Civ 7 is making all the right decisions

In the grand scheme of things, I’m pleased to see that everything is moving in the right direction. However, the details matter a lot, and one detail I’m really hoping for is historical text that explains the reasoning behind the civilization switches. This would make it easier to imagine the switch as part of your empire's evolution, while also providing an opportunity to learn about history during gameplay.

"Since your people settled down eons ago, they have seen the value of horses: for trade, for war, and as a way of life. An offshoot of them has come to centre itself more and more around these majestic creatures. They call themselves 'Mongolian' and, in the upheaval that followed the barbarian invasion, have come to the forefront of Egyptian civilization. Now that order is being restored, this faction controls the reigns [pun not intended] of power, and have lent their name to the next chapter of Egyptian history."
 
That works.

I kinda hope they'll let you keep your map-color through the whole game. That would help me keep identification with my "empire" through the civ-shifting upheavals.
 
I have heard this argument so often, but I still see the logics behind it.

In real life, civilizations/cultures/peoples didn't stay the same, they developed over time with influxes of new peoples, new cultures melting into existing ones, languages merging and influencing grammar and pronunciation.

In Civ VII we have an immortal leader, but so did we in Civ VI. To me, Hatshepsut leading Songhai is no weirder than Roosevelt commanding slingers in 4000 CE, or the Inca building a space port. Both are completely against any 'simulation', yet people have this odd (in my opinion) perspective that VII will detract more from a simulation than previous parts.

To me, the decision to make you choose a different civ per age (I'm still not convinced that you have to because I think you can still play a civilization the whole game) in Civ VII adds to the simulation aspect, but I will withhold my final judgement until I'm playing it.

If I had to try to explain myself more, I'd say that the immortal leader feels like a link between me as a gamer leading the game, and the persona in the game. The civilizations changing feels like a more direct representation of what happens in all other Civ games through cultural development behind the scenes (cities changing into modern cities, museums being built, etc.), but was never made visible in gameplay terms.

I think it is wise to withhold your final judgement. I will do so too. In Humankind, the played nation tends to feel a bit disjointed to me: There is no real natural explanation to why it went from the Agrarian Garamantes to the Warlike Poles. Almost all building skins just get updated along with getting a new name on the map and in diplomatic screens. My hope is that civ tries to make the civ switching a bit more coherent and connected. I can see why going from the Gauls to the French to the Canadians or something of the sort might feel like it adds to the simulation aspect - but to me, it would take away from the simulation aspect if I went between civs which have very little connection to each other. I suspect there are many different opinions on how civ switching should work.

As OP's topic at large: For someone wanting to look at the big picture, I am surprised that you would claim that Civ7 is making all the right decisions. It seems like a somewhat hasty conclusion.
 
Agree to disagree, Roosevelt commanding 4000 BC is certainly a stretch, but Augustus ruling Mongolia because he has found 3 horses in a previous era, is total different ballpark of non historical nonsense.
But you aren't going to be forced to select strange civ progression if you don't like it.
And they have said that the AI will default to using the 'historical' progression.

If someone wants to play Mongolia then you select their leader which auto unlocks them when you get to the appropriate age. And start with their historical predecessors for the Ancient Age
 
But you aren't going to be forced to select strange civ progression if you don't like it.
And they have said that the AI will default to using the 'historical' progression.

Yes you are going to be forced into weird progressions even by their "historical" default. They literally showcased Eygpt > Abbasids/Songhai > Buganda.... and the other example of their progression was Rome > Normans > Britain. It's very obvious they're not going to have enough civilizations in the game to make this switching mechanic work even by its own "historical" standards

If someone wants to play Mongolia then you select their leader which auto unlocks them when you get to the appropriate age. And start with their historical predecessors for the Ancient Age

I shouldn't have to pick Geghis Khan to lock in playing the Mongols for only one part of the game.... but even then we don't know if there is going to be appropriate predessecors for Mongols in base game.... and its very unlikely that there is going to be a good modern era replacement for them.
 
Honestly, even declaring some choices more historical than others seems like a mistake. If you're going to open things up, lean into it, go fully weird. It's an alternate Earth. Wonders are disconnected and always have been. Great people are disconnected. Leaders are now disconnected. The Civilization chain doesn't need any basis in historical fact, we can just go crazy, there are no rules, dogs and cats living together, etc.
 
Honestly, even declaring some choices more historical than others seems like a mistake. If you're going to open things up, lean into it, go fully weird. It's an alternate Earth. Wonders are disconnected and always have been. Great people are disconnected. Leaders are now disconnected. The Civilization chain doesn't need any basis in historical fact, we can just go crazy, there are no rules, dogs and cats living together, etc.

No thanks.

If I wanted that I would go play Humankind or Millenia.
 
I had to change my vote in the poll from strongly liking to strongly disliking after realizing, that Civ 7 is not played with a civ having three leaders for each of the three eras (sometimes formulated as "the three Chinas"), but still one immortal "goofy" leader and three really different civs. Even the switch that is offered as "historical" in nearly all cases has nothing to do with "historical" and frequently is not even "geographical". What a nonsense in my eyes!

Civilization is only a game, but this game is going more and more "Mickey Mouse", with the difference that Mickey Mouse is good, but Civ 7 is not.
 
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I shouldn't have to pick Geghis Khan to lock in playing the Mongols for only one part of the game.... but even then we don't know if there is going to be appropriate predessecors for Mongols in base game.... and its very unlikely that there is going to be a good modern era replacement for them.
It seems like there might be a nomadic Antiquity Age civ because we've seen a civ icon with a horse. But who knows who they are and if they would even have progressed naturally into the Mongols?
Honestly, even declaring some choices more historical than others seems like a mistake. If you're going to open things up, lean into it, go fully weird. It's an alternate Earth. Wonders are disconnected and always have been. Great people are disconnected. Leaders are now disconnected. The Civilization chain doesn't need any basis in historical fact, we can just go crazy, there are no rules, dogs and cats living together, etc.
Ironically it seems that they went back on having the universal Great People for everyone, not to mention many, if not all, now have discounts toward their respective wonders. Egypt at least has their own type of Great Person as one of their UUs, and it seems like that might be the new norm.
 
After the rush of new information has been able to settle, I have become quietly optimistic so far
 
Everything looks good so far, the architecture is amazing, the map looks gorgeous, the systems are interesting, the civs are now more in-depth with so many bonuses. it looks like it will be fun, I am more hype for it than I was with the pre-release of 5 and 6.

Which is why I really, really hope they are smart about civ changing, that it doesn't create any regretable and chauvinistic implications.(In other words, I really don't want to play Incas and end as Brazil :yuck:)

Yeah, the Inca are one of my favourite Civs.

The transition from earlier Andean Civs like the Nazca, Moche or Tiwanaku is quite logical. It works very well. The trouble is, what do the Inca transition into to?

Gran Colombia, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Argentina are all unpalatable options. 🤮
 
I remember the Great Hex vs. Tile War of 2010.

Was anyone really against hexes? I don't remember that so much. I think we all know, deep down, that hexagons are the bestagons. Stacks-of-Doom vs 1UPT, however, that was a fierce debate. I don't think it's fully died down either. While I was it favour of it at the time, and for years afterwards, I think that it actually hurt the game in the long run. Or, rather, switching to 1UPT without investing enough in the AI to make it good at it at the same time was the mistake.
 
I have never used the system, so there is no loss there for me
Yeah but it means a lot to other folks.

Civ is a unique game series in that it appeals to a huge variety of people for widely different reasons, and mostly allows us to customize our experiences to suit us. I love that about Civ and I want everyone to experience it the way they like.

It’s why I was advocating for World Builder in Civ 6 even though I don’t make maps—people absolutely love that stuff. The mod workshops are filled with custom maps.

Hotseat may not be extremely relevant in 2024 but it gives you a really different way to experience civ with your loved ones.

So even though you don’t care for hotseat, I think it’s nice if we can still see the value in it and advocate for it so those who rely on it can still have fun.
 
Yeah but it means a lot to other folks.

Civ is a unique game series in that it appeals to a huge variety of people for widely different reasons, and mostly allows us to customize our experiences to suit us. I love that about Civ and I want everyone to experience it the way they like.

It’s why I was advocating for World Builder in Civ 6 even though I don’t make maps—people absolutely love that stuff. The mod workshops are filled with custom maps.

Hotseat may not be extremely relevant in 2024 but it gives you a really different way to experience civ with your loved ones.

So even though you don’t care for hotseat, I think it’s nice if we can still see the value in it and advocate for it so those who rely on it can still have fun.

i do know it does mean a lot for some of the members on this forum, and I do respect that. Also, it was clear that Firaxis does as well, because they made it clear from the first big information launch that this feature was not coming.

However, I also feel that if it was a feature that was getting a lot of use, then we would have seen them assign the resources to implement it.
 
However, the details matter a lot, and one detail I’m really hoping for is historical text that explains the reasoning behind the civilization switches
That would be the surest way to make the "historical pathays" as the most immersion breaking one, so the opposite directions of what everyone is asking for.

Like, going Egypt->Mongolia because you have horses would be perfectly explainable with some fluff. "Your empire had always been near horses, to the point where children learn to ride before they know how to run. Nowadays, horses are part of the culture, and we now ride on the steppes, ready to go on other lands, to trade with foreigners... or simply invade them. Now, the Egyptians of old call themselves by a new name that will be feared by all: Mongolians." A sensible, good explanation that makes sense in-game.

But how could you justify going Egypt->Abbassids? "The Egyptians have succombed to the culture and the arms of the neighbouring Islamic Arabs, transforming the ancient kingdom into a new Caliphate"... Except that the Arabs are not in the game, our neighbours are Aztecs, Islam has not yet been founded and we're a Republic. How do you explain, in game, Egypt going to Abbassids without Arabs, without Islam, without them being neighbours or anything like that?

The most difficult thing would be to justify the "historical" pathways in a game where all the historical conditions that allowed for this evolution to happen are simply absent. That's why I don't understand the people so hell-bent on being restricted to "historical" pathways, or even heavily weighting the civ switching towards "historical" pathways. They would make zero sense in a civilization game, and would be, in my own opinion, ten times more immersion-breaking that having Egypt becoming Mongolia because they have horses and thus developed a strong horse culture. I hope that, at some point, you could choose how your game evolves. Either you choose the civs to pick by default their "historical" evolution (whatever that means), or you choose for them to pick in priority the "unlocked" civs (like Mongolia if you have horses), or you choose the choice to be at random (why not, after all?). But, for me, having Egyptians "naturally" evolving into Abbassids is nonsensical in a Civilization game.
You've been pulling ahead all through antiquity, and now suddenly all of your opponents are brought up even with you (that negates all of your work) or you the player can game the system to get the maximal advantage out of the civ-shifting moment, and so it doesn't do anything to mitigate late-game boredom.
Your efforts won't be entirely negated, at least from what we saw. We saw the bonuses you get from achieving the intermediate victories at the end of each ages, and they help you for the next age.

Like, if you gain enough Science Victory points (or Culture Victory points), your Ancient Academies (respectively Ancient Amphitheaters) keep their yield and adjacency bonuses in the next age, meaning that some of your scientific (or cultural) buildings don't loose their relevancy into the next age, giving you a slight push ahead against players who didn't.
And if you gain enough Economic Victory points, it's said that all your cities keep their city status in the next Age, meaning that if you were good and achieved the Ancient Economic Victory, then you'll still have cities against less competent players (or AI) who didn't managed that.

So I think they're reaching a nice sweet spot in keeping advantages but not too much, so giving you a slight ahead start but mitigating snowballing. We'll have to see how it pans out, but it seems quite promising.
Great people are disconnected
For me, it wasn't that they were disconnected more than they appeared in the civilizations where they thought they would do the most.

Marie Curie was Polish, but it's France that "recruited" her as a Great Scientist. Offenbach was German, but it was France who recruited him as a Great Musician. Leonardo da Vinci was Italian, but it was France who recruited him as a Great Artist, and Vincet Van Gogh could be considered, despite being born in the Netherlands, as a Great Artist recruited by France. Golly, we French sure are good at recruiting foreign great people, aren't we? But Christophus Columbus was as Genoan Great Merchant recruited by Spain, Nikola Tesla was a Serbian Great Engineer recruited by America, Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese Great Admiral recruited by Spain... But anyway, that's how I always saw this, and that was, for me, one of the most "historical" abstractions of the game. Not like the Gauls being able to build the Great Library while having a culture that quite shunned writing words and swore mainly through oral tradition...
 
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