The big list of things I hate about Civ4

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Europa Universalis is also the much better game because of the pretence of being historical.

 

[JarlFrank]

I've always craved a Civ with at least some semblance of historical realism.

As in, each nation has their own culture and religion, which would mean that European nations start out worshipping Odin, Zeus, Dievas, or other gods (depending on their specific culture) and could found Christianity later on. Also, they couldn't build the Pyramids and the Great Wall, but they can build Stonehenge which the Egyptians can't.

Also, one very simple and totally not gameplay-affecting element could be to give Great People culture-specific names. Having Russian scientists born when playing as Germany while the Russians get German scientists is a little awkward.

In Civ the world is always multicultural from the beginning.

 

[1eyedking]

JarlFrank is on to something.

Very unique civilizations/races, à la StarCraft. Might make an interesting mod if done properly; would give a highly replayable game even MOAR replayability.

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

I always thought that a way to improve religions without worrying about all that PC stuff would be just to randomize which religion gets a trait from some stock list of traits at the start of each game. You could even make the technology that founds a religion actually just found a specific trait, with the religion that gets that trait randomized, which would keep the element of strategy involved in beelining for certain techs if necessary. It's not a perfect solution, but since we know they aren't going to just assign specific traits to specific religions, it might be better than what we currently have.

 

[spectre]

Isn't that exactly what the current civ system does? Religious civics are there for a reason and work just as you described. Only that they're not permanent.

@JarlFrank, well for me it's just the oposite, I like my Civ deliberately ahistorical. But, should I get in a mood, there's scenarios.

I'm thinking, the whole scope of the game (5000 years) is just too much to encapsulate within historical constaints.

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor]

Started new thread for reccs:

http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=37664

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

Isn't that exactly what the current civ system does? Religious civics are there for a reason and work just as you described. Only that they're not permanent.

No no, not civics, traits. Like what Saint was saying when he started this thread.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Still too small - Cities are not the size of a county. Sorry, that's just the way it is. Especially when you can use up terrain around them, which eventually ends up with a city the size of a country. What the fuck? Either make the map 10x bigger, or rethink the idea of cities in the first place.

Still too fast - At the beginning of the game, one turn is something like ten years. Which means it takes your Macemen or whatever ten years to, let's say, move from NY to Dover. What the fuck? What the fuck? Whoever thought of that? Better still is the combat, especially since units have health bars and don't die in one hit like they used to in Civ. So you might have two units duking it out for up to fifty fucking years. That's just retarded.
The turns get shorter as time goes on, but even the fastest turn is something like half a year, which is ridiculous amount of time. Wars were fought and finished in the time it takes the player to unload all his units from a goddamn transport. Best way out would be making the game real time(with pause of course) with scalable speed, like in Sims. Or maybe let go of the idea of units alltogether.

3D - 3D is shit in strategy games. End of story. There was not a single fucking strategy game in full 3D which looked good, ever. Stop fucking using it. It doesn't look good, it creates all kind of problems(lolbugsnewdriversplz), and you CAN'T SEE SHIT BECAUSE HEY LET'S MAKE UNITS BROWN AND TERRAIN BROWN AND THEN ADD TREES AND THEN LET'S ANIMATE IT ALL OH HO. If you absolutely need to make retarded console kiddos the target audience of your fucking epic level strategy - and I have no fucking idea why - at least add simple 2D overlay mode for "hardcore"(i.e. people who don't want to use Shaders 3.0 just to move a stack around jesus christ) players. I'm talking Civ-Civ2 level of graphics, switchable in menu, yes even if I have to fucking restart. It will take you a week, a fucking WEEK to code it and it will make your game actually PLAYABLE.

Bullshit lighthearted tone for five year olds with assburgers - Sorry, when Cesar tells me that we should be buddies and that it would be "way cool" my forehead breaks the sound barrier just before smashing through my desk and proving that yes, you can in fact reach your own cock with your mouth, even if only once. I will not say anything else about this, if you can play the game and tolerate this kind of shit(I.e. actually use the diplomacy and not just ignore all audience requests) you should start watching anime because there's something fucking seriously wrong with your brain.

Religion copout - So we finally got religion in Civ, too fucking bad it doesn't do anything except making people happier, which is exactly same fucking thing it did in previous Civs, except it wasn't named back then. Well now it's named so we have gems like buddhists marching to war or confucianists with emancipation. Good fucking job Firaxis. Hope some durka durka steals a plane and crashes it into your HQ, maybe that will make you reflect on role of religion in society and why you can't just fucking wave it away.

Nothing new - Add more everything. We're essentially playing the same game for the fourth time(fifth if you count SMAC) with same units, research, and gameplay. That's gay.

 

[Turisas]

I've always craved a Civ with at least some semblance of historical realism.

As in, each nation has their own culture and religion, which would mean that European nations start out worshipping Odin, Zeus, Dievas, or other gods (depending on their specific culture) and could found Christianity later on. Also, they couldn't build the Pyramids and the Great Wall, but they can build Stonehenge which the Egyptians can't.

Also, one very simple and totally not gameplay-affecting element could be to give Great People culture-specific names. Having Russian scientists born when playing as Germany while the Russians get German scientists is a little awkward.

In Civ the world is always multicultural from the beginning.

Was originally going to say that the first two things would take a lot of work in re-structuring some of the main concepts in the series, but on second thought, I think it could be very doable. Each culture (where applicable) like you said could have their own unique religions in the same, early places of the tech tree, and later on the world religions from Civ 4 in everyone's (good compromise imo, if they were tied to cultures as well, the damn asians would get to hog most of them) tree... I'm no modder or anything, so no idea how you'd balance that (maybe a spreading bonus to later religions), but it'd be great for flavor.

I never liked being able to build the Pyramids as Americans either, but to do what you're proposing, you either have to water down the wonders so that the civs who have them don't have an unfair advantage, or make culture-specific counterparts for every wonder (which would have to be tied to the era, so no building the Skyscraper American equivalent of Pyramid wonder in the ancient era). Neither solution is exactly ideal.

Culture-specific GPs is a great idea tho, should definitely be implemented in Civ 5.


Edit: Ah yes, and as a primarily warmongering player (really, even my 'diplomatic' games usually end up with me giving the finger to everyone close to my empire before long), I'd really like to see the combat aspects improved. The most obvious issue I guess being the interesting way of how obsolete units can still win against vastly more advanced and superior units.

I'd also like being able to apply some scorched earth strategies when I'm on the defensive; if I'm certain to lose a city, why should I just let the enemy have it on a silver platter? Burn the fields, poison the wells and give STD's to all the women!