What aspect of civ do you dislike most?

[Marquis de Sodaq]

By the way, trade isn't so bad...
[This message has been edited by Marquis de Sodaq (edited March 06, 2001).]

[Sikander]

I find the most annoying things about CIVII are the same things that were annoying years ago in CIVI. Worst of all have to be the bizarre time-space problems.

Case 1: It takes 1000 years for someone to get anywhere, even in modern times travel is completely unrealistic. World War II would have taken 100 years if CIVII physics were in play.

Case 2: A city of 10,000 builds a phalanx, which can somehow magically impede the movement of your Panzer Corps (built by a city of several million) throughout an area larger than many of the states of Europe.

Case 3: At all times and in all cases (except in cities or forts) stacking (read concentration) of your forces within a single square increases the danger to your forces, while giving you little or no benefit, contrary to all the known principles of warfare throughout history with the possible exception of a full nuclear exchange scenario.

Let's face facts. Civ II is really Civ I with improved AI and a scenario editor. As a wargame Civ 1 was 20 years behind the times when it came out (rigid ZOCs, A square Grid instead of hexes, proportional odds resolution with no unit differentiation, tactical combat played out on the strategic map). IMHO it is best to minimize the wargame aspects of CIV (there are literally hundreds of better wargames), and play to it's strengths which are the economic and technological parts of the game. Unfortunately these are very old now, and pale in comparison to other games like SMACX. So I wait with dread for CivIII which seems destined to be far too much like it's predecessors to be any good. Can Fireaxis pleasantly surprise me?

When the AI builds a city only two squres away from one of mine and the 'Senate has met behind my back and signed a permanent peace treaty!' >:-/

[George Garrett]

War-4ever I read your complaint about workless surpus engineers some time ago - I had the same problem in a recent game. All city squares in my dominions were cultivated til they groaned, I was waiting for my space-craft to land, and there were all these bods hanging about...just for something to do, I started topping up my below-8 cities,with the "Join City" option, and was pleasantly surprised to find that each city, thus replenished gave me a "We Love The Leader"day. Thus encouraged I tried founding cities hither and yon, on desert, tundra, other city's squares,etc, and building them up with spare engs ...from these, also I got WLTL days...very rewarding, and much fun!

[East Street Trader]

Goddammit! Left undisturbed in early stage of current game so got cities down, built trireme chain and had first wave of caravans ready just as Republic discovered. First caravan (from HG celebrating London) plus a diplo sets off down the chain to reach a Japanese city where commodity demanded. Licking lips at prospect of 200 plus return and a 5/6 arrow route. Reach last ship, wake up caravan and diplo and hit keys to send trireme over last three squares. Trireme reaches last square and suddenly THERE IS A JAPANESE TRIREME in the square. I'm at war with the envious Japs so I've just inadvertently attacked the bastard. And does my trireme win the battle? Of course bloody not! Trireme, cargo and dip all go to the bottom.

I can't work out why the Japanese trireme was invisible until I arrived in the square right next to it. I had already explored the coast so shouldn't it have been in view?

So my nomination is either not being able to see units (other than subs) in reasonable time (if what happened is cosher) or BLOODY MYSTERIOUS AND INEXPLICABLE EVENTS WHICH SINK MY SHIPS if it was not.

Bet I have to defer representative gov.t an oedo cycle or two. Damn, stupid, idiotic, ridiculous, blather, blather, moan, complain, moan...

[Scouse Gits]

Move ships with care! My favourite trick is arriving at a coastal AI city with a caravel transporting three caravans. If I move one square too far the boat bombards the place, sinking with all hands.

Any exploration will only give you a "snapshot" of AI units for that particular date. The geography cannot alter, but city sizes and military deployment will keep changing.

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SG(2)
[This message has been edited by Scouse Gits (edited March 13, 2001).]

[lord of the mark]

quote: Originally posted by Sikander on 03-07-2001 06:08 AM I find the most annoying things about CIVII are the same things that were annoying years ago in CIVI. Worst of all have to be the bizarre time-space problems. Case 1: It takes 1000 years for someone to get anywhere, even in modern times travel is completely unrealistic. World War II would have taken 100 years if CIVII physics were in play.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, its not possible to make a playable and fun 6000 year civ game with realistic movement. Assuming turns are one year each, that means that in modern times ships can virtually teleport anywhere in the world in the space of a turn? how interesting a war can you have that way - Imagine WW1 in 4 turns!!!! how could you get into strategic and economic and political dilemmas of modern war in 4 turns???
OTOH supposing you have, say, 3 month turns - if you apply this from turn one, (4000 BC) that 24000 turns!!!!!! you want to spend the rest of your life playing one game of civ? Well you could attemt longer turns in the early game (but not TOO LONG, or your legions will go from one end of europe to another AND back in less than a turn - and thus cannot be shown) and have shorter turns in later years. Brandon von Every, posting in usenet,
has shown that this will not work.

There are only four options
1. Give up on including war or unit movement at all, (and even drop diplomacy, which in real life tends to happen fast, not in 5 year segments) and make the game only about economics and research ( an even more abstract imperialism) A vast historical simulation, but hardly a game.

2. Allow for thousands of turns> Again, forget about a playable or commercially feasible game.

3.Swallow hard and accept the unrealistic physics (the civ2 solution)

4. Model a much shorter time period (the EU solution)

Lord of the Mark

[Father Beast]

AARRGGHH!!! This never happened to me before!!!

I was in this long protracted war with the americans, and after 40 years, they finally deigned to talk to me. since I have the UN, that means a peace offer. I accepted their offer of peace, considering some more peaceful domination, and did not attack the rest of the turn.
during their turn, the ugly americans sneak attacked, destroyed a fledgling city, and then came to talk without my turn even coming up! I refused, of course, but the senate overruled me and signed the peace treaty!?!?!

so the americans were able to attack, do damage, and declare peace (along with those traitors in the senate) all on their own turn without giving me a chance to retaliate!!!!

again - AARRGGHH!!!

[ZoboZeWarrior]

I disliked :

- seeing my tank unit destroy by musketers.

- trade system (I could take hundreds of years to send a caravan to a foreign cities) : it gives not enought gold compared the efforts it cost.

- Unit are far toooo slow. An attack on cities could take hundreds of years (siege & final strike).

- The aggressivity and the lack of honesty of the IA. U make a little offense, and millenium after they always to trust you...

- Nuke cnnot detonate at will.

- You cannot build canal to link two oceans (but by buiding a city).

[Chris1111]

The most irritating thing is landing upon the shores of the enemy capital with 8 tanks and having my senate declare a cease fire.

That is when the leader goes insane kills everyone in the senate and declares himself the new Holy Emperor of the Republic.

[Earwicker]

Alliances that have no advantages. Typically, all they do is start a bunch of units wandering around your territory, impeding your units' movement, and buidling new cities in your plum locations. The AI is so erratic in its pursuit of warfare, you can't count on an AI ally to even keep an enemy busy.

[E_T]

I Hate it when the AI Reduces Production Rate to 80% of total and almost get a new tech from just one turn of research (when they should be taking 8 turns to finish). This is only because I get TOO FAR AHEAD of the poor AI!!!!

[Mark_Everson]

Its a toss-up between the abusive levels of micromangement necessary to run a decent-sized civ, and the pudding-headed AI.

[East Street Trader]

Losing.

[Ilkuul]

Some of the things I hate most:

-- The inability to stack units! What a pain and waste of time to have to send each individual unit of a large attacking force one at a time to the staging point! Just having stacked units will make Civ3 worthwhile for me...

-- Then when I do send an individual unit to the city on the other side of the bay... only to find it dithering to and fro, ignoring my new railroad, and trying to walk across the water!

-- And what about those engineers you put on auto to clean up pollution, make farmland, etc.? They sit forever on polluted tiles doing nothing -- far quicker to send one there manually and press 'p', and that's it, job done. Or you suddenly notice one of them irrigating a useful, shield-producing forest while all around there are un-irrigated plains and grassland!

... and plenty of other gripes, many of which have already been mentioned above. But despite them all, Civ2 is still the best computer game of the lot!