Which aspect of Civ 4 do you dislike the most?

[A Silly Goose]

Religion is to much of a deciding factor in who fights who. I like all the other concepts of it, just think it's to powerful in diplomacy.

Countless wars have been fought throughout history just for possession of Jerusalem--not because it's at a strategic location, or has access to a valuable resource, but because it's the "holy city" for three of the world's major religions.



At any rate, the thing that's probably annoyed me the most is that the "Game Concepts" section of the Civilopedia contains all the information I don't need, and always lacks the information I'm looking for. I mean really, who's gonna get any use out of the Civilopedia entry for "Animals?"

 

[ferenginar]

Insufficient information in either the civilopedia or the manual.

 

[Shadzy19]

*rant mode on*
The unfair diplomacy is about the only significant thing.
I mean come on , if we ask a friend to go to war we have to pay a arm and a legg for it .
If the AI asks us to go to war for NOTHING and we refuse WE get the rep hit?? There have been so many number of times ive been to war not to hurt my rep just to have the civ that asks us to declare make peace right away.

Im almost scared to research a tech at certain times cause within the next 5 turns at least 2 AI's come asking for it .
The redding out of our options and not for the AI in the trade screen is just ****.

On a smaller note , some flaws in the tech tree (cannons far to late , muskets obsolute pretty much instantly)

Combat system , i think its pretty decent , only collateral damage is to powerfull , just try to take a city out that has 5 arty's sitting in it before you get tanks. Because of the collateral damage even pults are decent units in the modern age ...

Last but not least , the AI is awful(scared?) at invading a continent.
In my current game (AW Monarch standart continents) i managed to kill all 3 of the AI's on my continent rather fast but offcourse got hurt tech wise.
Osaka who got pretty much all the wonders ( the other 2 AI's on his continent had been fighting for a long time) has a huge tech lead of rifles vs my knights/maces and double my army size .

Yet they didnt send any units at all besides settler pairs untill they got transports , then they finally started sending over units ( and still not all that much) I've seen the same thing in multiple games where a AI simply wont send units over in galleons no matter how ahead / behind they are. With galleys they tend to send lots of units but with galleons hardly ever.
*rant mode off*

Dont get me wrong i love CIV and imo its the best in the series , but it still could have been MUCH better . In stead of getting 3d graphics they should have been working on gameplay but thats just my .02 cents.
OTOH i should consider myself very happy without any tech problems at all.

Edit : forget galleys.

 

[Older than Dirt]

The abyssmal "manual" and poor civ-o-pedia.
Was the manual written as sales promotion and not ever intented to be used as a reference manual?

Fast worker move 3 bunny hops per turn; troops on 80-mph-trains move 10. Well, maybe not too bad - the workers are on speed and the trains are government owned and operated. How can it take 3 years to move by rail accross my continent. My troops enlistments are up!

My tanks can move 2 bunny hops - fast workers move 3 and slow lazy workers move 2. Stonewall Jackson's "foot cavalry" moves 1. How can this be?

I conquer several cities and sit all over the place for 50 years and am still engulfed by the enemies "culture" and can't use road or rail movement. ACK!!!

Helicopters can't fly over one square of lake because of environmental restrictions that protect gangle-footed geese.

Ten times the amount of micromanagement than that of civ 2.

Enemy naval units to which mine are adjacent move off "secretly" in unknown direction. So all of my crew is drunk and the radar is broken and the enemy throws no trash overboard to follow and there is no moon and there is a pea soup fog - that explains it.

 

[Civilized Guy]

I clicked none of them. About the only thing I liked was Leonard Nemoy reading to me quotes about my techs, and the beginning bit. I also liked the idea of those unit promotions. And the varied Great People. But that would be it. 3-D for the sake of 3-D isn't worth it, especially when it forces you to play on tiny maps with one other civilization. I miss City View. Never could get onto Multiplayer because it wanted a Gamespy ID and my current one just wasn't acceptable. Frequent sound corruption that forced a reboot so I didn't hear ninety eight percent static every time a sound played. Crashes to Desktop. Computer freezing. Complete crashes that send it into an involuntary reboot. I can run Battlefront 2 with ease, Civilization 4 shouldn't give me this much grief. But now for a bit of constructive thinking.
Religion seems to be added in at the last minute (It probably wasn't), for negligible game impact. What could have been improved with religion might be a Religious Memory. That is, if, say, Buddhism went to war with Christianity, the entire world remembers that the burning of cities and the killing of citizens was done in the name of Buddhism. Naturally, this lowers the public opinion towards anyone who uses or converts to Buddhism, moreso than the simple change due to different religion. Conversely, if Judaism builds lots of Great Wonders, donates to weak civilizations, and rescues homeless puppies, then Judaism is remembered as a great religion that did great things. Just a thought.

 

[potto]

Im disappointed in the Epic game

I want something i can save and return to in a couple of days and keeping returning, I want to be immersed in each stage of the progress of my civilisation and not see technologies whizz past. I want to feel that getting to the future is an epic journey in itself and not guaranteed to happen.

the new Marathon mode is pointless. Instead the Marathon mode should build units and buildings faster but the technology improvements appear less frequent so you get time to play with armies and fiddle with trade routes, tweaking cities and exploration and founding cities.

 

[Zhahz]

None of the above!

1. High system requirements/lag

I love PC gaming and I simply couldn't exist with a crappy rig. As my rig ages and needs an update I simply have to avoid titles it can't handle. Gaming reality.

2. Difficult diplomacy/isabella/tokugawa

Say what? Variety in diplomacy is a good thing.

3. Combat system/being overtaken or conquered on higher levels

Um, don't play higher levels unless you can handle it or like the ridiculous resource imbalance crutch the weak AI needs to be a challenge?

4. Religion

I love it and love the generic implimentation. It adds another element of strategic depth without drastically affecting the rest of the game, it helps feed diplomatic motivations, can help with finance and culture. Great addition.

5. Lack of palace/good civilopedia

Eh, I could care less about the palace and actually found the interruptions for building the same freakin structure during every game of Civ3 to be annoying. 'Pedia sucked at release but they've improved it a great deal...and there is so much in-game info available that I almost never use it anyways (compared to Civ3).

6. Long games

Say what? Not sure what this means. Civ IV has way more options than ever, including game lengths, map types, and other ways to setup a game. Random map generation is a critical thing to me and Civ IV does it incredibly well. I used to restart constantly in Civ3 due to crappy maps. In Civ IV I feel every map is playable. Part of it is map generation and part of it is the revised game as a whoel.

7. None- The game is about as good as it gets

Civ IV is a damn fine game but there is always room for improvement. IMO, what Civ needs to focus on the most is AI. The AI still does stupid or annoying things and I would prefer to see AI get smarter as the difficulty is increased instead of getting more resources (ala most of GalCiv's scaling). More than anything I don't want the AI to cheat - and it still does.

I guess it's great that Civ IV is so highly moddable but I doubt I'll ever play with a mod and ultimately could care less about mods or modding. I think the performance of the game took a huge hit due to support for modding. Obviously a huge amount of dev time had to be involved in making the game so moddable that IMO would've been better spent on game elements that the majority would enjoy.

I would also never play Civ IV multiplayer. It's probably fun for some but I would guess that the majority of players play SP. So again, I'd rather not see dev time spent on something that only appeals to the minority when time could be spent working on the core game to make it better for the majority.

Ultimately I'd rather see Civ be an excellent single player game that most civ players would enjoy more rather than try to be everything to everyone.

 

[Depravo]

The ridiculous strain it puts on a graphics card which should be far more than adequate, and the constant - probably related - crashes.

Otherwise, A1.

 

[Ya_Lun]

other games have done alot more graphically with alot less resources. Guild wars is the best example IMHO as to a game that does maximum graphics with minimum computation power.

 

[Wise guy]

Leaderheads that don't change over time... It really removed something

 

[lz14]

I enjoyed pretty much everything in civ4 so far.

Except the civ series is not as good as paradox games like Victoria.

 

[T_Raccoon]

None of the above!

1. High system requirements/lag

I love PC gaming and I simply couldn't exist with a crappy rig. As my rig ages and needs an update I simply have to avoid titles it can't handle. Gaming reality.

2. Difficult diplomacy/isabella/tokugawa

Say what? Variety in diplomacy is a good thing.

3. Combat system/being overtaken or conquered on higher levels

Um, don't play higher levels unless you can handle it or like the ridiculous resource imbalance crutch the weak AI needs to be a challenge?

4. Religion

I love it and love the generic implimentation. It adds another element of strategic depth without drastically affecting the rest of the game, it helps feed diplomatic motivations, can help with finance and culture. Great addition.

5. Lack of palace/good civilopedia

Eh, I could care less about the palace and actually found the interruptions for building the same freakin structure during every game of Civ3 to be annoying. 'Pedia sucked at release but they've improved it a great deal...and there is so much in-game info available that I almost never use it anyways (compared to Civ3).

6. Long games

Say what? Not sure what this means. Civ IV has way more options than ever, including game lengths, map types, and other ways to setup a game. Random map generation is a critical thing to me and Civ IV does it incredibly well. I used to restart constantly in Civ3 due to crappy maps. In Civ IV I feel every map is playable. Part of it is map generation and part of it is the revised game as a whoel.

7. None- The game is about as good as it gets

Civ IV is a damn fine game but there is always room for improvement. IMO, what Civ needs to focus on the most is AI. The AI still does stupid or annoying things and I would prefer to see AI get smarter as the difficulty is increased instead of getting more resources (ala most of GalCiv's scaling). More than anything I don't want the AI to cheat - and it still does.

I guess it's great that Civ IV is so highly moddable but I doubt I'll ever play with a mod and ultimately could care less about mods or modding. I think the performance of the game took a huge hit due to support for modding. Obviously a huge amount of dev time had to be involved in making the game so moddable that IMO would've been better spent on game elements that the majority would enjoy.

I would also never play Civ IV multiplayer. It's probably fun for some but I would guess that the majority of players play SP. So again, I'd rather not see dev time spent on something that only appeals to the minority when time could be spent working on the core game to make it better for the majority.

Ultimately I'd rather see Civ be an excellent single player game that most civ players would enjoy more rather than try to be everything to everyone.

I totally agree with everything you said except maybe for the palace thing. Not a necessity but i think it was just nice to stare at while i come up with new strategies as the game developed. Civ leaders don't change over time is another thing. Once again it's not a necessity but really nice to have. AI needs improvement too im not saying it hasn't been improved at all. In fact AI has been vastly improved all that it is lacking now is managing an overseas war it's still very much lacking in that. Pillaging fish nets and other water based resources doesn't count it needs to know how to use and maintain a navy, use marines and aircraft carriers as one, build task forces, and blockade cities, if the AI can do those things then this game would have to be the best game ever.

AAAAAH!!!!! AI came knocking with 4 destroyers 6 battleships 3 boatfulls of marines 5 boatfulls of tanks 3 Aircraft Carriers full of Jet fighters and 3 Sumbarines that just sank my lone battleship AAAAAAHHH!!!!

I would love to one day play civ IV and say something along those lines

 

[Bezurn]

none of the above.

Write in.

Overlapping cities squares are chosen by the computer, not the human, no way to change which city gets which squares.

If I build a 2nd city near an established one, or take over an AI city close to one of my own, I am SOL if the other city takes the others food source / production squares.

Example. Marathon Terra game. China and I were neighbors and had been in a cultural border war from very early on. His city had built Pyramids, Sistine Chapel, Taj Mahal, and a few other wonders. I had to import a 2nd religion into my city and build 2 cathedrals and the hemeratige to keep up culturally with his city. Still my 3 hill squares on the border were at 51%, and I was just breaking even at that point.

Then our relationships slowly degrade and war eventually comes. After a long double team by the AI I finally take over the city... but to my amazement the same hill squares I had been fighting to keep for my holy / commerce city were all taken by China's old city once I had control.

It was possible in SMAC to choose which tiles were worked in close cities, but not in this game. This is a minor issue, but still a big pet peeve as there is very little control you can exert over this behavior.

 

[ADHansa]

Bezurn- Go into cityview, click on on a shaded tile, tada, it gets highlighted.

 

[GIO888]

It has to be the Graphics. I never go right in close up, this is a strategy game. I view strategically!

It's the graphics responsible for my other gripe - lag. I can't play large or huge maps til I buy a new Puter, and this game is the Daddy (til Civ5)

Apart from these two, the only problem I have is an absent lottery win to fund an 18 to 20 hour a day addiction!

 

[Chesster]

I don't like the fact that I have to create a missionary in order to convert my own people.

Let me explain. I've had Hinduism as my state religion for many centuries. What I would like to see happen is this: if I create a settler unit from a city with a state religion then that settler should bring that religion with them when they spawn a new city. As it is now, I have to create a missionary then get it to the newly founded city to convert it. Seems like a waste of a missionary to me when they should be converting heathens.

 

[warpus]

I don't like the fact that I have to create a missionary in order to convert my own people.

Let me explain. I've had Hinduism as my state religion for many centuries. What I would like to see happen is this: if I create a settler unit from a city with a state religion then that settler should bring that religion with them when they spawn a new city. As it is now, I have to create a missionary then get it to the newly founded city to convert it. Seems like a waste of a missionary to me when they should be converting heathens.

Somebody created a mod that does just that. I don't remember what it's called, but I'm sure you could find it if you looked hard enough.

 

[Depravo]

I don't like the fact that I have to create a missionary in order to convert my own people.

Let me explain. I've had Hinduism as my state religion for many centuries. What I would like to see happen is this: if I create a settler unit from a city with a state religion then that settler should bring that religion with them when they spawn a new city. As it is now, I have to create a missionary then get it to the newly founded city to convert it. Seems like a waste of a missionary to me when they should be converting heathens.

Just so. If you have a state religion, and a city with your state religion creates a settler, the settler should 'carry' the religion, no question.

 

[Wretchosoft]

For me, it was definitely the lack of a good manual or civilopedia. As a newcomer I had pretty much no idea what to do (tutorial left me helpless as well). I had to do research on my own to figure out how to play.

 

[CivFan91]

I really like the game. I can play it well because of my supa-computer. (2.2 GHz CPU, 1024 MB RAM, nVidia GeForce 6600, 200 GB hdd...) The only lag I get is when one of two things happen:

1) I use the wheel to switch between globe and normal views (I hate when I do that!)

2) Norton pops up in the background and I run out of memory. I once got set back about 15 turns because of that. but then, I had been playing for hours.

Anyways, I am fully capable of large games with more civs. My current game sports 10 opponents, I have about 30+ cities, and I'm loving life. OK, I get a small framereate drop in the late late late game if I zoom out too much. Other than that, I'm fine.

I love the combat system. I don't know why, but I like it more. Probably because I don't need to stack 10 units to take a 3-unit city ala Civ III (though I do that anyway when wiping out someone with 2k+ points.)

The modern era is fun. You get so many cool toys... In my 10-opponent game, I start attacking a 10-unit, 60% bonus, size 11 city by using about a dozen bombers to wipe out the bonus and injure units. Then I send in the choppers, artillery, tanks and the like, and wipe them out. If any remain, I just use my Navy SEALs to finish the job. Wash city, rinse, repeat on next city.

I love religion. The ability to spread it is fun, and if you have an opponent with a religon nobody likes, you can declare war and nobody will care. Well, except for them. But they'll soon die anyway.

I like the fact that they did away with most of the micromanaging. No civil disorder = one giant headache gone. The new system is much more realistic. And the lack of pollution means I can spend less time worrying about Factories and more time doing what I want to do. More fun.

Then there's diplomacy. I don't bother with diplomacy most of the time. OK, the red options all around the board is a little annoying, but it is only because I don't hold well to kissing @$$es of other nations. If they don't like me, they can provoke my giant death-army to go crush them. I really don't care what they think. I just become the world superpower so it doesn't matter.

From the Civ III manual:
You cannot please everyone, but if you control all the trade routes and have the world by the throat, it matters less.

I now also like long games, if the challenge remains. I get bored, then *snap* New game... I did that a lot in Civ III when I hit the industrial age and knew I was going to win. I got challenged beyond my ability on Emperor level, so the boredom was lost, and the game was fun again.

But Civ IV is different. It keeps the challenge for me. I tried a Noble game, but after getting crushed by an endless stream of Barbarians (I never before had the chance to have an Archer with City Garrison III... from a city with no Barracks) I got a little discouraged. I'll try again in a day or two.

Well, I think that covers everything in the poll. I guess I'll see you around.