For the love of all that is holy, please listen Firaxis. Civ 7 is failing. Patch 1.20 gave hope to a few last holdouts but now that it’s sunk in reviews are trending negative again. You will not save this game with your minrun superficial pitch patch approach. Your obsession with balance is going nowhere in sales. Just stop.
Civ 7 need three things:
1) A concession to major player concerns as an admission of failure
2) Enlarge the scope of the the game
3) actually complete the broken legacy paths
Do this and you might save the game. Throw in a couple apology civs. It’s not that hard to make a new civ. Release mod tools.
I get you can’t redo the game. Almost everything I’m talking about is sort of like a patch.
For 1) this is conceding that the age transcription concept failed. You can’t completely get rid of it. Instead, just do two things. Let people keep their antiquity civs if they want, and also make age transition seamless. The way I’d do this is have the next age progression trees unlock during phase two of a crisis. Once you research two of the techs, and if phase three of the crisis is reached, you can civ transition. Once the crisis concludes, all players can civ transition and the old progression trees disappear. You can then civ transition at any time in the next age if you choose not to.
For 2) this means leaning hard into the town concept. There are lots of ways to do this and I’ve discussed my ideas plenty. Still the idea overall is big big big maps. This means towns are easy to make. One concept is to have them not count toward settlement cap or at least double settlement caps and make cities cost two. Something like this. Fix the goddamn city connections system and make it more interesting and logical, then make the town specializations more useful and interesting where you would often prefer to keep a town a town than make it a city. Please don’t be lazy, and let us have some control over where food yields distribute. I have suggested that distance should govern a cap on how much food can be sent so only nearby cities can get 100% of a farming town’s food. Of course I also think settlement cap should be replaced by a distance from capital system and so managing city connections and bonuses to use roads to reduce distance cost would improve both. I digress. Just make civ 7 bigger and use cheap, abundant towns to do it. I have recognized the need for towns to be able to produce a weak militia unit to compensate for distant cities. I digress.
For 3), guys, fix religion and modern age culture. There have been so many proposals but for the love of god just do more. More seriously, even the treasure fleet victory needs work and even culture in antiquity scales poorly with player count. Maybe just change these things up. People complain they’re two rigid. Maybe combine them. Maybe crusade could be a military-religious victory. Maybe colonization could be an economic-expansionist victory. Maybe enlightenment could be a cultural-scientific victory. Use the systems and yields you have and add nuance. I honestly don’t see why this would be so hard to do.
I can’t honestly fathom why there continue to be so many obvious bugs that go unfixed. I cant understand why the UI isn’t better.
Guys, you can’t wait for an expansion to fix this stuff.
Call the larger maps “conquest mode” to give it an optional experimental tinge. Release it for free. Do the same with your legacy path updates. The most popular experimental modes can combine their best features for the free patch that updates the game to be ready for the first expansion (which should be the 4th age you promised). Then the second expansion can get in the guts of the game and really change it (I think making city planning more variable to favor unique cities in a tall play is one good move, in addition to a vastly more integrated religious system, etc)
Or just keep patching in superficial crap. Can’t wait for the 1.3 patch that adds auto exploring scouts. I’m sure that will save the game.
Civ 7 need three things:
1) A concession to major player concerns as an admission of failure
2) Enlarge the scope of the the game
3) actually complete the broken legacy paths
Do this and you might save the game. Throw in a couple apology civs. It’s not that hard to make a new civ. Release mod tools.
I get you can’t redo the game. Almost everything I’m talking about is sort of like a patch.
For 1) this is conceding that the age transcription concept failed. You can’t completely get rid of it. Instead, just do two things. Let people keep their antiquity civs if they want, and also make age transition seamless. The way I’d do this is have the next age progression trees unlock during phase two of a crisis. Once you research two of the techs, and if phase three of the crisis is reached, you can civ transition. Once the crisis concludes, all players can civ transition and the old progression trees disappear. You can then civ transition at any time in the next age if you choose not to.
For 2) this means leaning hard into the town concept. There are lots of ways to do this and I’ve discussed my ideas plenty. Still the idea overall is big big big maps. This means towns are easy to make. One concept is to have them not count toward settlement cap or at least double settlement caps and make cities cost two. Something like this. Fix the goddamn city connections system and make it more interesting and logical, then make the town specializations more useful and interesting where you would often prefer to keep a town a town than make it a city. Please don’t be lazy, and let us have some control over where food yields distribute. I have suggested that distance should govern a cap on how much food can be sent so only nearby cities can get 100% of a farming town’s food. Of course I also think settlement cap should be replaced by a distance from capital system and so managing city connections and bonuses to use roads to reduce distance cost would improve both. I digress. Just make civ 7 bigger and use cheap, abundant towns to do it. I have recognized the need for towns to be able to produce a weak militia unit to compensate for distant cities. I digress.
For 3), guys, fix religion and modern age culture. There have been so many proposals but for the love of god just do more. More seriously, even the treasure fleet victory needs work and even culture in antiquity scales poorly with player count. Maybe just change these things up. People complain they’re two rigid. Maybe combine them. Maybe crusade could be a military-religious victory. Maybe colonization could be an economic-expansionist victory. Maybe enlightenment could be a cultural-scientific victory. Use the systems and yields you have and add nuance. I honestly don’t see why this would be so hard to do.
I can’t honestly fathom why there continue to be so many obvious bugs that go unfixed. I cant understand why the UI isn’t better.
Guys, you can’t wait for an expansion to fix this stuff.
Call the larger maps “conquest mode” to give it an optional experimental tinge. Release it for free. Do the same with your legacy path updates. The most popular experimental modes can combine their best features for the free patch that updates the game to be ready for the first expansion (which should be the 4th age you promised). Then the second expansion can get in the guts of the game and really change it (I think making city planning more variable to favor unique cities in a tall play is one good move, in addition to a vastly more integrated religious system, etc)
Or just keep patching in superficial crap. Can’t wait for the 1.3 patch that adds auto exploring scouts. I’m sure that will save the game.
