hiding somewhere on the planet?

Boy, do I know that feeling too well...

 

[warpus]

I also hate it when one specific civ will constantly bug me about trade deals, that they cancel 2 turns later.. 5 turns later, the whole thing repeats.

MAKE UP YOUR MIND, DAMMIT

 

[Heathen_Penguin]

My 2 main annoyances:
1. Bad grammar everywhere - this would be easily fixed with like.. 1 line of code. <snip>

1. Improper grammar everywhere: This could be easily fixed with a small of amount of code.

It is also annoying when during a "mutual military struggle", my partner pillages the land around my future cities.

Heathen