Mac CIV VII is not a good game

[Gorbles]

If you answered Yes you're lying to yourself.

The point of people having opinions is that they're allowed to be different.

Why not release the game with all the base features to a really good par and then work on improving it?

They did this in VI. That isn't to say it couldn't have been improved, but all the systems were a lot more fleshed out than in V.

VII suffered from being released in an obviously not ready state. Antiquity has always been what the other two Ages should've been, on release.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I think we should let this thread die because coming to the forums and seeing this title as the top post isn't very welcoming. I'm not trying to supress anyone's opinion, it's just a crappy thing to show newcomers or people looking for information.

I’m not trying to suppress anyone’s opinion, I just don’t want anyone to see the ones I don’t like.

1984 much?

You completely missed my point, by a long shot. The point is that Civ players get so stubbornly attached to a Civ game that it will take them a long time to get used to the newest game. That's all. In the mean time, they like to complain about how the latest Civ game is awful. This is a tradition in the community.

Look at the reviews and sales, this isn’t Business As Usual.

The tantrums from the No Mutants Allowed club was pretty hilarious when Fallout 3 came out, game was a blockbuster. The tantrums from the New Vegas/NMA fanatics over Fallout 4 was even more hilarious and that game broke all records when it came to Fallout

Then they ditched the core identity of the game for Fallout 76, EVERYONE hated it, and it tanked so hard Bethesda got fire saled to Microsoft.

See the difference?

So I've heard about tradition. Well, I didn't miss your point, you just didn't say that in your first post.

Why would someone enjoy a new release that is missing something from the game they have already?
Or it has something that is poorly implemented in comparison?

Boiling things down to tradition is missing the point of why Civ fans are constantly upset by new releases.
They're constantly upset because every new release is... On release... Worse than the previous release.

So you have to wait about 6 years to actually get a game on par with the game you already had. And investing in that from the start actually costs you way more than just waiting and picking up the complete edition at the end.

Anyhow, stubborn attachment? Maybe some people. But basic logic is probably the driving force.
Boot up Civ7 as it is now. Does it have even 10% of the replayability of Civ6, Civ5 or Civ4? If you answered Yes you're lying to yourself.

Or what about the polish of the mechanics? Religion or government in Civ7 is really half baked.
This is the type of stuff they leave especially for expansions.
They've done this for 3 games straight.

Why not release the game with all the base features to a really good par and then work on improving it?

I have no idea why people buy games at launch or preorder anymore. It made sense back in the physical media days because it guarenteed you got to play on launch day, you had the fun experience of camping out in front of game stop the night before, and making Line Friends, and Corporate Enshittification had not ruined the craft of making games yet so they were generally complete and functional on launch.

All these moments have been lost, like tears in the rain.

Just wait for the Complete Edition on a Steam sale; you pay a fraction of the price, get quadruple the content, the game will be somewhat patched, and often modders have had the opportunity to do the developer’s work for them.

The point of people having opinions is that they're allowed to be different.

They did this in VI. That isn't to say it couldn't have been improved, but all the systems were a lot more fleshed out than in V.

VII suffered from being released in an obviously not ready state. Antiquity has always been what the other two Ages should've been, on release.

The base game of 6 is pretty solid, personally I feel like it’s actually better than with the expansions. The expansions had a lot of cool concepts, but they clearly were NOT playtested or refined enough (or at all).

“Hey at least the first third of the game, before the key feature of the game happens, is good” is…yikes.

 

[Gorbles]

“Hey at least the first third of the game, before the key feature of the game happens, is good” is…yikes.

Me noting that VII suffered by not being ready for launch wasn't exactly meant as a positive, which is why I didn't frame it like you seem to have.

 

[Cedbird77]

I remember when they introduced GDRs in Civ5, pointing to an overly enthusiastic thread on this site in the "Suggestions" forum. It was a late game unit, for fun, and not intended to be historical. Civ6, in the tradition of Spinal Tap, turned the GDR up to 11 with promotions, mountain-spanning leaps, and better animation. For me, they are like an ice cream treat for having made it to the final portion of the tech tree. They are fun to move around and to use for attacks, compared with nukes.

I might really like a new late-age unit, such as improved versions of drones or Civ3's cruise missiles. Updating the late-game military doctrines from WWII and Vietnam heavy bombers to match what we've seen in the 2020's.

Yes at first I did not like the GDR. I thought it was kind of fake. But this is a great description of them . I like them now. If you get that far in the game and have not won. It’s time to wrap it up . I see it as a challenge to be better.

 

[GeneralZift]

The point of people having opinions is that they're allowed to be different.

They did this in VI. That isn't to say it couldn't have been improved, but all the systems were a lot more fleshed out than in V.

VII suffered from being released in an obviously not ready state. Antiquity has always been what the other two Ages should've been, on release.

You can have a different opinion based on facts. But you can't have different facts based on your opinion.
The fact is, no matter how you feel about it, or if it matters or doesn't matter to you a lot, or if other things are more important -- but Civ7 has less replayability than the other available options as-is available right now.
For a fraction of the cost, you can get Civ6 full with different game modes, more Civilizations, and more fleshed out mechanics.


They didn't release Civ6 better than Civ5 was on completion. This is also just wrong. Release Civ6 had some mechanics that were worse or more convoluted than Civ5.
And most people took time to move on to Civ6.

But is it a matter of time? Or here is the crux of the issue.
If it was like many other sequels, for example Smash Ultimate, where it is better in almost every way than the prequel, than you would see far less disdain for Civ games on release than you do now.

The fact is also that the way their production works right now with the love-hate cycle is simply more profitable.

 

[UWHabs]

You can have a different opinion based on facts. But you can't have different facts based on your opinion.
The fact is, no matter how you feel about it, or if it matters or doesn't matter to you a lot, or if other things are more important -- but Civ7 has less replayability than the other available options as-is available right now.
For a fraction of the cost, you can get Civ6 full with different game modes, more Civilizations, and more fleshed out mechanics.


They didn't release Civ6 better than Civ5 was on completion. This is also just wrong. Release Civ6 had some mechanics that were worse or more convoluted than Civ5.
And most people took time to move on to Civ6.

But is it a matter of time? Or here is the crux of the issue.
If it was like many other sequels, for example Smash Ultimate, where it is better in almost every way than the prequel, than you would see far less disdain for Civ games on release than you do now.

The fact is also that the way their production works right now with the love-hate cycle is simply more profitable.

Your "facts" are opinions though. Anytime someone mentioned replayability, that's an opinion. I mean it's a "fact" that for any game, I have 20+ leader options + 10+ civ options to play antiquity, so I have 200+ possible games to play, before you even factor in civ switching. 6 "only" has 50 or so. So arguably there's way more replayability in 7. And personally 6 was better at launch than 5 was at the end of its cycle, and certainly once they ironed out the initial bugs 6 months or so in it was definitely way better after that for its life.

That's not to excuse things, though. We're now over 9 months since launch, and this is the first time where I feel the game is getting close to playable enough to suggest it to someone who's a fan of the civ series. And even that... like I'll probably still gift it to my dad for Christmas, but even that I'm still a little hesitant whether it's in a good enough place.

 

[Gorbles]

You can have a different opinion based on facts. But you can't have different facts based on your opinion.
The fact is, no matter how you feel about it, or if it matters or doesn't matter to you a lot, or if other things are more important -- but Civ7 has less replayability than the other available options as-is available right now.
For a fraction of the cost, you can get Civ6 full with different game modes, more Civilizations, and more fleshed out mechanics.

Different people gauge replayability differently. The number of leaders doesn't actually keep me playing all too much. I don't have a leader or civ that I'm really looking forward to, and I never have. I've never thought "I must pick up Rise & Fall, it has Wilhemina". But that's just me, personally.

Anyhow, it's not a "fact" to claim that Civ VII has less than 10% of the replayability of any previous version. It's just your opinion. From someone who has been pretty clear about all the ways they don't like VII. Which is fine! But maybe consider that we're past objectivity in this little tangent, instead.

They didn't release Civ6 better than Civ5 was on completion.

I never argued they did (though "better" is again a very different thing to "replayable"). All games lose something on release compared to a previous entry with years of support and multiple content / expansion packs.

It's unfeasible to insist that the next entry should contain everything the previous entry did, for PC games where this kind of content expansion is normal.

At the same time, nobody should feel forced to buy something that doesn't give them value. Just in case someone attempts to claim that I'm making that argument, too.

If it was like many other sequels, for example Smash Ultimate, where it is better in almost every way than the prequel, than you would see far less disdain for Civ games on release than you do now.

Oh, man, the Smash community has a lot of opinions on which Smash is better I don't think this example helps you.

 

[Leucarum]

Your "facts" are opinions though. Anytime someone mentioned replayability, that's an opinion. I mean it's a "fact" that for any game, I have 20+ leader options + 10+ civ options to play antiquity, so I have 200+ possible games to play, before you even factor in civ switching.

Agreed that it's an opinion, but I don't think it's number of Civ/leader combinations which are hitting 7's replayability for me. It's more that the legacy paths make the general contours of a game play out the same way regardless of who or what you pick... Especially after antiquity.

I will say though that civ switching would mean you burn therouh that diversity faster than normal. And I said "would mean" because honestly I rarely play past antiquity so effective civ diversity is far lower for me.

And replayability is relative. I have hundreds of hours and I am saying it's not as replayable as I'd like. But it's all relative to previous civ games - including at launch

 

[aieeegrunt]

Me noting that VII suffered by not being ready for launch wasn't exactly meant as a positive, which is why I didn't frame it like you seem to have.

Whar do you think needs to be added, removed, or changed from the other two ages to improve them?

 

[Gorbles]

Whar do you think needs to be added, removed, or changed from the other two ages to improve them?

Not sure. Firaxis have already announced they're targeting the weaker areas (Legacy Points, victories). People are obviously waiting on the play-as-a-single-civ, however that plays out, but I don't think that's strictly related to each of the other two Ages not being as good as Antiquity.

People talk a lot about yields, about the AI not putting up a challenge, and so on. These are all factors (yields being growth that can either trivialise a run, or make a run feel impossible if you don't achieve the amount you need for your settlments to do well / army to be produced / pick soft goal here). But it means touching up various gameplay systems and player feedback loops in order to get the right "feeling".

Personally, I enjoyed the hard Age Transitions, because they hit yields pretty hard (though there were significant issues on release with how yields scaled). I still play with Regroup as default (vs. Continuity). If Firaxis follow through with "Collapse", and all three Transition types receive equal attention, then maybe that'd help as well.

So, to shorten the rambling:

1. Better / more diverse victory paths.
2. More variance in Legacy Points (imo less should translate into straight buffs).
3. Better UX / UI throughout (the ten turn timer is good, as are the reworked loading screens, but there should be more - especially if Crises are enabled).

I haven't had enough time with piracy yet, but adding new gameplay systems that are unique to the later Ages are obviously a great way to spice up an Age and make it feel more distinct, vs. a repeat of what came before. It shouldn't just be reliant on the victory paths, and these should be signposted well enough in the UI.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think proposing solutions is fun for speculation, but it's not constructive, because even professional game designers can't really say which things will work without playtest (although professional game designers are much better at identifying things which won't work, without playtesting). What's more interesting is to highlight problems, which need to be solved first. And this list to me goes to:

1. Victory beelining makes last age much different from other and unfun to many players. There was a lot of brainstorms about how this needs to be solved, but clearly it's more about victory projects themselves than underlining legacy paths.
2. Feeling of railroading on legacy paths, especially in Exploration. Again, brainstorms here range from providing alternative legacy paths to changing how legacy paths are communicated.
3. "Pointless" actions by the end of the game. That was always a problem for Civilization series, but now it affects age ends as well. I'd say Continuity mode fixes it to me for Antiquity to Exploration transition, but Exploration to Modern still often comes with resource abundancy.
4. Lack of decent ways to spend Influence for peaceful players. Independent powers are finite, endeavors and espionage require very little Influence to get up and running and you don't want sanctions if you play peacefully. The only thing left is to boost trade relations, but again that's limited and requires a lot of merchants (in my current game I'm in the middle of Exploration with 2K Influence and nothing to spend it).
5. Quality of life things missed like ability to switch tiles between settlement (one of my towns have to build 3-tile bridge to reach naval tile, because tile right near the town was taken by the city) or liberating City-States (it's not that important with age reset, but could still be cool).
6. Bugs and UI improvements. I think last updates introduced new bugs, like AI often interacting with distant lands in Antiquity in weird ways, like settling there or instantly befriending independent power, without even being Tonga.
7. Balance is off in many areas.

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah, more or less agreed. I think 4 in that list arguably comes under the balance aspect - some times of the game influence is super limited and you have some real decisions. Other times you can just bank it massively. Or like early game in antiquity, I can basically triple my science/culture with endeavors, but once you're in the middle or later part of the game, what you actually get out of them is a rounding error on your total, and their only use is making friends.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Not sure. Firaxis have already announced they're targeting the weaker areas (Legacy Points, victories). People are obviously waiting on the play-as-a-single-civ, however that plays out, but I don't think that's strictly related to each of the other two Ages not being as good as Antiquity.

People talk a lot about yields, about the AI not putting up a challenge, and so on. These are all factors (yields being growth that can either trivialise a run, or make a run feel impossible if you don't achieve the amount you need for your settlments to do well / army to be produced / pick soft goal here). But it means touching up various gameplay systems and player feedback loops in order to get the right "feeling".

Personally, I enjoyed the hard Age Transitions, because they hit yields pretty hard (though there were significant issues on release with how yields scaled). I still play with Regroup as default (vs. Continuity). If Firaxis follow through with "Collapse", and all three Transition types receive equal attention, then maybe that'd help as well.

So, to shorten the rambling:

1. Better / more diverse victory paths.
2. More variance in Legacy Points (imo less should translate into straight buffs).
3. Better UX / UI throughout (the ten turn timer is good, as are the reworked loading screens, but there should be more - especially if Crises are enabled).

I haven't had enough time with piracy yet, but adding new gameplay systems that are unique to the later Ages are obviously a great way to spice up an Age and make it feel more distinct, vs. a repeat of what came before. It shouldn't just be reliant on the victory paths, and these should be signposted well enough in the UI.

Thank you, these seem like good points that address some of the complaints I have seen about ages after Antiquity

 

[Gorbles]

I think proposing solutions is fun for speculation, but it's not constructive, because even professional game designers can't really say which things will work without playtest (although professional game designers are much better at identifying things which won't work, without playtesting). What's more interesting is to highlight problems, which need to be solved first. And this list to me goes to:

1. Victory beelining makes last age much different from other and unfun to many players. There was a lot of brainstorms about how this needs to be solved, but clearly it's more about victory projects themselves than underlining legacy paths.
2. Feeling of railroading on legacy paths, especially in Exploration. Again, brainstorms here range from providing alternative legacy paths to changing how legacy paths are communicated.
3. "Pointless" actions by the end of the game. That was always a problem for Civilization series, but now it affects age ends as well. I'd say Continuity mode fixes it to me for Antiquity to Exploration transition, but Exploration to Modern still often comes with resource abundancy.
4. Lack of decent ways to spend Influence for peaceful players. Independent powers are finite, endeavors and espionage require very little Influence to get up and running and you don't want sanctions if you play peacefully. The only thing left is to boost trade relations, but again that's limited and requires a lot of merchants (in my current game I'm in the middle of Exploration with 2K Influence and nothing to spend it).
5. Quality of life things missed like ability to switch tiles between settlement (one of my towns have to build 3-tile bridge to reach naval tile, because tile right near the town was taken by the city) or liberating City-States (it's not that important with age reset, but could still be cool).
6. Bugs and UI improvements. I think last updates introduced new bugs, like AI often interacting with distant lands in Antiquity in weird ways, like settling there or instantly befriending independent power, without even being Tonga.
7. Balance is off in many areas.

I mean, speculation is speculation I'm not a professional games designer, for sure.

I think "constructive" is a tricky way to rate something, as we might use it in different ways. For example, does my post constitute a constructive solution for the game? No, I don't work at Firaxis. But is it constructive discussion? I think so. I like hearing where people are coming from when it comes to the game itself. It beats a lot of the other meta-discussions (for me).

Ultimately, I think the game came out too early, and this compounded all of its weak areas, and slowed down any path forwards to improve the game to a point where a majority would be happy with it. Everything is downstream of that starting point, and it's unfixable. I differ on whether or not X or Y are conceptually good mechanics, and I think at this point I know where all the regular posters sit on X and Y (and Z, and so on), so rehashing that probably wouldn't be (any version of) constructive.

We're just killing a bit of time inbetween seeing what the devs have planned, I guess. With the holidays coming up, there's going to be more of this, as we're going to be going longer without updates.

 

[Maiq]

I think we should let this thread die because coming to the forums and seeing this title as the top post isn't very welcoming. I'm not trying to supress anyone's opinion, it's just a crappy thing to show newcomers or people looking for information.

You could say the same thing about all the reviews

 

[Cedbird77]

I see what they are trying to do with choosing the leaders. That is choosing leader that most people do not know. But I think that they have gone way overboard. I have not played the game yet and I am not in a hurry to do so. Only out of curiosity. But not necessity like every other title since I entered in Civ 3. I am still playing 6 and loving it. I love Harriet Tubman but not as a Civ Leader. That is what turns me off from this Civ. The leaders and the Civilizations are the big draw.

But I am glad that others are enjoying it. I peak back in to see of anything has changed because I love Civ. Just hope I don’t have to sit the whole 7 out.

 

[GIO888]

Totally What Cedbird77 said,

Except I've been from Civ I, and I'm also still playing Civ VI and loving it.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I've played the game more than once- lack of units, tiny ui, crappy ui that's not informative, UI constantly asks me inane questions blocking turns, insanely priced DLC, Leaders differing from their historical civilization. There's more too.

Lack of Units... remember there used to be workers, needed to build roads to farms, that also need workers to work, and improve resources...

Remember we used to talk about dynamic pastures that could multiply, follow the seasons...

Tree lines advancing... and Jungle so thick that you would need Vaccines before normal (not Natives) European workers could enter "foreign" Jungle ecosystems??

Yeah... I remember those times...

the Gentrification has gone too far too...

One minute gameplay... no Manual needed...
We could have 32 different kind of workers...
Someone voted against it...

We could have had 10 kinds of different tanks designs...
20 different TRAINS designs...
8 different basic architectural / cultural affinity based buildings designs, and basic units ( Asian Archers, African, MesoAmerican, NorthAmerican, Mediterranean, Maori, Indian, Turkish, English, German...)
6 different AGES designs for each Civilization and Leaders...

Everything shrinked to an halt.
Complexity has been dumped with the paper Manual.
Now we need to patch notes together and write them down ourselves, because the game changes too quickly...
Consume before it expires... or jump the lunch...

I changed course.
I cannot sit at the table anymore.
They put a reservation note on the table that says "pre-order only" and I only pay in cash...
I need to eat, but I can't if the pre-conditions are these.

Completely remove the staff for Automatic waiters is a perfect analogy of what is going on here...
But there is the suspicion they got rid of the "head-Chef" too...
The secret sauce (The workers) isn't there anymore...