Quote Originally Posted by alh_p View Post
Warfare in Civ has always been a bit micro management heavy, to say the least. If they can make it less so in Civ 5, and yet more tactical that should be interesting.
I would really like it if they slowed down the army tech advancement by adding more techs to the tree between each upgrade trigger. Or speed up the construction of units. I often find that by the time I have built my set of unit X it's obsolete because my research unlocked unit Y, so the whole cycle begins again. Upgrading would be a simple one click solution and defuse much of the annoyance, however often it is too expensive to be practical.

If they did that, and made shuffling units around less tedious, and ditched the percentage chance “Ooops, you conveniently managed to lose 8 consecutive 99% win chances in a row and now your entire stack is dead, it’s not a fix honest!” combat in favour of something which feels like less of a lottery, warfare in civ might be tolerable.

In fact that's another thing I'd like them to do: focus less on the later ages and add more meat to the pre-industrial ages. The last third of the game (in terms of tech tree) is the least interesting because it's filled with micro and most of your real work is done, yet it tends to take up well over half of my total hours in any game I play. The earlier stages, where you have the most to do and where there's most variety, fly by.

Civ 4 allowed you to influence both of these things to a degree via settings which were introduced after the original launch. They never quite worked satisfactorily IMO as they were a quick bandage rather than a detailed solution.

Quote Originally Posted by God Emperor
The religions were fun, but extreemly bad when game mechanics are taking in concideration. Because the computer requires much less beakers to research a technology, it will always get the starting religions first, unless you are extreemly lucky (they do not pick a religion tech, highly unlikely) or you make npc opponents that does not start with mysticism.
If I wanted to play a game where religion was a core part of my strategy and didn't take a civ with mysticism, I often aimed for a later religion, or let the AI develop and spread an early one before conquering their religious centre and making myself head of it.

Or sometimes I'd join a strong religion and not attempt to become head of it, instead letting the AI civ gain the extra gold and becoming close friends with them. I'd then have a stooge to do most of my fighting for me if I played the diplomacy carefully. Ah, nothing like unleashing a gold-hyped Izzy or Monty on an unsuspecting third party that happened to frown at me ...

But I admit I never liked to play on the difficulties where the AI got large bonuses. Playing against a heavy cheater just makes me feel frustrated no matter what. If I win then it feels hollow because the opponent wasn't smarter; if I lose then it feels like it had little to do with my own playing and everything to do with the unfair bonuses.

Hmm, that would be another wish for civ 5: an AI that's better than Civ 4's already good AI, so cheating bonuses aren't as necessary.