I lasted 75 turns before giving in. It just got too annoying.

1.) The culture picking. Of course I'm never going to be first in a race against the AIs that probably still can see through the fog to get the first star quickly. So I'm not ever going to get Egypt, which is always chosen first, of course, because builders are like 10x more desirable than anything else. After Neolithinc, there are at least 2 ages with just 1 builder culture. So basically, the player who is already ahead gets the most powerful choice on top of already having an advantage. Great design.

Also builders should get 10 stability per district. Since most districts get you -10 stability, this should even out, allowing you to build infinite districts. This would be OP, too but fortunately doesn't seem to be working, at least I don't see those +10 stability listed anywhere.

But of course I don't mind installing a mod that lets me choose a culture that is already taken. Too bad this doesn't seem to work for the AI players too, otherwise I'm pretty sure there would have been 7 Egypts on the map.

2.) The mystery of the civics, that can be enacted. Sure how nice, depending on where I am in the game I can to make decisions. But when they trigger is opaque, and makes planning a bit difficult.

3.) My great religion. Don't remember when I founded it. Too late I guess. But I should have never even cared to look at it, because finding out it has 0 followers just isn't really fun, and doesn't make that much sense to me either.

4.) Cultural conversion. I get like 7 messages per turn about some territories being converted in 5 or 10 more turns. Like I care. I mean I would, but for one, it doesn't matter, and two, I can't do any thing about it, can I? At least I never found out. But I still have to acknowledge half a docent of these every turn. What a drag.

5.) The trade routes. I mean it's great that I can just "buy" resource access with a one-time payment. This really pays off rather quickly, giving nice bonuses. AI can do that with your resources too. Any every turn I get 20+ notifications about violence stopping an outgoing trade, and 5+ of stopped incoming trades. I tried to find out if I was actually missing some resources but cound't find any. All bonuses seemed to be there. I tried to find out where that "violence" was happening, or how to stop it, but couldn't find any clues. 

The positive point here is, that I only have to acknowledge once for all outgoing and once for all incoming trades that are blocked, so I don't have to spend hours clicking through 30+ blockades that don't seem to block anything. Also what am I supposed to do about it? Again, just like point 4, not a f'ing clue. 

6.) Oh the diplo. How I hate this with a passion. Grievances convert to demands, with give war support and reason for war. Great. So at some point my neighbors started demanding territories. Of course I declined, I spent my own precious influence on it, how is there even a choice here? One opponent was dump enough to declare war and got squished. Good times. When his war support reached 0 I had to make peace, score was 199. I would have needed 200 to make him a vassal. No chance to prolong the war to get that +1 war score I needed, so I had to take have his empire, the remainder became a vassal to another AI opponent. No clue how that happened, I don't think there was a war. 

That part was only slightly annoying. The real crap started a few turns later with multiple AIs demanding territories I held. like every turn. I reject immediately. They demand again. Reject. Again. Again. Again. They can't get more than HATE FILLED, they can't get more than 100 war support. They don't care, I have to click the same shit every turn.

That's when I gave up. Spending so much time clicking the same shit every single turn, and the game not even giving me a clue how to do anything about a single one of these issues. 

I tried to like this game, once. I tried again last week. I just can't. And I'm not even getting to the bad parts with the pollution/AIs collapsing crap parts.

Fuyuan wrote:

3.) My great religion. Don't remember when I founded it. Too late I guess. But I should have never even cared to look at it, because finding out it has 0 followers just isn't really fun, and doesn't make that much sense to me either.

No solution, but my experience is that if you don't produce enough faith (for exemple only 2 territories with the +2 faith / territory choice, and no sacred site built) your religion can't start as the Animism will be stronger. And as conversion is everybody or nobody for each territory you indeed stay at 0 follower until you build a sacred site (or other sources of faith like civics).

OK so I'll try to knock these off one by one but several of your points are based on assumptions that are incorrect and are just from a lack of experience playing the game. 

1. You seem to be of the impression that builder cultures are the only winning cultures.  This is incorrect.  You need to adapt your playstyle to the cultures you're choosing - there is a lot of nuance here.  If you want to ham fist this and just orge your way through it yeah, plunk down orange industry everywhere and you'll have all sorts of other problems as you move up in difficulty level (as is seen in your other posts).  I have played many games and have often gotten Egypt.  The AI doesn't seem to prefer it in my games - they are quite varied.  I also have frequently been the first to choose a culture.  Lastly, why do you want to be first? Collecting stars is a valid path too!
2. This is the game design - I haven't seen any problem with it so far - you get cool results for your actions that open up opportunities for you.  Plan around other things - use culture (from your people) when those opportunities arise!
3. You not remembering when you founded it is a you problem not a game problem - they LITERALLY throw a huge screen up in your face making you pick Shamanism or Polytheism.  If they give you a MASSIVE screen in your face and you choose to ignore it - that isn't a game design issue my friend - use the tools they give you. Again, thinking this game is ONLY about building industry plots and ignoring culture and religion and everything else in the game just means you're being myopic and aren't playing the game.  Once you get a religion you can build your first religious site.  You also have THREE GIANT CIRCLES on the bottom left of the screen - they take up SO MUCH SCREEN! Do you think something that huge isn't important? CLICK ON THEM! Keep an eye on your influence and religion and adjust your priorities to what is happening on the map man!
4. Two things here, one is a game design issue, the other is a you problem.  You not knowing what culture does isn't a game design issue - you can come to the forums and cry about how bad the game is because you don't know what culture does or you can read the tooltips and the encyclopedia and use the tools they give you.  Regarding the popups, yes, that is annoying.  The game doesn't seem to have a good way of prioritizing notifications so some popups which have low relevance get mixed in with high relevance popups and create a lot of noise - this is an issue, there need to be ways to classify notifications better. Fortunately they just announced that UI Notification improvements are next on the roadmap.
5. Again, two part problem, one is the same notification noise issue.  The other definitely needs some better info design in game but you CAN hover over the trade routes and see where they go - so you can follow a land or sea trade route and see if it is crossing two empires that are at war.  
6. You're oversimplifying the diplo system - I'd hate it too if I played like you!  You don't have to immediately press your grievances man! You can reject them or just ignore them and they will go away.  If the AI demands territory just ignore it lol, you don't have to do anything but build up your army so they don't go to war - they may anyway but this is like a warning to you.  Like what is happening in Ukraine right now.  Build walls, build army, prepare, it may not happen but be ready in case it does.  You can do the same.  War support is your population's justification for war or their will to keep fighting.  It is funny how you click the buttons you shouldn't click (demands / grievances) but don't click the buttons you should click (religion, culture) and then complain about the game.

GeneralDad wrote:

I really want to like this game - it has a lot of cool new ideas that outdo Civ. But - I guess I do not understand the game or am not that good at it. I have not figured out the Humankind beating snowball. So, Town became way too easy and Metropolis is way too hard and the game stopped being fun to figure out. I am at T36 in my latest try - 800 Fame behind & an AI has 8 luxes, I only have one in the typical human resource-poor start area. And, why is Mykene almost ALWAYS my neighbor? Variety? Too frustrating - it will just go like my last effort as I fall behind or run out of money to keep enough military to stay alive. Even marginally winning a war did not help in my last game - not enough gains to start a catch-up. For me, the game is too hard on Metro and no sweet spot of reasonable difficulty from which to learn more about the game. The difficulty is not well calibrated - unless you get whatever the good players have figured out that gives the snowball? 

I think the game will lose the non-super players...

Even though it is now clunky, I am back to Civ on King, maybe try Emperor...  

The reason you like Civ is you've learned the mechanics.  You can go back to the familiar if you like.  Or you can make this game more familiar.  There is a lot of really amazing nuance in this game and I fully disagree that this game requires super players.  In order to move up to the next level you need to learn more of the mechanics.  First, the human start is NOT typically resource poor - this is just the map you're on.  Like in Civ, if you don't like your starting area, restart and get a new map! Your neighbor varies a lot, I have rarely had Myceneaens as a neighbor - more frequently Olmecs. 

If you want feedback, share a screenshot of your empire at T36 (or a save) and you can get some help from other folks to start owning Metro a bit more.  Start a new thread though since this one is someone else's.  Ping me in the thread and I'll jump in for some feedback.  I mostly play Empire or Civilization difficulty now after many games to get control of the mechanics (that are very different than Civ).

StarCleric wrote:

There is a notification settings in an upcoming update planned.  Sadly, it said Summer 22.  If the devs are smart, they won't wait THREE MORE frigging months to release some of things listed in the upcoming update.  Notification spam is one of my huge pet peeves with this game.  Problem with collapsing them is there's always one important one you'll miss if you do that.  I STILL won't give my friends the "Go Ahead" to get this game, not until after I see if the next update delivers what it says.  Heck, I may tell them to give up and get Civ 7 at the rate this game is being updated.

OKay, let me specify here that on the What´s next it´s written Summer 2022, but that doesn´t mean that all changes are arriving together in summer, we have some months before that ^-^

Thank you for all the answers.

Evolena wrote:

Fuyuan wrote:

3.) My great religion. Don't remember when I founded it. Too late I guess. But I should have never even cared to look at it, because finding out it has 0 followers just isn't really fun, and doesn't make that much sense to me either.

No solution, but my experience is that if you don't produce enough faith (for exemple only 2 territories with the +2 faith / territory choice, and no sacred site built) your religion can't start as the Animism will be stronger. And as conversion is everybody or nobody for each territory you indeed stay at 0 follower until you build a sacred site (or other sources of faith like civics).

My problem was never Animism though, I just had a neighbor that put more than 100 faith pressure on my capital, so me with my measly 1 Holy Site sat at zero followers. Coming back from a big disadvantage like that isn't easy, since with the number of followers, the number of possible holy sites also increases for that opponent, making a bad problem worse. 

I found my way around it with the Statue of Zeus and Notre Dame, plus 4x Holy Day project, netting 3 Holy sites with 40 base faith, and Notre Dame giving some extra. And even when I only barely made it.

Religion, with its winner-takes-all approach, really leaves you with only 2 choices: go big or go home.

Mirror514 wrote:

Also regarding AI demands for regions, you don't have to keep refusing every time, you can just ignore them and leave it. Refusing demands ratchets up the war support too, so if you just want to ignore your neighbours altogether, then that's fine. 

As for the civics, they're not generally things you really have to plan around, they're just little bonuses to help specialise. Like, you'd usually pick them depending on what playstyle you're going for, and you can always switch later if its really bothering you. 

And then for the culture picking... Honestly I can't relate, I always manage to pick a culture before or at the same time as the AI. And Egypt isn't an autopick for the matches I've been in, usually it's Harappans or Babylonians first.

Like the other guy said though, most of your issues seem to do with the notifications. Other than that... culture conversion and religion, somehow you're not engaging with that side of the game at all, so if you just don't care about a fundamental chunk of the game, then clearly it's not the right game for you.

Tragopan wrote:

I will say that the AI being able to spam demands is most certainly a bug. They can do it without cooldown or consequence allowing them to spike their war support from 0 to 100. Very exploitable on their part (and they do). Just ignoring those demands isn't a good solution nor a good game design choice. Would like to see confirmation from developers that this is intended. 

I found out that my rejecting all demands every single turn was actually the right thing to do, not just in order not to give the opponent free +3 war support per turn.

The trades routes that get halted due to "Violence", as the notification put it, are actually suspended because there are open demands. So I'd lose a lot of resource access too if I just leave them there. Seriously, why doesn't it just clearly say "open demands", or "active diplomatic crisis", something like that, instead of the meaningless word "violence", is that so hard? Then I would have at least understood the message.

Not refusing demands every turn definitely isn't an option when you're trading with them. An auto-reject option would be nice.

StarCleric wrote:

There is a notification settings in an upcoming update planned.  Sadly, it said Summer 22.  If the devs are smart, they won't wait THREE MORE frigging months to release some of things listed in the upcoming update.  Notification spam is one of my huge pet peeves with this game.  Problem with collapsing them is there's always one important one you'll miss if you do that.  I STILL won't give my friends the "Go Ahead" to get this game, not until after I see if the next update delivers what it says.  Heck, I may tell them to give up and get Civ 7 at the rate this game is being updated.

I actually tried playing again, without the notifications, and it really was like night and day. Who cares if I oversee some ransacking, I actually get to play, instead of feeling like all I do is click "acknowledge". So, while updates here are welcome, it seems just ignoring that spam is all it really takes.

Oddible wrote:

OK so I'll try to knock these off one by one but several of your points are based on assumptions that are incorrect and are just from a lack of experience playing the game. 

1. You seem to be of the impression that builder cultures are the only winning cultures.  This is incorrect.  You need to adapt your playstyle to the cultures you're choosing - there is a lot of nuance here.  If you want to ham fist this and just orge your way through it yeah, plunk down orange industry everywhere and you'll have all sorts of other problems as you move up in difficulty level (as is seen in your other posts).  I have played many games and have often gotten Egypt.  The AI doesn't seem to prefer it in my games - they are quite varied.  I also have frequently been the first to choose a culture.  Lastly, why do you want to be first? Collecting stars is a valid path too!
   I actually want to collect stars, I just also want to choose what I want, not what is left. But as I said, that mod works fine, and solves that issue for me. I even saw one AI opponent chose the same culture I had picked - Khmer - yesterday, so I works for AI players too, which is nice.
2. This is the game design - I haven't seen any problem with it so far - you get cool results for your actions that open up opportunities for you.  Plan around other things - use culture (from your people) when those opportunities arise!
   And I'm saying I don't like this design. Obscuring game mechanics for "surprise" moments is not why I play turn-based strategy games.
3. You not remembering when you founded it is a you problem not a game problem - they LITERALLY throw a huge screen up in your face making you pick Shamanism or Polytheism.  If they give you a MASSIVE screen in your face and you choose to ignore it - that isn't a game design issue my friend - use the tools they give you. Again, thinking this game is ONLY about building industry plots and ignoring culture and religion and everything else in the game just means you're being myopic and aren't playing the game.  Once you get a religion you can build your first religious site.  You also have THREE GIANT CIRCLES on the bottom left of the screen - they take up SO MUCH SCREEN! Do you think something that huge isn't important? CLICK ON THEM! Keep an eye on your influence and religion and adjust your priorities to what is happening on the map man!
   My complaint wasn't that I didn't remember when I founded it. My problem was the zero followers. Which is because of the winner-takes-all-design. If I had to take a guess, the person that implemented this was american. Nowhere else in the world would anyone get the idea that this is how things should work.
4. Two things here, one is a game design issue, the other is a you problem.  You not knowing what culture does isn't a game design issue - you can come to the forums and cry about how bad the game is because you don't know what culture does or you can read the tooltips and the encyclopedia and use the tools they give you.  Regarding the popups, yes, that is annoying.  The game doesn't seem to have a good way of prioritizing notifications so some popups which have low relevance get mixed in with high relevance popups and create a lot of noise - this is an issue, there need to be ways to classify notifications better. Fortunately they just announced that UI Notification improvements are next on the roadmap.
   The UI should provide the hints needed to understand a mechanic. So far I observed osmosis events, the science one that gives me a tech for money, which is nice, and the civics one, that gives me a civic choice for free if I want it, or -50 stability if I don't, Also opponents can demand the converted territory. Did I get that all right, is there anything missing?
   Ignoring notifications altogether at least solves that part of my complaint. 
5. Again, two part problem, one is the same notification noise issue.  The other definitely needs some better info design in game but you CAN hover over the trade routes and see where they go - so you can follow a land or sea trade route and see if it is crossing two empires that are at war.  
   Wrong. The issue was with open demands. Once I reject the demands, all trade routes work normally again, which is also why I never found out which resources are actually not arriving from trade routes.
6. You're oversimplifying the diplo system - I'd hate it too if I played like you!  You don't have to immediately press your grievances man! You can reject them or just ignore them and they will go away.  If the AI demands territory just ignore it lol, you don't have to do anything but build up your army so they don't go to war - they may anyway but this is like a warning to you. Like what is happening in Ukraine right now. Build walls, build army, prepare, it may not happen but be ready in case it does. You can do the same. War support is your population's justification for war or their will to keep fighting. It is funny how you click the buttons you shouldn't click (demands / grievances) but don't click the buttons you should click (religion, culture) and then complain about the game.
   Wrong, I can't ignore it. As I explained above, I need the open demands gone if I want my wares that I already paid for.
   Also what do you mean I click buttons I shouldn't click, I go NOTIFICATIONS about the demands, and even pink dots on the opponents' icons on the top of the screen so I know I have diplo stuff to look at. And I don't convert my own grievances to demands unless I want immediate war, if that was what you meant, I just got a lot of demands from opponents.

This game has a lot to offer and is quite complex.  It has some unique stufff so playing it like other games and expecting it to be the same is a path to no fun and isn't fair to the game design.  Learn the game and play it for what it is.  There is a lot here to offer if you're interested in dropping the ego and learning the nuance in this game design.

Unintuitive, unclear, or even hidden mechanics are not great game design, in my eyes.

Of course some things are broken, but broken stuff can be fixed. Choices that are made, undoing them is a lot harder. Like [3.)] winner-takes-all religion, or [1.)] the era-based culture-choosing, which I also don't like, [7.)] the quadratic part of the food consumption formula that prevents big cities and can starve merged ones. District cost also increases but at least there a part scales to the power of 1.15, and I think that would work fine for food consumption too. Like 0.1*P^2+0.5*P^1.15+7*P instead of 0.25P^2+6P 

Combat can be good, as long as you are involved. But [8.)] if 2 AIs keep fighting over multiple turns, locking in your units or blocking passages, or even locking down your cities if the fight too close to your borders, really got on my nerves when that happened. Thankfully that didn't happen in my current game though, but long ago - but unless mechanics changed, that complaint still stands. 

I'm still not so sure about [9.)] the line.of-sight mechanic. My javelineers with range of 2 completely refuse to attack anything that isn't in their line of sight, which means no unit can stand between them and target, and some terrain can also interfere, so basically they have to stand next to the target, while the Egypt UU with 3 range only gets -4 strength for no line of sight, and can shoot even over mountains, which makes them 10 times as useful.

SpacesuitSpiff wrote:

There is one other way to make a comeback in the religion game: vassal someone who's actually producing faith.

Hijacking someone else's religion with a larger pop is doable too.

I'm aware, I could have just switched to my neighbor's religion. That would have actually been the smart choice, I just wanted to see if I could still pull off my own. And I could, if only barely.

Oddible wrote:

You're making choices that are sending down a path to losing, and limiting your gameplay options, then you're complaining that you are losing and have limited gameplay options.  You have chosen to reject every demand every turn in order to maintain trade routes - you seem to think that the trade route is more important than those grievances - which is fine, that's your choice - but don't complain about the consequences of those actions afterward! If you want a different result, play a different way.  Personally throwing away a little gold and trade goods so I can have better control over when and how I go to war is a significantly MORE STRATEGIC play for me.  But you do you bud!

If rejecting demands is not your standard choice then I can only agree to disagree, you do you bud. I was never complaining about losing, I was complaining about the spam, and that I have to click to reject multiple demands from multiple opponents every turn, with no end in sight, no way to turn it off, and with real consequences for ignoring it: trade.

Oddible wrote:

You complain about the zero followers of your religion but the only way that happens is if you ignore it as a mechanic all game and focus on other things.  If you would actually pay attention to it earlier in the game and check on it periodically, you'd realize that it is ABSOLUTELY NOT a "winner takes all" design, it's just that you're neglecting it all game then you get pissy when it finally catches up to you.  

How is it not winner-takes-all? As far as I could see, every city or unattached outpost can only have one religion that it follows, and 100% of its inhabitants count towards the number of followers of that religion.

You clearly don't understand some of the basic mechanics (of this game and strategy gaming in general).  It is all about choices and trade offs, not absolutes.  If you auto-reject every demand without thinking of the impact of it - that is a trade off you've chosen.  Or you can do it judiciously and with foresight and planning to get the results you really want.  If you ignore religion and influence the entire game, it can feel like "winner takes all", or you can play with the tradeoffs of religious sites, civics, cultures, etc to ensure you have the religion that best allows you to accomplish your goals (whether that is your religion, theirs, or a mix).