Yet Another Complaint Thread ...

JohnnyRico

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 4, 2005
Messages
16
I figured among all this Firaxis assphalt kissing maybe someone should deleted about all the things that are not good enough in Civ 4. Personally, I dont think that this game will be one of the all time great moments in gaming history (like civ 1 was). I find it amazing that Ive paid my 4th installment of 50$ (nm expansions) for the same concept (with yet another facelift).
Moderator Action: Language deleted. Don't swear here.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
Most diappointng aspect...
Combat. although the unit promotions are awesome and add depth to combat,) it's still a one-on-one business. You have an army of 10 attacking a city with 4 defenders. one of each steps forht and slugs it out, win/lose, repeat. It's stupid. There is no implementation of an army concept much less a cohesive front.

Right click menu: There is none anymore. (was so useful in previous civs!)

Graphics. Yeah i heard 1000x how awesome they are. It's true that it's quite cool that you an see an archer fire an arroow, which pierces the enemy through, which then drops. But I find the map generally cluttered these towns and cottages and cant even see enemy strolling along the busy landscape. It's difficutly to see what unit defends a town just by looking at it (which was always obvious in previous versions). I think unit icons are unintuitive: aftera while you get conditioned like a dog to recognize that orange-yelloe thing is a swordsman and that orange-bown is an axeman, but it's more conditioning and less recognition. THe combat bonuses icons are even worse. THe tech icons are cartoonish and again unintuitive, other than 'the wheel' i have to read what im clicking on cause by icon alone i could never tell. Point is: Bigger size and higher res would be nice (cant wait for mods) Whoever;s gonna respond to my post that "the graphic layout is awesome", please do the following - inside a game look at he tech tree and ask yourself if you can understand what 1/4 of the tech and unit pictures represent.

The Pillage sound. OMG the pillage sound! I get pillaged 10x per turn when im at war and that annoying shrill sound repeating over and over and over and over dives me insane! I play with the sound off now. Please someone tell me which wav file i have to delete.

Pillaging Part II. How can a horse archer pillage a dirt road??? I mean what do you actually do to destroy the dirt? I can understand burning down a farm, makes sense and it's historically accurate, breaking rails -yes, leveling towns - ok, but the fcuking AI is pillaging crazy! Some improvements shouldnt be pillage-able, while others should take maybe a few turns. It' might have been ok in civ 1 because with the programming level at the time most game concepts had to be abstracted, but its 10 years later...

Install crash. Damn game wouldnt install. My system tends to be stable generally but civ 4 install made it crash quite seriously. It wasnt the kind of crash that the program closes without finishing the job, or the kind that keeps u waiting then tells you that the program is 'Not Responing', or even the kind that just freezes the system. It was more like the lightning tripped a fuse... except only the computer went off and not my radio. Civ 4 suport web page addresses the problem, which is good and pisses me off at the same time: it means the bastards knew about it from day 1 yet shipped anyway.

Tech 'Writing' leads to 'alphabet'? Thats just dumb.

ANNOYANCES (tons, here are ONLY a few) that show that these guys just didnt give a shyte about desigNing a great product, just rushing an unpolished POS out the door and into the arms a mob of addicts who will suck it up and say thank you too.

Message of an event kicks in a turn later.

French tech tree?

Play disk/ Install disk issue

Why are the tech briefings tell you about future units??? Its like the science advisor of Ghenghis Khan comes to him and says: Sir we figured out how to ride the horses, we can make horse archers now. Oh and btw in 500-1000 years we'll be kickg ass with knights and rifle cavalry. I dunno wtf those things are sir, but it's gonna be great, and what we just invented will be THE thing allowing us those units." They obviously never heard of suspension of disbelief.

Promotion names. While promotions are cool, they mustve been named by a non-english speaker. For instance, have you wondered why 'flanking' gives you *retreat* ability? Or 'Charge' *anti-siege unit* bonuses? (charge of the light brigade? they failed didnt they?) Pinch (they mean flanking?) is anti-melee. sigh.

Moderator Action: In addition to Chieftess' language edit, I changed the thread title to be more descriptive... --Padma
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
o, thanks for explaining flanking - I saw flanking allows retreat 10% and said nope no retreat except on your shields boys and never use it.
Unfortunately I have read the rest of your complaints countless times here - If you aren't part of the solution you are part of the problem. Have Fun.
 
Well, just put me in with all of those other 'assphalt kissers' I guess. Sure the game is by no means perfect (but, what games ever are) but it is a HELL of a lot more than a mere facelift. IMO, it completely rewrites the way in which you both play and WIN the game. It is the best Civ experience I have had since Civ2 by a long shot and-though there are things I hope for in later expansions/mods-I am more than convinced that this is a WHOLLY new game, rather than a revision/modification of Civ2 or Civ3. Guess I will just go away and thorougly enjoy this fantastic game, and leave people like you to mope in sheer frustration that the game didn't turn out exactly the way you wanted it to (if you don't like it MOD it-at least you can do that this time around!)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
I'll agree with some things you say like the lack of a right-click menu. But some of your comments are off. There is indeed strategy involved in attacking cities. The order in which you use your units to attack is a large factor, as well as how you use artillery and if units have the "Vs. unit type" promotions. It is no longer a game where you build a massive amount of one unit type and take out an entire country. You now need different units and the composition of your army makes a difference. If you have too many defenders, you will not be able to capture teritory. Is your army geared toward fighting archers? what if they send melee units, you'll be slaughtered.

I did get a kick out of the wrtiting/alphabet thing, but then I thought... cavemen made pictures to communicate. That is a form of writing but there is not alphabet involved. I let it pass.
 
JohnnyRico said:
I figured among all this Firaxis assphalt kissing maybe someone should ***** about all the things that are not good enough in Civ 4. Personally, I dont think that this game will be one of the all time great moments in gaming history (like civ 1 was). I find it amazing that Ive paid my 4th installment of 50$ (nm expansions) for the same concept (with yet another facelift).

Wow. Somebody's angry about something.

Most diappointng aspect...
Combat. although the unit promotions are awesome and add depth to combat,) it's still a one-on-one business. You have an army of 10 attacking a city with 4 defenders. one of each steps forht and slugs it out, win/lose, repeat. It's stupid. There is no implementation of an army concept much less a cohesive front.

If you prefer, you can imagine all the units to be attacking at once, with the first units being in front. Would you care to offer an alternative suggestion?

Right click menu: There is none anymore. (was so useful in previous civs!)

No longer necessary. You may now simply point your mouse at anything and all the information you need. Furthermore, getting to the city screen by double-clicking its title is a lot easier than right-clicking and selecting "Zoom to City" from a drop down list.

Graphics. Yeah i heard 1000x how awesome they are. It's true that it's quite cool that you an see an archer fire an arroow, which pierces the enemy through, which then drops. But I find the map generally cluttered these towns and cottages and cant even see enemy strolling along the busy landscape. It's difficutly to see what unit defends a town just by looking at it (which was always obvious in previous versions). I think unit icons are unintuitive: aftera while you get conditioned like a dog to recognize that orange-yelloe thing is a swordsman and that orange-bown is an axeman, but it's more conditioning and less recognition. THe combat bonuses icons are even worse. THe tech icons are cartoonish and again unintuitive, other than 'the wheel' i have to read what im clicking on cause by icon alone i could never tell. Point is: Bigger size and higher res would be nice (cant wait for mods) Whoever;s gonna respond to my post that "the graphic layout is awesome", please do the following - inside a game look at he tech tree and ask yourself if you can understand what 1/4 of the tech and unit pictures represent.

Again, if you mouse over something, you can get its name, strength, unit class, and inseam.

The Pillage sound. OMG the pillage sound! I get pillaged 10x per turn when im at war and that annoying shrill sound repeating over and over and over and over dives me insane! I play with the sound off now. Please someone tell me which wav file i have to delete.

Well, you may have a point there. It's just a minor detail, though. Maybe they should include a few more screams and sort of randomize it.

Pillaging Part II. How can a horse archer pillage a dirt road??? I mean what do you actually do to destroy the dirt? I can understand burning down a farm, makes sense and it's historically accurate, breaking rails -yes, leveling towns - ok, but the fcuking AI is pillaging crazy! Some improvements shouldnt be pillage-able, while others should take maybe a few turns. It' might have been ok in civ 1 because with the programming level at the time most game concepts had to be abstracted, but its 10 years later...

They tear up the dirt road. And it takes several turns to fully pillage a suburban town.

Install crash. Damn game wouldnt install. My system tends to be stable generally but civ 4 install made it crash quite seriously. It wasnt the kind of crash that the program closes without finishing the job, or the kind that keeps u waiting then tells you that the program is 'Not Responing', or even the kind that just freezes the system. It was more like the lightning tripped a fuse... except only the computer went off and not my radio. Civ 4 suport web page addresses the problem, which is good and pisses me off at the same time: it means the bastards knew about it from day 1 yet shipped anyway.

You have my deepest sympathies for whatever computer problems you might have. However, you can't expect the developers to prepare for every possible contingency. I'm afraid I can't say anything of value here, as my opinions are tainted by the fact that it runs fine on my computer and I'm all the happier from getting it earlier, but if you could somehow find an objective reviewer, you'd get a better answer. For now, all I can say is: Would it be fair for people who could run Civ with no problems at all to be denied the game solely so that you could wait for it without the knowlege that other people have it? In the end, you wait just as long; the only difference is for us.

Tech 'Writing' leads to 'alphabet'? Thats just dumb.

"Writing" refers to the ability to put things down on some sort of material that others can decypher, like pictograms. "Alphabet" refers to a particular method of writing in which symbols are used to represent not entire concepts but rather abstract sounds, whether they be entire syllables or just noises like the Latin alphabet. Incidentally, this is a prerequisite to Literature because the alphabet allows for more abstract concepts to be easily expressed.

ANNOYANCES (tons, here are ONLY a few) that show that these guys just didnt give a shyte about desigNing a great product, just rushing an unpolished POS out the door and into the arms a mob of addicts who will suck it up and say thank you too.

Message of an event kicks in a turn later.

Actually, the message usually comes right after the event occurs, but you notice the effects as it happens. This was done for the sake of multiplayer, I believe.

French tech tree?

I'm not sure what you mean...

Play disk/ Install disk issue

Ah, yes. That was a little confusing, but it was just a minor detail.

Why are the tech briefings tell you about future units??? Its like the science advisor of Ghenghis Khan comes to him and says: Sir we figured out how to ride the horses, we can make horse archers now. Oh and btw in 500-1000 years we'll be kickg ass with knights and rifle cavalry. I dunno wtf those things are sir, but it's gonna be great, and what we just invented will be THE thing allowing us those units." They obviously never heard of suspension of disbelief.

Perhaps you misunderstand the concept of "suspension of disbelief." The concept basically allows for certain incongruities or physical impossibilities to occur that the intended audience accepts as necessary for the genre, artistic style, or medium (eg characters on stage who walk forward and speak their thoughts aloud--that is, sililoquies--are accepted as perfectly normal and even necessary in a play, regardless of the fact that anyone who'd do that in real life would be insane).
In Civilization, you must accept the fact that you are omniscient. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to plan anything. The "Sid's Tips" are not stated by any mortal advisors, but by Sid Meier, a felow omniscient who advises you. Unless, of course, you'd prefer to memorize the entire Civilopedia and formulate your strategies completely from scratch?

Promotion names. While promotions are cool, they mustve been named by a non-english speaker. For instance, have you wondered why 'flanking' gives you *retreat* ability? Or 'Charge' *anti-siege unit* bonuses? (charge of the light brigade? they failed didnt they?) Pinch (they mean flanking?) is anti-melee. sigh.

Well, the name "flanking" does sound a little odd. Incidentally, "pinch" provides an anti-gunpowder bonus, but I'm not entirely sure what its contextual definition is.
 
Good point on alphabet and writing.
 
Oh and, to deal with one or two of your specific complaints:

What right click menu? I have never used one before in previous civ games-couldn't have been too useful to all of us in that case. Plus, you get info from scrolling over pretty much everything now-so why would you want or need info any other way?
Combat-oh sure it would have been better if it was all on all, but this is one of the BEST features of Civ4, the extra strategy/choice involved in combat (both in preparation and execution).
Oh, and alphabet actually DOES follow writing-historically. The depiction of ideas through icons and symbols predates a set alphabet by several hundred years (Egyptian heiroglyphics for a start).
Oh, and the Light Brigade didn't LOSE, the majority of them died after the war, on the way back to England-plus it wasn't them charging the cannons which was the problem, it was incompetent leadership-but they DID overcome the cannons-sorry to disappoint you, but you REALLY should read a history book once and a while.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
JohnnyRico said:
Tech 'Writing' leads to 'alphabet'? Thats just dumb.

Pictographs. An alphabet is composed of symbols that represent phonemes, parts of sounds, I believe.

-NE
 
sigh.. go in the options and turn on the right-click menu. Not as features as the civ3 one, still very useful. Everything else is available from the lite city screen, no need to right-click..

Oh and hey you can select multiple cities or all cities with the lite city screen (by shift or alt clicking on the name), so you can have all cities build the same things. That beats any right-click menu, when you need to do it.
 
Writing does lead to alphabet.

Writing was normally done first, typically in pictographs. The first Sumerian writing was basically a pictographic type used for purposes of commerce...

Alphabet represents a switchover/development to a system based on phenomes. For that matter, vowel letters were developed after the alphabet - for example, ancient Hebrew is vowel-less. But "writing", aka pictographic transmission of concepts, had existed long before alphabet.
 
Gah! There is a Right click menu, for crying out loud. Just inable it your options. It's not as detailed as Civ3's right click menu but as many before me have said, it doesn't need to be, because holding your mouse over something gives a lot of details...
 
JohnnyRico said:
Tech 'Writing' leads to 'alphabet'? Thats just dumb.

HAHAHA! That and the fact that you can build Power Plants before you get electricity makes me wonder how much this game was rushed. And what is the purpose of the Internet - why even have it in the game???
 
Wlauzon said:
HAHAHA! That and the fact that you can build Power Plants before you get electricity makes me wonder how much this game was rushed. And what is the purpose of the Internet - why even have it in the game???


OK on both of those points
1. You can have Writing without an Alphabet, you CANNOT have an Alphabet without Writing (Alphabet is a system of WRITTEN symbols for sounds) This is the only version of Civ to get that RIGHT, finally.


2. You have 'Power Plants' before you have Electricity. They just have to be local (like a water MILL had to be directly attached to the MILL) Electricity is not the only form of power. It is just an easily transportable form of power.
 
Sorry, I have to answer this part because it was a rather unjustified personal attack. Now there is nothing I can do about your lacking social skills, but here's some historical perspective.

2/3 of the light brigade were lost in the charge (nearly 700 charged, 200 came back, most wounded.) Thats a higher casualty rate than many units which WIN battles. If by "didn't LOSE" you mean they overcame the gun positions, then I have to agree with you, if only to satisfy your ethnocentric point of view. However, keep in mind that they held the hill for just minutes before they retreated rather than face the russian counterattack (however ineptly the counterattck was conducted, the remainder of the light brigade was faced with superior numbers of fresh lancers and they bailed out of there, just in time.) The heights remained in Russian hands during the war and to this day.
Strategically the British fell woefully short of their goals in the entire war, not the least because their cavalry was spent in the battle of Balaklava. (the heavy cavalry was involved in fighting superior russian forces earlier in the battle, too; although with much more sucess if measured in lives lost.) TRust me, it is not I that needs a history book.


Aussie_Lurker said:
Oh, and the Light Brigade didn't LOSE, the majority of them died after the war, on the way back to England-plus it wasn't them charging the cannons which was the problem, it was incompetent leadership-but they DID overcome the cannons-sorry to disappoint you, but you REALLY should read a history book once and a while.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
Actually, as I stated previously, new historical evidence has shown the original charge to be much more successful than previously thought. Although the majority of the Light Brigade never made it back to England, this was not the result of taking on the big guns of the Russians. According to documents, nearly all those who died actually did so on the long journey back to England. The problem was that those making the official document of the time-back in the homeland-wanted to portray the Light Brigade as some 'noble sacrifice'. The other great 'error of history' in the Light Brigade/Crimean War is the role played by the Turks, which was deliberately falsified/downplayed by the British Press-but that is a whole other story. If you watch a tv series called 'Battlefield Detectives', you will see a whole lot of popular myths about famous battles laid to rest. Oh, and I do apologise for my final 'snide remark' in my last post-I was having a bad day and took it out on you. Seriously, my social skills are actually more refined than that ;)!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
'Battlefield Detectives' yes yes. Fun fun. Love that show. Wish they would do more on modern battles. Modern being wwII on up. Yes yes. Sorry about rushing off topic
 
<yawn>

Simple solution. If you don't like the game don't play it.
 
I am not in 100% agreement to everything in the OP. However, I do think this thread pulled away from the more important parts of the statement, at least IMO.
1) Proven fact writing was done by cavemen. They had no alphabet.
2)You can enable the right click menu from the options menu.
Now we can quit posting that in a reduntant cycle and get back to the OP.

JohnnyRico said:
Graphics. Yeah i heard 1000x how awesome they are. It's true that it's quite cool that you an see an archer fire an arroow, which pierces the enemy through, which then drops. But I find the map generally cluttered these towns and cottages and cant even see enemy strolling along the busy landscape.

This is pretty much what alot of people are having issues because of for Civ 4 on their computers for. I agree there was no need to animate a worked mine from a non-worked mine. I think it would have helped also not to animate idle units in this also. As I have stated before, we have sacrificed the greatest element of Civ (gameplay) for mediocre graphics.

Pillaging Part II. How can a horse archer pillage a dirt road??? I mean what do you actually do to destroy the dirt? I can understand burning down a farm, makes sense and it's historically accurate, breaking rails -yes, leveling towns

I understand where you are coming from but I wouldn't like to have road pillaging taken out myself. Another thread on here makes a good point of how the enemy can pillage your roads yet you can't pillage them yourself. :crazyeye: With logic like that, no wonder the horse archers can pillage a road. ;)

Install crash. Damn game wouldnt install. My system tends to be stable generally but civ 4 install made it crash quite seriously. It wasnt the kind of crash that the program closes without finishing the job, or the kind that keeps u waiting then tells you that the program is 'Not Responing', or even the kind that just freezes the system. It was more like the lightning tripped a fuse... except only the computer went off and not my radio. Civ 4 suport web page addresses the problem, which is good and pisses me off at the same time: it means the bastards knew about it from day 1 yet shipped anyway.

Be happy the support page helped you at all. I know what you were thinking the minute this happened, although I wasn't thinking this until about day 3.

ANNOYANCES (tons, here are ONLY a few) that show that these guys just didnt give a shyte about desigNing a great product, just rushing an unpolished POS out the door and into the arms a mob of addicts who will suck it up and say thank you too.

Message of an event kicks in a turn later.

French tech tree?

Play disk/ Install disk issue

Yep. We are rarely allowed to mention the discs on here anymore. Though I understand alot of people point this out it IS the biggest, most obvious, blatent, in-your-face proof this game was rushed out the door while they put the stickers on in the van on the way to the ditributor type thing. And the French tech tree comes in right along beside it.

Why are the tech briefings tell you about future units??? Its like the science advisor of Ghenghis Khan comes to him and says: Sir we figured out how to ride the horses, we can make horse archers now. Oh and btw in 500-1000 years we'll be kickg ass with knights and rifle cavalry. I dunno wtf those things are sir, but it's gonna be great, and what we just invented will be THE thing allowing us those units." They obviously never heard of suspension of disbelief.

LOL this part had me laughing my butt off. I don't know how many times this crossed my mind now although I have always seen it as a 'science advisor saying I think if we could figure out a way to this and that, we could possibly use our horse archer unit with some modifications that would be beneficial.'

Promotion names. While promotions are cool, they mustve been named by a non-english speaker. For instance, have you wondered why 'flanking' gives you *retreat* ability? Or 'Charge' *anti-siege unit* bonuses? (charge of the light brigade? they failed didnt they?) Pinch (they mean flanking?) is anti-melee. sigh.

Yeah "Flanking" has always bothered me as well.
 
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