Just How Unhelpful is the Manual & Civilopedia ?

[SorvinoBackhand]

I think you are being too kind, Godspawn.

The conceptual thinness of the civilopedia, more than its design, is the real problem. Try finding irrgation or power, or look at the recent thread on bulding settlers (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=145590). How hard would it be to simply EXPLAIN this kind of stuff? I should be able to quickly access a LONG and THOROUGH list of every game concept, unit, building, whatever, and find a page that DETAILS, with the necessary numbers, what it does.

Civ is about choices, as Vel likes to say. This is a far more complex games than its predecessors (which is good), but opportunity costs cannot be measured without information.

[AnteX555]

Yeah it's bad

I found it annoying that they have removed the storys about the buildings (and other things) in real world. It was always funny to read about those things like from historybooks. Now the kids just build three gorges dam but they don't even now where it really is

[Enigma_Nova]

It's hard to find things in the manual without reading the entire thing through, and the Civopedia isn't nearly concise or cross-linked enough to provide much information.
Seriously, The apolyton forums pwn the crap out of anything Sid could do.

[Urban Ranger]

Gee people, RTFM already

[meriadoc]

I agree. I was so thrilled when I opened the box and found a nice thick manual. And then I was so dissapointed when I found out how useless it was. The good news is that it does a good job of covering, in detail, the things that it does cover.

The bad news is that it misses way too much. For instance, non-obvious user interface elements. The only way I found out about the existence of rally points was through Apolyton; they weren't so much as mentioned in the manual.

[phlucas]

Originally posted by meriadoc
I was so thrilled when I opened the box and found a nice thick manual. And then I was so dissapointed when I found out how useless it was.

I was disappointed when I first tried to find the statistics of some building; they had translated all table entries into German, but kept the ordering of the English version, making the tables effectively unsorted. This borders on wilful sabotage.

[gilfan]

If you want a real poll, you shouldn't ask blatantly leading questions such as "Just How Unhelpful is the Manual & Civilopedia?" You're going to get a disproportinate number of replies from people who agree with the inherent bias of the question, as well as influencing everyone to give a more negative answer than they would otherwise. Not saying the manual is good or anything, just that the poll is not going to get you anything close to an accurate answer.

[Snotty]

Ive found everything I have needed to find in the manual and civilopedia, but im an experienced player, and I read the forums so I havent had to look for too much.

My biggest dissapointment was the lack of flavour/history text for each of the techs. Previous civs taught me a lot of concepts in history while I was growing up, and Im sure some of the kids of today would read the text if it was there.

Presumably this is something that can 'easily' be fixed by the community, in a wiki style?

[inetd]

Just a quick question I don't want to open a separate thread for:
In CIV 3 it was possible to right-click on something (especially units / buildings in the city queue) and the corresponding Civilopedia entry would pop up. Is there such a feature in CIV 4 too?

[Trifna]

Companies would rather put their efforts at building the game it seems. Maybe because reviews will look at this more, perhaps mainstream players too.

The only way I'd see would be a players-made one. In the past, Firaxis integrated a fan-made Earth map in the patch, so who knows if they would integrate an updated civpedia.

[gilfan]

Originally posted by Snotty

My biggest dissapointment was the lack of flavour/history text for each of the techs.

click the orange book icon in the top right of the civilopedia entry

[Axxaer]

Personally I don't see finding things in the manual as a problem as I read the whole thing already (I was on holiday when I got it and couldn't play for a week...). I still voted 'Awkward, Difficult to Use, Hard to Find Stuff' because it is all those things...

[Snotty]

click the orange book icon in the top right of the civilopedia entry

Thats great, thank you very muh

[Enigma_Nova]

Poll needs a banana option.

[djpsychonaut]

Originally posted by Bogdanovist
Too many ommissions. For instance nowhere in the manual, civilopedia or in the reference sheets does it say what railroads do! You have to read the info on ALL the other improvements to find out which ones get bonus for railroads (e.g. lumbermills).

Indeed, also it doesn't mention in the pedia that the Space Elevator has to be built near the Equator! I had to rely on Apolyton to find that one out.