I agree that the leader's traits suck. I felt it was a real step backward.
Woah... I massively disagree here. I love the leader UA's. They're great. They actually make each civ different, and make them function best with a different playstyle. There are a few civs that still feel weak (America, I'm looking at you) but most of the civs have either fantastic UA or fantastic UUs.
I'll play India very differently from Greece, or Germany, or England.
And the civs seem balanced at a civ level, so those with stronger abilities (India) have weaker UU/UBs, and those with weaker abilities (Ottomans) have stronger UUs.
Plus, the game is not as intuitive as Civ IV.
Eh. I think this is mostly because you've been playing Civ4 for years, and Civ4 did not really tinker with the core mechanics much. Remember how unintuitive corporations were when you first met them.
Even with the rules I'm sort of confused how to win a cultural victory.
Complete 5 trees of social policies, build the utopia project.
The most important thing to remember is that each city you add increases all social policies by 30%, though puppets don't, so you need to keep a small central core to stop costs spiralling out of control. Each successive SP costs more than the previous one, so things that give you "free" SPs like Free Religion, the Oracle and Sydney Opera House are hugely valuable.
I was irritated that for some reason they dropped the clock option as something you can have.
Shift-tab brings up Steam, which has a clock.
What I'm mostly looking for in early Civ5 mods are:
a) A few gameplay tweaks, most noteably increasing tech costs, so that the game doesn't go by in a blur.
b) Stop puppets from building military buildings (barracks, arsenal, etc.) that they can't use.
c) More stuff; more detailed tech tree, more unit variation, more "passive" abilities from techs.
d) Some slight resource rebalancing. Rivers are too important, plains are too much better than grasslands, bonus resources are too weak, horses are too common, etc.
e) Increased transparency on diplomacy and unit maintenance.
Well, i see the game balance IS important.
