How much do you want Geography to matter in Civ 7?

[civilizationfanatic2000]

how much do you want the starting location (climate, biomes, coastline, ruggedness, rivers, etc) to matter in how much it shapes your civ? do you want the ability to 'min max' geographical features through repeated resets and even migration or terraforming?

an example of geography determining the powers of your civ is in the case your land converts to steppe, you would slowly get steppe raider bonuses.

 

[Quintillus]

I like geography to matter enough to make it worth your while to "play the terrain" to a fair extent.

Civ VI tried to lean into this with some of its Eureka bonuses, but there were so many of them available, and they were so focused on boosting tech speed, that IMO it was simply too much to keep track of them. If I got one and researched a tech sooner, great. But beyond the very early game, it was too much to keep track of to pay attention to.

I think Civ IV did a better job of this with the unit promotion system having hill and forest related bonuses you could choose. Give a bunch of your units Woodsman I, II, and III promotions, and your army is going to be dominating in the forest. It wasn't at a whole-civ level, and if your next war were on the flatlands or hills on another frontier, you could start assigning your new units different promotions. But it allowed some specialization.

 

[GeneralZIft]

It's not super fun in MP if the game heavily depends on your starting climate and how much you over-plan your empire.

Don't get me wrong, I think planning makes the game fun but Civ 6 forces you to plan all the district's with all their adjacency bonuses ahead of time.
Whereas older Civ titles just kinda make you think about where to put your city in general and what's around that city in a broader scale

So if you start in hills with tons of production and a mountain in 6 you become god of construction and science.
In 5 there are favourable starts but you are not AS disadvantaged as you are in 6.

(in my opinion)!

 

[Henri Christophe]

I think geography is very important and should be the most accurate as possible. I learn to much geography with this game.
But once, playing civ5, I was very upset because South America map was without the Andes range of mountains ¬¬"

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

i think geography should be important in the Diamondian way- that is to say, 'fractured land' matters, so does the arrangement of the continent itself, etc