I've read the post and the first few replies, and felt a strong impulse to provide a different perspective on Civ 7's issues and how to address them. In particular, if we're speaking about Agency, Balance and Complexity:
I disagree about Agency and Complexity being reduced or taken away from players in the 7th installment. I agree that Balance changed towards symmetric balancing, and the consequences of it are off-putting to most players, and those players feel it very well. I also think that this change ought to be appealing to some players, but due to other issues those players don't get to notice this or can't appreciate it even if they wanted to. In further paragraphs, I'll go over Agency only in more detail, as I don't feel enough energy in myself to elaborate about Complexity as well, but I will do so eventually.
I will construct this comment by going over statements in the original post and providing my thoughts about them. I'll do this not to nitpick and not because I haven't statements of my own; but because I want to start elaborating on the common ground that was laid by the tremendous efforts of OP.
As was mentioned in the post,
Agency is the capacity to take impactful actions. So let me elaborate on the capacity first. Just as in previous civ games, capacity to determine the fate of the civilization is in player's hands. To prioritize endeavors vs befriending IPs, expansion vs wonderbuilding, warfare vs trade, alliance vs neutrality - it's all there, and it defines how (or when, or even whether) you achieve your goals. And goals in this context are not just legacy paths (a bit off-topic, but I believe the devs made the wrong decision to advertise legacy paths (mostly via UI) as the primary win conditions for the age, even though achieving them only feels like winning and may actually be suboptimal for long-term game results). And surely, it's possible to go back, load the save file, re-evaluate your game and do better. Given the above, I don't think Civ 7 players lack in capacity compared to Civ 6 players.
Next, the impact. This one is more interesting. Before anything, I'd like to point out that the degree of the impact is relative, i.e. objectively the impact of a single action can only be measured against other possible actions in the game, and objectively it's unfair to compare the impact between Civ 7 and Civ 6 actions. But gaming is a subjective experience (and it's beautiful and fair that it is), so I'll address this subjectivity later in the comment.
In Civ 6, achieving certain milestones made a huge impact on player's progress and capabilities. In Civ 7, there's only a few such milestones, and they aren't as impactful (from my experience, it's certain leader attributes, traditions and choosing certain civs). However, Civ 7 is very generously rewarding players who manage to work with multiple gameplay systems towards a particular goal. Let's take a look at few examples:
- There are so many ways to buff your combat strength, and almost all of them are available early; army commanders, city-states, certain techs and masteries, endeavors, resources, wonders, synergies between leaders and civs - and almost all of them require agency from the player to take advantage of. To name a few: settle near copies of iron and grow towards it, bring out some troops early to attack nearby IP while befriending another military IP to use its suzerain bonus; level up your commander against IP to use him later against another civ; prioritize science to research bronze working and its mastery asap to have very powerful infantry before your opponent.
- Exploration legacy path in science encourages players to use specialists to their fullest and maximize adjacency bonuses. While I think adjacencies aren't as immediately rewarding as they were in Civ 6, there's a lot of decent combinations with wonders, civ abilities and masteries to have amazing yield porn (even though the UI doesn't present it in the satisfying way it deserves). One wonder that provides spectacular yields is Notre-Dame; while it may not be obvious at first, the wonder provides a huge amount of culture during celebrations and a free celebration on top. If you managed to plant a lot of specialists while maintaining decent happiness in your empire (all of which you had agency for), you can reap a lot of yields from this wonder. There aren't many wonders that have such great effects in Civ 7, but it's definitely one of them.
- I think a lot of players prioritize urban districts over rural districts because it feels natural to build buildings if they're available; but certain landscapes are better with improvements (like mines), and the food can be obtained from nearby towns, so farms may not be a huge priority. Once the player memorizes what improvements (including unique) are in the game and what synergies (masteries, wonders, warehouse buildings) can buff them, I think the true potential of yield porn lies in stacking those rural tile bonuses, not districts and specialists. However, it's not immediately obvious, and thorough experimentation and engaging with gameplay systems is required to have a feel for it. City-states in each age provide access to a particular unique improvement, and Serpent Mound wonder provides a decent amount of science to each tile with such improvement. Unique improvements are ageless, so you can, for example, build a lot of Potkops in the antiquity and buff them using the Serpent Mound in the exploration. The wonder is available at the start of the tech tree, and you absolutely can rush it if you want to.
Overall, regarding the impact, Civ 7 prioritizes step-by-step and multi-vector planning ahead to achieve greatness; while Civ 6 has a few carefully planted low-hanging fruits across the game's progress, and each of them is tied to a particular mini-game and significantly boosts the empire's results. To name a few: Magnus chops, insane adjacency bonuses (campuses from mountains, IZs from aqueducts and dams), feudalism policy card Serfdom which grants builders extra charges. I'm not claiming it's not fun to master these, but once you do, you wouldn't want to avoid them, because the pacing starts to feel too slow without them. And consequentially, it may become too repetitive to play Civ 6 if you're playing for the win. But Civ 6 partially compensates for that with a huge amount of content it has now.
I promised that I'd get back to gaming being subjective and ways to measure impact. I think it's fair to say that for many people the impact from individual actions and accomplishments in Civ 7 is lacking compared Civ 6, and this is a major contributor to people's dissatisfaction with the game. The difference in the impact is present due to multiple reasons: symmetric game balance, unrewarding UX for accomplishments, inevitable age transitions and crises that bring everyone down. I think in the long term it would be impossible for Civ 7 to win this battle, but at the same time, with more content and polish the game has the chance to become appreciated on its own, not as a Civ 6 successor. In my opinion, Civ 7 has zero chance to become the game that Civ 6 players knew they'd wanted, but it has non-zero chance to become the game we didn't knew we'd wanted. Just not in the state it's currently in.
And last but not least, I want to mention another thing related to how agency feels in the game. It has already been mentioned a few times, and I completely agree with it. I think it's important for players to feel that they are in the lead of their civilization(s) and that the game is interacting with them directly, breaking the 4th wall to a degree. At least once you feel it, it's hard to go back from this feeling, especially if you only have AI opponents. Because of that, I think it's unfortunate that opposing leaders don't look at players in the diplomacy screen, like they did in Civ 6 (instead, in Civ 7 they look to the side, where the player's leader stands). While the player can adjust to this and it's not the end of the world, this design is another contributing factor to Civ 7 feeling like a downgrade, at least while getting used to it.
