List of what I don't like about Civilisation II

• • Lack of granularity of city population (and hence the significance of population loss when cities are captured)

  • Lack of unit stacking (unrealistic combat - one unit can defeat 50 if they are in the same tile without a city or fortress) (makes the game take longer as there are more units to push around the map)

  • Lack of granularity in the strength of military units (i.e. one whole unit)

  • Unit driven exploration

  • Unit driven espionage

  • Unit driven sabotage

  • Unit driven establishment of embassies

  • Unit driven terrain improvement (very player-time intensive)

  • Unit driven trade

  • Unequal diplomacy

  • Settlers taking a unit of population and food

  • Lack of a scenario generator

  • Unreliable "go to" function for units

  • Unrealistic terrain modification (it's possible in game to irrigated and subsequently transform to grassland the whole Sahara Desert)

  • AI civilisations building cities in between my well-spaced cities (how rude!)

  • Inbalanced attack/defence - at the scale that Civilisation deals with (and particularly for the pitched battles of antiquity) there is little difference between attack and defence

  • Civil disorder - it's just not that fun to manage

  • Road triple movement rate - not realistic

  • Railroads give infinite movement - definitely not realistic (I wish my train were that fast!)

  • Standalone artillery units (a special case of the unit stacking criticism) - does it make sense for a catapult unit to have the strongest attack in open country?

  • Isometric graphics - why bother?

  • No technology, intelligence diffusion

  • Population growth tied to food (rather than medical technology)

  • No upgrade path for units (other than Leonardo's Workshop)

Weaknesses of the Civilisation series cities model

• • Being forced to place cities in undesired locations to give them access to special resources or squares with high food production

  • There is no way to place cities without overlapping (which inhibits growth in the later stages of the game) or leaving unutilised tiles (which is a waste and will sometimes encourage the AI to build on these tiles)

  • The civilisation model would achieve a perfect utilisation of resources with even placement of cities - this does not reflect how cities grow in reality there are far fewer significant cities in the mid west of the USA that there would be under the civilisation model

  • City placement is micromanagement, which is dull

  • Naval production is limited to cities placed by the sea