“One More Turn” but not “One More Game” - Revisiting my first impressions of Civilization 7

[King Flevance]

I have been eager to start a new game after every full game I finish and try out new ideas I had in my last playthrough. Every playthrough I have held some regret toward some part of my expansion strategy or my city development strategy. But I have also not played a bunch of games yet. I have only completed 3 games. (Campaigns) Plus a 3-4 trial single age playthroughs. My recently completed campaign was my first try at Marathon with long age length. I have also played an epic campaign and a standard. My current one is back to epic with long ages.

@CGPanama It really pains me to read opinions like yours. It pains me because they are true and on spot. It pains to see that the game is designed and targets a totally different players, not old fans, not people looking for challenging and engaging gameplay, not looking for epic long stories that unfold before your eyes. Just a new generation, with a different focus and needs. All is left is a beautifully gorgeous mindless shallow clicker.

I have been playing Civ since Day 1 of Civilization 1's release on the SNES. I felt the way you feel when Civ 5 released, and I feel Civ 6 tried to revert back with a few new ideas and ultimately came up short. Yet, I am fully enjoying 7's approach to the design. So, the notion this is not for old fans, but instead a new generation sits wrong with me. I find city placement + specialization balancing act the most intriguing in this variant vs any previous iteration that has no drawback to building everything makes it very engaging. Now, I would not venture to call this version challenging though, other than it is a challenge to navigate the game's mechanics but familiarity is quickly resolving that. I am currently trying a new game at a higher difficulty with the AI mod looking to see if I can find some challenge now that I am more familiar.

The bold underlined part is actually something Firaxis has been clear that they are literally trying to do this time with the narrative events system. Even the age system was meant to make the story of your game always have competent adversaries rising against you. I agree with you that they have seemed to fail at this. But it is not because they didn't try. I would argue they tried so hard that they actively worked against their goal and instead superficially clogged the narrative with crises and broke the narrative with age transitions without it really doing anything for snowballing.

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For wonders, I think because they take up a whole tile, they should be comparable to the power of a district, not a building. I think some ancient wonders like Angkor Wat should be +3 per Age rather than just +3. Modern wonders should have a base yield of at least +10, not +4. So, I agree they need strengthened. But this is a minor critique, not a failure on Firaxis's design.

I am enjoying myself with this model overall. A noticeable part of that is, for sure, thanks to the modders in this community addressing much of the primary problems I have with the game. However, I do want to give Firaxis some credit here to say that they have a nice core game idea. I strongly feel that Age transitions, religion, crises, and biomes all need to be reworked. Also, diplomacy needs expanded upon. These are all large project by themselves. If you fix any one of these, it will greatly change the dynamic of the game. But each one works well enough to create a complete experience, it is just on the bland side.​

I got lucky that I enjoy the core of the game greatly. Maybe it is because I am a board game hobbyist, but I don't think so because comparing this game to board games doesn't quite fit to me. It has too many trappings of video games in it for me. Crises have some board game flavor, but I think that is it. I do find the board game comparisons funny though as the first Civilization was inspired by a board game, and Civ the video game has inspired multiple board games, and now a board game designer is at the helm of the video game. This game has board game design at its core, so I find it odd to criticize it for what it literally started out as. However, I think Civ has evolved into its own thing. Trying to track all of this on a tabletop would not be fun, Civ takes full advantage of having a processor do all the math and bean counting for you. No one would play this board game.

 

[CGPanama]

I think there are two main issues and they're likely playing into how you feel:-

1. Yields are so big everywhere nothing feels special, including the Natural Wonders (many of which are just yields without any other ability).
2. I think the resource system is the best in the series but let down by an awful UI. In Civ IV for example if you were building the Parthenon with marble as an Industrious leader you could really tell the difference from other Civs. In Civ VII the effect is there but it's not called out e.g. you should be able to hover a wonder and see e.g. base cost 300, less 40% for Ivory = 180, that way the real impact of the resources would jump out at you.

I agree with this to an extent. I am not sure that the UI alone will fix my complaints, but I will be willing to see once the next patch comes out. I actually like how the resources play out (though the management of it is clunky), and the ease in which I collect them again leans into the sameness of each play through since I usually get them all either directly or through trade routes.

 

[CGPanama]

OK, so breaking these down, I guess I can distill the distinctiveness of my playthrus to these (there are more, but let's say this for now):

• Traditions carry over from previous civs, thereby making your civ really feel like it came from something else ... truly "layered" ... and it also makes each playthru so different because you can find that suddenly a card from the ancient era synergizes so well with your civ in the modern era, and completely pivot as a result
• Narrative events. Some are more fleshed out than others, but the ones that are can totally change your empire and provide a memorable experience
• The lack of balance. Yes, you heard that right. I love the lack of balance. Balance is totally overrated in 4x games. I'm actually worried they will move to balance the game in the future. The fact that Catherine could spring forward in culture gave me pause in the game. I had to shift my strategy if I was going to contend with her Russia in the modern era.
• Changing landscape. I like the capital changes, and how that alone can suddenly inject energy into a totally different area of your empire. I like that each era feels like you can focus on something different. You can propel yourself forward in new ways, using what you did before as a springboard, but not a wall or a claw holding you back.
• The leaders. Their abilities are so dramatically different from one another, and mixing and matching them with civs, events effects, and traditions can utilize different facets of their abilities that you may have not used in a previous playthru.

ThichN -

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer so completely. You give me a lot to think about (I forgot to mention that narrative events are one of the things that I like and do give some variety to the "story" of the game, though didn't seem to effect the outcome for me to much.

Interested that you feel there is a lack of balance, while so far my experience has been the opposite. I will have to watch for this a lot more to see if I am missing the nuances of different leaders. And I agree, that I like the way leaders and civs play in the game, including the legacies layering on.

And as a side note, I wish I could enjoy capital changes, but the limits on locations (and my inability to remember which city corresponds to the choices) has left me usually sticking with my original capital.

Again thanks for such a thoughtful response. Cheers.

 

[ThichN]

ThichN -

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer so completely. You give me a lot to think about (I forgot to mention that narrative events are one of the things that I like and do give some variety to the "story" of the game, though didn't seem to effect the outcome for me to much.

Interested that you feel there is a lack of balance, while so far my experience has been the opposite. I will have to watch for this a lot more to see if I am missing the nuances of different leaders. And I agree, that I like the way leaders and civs play in the game, including the legacies layering on.

And as a side note, I wish I could enjoy capital changes, but the limits on locations (and my inability to remember which city corresponds to the choices) has left me usually sticking with my original capital.

Again thanks for such a thoughtful response. Cheers.

My pleasure -- it gave me a good reason to reflect on my games! When I'm addicted to a game it's good to step back every now and then and think about why.

I hear you on the capital locations. You can actually click "View Map" to see where the city is that the game wants to you to change to before deciding. That is quite helpful. I wish we had a similar option when peace deals were being offered, though.

Yeah I really do feel that not all leaders and Civs are equal, especially in certain combos. In a way, though, this is another way to adjust the difficulty level. I like when 4x games let things be a little nutty.

 

[ThichN]

Just thought I'd post a quick update on my Lafayette game. Carthage -> Normans -> French Empire.

This one played quite a bit differently because of a French tradition in which culture is obtained from destroying enemy units. This game was all about strong alliances and vicious enemies: I could farm my enemies throughout the modern era to obtain more and more culture, while enhancing my relationship with other Civs to create more policy/tradition slots as Lafayette.

Again, Tubman put up quite a fight, but I eventually conquered her capital. This was a victory with a fun blend of military-culture. You can see in the back in my screenshot the Eiffel Tower in Paris, of course.

It was interesting, too. Carthage was my capital in ancient era. Then Rouen (moved cities, to a southern city on my starting landmass). But then for the modern era it wanted Carthage to become Paris. So my capital for the last era was my former ancient stronghold.