Civ VII Post-mortem: Crafting a redemption arc

[Foulweather]

The best proposal I recently heard would have been to add in a "cultures" system. Where a new era triggers, in a similar vein to a golden age, a small set of policy options and maybe a unit or two or maybe a shift in building style.

"The Egyptians have adopted Venetian Culture"
"The Assyrians have adopted Dutch Culture"

It just FEELS civ-y.

Keep your civ: Evolve over time. Play as Greece, and you may adopt a Byzantine or Egyptian or Bulgarian Tradition in Exploration. Add more possible Tradition choices during gameplay: Build an embassy in Spain, you have the option of slotting a Spanish Tradition in the next age. Or gain it by conquering a city from that civ. Does it evade the ugly implication of Mississippian inevitably "turning into" America by simply saying that Mississippian traditions may influence your artifact-displaying America somehow, and equally that American traditions can influence your space-faring Mississippian civ? Would people be fine with that level of geographic/historical association?

I'm still theoretically open to civ switching, but what they've done doesn't feel right, and thinking about it for months now and reading all these threads, I haven't heard of a way to really do it satisfyingly. I think trying to build some form of evolution within a single civ is probably the best answer.

 

[Gorbles]

You can add something brand new in civ7, just not civ-switching. I am sure the devs could find something else to be the big new feature.

You could, but then that'd be something else to dissect and interrogate

It's easy to say "this is going to do badly". People tried it with VI. People predicted with absolute confidence that Firaxis had lost their way and were appealing to mobile gamers.

It was a massive success.

We have the inverse here. People are right in hindsight but are seemingly unable to see that that's only because of hindsight. It doesn't let you go back in time and design something more successful. It only lets you build on what to do better for the future.

And quite frankly, there are some people who don't want anything new and just want endlessly refreshed versions of the game they played 10, 20 or 30 years ago. That mentality is a curse on new games. We have old games. Play them. I still play SMAC!

 

[McSpank01]

You can add something brand new in civ7, just not civ-switching. I am sure the devs could find something else to be the big new feature.

Even Civ Switching, I think is fine to do, it's just about the how really. Right now for many people it feels too intrusive and abrupt. I still think that has far more to do with how they constructed ages than anything else however.

There are a lot of new ideas in Civ 7, but I would say almost all of them need a year or two of refinement and improvement before I would class them as something I would look back on and think they were good things.

 

[Leucarum]

I don't see this at all.

If Civ 7 didn't have age transitions and civ switching I'm not sure what there really is about the game to differentiate it from Civ 6. Sure there are some elements that seem like improvements, like commanders and scouts. Almost everything else in the game, from city states, diplomacy, religion, upgrading your settlements, feel like mostly downgrades or hardly massive upgrades. There is potential to many of the systems they introduced, for instance I think Towns is a really good idea, but ultimately these feel inconsequential and incomplete.

I honestly can't see what the selling point of Civ 7 would even be without Ages and Civ Switching, the game simply doesn't have enough else going for it right now. How would you convince someone to buy it? 'Hey, do you want Civ 6, but with most of the stuff you liked missing, but hey there are some minor tweaks that are improved, oh and it has nicer graphics.. even if you can't tell what anything is'

I'd think leader/civ mixing and matching could have been the big feature to hang the game around. Honestly compared to hoe big a shift 6 was from 5, or 4 from 5, I think you could draw the lesson that you only need one big new thing, not 3... It's kind of wild how much of Civ7 falls into the 1/3 new category.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Even Civ Switching, I think is fine to do, it's just about the how really. Right now for many people it feels too intrusive and abrupt. I still think that has far more to do with how they constructed ages than anything else however.

Thats's a fair point. As implemented, they did feel rather intrusive and abrupt. I especially did not like the time jump as well as how it pulls you out ouf the game with a separate civ selection screen. It does feel like a game is ending and you are starting a new game. That likely turned players off. If Firaxis had done civ-switching and ages differently, the changes might have been better received. Although, you could probably say that about any change, "if only they had implemented X differently, it might have worked".

 

[Crashdummy]

The best proposal I recently heard would have been to add in a "cultures" system. Where a new era triggers, in a similar vein to a golden age, a small set of policy options and maybe a unit or two or maybe a shift in building style.

"The Egyptians have adopted Venetian Culture"
"The Assyrians have adopted Dutch Culture"

It just FEELS civ-y.

I think that changes too little, it wouldnt be enough at least for me

I think we already had enough ways to change our Civ, and this was just a design mistake that needs to be properly addressed instead of trying to find a make-up change to cover it

I think Civilization as a franchise needs to stay away from changes like that, and it should be another franchise that take the risk for it (made by Firaxis themselves or someone else, but in another franchise)

 

[bladex1200]

Even Civ Switching, I think is fine to do, it's just about the how really. Right now for many people it feels too intrusive and abrupt. I still think that has far more to do with how they constructed ages than anything else however.

There are a lot of new ideas in Civ 7, but I would say almost all of them need a year or two of refinement and improvement before I would class them as something I would look back on and think they were good things.

I honestly feel like if they EITHER did civ switching OR radical era resets / crises and built narratively around one of these features while omitting the other, they actually might have hit the secret sauce.

Imagine Civ switching but optional and driven by the player as their original civ's bonuses go "out-of-date" with the passage of time and obsolescence of old buildings and units. The player could, as a challenge, choose to start with an ahistorical civ (e.g. America in the ancient era) but would basically be playing gimped until they reached the era where the civ's bonuses are relevant (just like prior Civ games). Similarly, if a player didn't want to culture/civ switch after the heyday of their civ (e.g. keep playing Rome even into the medieval era after their special district/building and unit were obsolete) they could obviously stay with that civ but the opportunity cost is missing out on new bonuses that age-appropriate civs would have. Mechanics could be built around encouraging era-appropriate switching (maybe all civs have a "first adopter" bonus that encourages switching to get a power-spike as soon as a certain tech or civic or criteria was met) and/or perhaps to add complexity you could even have post-era bonuses to reward players who play around not switching for long enough (e.g. Roman players get bonus tourism or culture on their unique buildings/districts if they remain as Rome into the modern era, but otherwise you'd be playing through the medieval and renaissance and industrial eras with no bonuses).

I think that would allow introducing civ switching without alienating the fanbase and without tying it to the abruptness of era shifts. And it naturally promotes tons of DLC to flesh out the civ switching "tree" since you don't need to balance out civ options by era - if a certain era has a "bottleneck", you could simply balance around expecting most obsolete civs to still play through the era and having a natural weakening point for players to catch-up by power-spiking with a civ switch.

 

[Leucarum]

I honestly feel like if they EITHER did civ switching OR radical era resets / crises and built narratively around one of these features while omitting the other, they actually might have hit the secret sauce.

Imagine Civ switching but optional and driven by the player as their original civ's bonuses go "out-of-date" with the passage of time and obsolescence of old buildings and units. The player could, as a challenge, choose to start with an ahistorical civ (e.g. America in the ancient era) but would basically be playing gimped until they reached the era where the civ's bonuses are relevant (just like prior Civ games). Similarly, if a player didn't want to culture/civ switch after the heyday of their civ (e.g. keep playing Rome even into the medieval era after their special district/building and unit were obsolete) they could obviously stay with that civ but the opportunity cost is missing out on new bonuses that age-appropriate civs would have. Mechanics could be built around encouraging era-appropriate switching (maybe all civs have a "first adopter" bonus that encourages switching to get a power-spike as soon as a certain tech or civic or criteria was met) and/or perhaps to add complexity you could even have post-era bonuses to reward players who play around not switching for long enough (e.g. Roman players get bonus tourism or culture on their unique buildings/districts if they remain as Rome into the modern era, but otherwise you'd be playing through the medieval and renaissance and industrial eras with no bonuses).

I think that would allow introducing civ switching without alienating the fanbase and without tying it to the abruptness of era shifts. And it naturally promotes tons of DLC to flesh out the civ switching "tree" since you don't need to balance out civ options by era - if a certain era has a "bottleneck", you could simply balance around expecting most obsolete civs to still play through the era and having a natural weakening point for players to catch-up by power-spiking with a civ switch.

I keep on coming back to Paradox as the only example of Civ switching which is popular with their players. I think the key there is that it's aspirational and challenging. It's a goal you actively set and work towards for the benefits.

But, that seems really difficult to square with a mandatory civ switching scheme (you need a chance of failing to achieve civ switching for it to be a valid goal) and it's awkward with synchronous Civ switching.

I can't help shake the feeling that Firaxis missed a lesson there... Maybe there's another good way to implement it, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort of Civ Switching trilemma lurking in the background where you can have civ switching be one of:

Mandatory and Synchronous but not Challenging.

Challenging and Synchronous but not Mandatory.

Mandatory and Challenging but not Synchronous?

 

[bladex1200]

I keep on coming back to Paradox as the only example of Civ switching which is popilar with their players. I think the key there is that it's aspirational and challenging. It's a goal you actively set and work towards for the benefits.

But, that seems really difficult to square with a mandatory civ switching scheme (you need a chance of failing to achieve civ switching for it to be a valid goal) and it's awkward with synchronous Civ switching.

I csn't help shake the feeling that Firaxis missed a lesson there... Maybe there's another good way to implement it, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort of Civ Switching trilemma lurking in the background where you can have civ switching be mandatory and synchronous but not challenging. Challenging and synchronous but not mandatory. Mandatory and challenging but not synchronous?

I think the biggest issue is having it be synchronous. Having it be challenging or not doesn't necessarily change whether it will be fun. Maybe you have asynchronous optional switching but keep crisis mechanics and switching occurs organically as a way to overcome crisis mechanics (e.g. different civs will have crisis-bonuses for the eras in which they're naturally ascendant, representing them rising from the ashes of old sagging empires) but a player can avoid switching if they are really good at the game and for some reason want to keep their old civ (RP, as a personal challenge, or just because they still have marginal uses for the obsolete bonuses). Maybe you have asynchronous optional switching without crises but you just give civs REALLY OP era-sensitive (e.g. tied to specific units, techs, buildings, etc that will be superseded) bonuses so that it's aspirational and engaging to switch to keep the snowball rolling.

Having it be synchronous I think takes the player out of the experience by removing them from the narrative and decision-making of the game and forcing the developer-preferred choice. The player is reminded that they're not crafting something of their own but having to paint within the lines; this is always true to a degree for any video game, but I think synchronous interrupts in the middle of a play session are one of the most grating ways to remind a player to paint by numbers.

 

[Leucarum]

I think the biggest issue is having it be synchronous. Having it be challenging or not doesn't necessarily change whether it will be fun. Maybe you have asynchronous optional switching but keep crisis mechanics and switching occurs organically as a way to overcome crisis mechanics (e.g. different civs will have crisis-bonuses for the eras in which they're naturally ascendant, representing them rising from the ashes of old sagging empires) but a player can avoid switching if they are really good at the game and for some reason want to keep their old civ (RP, as a personal challenge, or just because they still have marginal uses for the obsolete bonuses). Maybe you have asynchronous optional switching without crises but you just give civs REALLY OP era-sensitive (e.g. tied to specific units, techs, buildings, etc that will be superseded) bonuses so that it's aspirational and engaging to switch to keep the snowball rolling.

Having it be synchronous I think takes the player out of the experience by removing them from the narrative and decision-making of the game and forcing the developer-preferred choice. The player is reminded that they're not crafting something of their own but having to paint within the lines; this is always true to a degree for any video game, but I think synchronous interrupts in the middle of a play session are one of the most grating ways to remind a player to paint by numbers.

I think maybe the challenging part might be the most important. If the devs stated goal was to make sure Civs were always played in their optimal era then I can see why you'd want it to be mandatory... But I suspect they picked the worst of all worlds by picking the one option where you don't make Civ switching challenging/aspirational.

Or... Maybe it's a dumb idea to try and invent a general theory of Civ Switching

 

[Sekou]

Bravo!

I'm admittedly late to this document/thread as I've been patiently waiting for Firaxis to make some meaningful changes to re-engage this OG Civ player, but have found the updates to be wanting so far. That being said, this needs to be nailed to the door of 10 Loveton Cir, Sparks Glencoe, MD.

"Immersion was killed in the Diplomacy screen with a 3rd-person view"

That comment alone was ripped straight from my Civ soul. That change hurt me deeply. They made me a spectator in my own game world.

 

[Kenshiro70]

"Immersion was killed in the Diplomacy screen with a 3rd-person view"

That comment alone was ripped straight from my Civ soul. That change hurt me deeply. They made me a spectator in my own game world.

You have @Verified_Confection_Being to thank for that one. He presented a compelling argument for its inclusion.

Also, for anyone who hasn't looked at the original post recently, i just finished revamping the layout; hopefully it is much more readable now. I've documented most of the things I did over the "BBcode Tips and Tricks" thread (link).

 

[Kenshiro70]

I have a question for everyone on the subject of snowballing. I understand that not everyone likes it, but what I'm having trouble envisioning is this: if I'm playing on the lowest difficulty and there's no snowballing, what does gameplay feel like? What feedback would I get from the game that it's time to increase the difficulty level?

Can snowballing be removed from the game without the cure being worse than the disease?

I've been trying to figure this out because I'm not really satisfied with that section; it relies too much on "Age transitions taking away things is bad" and doesn't present a strong enough case for "snowballing is an inevitable result of progression".

What the section doesn't cover is that there's a second, much more subtle anti-snowballing mechanism in play - the Antiquity and Exploration ages last long enough that you're almost always going to traverse the tech trees and can build, if you choose, almost any and every building. In some ways, that's a much better mechanism, but it's at the cost of a sense of urgency that's important to One More Turn. That's why I'd like to be able to present a much more robust case that while you don't have to consider snowballing as good, it should be recognized as unavoidable.

It reminds me of a saying about Democracy - "It's the worst form of government, but it's better than the alternatives."

 

[Gori the Grey]

This isn't a direct answer to your main question, but on a separate matter that you raise, I think Tradeoffs need to be part of your stalking-horse definition, right after Power. You have power in Civ game, but you also have specific choices to make about how to enhance that power, and choosing one of them means losing out on, or at least delaying, the others.

Here's my treatment in the Player Stats thread (It was in a discussion of snowballing):

Yeah, I've been thinking about this.

(You can add me to the list of people who don't finish games but start game after game after game.)

I might go a step further and say that snowball is THE GAME.

What I mean is this. The other slogan besides "stand the test of time" that used to get bandied about was "interesting choices." I'll just focus on the choice from among buildings. So, as you're first learning Civ, early game, you can build a monument, a granary, a watermill, a shrine. (5 is my reference point). The game tells you what each one will do, but you don't really have a way of knowing, long term, how some extra culture, food, food and production or faith will help you. But it's a clear choice. Those are various strands of the game, and you can decide on whatever basis on which strand you'd most like to advance.

Once you've played a few games, you have a better sense of how those various things do benefit you long term, and maybe you've started to get the sense, well, nothing benefits me more than population growth. So you start to gravitate toward granary as your go-to choice in that early situation.

Once you play a little more, if you've got a certain kind of mind, you start to ask, "now, which one will help me the most?" You start min-maxing, in other words. For every set of possible competing buildings, through the whole game, there is a best answer to that question. Not one single best answer in all cases; it's partly situational. But you start to get the sense for what sort of situation has to obtain for you to deviate from the generally best.

As you get better at all of these things, you move up in difficulty level in order to keep giving yourself a challenge. You hit deity and the AIs start with so many advantages, and all through the game do everything faster than you that for you to compete at all, now all of those choices have to be absolutely optimal. You can't miss a trick. But if all of your choices are optimal, you can gradually chip away at the AIs starting advantages. Again, you can't do this unless you are making absolutely optimal choices, but once you do edge past the AI, all of that optimal infrastructure you built now lets you keep building your lead over them (snowballing).

You have got to that point by getting particularly skilled at doing THE. THING. THAT. THE. GAME. MOST. FUNDAMENTALLY. ASKS. YOU. TO. DO. (make good choices).

So-called "snowballing" is actually PLAYING. CIV.

 

[itix]

I have a question for everyone on the subject of snowballing. I understand that not everyone likes it, but what I'm having trouble envisioning is this: if I'm playing on the lowest difficulty and there's no snowballing, what does gameplay feel like?

I remember this kind of game from the early days of Civ 1 when I was learning to play at the default difficulty level. It was an exciting and challenging game. I had to work hard to keep my empire, and I still have flashbacks to some events in this game. One of the best Civ games ever.

The next game, however, was different. I learned from my mistakes and the next games were getting too easy.

Then there was Panzer General. It was very challenging because there is a turn limit to reach your objectives, or you lose. Army compositions are fixed, so you can't change the setup apart from a few auxiliary units of your choice. But maps are always the same, which leads to low replayability.

Next take is Steel Panthers. Maps are randomized, but you can upgrade your army. Eventually, it gets too easy when your army composition is perfected. You are not allowed to pick your battles (only a theatre). After a battle, there can be a counterattack. You cant avoid it, you are not allowed to repair or replace your losses, you have to fight with what is left from your previous battle. Great game and despite being 25 years old, it is still played.

Thus, to limit snowballing and engage player:

• randomize everything
• limit player choices
• hide the future

In Civ, random maps are far more popular than TSL Earth maps. RNG works.
But it fails at giving the player too many choices. With fewer choices, it is easier to make it challenging.

If choices have to be made, randomize that. Like in civ switching, dont let the player choose civ, let the game choose civ for the player.

And hide the future. That is not easy, but surprise attacks are considered good. Fog of war is universally liked.

As we see, Civ is applying many of those to different degrees, but doesnt limit what players can do. This has both good and bad effects... (I see I drifted away a little...)

Can snowballing be removed from the game without the cure being worse than the disease?

If you play 10 games in a row at the lowest difficulty and can't snowball, is it because of the player or because of the game?

 

[kotpeter]

If I'm playing on the lowest difficulty and there's no snowballing, what does gameplay feel like? What feedback would I get from the game that it's time to increase the difficulty level?

Let's separate the default difficulty from the lowest difficulty. The lowest difficulty is usually even easier than the default one, and I don't think many people play it. I believe game designers made the default difficulty the most comfortable landing for the majority of new players to improve their onboarding. From this point forward, I'll be talking about the default difficulty.

The default difficulty achieves 2 things:
- It lets players explore the game and try different portions of it without falling too much behind their opponents
- It creates just enough challenge that people have fun overcoming during their 1st playthrough

Which means, the default difficulty should be a compromise on different aspects, for example:

• AI should not be very aggressive, but it still needs to settle and expand, so that the world feels alive.
• AI may not have the most advanced units, but it still needs to build an army and invade the player at some point to create interactive situations.
• AI should produce yields that aren't too high or too low, so that the player doesn't feel hopeless or even stupid. Ideally the difficulty should be adaptive, but it's difficult to tune and get right.

The difficulty setting also affects the behavior of certain gameplay systems. In Civ 2, the lower your difficulty was, the less demanding it was for players to keep citizens happy. In Civ 6 or Civ 7, the AI gets combat strength bonus, which requires players to do more preparation than they would've needed for "fair" battle. It's not a bad thing per se, but it should be used very carefully and sporadically. I think Civ 6 goes absolutely nuts with bonuses it gives to AI on higher difficulties and it hurts the experience; higher difficulty doesn't make the game more interesting, because the AI remains a pushover. But it does make the game annoying, because you get to miss a lot of early great people, settlement locations, or even become attacked by a number of warriors with a significant combat bonus on top.

When the player finally overwhelms AIs on the default difficulty, higher difficulty levels start offering a degree of replayablitity due to increased challenge. It's where players can use all gameplay skills they earned previously, find and overcome new challenging situations and meet new opportunities to learn more about the game. For some people, the approximate maximum on the learning curve is essentially the depth of the game (I don't agree with this, but the logic is understandable). The "snowballing" aspect is the result of using all combined knowledge about the game to achieve new degree of empire "greatness" and feel accomplishment from your results. I think different gameplay achievements offer different degrees of snowballing, and as the player goes along, more hidden synergies become obvious, more mechanic interactions are memorized, and from all of those new snowballing strategies emerge. I think it's quite similar to how people create meta decks within CCGs: through trial and error, experiments and analysis (CCGs don't take as much time to master though, but they often have frequent card drops to keep the loop fresh).

Overall, snowballing is a reward for learning the game and using this knowledge to its best during the playthrough, and good game design makes snowballing reasonably hard to make the achievement rewarding.

Can snowballing be removed from the game without the cure being worse than the disease?

No. Snowballing should not be removed from the game. It's not a disease. Removing snowballing will create a pure spreadsheet simulator, which (I assume) is very different from what Civ audience wants. Instead, there should be different degrees of snowballing, each with its own skill requirement and rewards, for all kinds of players.

Part of the problem is that for different people snowballing means different things. This depends on the skill level and the informity about the game. For some people, abusing Magnus chops and high adjacencies creates enough yields and tempo to call it snowballing. For others, suzeraining Kumasi and sending traders create culture amounts resulting in snowballing. But there are people who think of those as just regular gameplay stuff, and to them snowballing means achieving even greater heights, even more unstoppable avalanches, by using all their opportunities to their fullest and balancing around different gameplay systems.

I think Civ 7 failed snowballing for the 1st kind of players (more casual and chill), but it still provides enough of it for those who seek high-level gameplay and competition. There isn't enough satisfactory moments that can be achieved without very deep game knowledge and situational awareness. So the majority of people feel like there isn't any snowballing to their gameplay, or rather, there isn't any greatness to their empires or any meaning to their achievements. And I'm not blaming them; if the game aims towards casual players, the development team needs to keep them in mind when designing and tweaking gameplay systems. I feel like there wasn't enough playtesting by different cohorts of players before release, and a lot of systems were tweaked based on feedback of designers playing against each other. Game designers can pinpoint objective issues in systems they create, but it might be very hard for them to envision how their game is going to be experienced by different kinds of players.

 

[Krikkit1]

The definition of snowballing that is the one that needs to go away is “the late game is easier than the early game”

As I use yields to build and develop, my yields will go up, and making the important choices about that is “playing civ”

However, the question is what I do with those higher yields.

Am I now just better at doing things OR are there much harder things for me to do now.

Imagine spending money to get a education to get a better job…now you can relax no?
No, instead increasing social expectations/inflation means that you can’t just coast, you have to immediately start investing in your next move up or you will be ruined. You can never retire.

Now that is a horrible life…but it makes for a better game, as you shouldn’t have a “retirement” in game…because then your choices don’t matter.

Now if you want the game to be more sandboxy, you can lower the difficulty, but the difficulty shouldn’t start hard and move to easy (especially because it becomes too easy and the Modern game is boring) (Many people say Modern civs are fun…when you do an advanced start and haven’t outclassed the AI for a full age)

 

[Gori the Grey]

There isn't enough satisfactory moments that can be achieved without very deep game knowledge and situational awareness.

This, for me, is a tidy formulation of what makes "snowballing" not only acceptable, but, as I said above, the very essence of the game (for experienced players).

In a recent game of civ 5, I was playing as Egypt, going for domination. My nearest neighbor was the Celts, and I took care of them pretty easily, but the only next civ I could attack on this map was Zulu, and if you know 5, you know Zulu are a PITA, b/c Impi are devastating and they're programmed to spawn hordes of them.

I couldn't even get a real good spot to attack them from without taking a city state, Zanzibar. I generally don't like taking city states, but I prepped myself to do so, lining up my CBs on one side of the city. Suddenly England asks me if I want to attack the Zulu. Yes, please. I figure if Shaka's fighting on two fronts, there are fewer Impi he can send my way. Better yet, Zanzibar is allied with England, so the second the two of us attack, Zulu are at war with Zanzibar. And they try to take it. And do. But my forces are perfectly positioned to 1) take it back immediately an 2) kill a few Impi in the process. Zanzibar changes hands half a dozen times, but I'm happy to let this happen, because each time, I'm reducing Shaka's army. Eventually, I take and hold it; no new troops. I move toward Shaka's cities; they've got almost nothing to defend with.

It's a little cheesy, but being able to exploit it depended on my knowledge of how strong Impi are, of what happens when CSs are conquered, of what happens to a CS when war is declared, of certain aspects of terrain that played into this case, (also of how stupidly the AI makes use of its troops), and my situational awareness that having this CS as a battleground was better than me just taking and trying to hold it, which had been my original plan.

I've never had anything similar happen, so it was an improvisation in this case on my part. That's what makes "situational awareness" fun for advanced players, and makes it feel like your skill at the game is what's helping you win the game.

Anyway, you develop both of these things over time as you master the game and move up in difficulty levels, and it contributes to one-more-game replayability. (And one-more-turn; while I was trying this out, I was very interested to see if it would really work).

I did win that game. Beating England right after (sorry, Liz) was the point I knew I'd won it. A lot of times, I then retire the game and put the saves in a folder called "call it a win." Because playing out the late game once you've reached the tipping point can be tedious. But playing to that tipping point (to where it's clear to you that you've "snowballed") is fun. This time I did play the game out to the end.

 

[Kenshiro70]

I think we've got a winner.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------Source: Oxferd, Cainbridge, Mariam-Webstar dictionaries​

 

[Leucarum]

So, while it's not switch - the reason I am still playing Civ7 is that it runs really well on a Steam Deck. If not for that, then I very much doubt I'd have stuck with it as long as I have.

I don't hate the UI (could be better but it's come a long way), and I appreciate that it runs well on a console interface. It's just incredibly useful while on the move.