Civ VII Post-mortem: Crafting a redemption arc

[Thenewwwguy]

Very late to this because I’ve not been active on here since the pre-launch build up to Civ 7, but @Kenshiro70 has done a marvelous job of articulating my issues with this game (and reasons I will not buy it) in such a detailed and complete way.

That being said, I’ll disagree with two points (and basically only these two points). The first is the comment about civ 7 excluding popular leaders. I disagree mainly just because all of the examples (cleopatra and tokugawa) aren’t series mainstays anyway. This is a small disagreement though.

The larger one is this:

Why did Firaxis spend their money on hiring historians rather than on developing a UI that presented the critical information needed for gameplay decisions

I disagree with this mainly because the historical accuracy and influence is one of the only things Civ 7 does well. Not in the “omg the civ switching this is so historically accurate” way, but rather because the civ choices have been much more complex, quality choices—thinking the chola empire, buganda, etc. The expansion of leader to include historically infleuntial characters of all kinds also strikes me as a positive decision that I’d appreciate more if they weren’t detached from civ’s—for example, I really like the choices of Machiavelli, Ada Lovelace, etc.

Why comment on somebody's opinion piece calling it ridiculous, without reading it, and commenting that you're not going to 'bother clicking on it' as if somebody is expecting you to.

There's nothing miserable about it I don't think, he just provides very in-depth feedback on every aspect of the game.

Video game designers heavily appreciate this form of feedback because it comes from a place of deep thought and not just meaningless backlash on Reddit.

He provides opinions and sources, it's laid out very neatly and intellectually. This is very much good work, it's not toxic or vitriol.

It's NOT (strictly) hate when people critique --- it's coming from a place of care for an IP, it's coming from a place of constructive criticism. Sometimes to build on something, you have to take it apart and figure out what makes it tick, what's wrong with it, what's good with it, and which aspects cause which reactions in players. It's between an art and a science.

EDIT: I just have to reiterate that if I was in the position of OP and saw this reply I probably would be devastated. And for what? I think it's quite rude-ish.

I totally agree here. I think the Civ community isn’t actually generally that toxic. Quite the opposite, actually, I think (esp here on CivFanatics) there’s a pressure to be toxically positive about everything. People feel obligated to be optimistic about everything. I remember feeling pretty disimpassioned about civ 7 as its release window continued, and there’d be a general air of “how can you not be in favor of this before it releases.”

The reality is that there’s far far worse for fanbases. Take City Skylines 2, another game from a series I really enjoy that has performed poorly. Cs2 isn’t nearly in as bad of a shape as Civ7. But the fanbase is AWFUL. They’re practically demanding the heads of the devs, resigned themselves to the game losing support after just 2 years, and basically bullied Colossal Order into just ending meaningful with the fanbase.

Meanwhile, Civ 7 is in much more critical, unrepairable help, and people are still critiquing the OP for using the term “post mortem” because “the game isn’t dead yet” when this game is in far far more dire straits.

While what you say might be true for this case, and I know it is true for many others, the title doesn‘t suggest constructive criticism or deep analysis. Starting the thread by calling the game already dead isn’t promising. But finding good titles is hard, and especially ones that don‘t evoke unwanted associations in (specific) readers. That‘s why most of the academic papers I read nowadays have 20+ words in their title, and i think the shortest I ever managed to write is 6 words. But if it is 3 words and heavily suggestive of what’s to come and we‘ve had dozens of threads that suggested the same in their title, it‘s no surprise that people have had it.

I will read the thread later on though nonetheless, because on first glimpse it seems better than most and interesting. Whether I agree with the verdict and argumentation remains to be seen.

I have to say that the Civ community is actually one of the least toxic communities I have been in throughout my gaming lifecycle. Matter of fact, I find the Civ 7 discord more toxic than this very site. Even if you don't like the opinion presented in this thread, look at how much time and care Kenshiro70 put into articulating it, even formatting it for easier readability.
I would argue that your response is actually toxic behavior by posting about how "horrible his opinion is that you refuse to read it" instead of just hitting the back button.

Respectfully, disagree. It’s far more indicative of thought out critiques than most negative posting in this server, insofar there is much well-thought out critique in this server. In my experience, civ fanatics tends towards either: relatively well-thought out positivity, aggressively positive posts, or complaint threads that bear on incoherence. This is quite clearly none of those.

That's a high quality post, kudos. Appreciate the time you've taken to share it!

I agree with a lot of what you say, particularly that Firaxis have been focussing on the wrong thing, and first and foremost should be trying to make the game fun - if they can solve that problem a lot of other things will fall into place.

However, theres 2 glaring omissions that I can't help but notice as a fellow product professional:

1) personas. The way I read your post it's like gamers come to Civ for 1 thing and 1 thing only, a good strategy game - a puzzle to solve. I think it's borne out quite thoroughly on social media since Civ VII that previous Civ games appealed to multiple personas, but this game alienates some before they even get to the point of finding out it's not fun.

That you are speaking to only one of these personas crystallised for me when you put forward the idea that a game without win conditions can't be considered 4x. I think that is demonstrably untrue from the number of players who had enormous fun with previous Civ titles without finishing games. 4X is not achieved when you finish the game, at least not for me, instead it's just imbued through gameplay, regardless of whether you finish it. Most people would say the age that is the most 4Xey and the age they have the most fun with is antiquity or the early game in prior titles, and those parts of the game do not have victory conditions. At some point the fun peters out, and I think it's because the game loses the Xpand aspect. Civ is not a historical simulator or a strategy game to me - it's a challenging map painter.

That may be different to your idea of it of course and that's why I mentioned personas. Your problem statement over simplifies the issues and only states them from the perspective of one type of user. I think you've identified the common one, but there are other problems which are preventing people from not just playing the game but also buying it. Which brings me onto...

2) marketing. A lot of Civ veterans have outright rejected the vision of Civ VII as not being conceptually a civ game anymore essentially. No amount of making the game fun is going to appeal to this group. There are "fun" games out there like Counter Strike which are standouts in their field which millions of gamers play for thousands of hours, but I bet some here have never touched it and have no desire to pick it up.

Civ has rebranded itself for Civ VII because it knows it's competing against Civ VI. The series is a victim of its own success, and because Civ VI is so fun and replayable to many, and has taken almost a decade of development to reach that point, they opted for a different approach this time to capture additional audiences and offer a different style of Civ game, and it's backfired quite considerably.

The problem for a persona of Civ gamers is baked into the vision statement itself. It's rejected on principle, and they can't be won over by improving the fun. That Firaxis is pivoting to try to win this persona over is not a wrong development, but I would agree they are attacking it in the wrong order. Make the game fun, then appeal to a broader base. As it stands they are trying to appeal to a broader base with a game they won't enjoy when and if they decide to buy it anyway on a 50/50 chance based on the odds of the people who liked it enough to buy it in the first place (so presumably anyone else's odds are on fact lower...)

In short, they've marketed this game and designed this game fundamentally differently, with a different vision and a different (imagined bigger) intended audience that as you say, hadn't materialised. I don't think that's just down to making the game simpler, I think it's because they've produced the 4X equivalent of new coke.

Really enjoyed your post though, I think what I'm getting at is I think it should be longer

agree re; personas, but i don’t think the game should be planning with them in mind. As you mentioned, the people not finishing games generally aren’t doing it cuz they’ve got bored, they’re doing it because their enjoyment in civ comes from storyline development, which runs its course, and they’re not unsatisfied with a premature conclusion of a save file. The issue with civ 7’s philosophy *was* the choice to address that, not the fact that it addressed it in the wrong way. Civ had the opportunity to go from strength to strength by following the rule of thirds and *iterate* on the successes of civ 6, the same way civ 6 iterated on civ 5, but they chose to radically break due to misguided problem solving.

It really feels like the devs don't want players to play with history.

One of the core fun moments I have always enjoyed in Civ games since I first played Civ 2 is to play as a pre-Columbian civ and make it to the space age. It’s like, cool as hell. This is always a source of fun for me not only in Civ, but also in basically every single game it's possible, Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, to a lesser extent, Europe Universalis.

agree, the “what if” nature of civ has always been my favorite part.


I’m sure i’ll have more to say as I wade further into the 23 pages of conversation that happened without me, but this strikes me as a very detailed and well-thought out critique of everything that’s gone wrong.

I am of the opinion that civ 7 is possibly damaged beyond repair. the game philosophy might work for some people, but it’s not very appealing to me. I don’t like civ switching, and the implementation, which I withheld judgement on prior to release, has not changed my view. Any progress from devs to create a “classic game mode” is likely grasping at straws, and while could tempt back a lot of players like me—the traditional player base who fell out of love with civ 7—the simplified gameplay, stats and abilities which just boil down to stat boosts and slight buffs rather than flavor-filled gameplay modifying abilities like in civ 6 don’t appeal to me. the poor map generation doesn’t appeal to me. the terrible UI doesn’t appeal to me. the heaps of bugs don’t appeal to me.

Moreover, a total abandonment of the game philosophy is effectively an indictment of the game, they’re ultimately saying they don’t believe in it themselves. Even if the devs do just take civ 7’s existing cast of civs and leaders, attaching them 1:1 with an appropriate civ/leader choice, and release “classic mode”, it will ultimately be a last-ditch effort to recoup losses on a failed game—if dlc and expansions are even provided, they’ll come with caveats of trying to cater to both, they wont contain the same impact or content you’d want them to. it’s ultimately all a wash, no matter what happens.

The gutsiest decision firaxis and 2k could make is just move on to civ 8. admit fault, go back to the series’ roots, and spend the next 3-4 years developing a quality game that takes risks in more reasonable, moderated ways and otherwise returns to the traditional gameplay. innovation in successful game series often doesn’t mean total gameplay transformations, it means evolving the traditional gameplay towards more complex, polished ends.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I think it's not only about infinitely replayable – people like to play games they know. There are some games that I can play for some hours every years, like the original Pharaoh, any Mario or Mario Kart, or Stronghold. Hence, a successful franchise has the problem to find a balance between a new entry that is familiar enough to the 'old guys' to get them on board, while also being innovative enough so that there is a reason to change to the new version. This is a difficult balance.

On the other hand, as a developer, it might be the most boring task to make the same thing again 'just up to date'? I'm no developer, but in the jobs I've been working in the domains of research or arts, if someone told me do repeat a project just with the current state of art and tech, I would have told them to find someone else.

Just yesterday, because Gamescom started, one of the major german newspaper had a headliner about how there are hundreds of new games presented, but the majority will be not as successful as necessary. The main reason being that there are a huge number of good and older games out there, and despite huge marketing efforts, most gamers stick to 'old' games for most of their playing time.

it’s funny—the only game series i’ve ever dedicated the same amount of time, love, dedication and passion towards as Civ is probably Pokemon, which has a very similar fanbase, culturally, and very similar struggles, though it’s much larger and much more popular, which means that unlike Civ, its newer, worse games are effectively too big to fail and no competition has ever succeeded in turning away fans meaningfully.

Like how many civ fans are often drawn to either their first game or the one they feel “did the formula” the best, pokemon fans often feel attached to the same criteria. much like how i think civ 6 did the formula the best, i think pokemon black and white do—despite having started with civ 3 and pokemon emerald respectively. pokemon fans also generally also feel the need to constantly defend dev decisions even when they know they’re mistakes. pokemon has also, critically, made big swings and misses before.

All of this to (relate this to the topic at hand and) say, nothing about this failure is complete or unrecoverable, so long as firaxis is willing to walk the mistakes back and fix them going forward—whether that’s in game or in series

 

[Thenewwwguy]

That may be a part as well, whether it‘s the main theme, I can‘t say. I‘m personally looking for innovative ideas in modern games.

If you would ask me to start a new BG tomorrow, I’d probably go for a third (?) BG1 or sixth (?) BG2 rather than a second BG3. But maybe, I’m just too nostalgic with that series and similar games in particular.

i mean, i think bg3 only functions as an example there—look at similarly successful games in the last 10 years:

hollow knight, expedition 33, outer wilds, disco elysium

what i will say is that none of these games have the baggage of a long-standing series, one of the legacy game series that has shaped the history of gaming—bg3 does, but not in the same way, being decades after bg2 and having a lot of flexibility to be different.

civ has a certain game format which is harder to innovate upon without radically changing the game. changes should have been at the mechanical level (what previous civ games have done—tiles, armies, cities, yields) rather than the functional level (1 narrative of growth over thousands of years, leaders, civs)

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I wouldn't say 'hugely'. But 2M to me doesn't say unpopular either. Clearly, it appealed to a large audience (within the scope of a city building sim), yet failed to reach the masses that its predecessor reached – but that also was the most successful city building sim of all times iirc. Given the continuing discourse about CS2, I'd say the game is still of high public interest. It's neither forgotten nor have people stopped buying and playing it. I've not really followed this discourse though, as I wasn't really hooked by CS1 and had no interest in CS2 (despite liking city builders a lot).

In the end, it might come down to which understanding of popular you have. Maybe I'm spoiled here as I tend to understand it in different ways at the same time, and not just as "popular is what a majority thinks". And who would that majority be anyways? To me, having a wide appeal is popular (aside from definitions that would make basically make all video games popular, because they are inherently a popular media). And within the realm of games that are played on a PC and require several hours of play for a game or session, I think a million sales and >100k different players per week are wide enough. Whether this is enough to cover the cost of FXS or CO is unrelated imho.

I guess CS2 and Civ 7 are and will be compared a lot because they share the fate of being successor to an incredibly successful and popular game that is widely regarded as the crown of its genre but suffered a terrible launch that failed to match expectations? As said, I've followed CS2 only loosely, but my impression at launch was that many of its problems were of technical nature, and not design as in civ 7. But maybe, that has changed meanwhile. I'm curious where EU5 will land in this, which could potential land in a similar situation.

As a city skylines fan, what i will say is that city skylines 2, as a base game, is a better game than cs1, which you can’t really say for civ 7 vs. 6 (though both 6 and 7 were effectively unfinished at launch)

you’re correct in noting that cs2 has issues that are of a technical nature, rather than a design nature—switching to unity meant that they’re effectively unable to create basic needs of the series: asset editing, proper simulation. But Colossal Order did make key design mistakes—they didn’t fix the limited zoning system which forces buildings to level terrain and prevents building in non-square plots—meaning non-grid road design and building varied terrains are basically impossible in cs2, much like cs1.

cs2 is nonetheless in better shape than civ 7 *because* it’s still an improvement on its predecessor, unlike civ 7. the reason why fans are so toxic and negative about it is because it appears like the game is abandoned. they barely fix bugs, have little intent to support it past the dlc they’re mandated to release, and probably won’t release any more dlc after that. not only that, but paradox is basically shuttering Colossal Order, and the city skylines series is likely dead.

Also unlike civ, cs2 doesn’t really have good alternatives— better quality city builders like anno, manor lords, or the new town to city tend to be limited in scale, size or timeframe. there are no other modern city builders that allow you to build complex city-regions to the level of detail that city skylines 2 does DESPITE its failures.

there is potential—manor lords showed that non-standard plot development is possible in-game, and citystate: metropolis seems to be improving in that by creating non-standard building generation, but citystate is more of a governance simulator than a city builder, and despite the devs’ suggestions that metropolis will be more aimed at a city building audience, it’s nonetheless never going to be a game in the same genre as civ

civ, meanwhile, is not beyond competition, and has active opponents which fill close to the same niche—civ 4, 5 and 6 all kept it the leading contender in the pan-historical 4x genre, but that’s not a foregone conclusion. so civ 7’s failures to me read as far more dangerous.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I think you have referenced the point of 'standing the test of time,' when discussing how out of touch the Devs have been with their audience. The audience (or at least most of the paying audience) wants to play with the power-fantasy of building an empire, not some amorphous concept ala 'build something you believe in'.... even if one could actually describe that in terms of a game of Civ.

ultimately, i think people need to ask themselves, even if they wanted to change the motto, which i understand, did they succeed in doing so?

what am i supposed to be believing in? my empire that’s effectively demolished after a few hours? the new civ title i was forced to accept, even when maybe the empire i want to build and beleive in is a space-age babylon?

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I do see and respect that this is likely a dead thread and i am quite late to the party and attempting to put my two cents in on virtually everything that’s been discussed, and not organizing it extremely well, so i do want to pre-emptively apologize to mods if the way i’ve organized my thoughts in multiple posts isn’t great, and i do promise that this is the last subsequent post until there’s some meaningful discourse i can hop on.

This viewpoint is pretty contradictory though. You want to rewrite history, but not only is Civ not a history simulator at all, you also balk at the idea of civ switching, which is probably much closer to historic accuracy than previous version.

When you pick George Washington Builds the Pyramids in 4200BC your immersion argument disappears.

I’ll address these first because I do understand this PoV but as someone firmly in the “civ switching should’ve never happened” camp, i think this is a case of people talking about immersion not using the most precise language, and that being misinterpreted.

when people talk about immersion, or “alternative history” with respect to civ, i do think these probably aren’t the best terms to use, mainly because—as you correctly note—civ was never even attempting to be historical.

I think it’s more the case that there’s a certain level of facilitating role-play and imagination. Imagining Empire XYZ to have existed for all of history and very successfully ruling.

The issue ends up being that the immersion in that *fantasy*, not the concept of alternative history, is what people want.

Just a note but taking Egyptians/Romans/Carthaginians to space cannot be the reason why Civ is superior to every other 4X game since it's something you can explicitly do in Humankind and most people here would agree it's not the pinnacle of historical 4X games.

See the main banner of the game, of an Ancient Egyptian astronaut on the Moon:

Nonetheless, @notNamed is correct — the fantasy isn’t the only thing at play here. It’s moreso that you are immersed *in* the fantasy in a way that Humankind failed to do, for the same reason Civ 7 fails—despite a title of a civ only seeming to be a title, people immerse themselves in said title, and they attach themselves to the civ title far more than they associate themselves to a leader (and as we have already discussed ad nauseum in civ fanatics, you’re not exactly immersed in the roleplay of the leader either because you see yourself in the third person in diplomacy)

For me it’s just a slightly different narrative. For instance I would previously play as Rome and play into the modern age. During the medieval period I was imagining Rome more as a standard medieval European civ, maybe France. Easy to do because you have knights and men at arms.

By modern era I’m now watching my Rome civ but am imagining more as a sort of American empire. That is my closest comparison in my head.

Now in Civ 7, it’s just a bit more explicit. That’s why I don’t have an issue with it.

I do sympathize with this take, but I also think i’ve elaborated why a lot of people feel unequipped to feel this way. For example, when I roleplay my playthroughs, there’s some, implicit or explicit, retention of more of the historical traits than you’re hinting at, for me personally. I don’t think the level of immersion for people in their roleplay is the same, and it prob differs heavily from person to person—which is why *mandating* civ switching doesn’t work for me as much as trying to facilitate that “culture change” through softer means.

I think the broader thing is that civ changing, along with other key failures of mechanics like crises, are all symptoms of the devs trying to hit us over the head with what they want the game to be:

I think crises could work, but there is so many reasons why they won’t that I think it’s a bad idea to include them.

The main issue I think is that they are such an interruption to your gameplay, or should be. They should stop you doing what you were trying to do, so that you could take care of the crisis, but as a player I will probably get annoyed by that.
They also feel like they are taking your civ backwards, rather than forwards, taking stuff away rather than giving you things.

Ideally I think Crises should act like Dark Ages in Civ 6. Essentially they are opportunities for you to leverage the crisis to move your Civ in a certain direction, making choices where there is an element of sacrifice. Conceptually a plague is an overall bad thing for a civilisation, but what if it led to better wage equality for peasants and more social mobility as people died out (as kind of happened in England). What if a barbarian invasion was playing havoc on your borders but made it easier to recruit new troops and your whole society became more Martial.

Civ 6 kind of did these things with dark age cards, for instance internal trade routes became more valuable but I couldn't produce settlers, or science is boosted but culture sacrificed. It is that sort of choice the player should be making. Crises should inherently change the landscape of the game and make players play differently, and have to adapt to them. Above all, there should be a player incentive and bonus for engaging in them, not just penalties.

Overall however, I think Crises are a very hard concept to balance and make work, it certainly isn't easy and the half arsed way it has been implemented has pretty much killed the idea on arrival

Civ 3 (going back to it again lol) and Civ4 had periodic events like Barbarian Migrations and Plagues and weather events that were serious enough to get your attention and engagement, and could do real damage if you played poorly or were unprepared.

This was far FAR superior to Lazy Developer Fiat because the player *had actual engagement and agency*. You let the goddamn player *play the game* instead of deciding for them because you know better than them how to have fun.

i totally agree with this for that reason. Crises suck because they feel like they bash the player over the head going “ALERT ALERT a situation out of your control is changing the fate of your nation”

this should be an implicit component of the game, not a framing mechanic. it goes back to the basic storytelling principle of Show, Don’t Tell. Why on earth are we just being told, with 0 agency or input for strategy and management, that a crisis outside of our control is dooming our nation as we know it, and forcing us to play differently? What “connection” beyond loose, pre-determined historical/geographical paths do civ transitions have, otherwise?

Whereas a more “showing” approach would have been making in-game periodical crises so impactful that I, as a player, feel obligated to change my strategy, government, culture and beliefs to weather the storm. I shouldn’t just be told that “things are different now”, i should have to have the option to either die by staying the same or live by abandoning what i know.

In this video, you see that Brandon (a planner) gives up the game because he finds that planning is mostly pointless. Dan, on the other hand, is more of a storyteller. He doesn't like that he doesn't really get to tell his civ's story, and instead the story is dictated to him. Obviously these are just two guys, but I think their views encompass the feelings of many.

I identify with both of these, and can’t be bothered to play for these exact reasons.

In film production, there are legal requirements to receive certain types of credits (these have been negotiated by the relevant unions, i.e. producers, actors, crew, cinematographers, etc.). Seems like it would be good to have a similar thing in the game production space.

Gaming is effectively a lawless land in a lot of respects. Game devs are some of the most overworked, overexploited people there are. Rights provided by law in film, tv, literature, theatre hasn’t kept up for games. I always do sympathize with them, even when things like this don’t work out.

I am kinda grim about the prospects to save civ7.

There have been many miraculous rebirths in the recent video game history, but I don't recall one happening when the main source of the game's criticism is its core premise.

Hell knows what you are supposed to do with this as a developer.

Agreed. Honestly, I think strategy games are the worst positioned to ever recover from bad starts because they’re built to be built upon. It becomes so hard to fix the underlying basis for everything else. Versus Cyberpunk or No Man’s Sky just iterating internally on the premise, not fully upending it.

City Skylines 2 and SimCity felt flawed and irredeemable for similar reasons. Can anyone think of any strategy and management game in recent memory that has fully recovered from absolute trash to reasonably good?

This is a bit of a tangent but I really wish they'd stop increasing the workload for leaders and civs. The game genuinely does not need to look any "prettier" than V and as nice as the leaders looked in V, it's clearly a bigger bottleneck than it's worth; both in terms of the workload, and in terms of who it allows them to add. Cut out the full voice acting, or stick people back into portraits, or at the very least just dial the graphical fidelity back. I would rather a mechanically coherent but visually lacking game (not in the sense that it's ugly, but in the sense there's room for improvement) like 4 over a mechanically lacking but "pretty to look at with the UI off" game like 7.

Your opinion would not create a popular game in 2025. Civ IV came out 20 years ago. Nowadays, graphics* matter as much as everything else being compelling does.

*a competent, well-executed artistic vision. It doesn't have to be photorealistic. But at the same time a lot of complaints about VI were because of the more stylised art direction.

To weigh in here, I totally agree with @Gorbles — a clear art direction is needed even if graphics don’t have to be good (see: breath of the wild on a graphically limited console). In fact, everything civ 7 has done sometimes seems to be in the hopes of reducing art’s role in the game dev system (mostly by delinking leaders with civs to not have to create them all)

Civ V wins again.

There’s been a lot of “but my civ was best” posting in this chat, so this isn’t targeted at this particular message, but this rhetoric is so unhelpful. We all know different people appreciate different civs to different extents. Why litigate which of civ 4-6 is the best when civ 7 could have been “good and distinct” and instead is “bad and distinct”. the options weren’t “bad and distinct” or “good and similar to a previous game”

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'

The issue is that the game philosophy of civ 7 isn’t the issue, the practical implementation is. As I mentioned above, they totally could have implemented some capacity of civ switching without forcing us to actually switch civs, like by introducing era-bounded “policies”, leader-switching, allowing our gameplay throughout eras to be more affected by our own decisions than pre-determined finish lines. I agree with what you said before that the civ 6 age system made far more sense than civ 7’s eras and crises.

They tried out leader switching first, but to them it didn't work and was less immersive in their opinions because it seems like Firaxis liked to identify with leaders, rather than civs.
As someone who likes to identify as the civ, and not the leader, I think I might have much preferred that. I wonder how many more people would have preferred leader switching to civ switching?

I would’ve preferred leader switching—though you know this since we talked about it at-length prelaunch. It feels more logical—leaders change while a nation stays the same. And before anyone says “but the immortal leader is key to civ”, so was playing as one civ until they arbitrarily killed that.

By "leaders" I'm assuming you mean something like VI's Great People, right?

I like it. I think it would kill two birds with one stone; adding a little more complexity and helping those behind to catch up rather than slowing those ahead down.

Civ 3 did this, with playable leaders as great peoples, iirc.

 

[GeneralZift]

it’s funny—the only game series i’ve ever dedicated the same amount of time, love, dedication and passion towards as Civ is probably Pokemon, which has a very similar fanbase, culturally, and very similar struggles, though it’s much larger and much more popular, which means that unlike Civ, its newer, worse games are effectively too big to fail and no competition has ever succeeded in turning away fans meaningfully.

Like how many civ fans are often drawn to either their first game or the one they feel “did the formula” the best, pokemon fans often feel attached to the same criteria. much like how i think civ 6 did the formula the best, i think pokemon black and white do—despite having started with civ 3 and pokemon emerald respectively. pokemon fans also generally also feel the need to constantly defend dev decisions even when they know they’re mistakes. pokemon has also, critically, made big swings and misses before.

All of this to (relate this to the topic at hand and) say, nothing about this failure is complete or unrecoverable, so long as firaxis is willing to walk the mistakes back and fix them going forward—whether that’s in game or in series

Heavy on the Pokémon comparison, and there is an underlying reason that these guys can get away with it, and others just cannot.

They both represent essential monopoly on the genre that they're in. Such a huge giant that they simply cannot lose when they release a new game. People will flock and buy even if it's worse than the last one, because it's more of what they love originally.

Just like when I tell people about Civilization that they should up their quality, for example, include the full 3D Leader screens, and make them even better.
And it reminds me of the days when I used to tell people that Pokémon should up their quality and include all their great things from past games, like open routes / exploration (nonlinearity), following Pokémon.

I always hear the same defenses. There's not enough money. There's not enough time. That feature was too much effort. In fact it wasn't even good.

I think people just enjoy the games for the sake of it, they're okay with it not being as good as previous games but just different.
This is why Civilization gets away with a "different game" every game but with poor release quality and patch it later mentality.
This is why Pokémon gets away with "the same game" every game but with slightly different content and mostly more scrapped features.

Until these giants are threatened by cheaper, stronger, better competitors in order to up their game, they will continue to take shortcuts and experiment on what their playerbase finds acceptable.
Only when there is even a modicum of real competition, that's when you will finally see them bring their big guns out. It's a travesty really.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Heavy on the Pokémon comparison, and there is an underlying reason that these guys can get away with it, and others just cannot.

They both represent essential monopoly on the genre that they're in. Such a huge giant that they simply cannot lose when they release a new game. People will flock and buy even if it's worse than the last one, because it's more of what they love originally.

Just like when I tell people about Civilization that they should up their quality, for example, include the full 3D Leader screens, and make them even better.
And it reminds me of the days when I used to tell people that Pokémon should up their quality and include all their great things from past games, like open routes / exploration (nonlinearity), following Pokémon.

I always hear the same defenses. There's not enough money. There's not enough time. That feature was too much effort. In fact it wasn't even good.

I think people just enjoy the games for the sake of it, they're okay with it not being as good as previous games but just different.
This is why Civilization gets away with a "different game" every game but with poor release quality and patch it later mentality.
This is why Pokémon gets away with "the same game" every game but with slightly different content and mostly more scrapped features.

Until these giants are threatened by cheaper, stronger, better competitors in order to up their game, they will continue to take shortcuts and experiment on what their playerbase finds acceptable.
Only when there is even a modicum of real competition, that's when you will finally see them bring their big guns out. It's a travesty really.

i do think, for what it’s worth, where the comparison diverges is the parasociality of pokemon—even if a game of revolutionary quality emerged in that genre, it doesn’t have the baggage pokemon does—a cast of characters people feel drawn to, attachment towards, etc.

they could make the best game of all time as a pokemon competitor, and pokemon players would probably struggle to jump ship because *their favorite* is pokemon IP.

that being said, I think the comparison is generally very apt and fair: two giants of their respective genre that have struggled to output the quality of their heyday and coasting because no one has adequately challenged them—it’s just pokemon is a lot less vulnerable than civ

in either case though, the issue isn’t the devs themselves, but the leadership and management. the profit motive gets in the way of pure quality and entertainment. it sucks that games are treated as commodity instead of art, and a product to be sold rather than one to be enjoyed.

 

[Leucarum]

Honestly, rereading this thread just makes me more sad about Civ7. In amongst all the post mortem, I think it has to be highlighted that the Antiquity era is really, really amazing. The game flashes a glimpse at the greatness that it could have had before throwing it away.

Making the later eras a tightly woven set of interactions between ages, civ switches, legacies, snowball-control and the crises was always going to be a tough landing to stick. The line between a successful and graceful landing, versus a broken ankle is very tight when each of the systems you need to get right affects the others dramatically. Firaxis ended up breaking their ankle over a jump they didn't need to make.

And I really do think the failed landing means they have had to react in ways which doom the age system. If you don't control the snowball it's over, and any chance at that looks dead in the water.

Leader/civ mixing, commanders, cities/towns, navigable rivers, influence, updated resources - those alone would have been significant enough new features to let the game stand on its own.

So every time I play antiquity and look at what the game could be... It makes me sad that I doubt we'll get there.

 

[tman2000]

Honestly, rereading this thread just makes me more sad about Civ7. In amongst all the post mortem, I think it has to be highlighted that the Antiquity era is really, really amazing. The game flashes a glimpse at the greatness that it could have had before throwing it away.

But it's not amazing. The streamlining which makes antiquity feel smoother ruins the rest of the game, this feature set is a hard trade off. Civ isn't just its opening chapter.

You might compare it to something like Grand Theft Auto where people complain the wider open world is gated behind completing earlier missions. Creating an empty shallow GTA but where it's fully open from the first time you enter a car would be the best early game GTA has ever had connected to the worst GTA game ever made.

 

[Draginol]

This post and discussion is one of the reasons why forums are still a superior medium for this kind of discussion.

I've been writing the Ara: History Untold dev blogs some of you have read on Steam :

Ara History Untold: Anniversary Edition - Dev Journal #8: Quotas & Priorities - Steam News

by Brad Wardell

store.steampowered.com

Ara History Untold: Anniversary Edition - Dev Journal #7: Culture & Influence - Steam News

by Brad Wardell

store.steampowered.com

The one going up tomorrow with 2.0 talks about the player bases on these games. Civ V has a much higher player count than Civ VII and yet Civ VII still absolutely dwarfs the player counts of all the other Civ style games combined (Ara + Millenia + Humankind + Old World). So despite the bumps in Civ VII, people aren't really moving to other games. Each of those games has its own issues (I've spent many months improving Ara) but the gulf between Civ games and everyone else is significant. Hopefully some people will give Ara 2.0 a try.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

This post and discussion is one of the reasons why forums are still a superior medium for this kind of discussion.

I've been writing the Ara: History Untold dev blogs some of you have read on Steam :

Ara History Untold: Anniversary Edition - Dev Journal #8: Quotas & Priorities - Steam News

by Brad Wardell

store.steampowered.com

Ara History Untold: Anniversary Edition - Dev Journal #7: Culture & Influence - Steam News

by Brad Wardell

store.steampowered.com

The one going up tomorrow with 2.0 talks about the player bases on these games. Civ V has a much higher player count than Civ VII and yet you take the Civ V and yet Civ VII still absolutely dwarfs the player counts of all the other Civ style games combined (Ara + Millenia + Humankind + Old World). So despite the bumps in Civ VII, people aren't really moving to other games. Each of those games has its own issues (I've spent many months improving Ara) but the gulf between Civ games and everyone else is significant. Hopefully some people will give Ara 2.0 a try.

I certainly hope that non-Civ competitors can become more successful. But i think the old anecdote about civ 5 being civ 6’s biggest competitor just has resulted in both 5 and 6 being 7’s biggest competitor.

I do wonder how much of the civ competition boils down to trying to differentiate too much, and losing the plot in the meanwhile, or attempting to command AAA prices while being unproven. I am yet to play ara: history untold, but the reviews seem generally more positive than civ 7, but less positive than civs 5 and 6. It also looks mechanically and thematically fairly similar to civ, and avoids the pitfall of being differentiated for the sake of differentiation, so I am curious as to what is limiting ara beyond name brand

edit: just wanted to add that i think one thing where civ still excels is the historical research and detail that it has. no other game, even during civ 7’s franchise low point, does the level of research, cultural consultation, etc. that civ does. ara, for example, still has a blobby celts and india—what other historical 4x games have the chola, buganda, let alone more notable, yet still rare civs

 

[Leucarum]

But it's not amazing. The streamlining which makes antiquity feel smoother ruins the rest of the game, this feature set is a hard trade off. Civ isn't just its opening chapter.

You might compare it to something like Grand Theft Auto where people complain the wider open world is gated behind completing earlier missions. Creating an empty shallow GTA but where it's fully open from the first time you enter a car would be the best early game GTA has ever had connected to the worst GTA game ever made.

I don't think that's true in this case. I personally like the reduced micromanagement.

Civ 7's problems stem from railroading, steamrolling, and poor immersion... Not the streamlining which is overwhelmingly a good thing... And I'd argue in modern doesn't go far enough.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I think people just enjoy the games for the sake of it, they're okay with it not being as good as previous games but just different.
This is why Civilization gets away with a "different game" every game but with poor release quality and patch it later mentality.
This is why Pokémon gets away with "the same game" every game but with slightly different content and mostly more scrapped features.

I do appreciate the idea that Pokémon got the idea to try to experiment more with their "Legends" games and see what might work out for their mainline games. Of course, those seem to be the games that generate great hype and praise.

I don't feel like Firaxis has had the luxury of experimenting outside of their mainline game, at least recently, and unfortunately aren't able to test to see how they would be received.

 

[King Flevance]

I have not yet jumped on the Ara or Millennia bandwagon as of yet. I think they both look very interesting but this year has significantly mutated/destroyed much of my gaming time. I have just been trying to follow Civ 7's post launch development when I have free time as I mostly enjoy large maps on epic game speed right now and that eats time just to experience.

Ara looks interesting, but I need to watch more Let's Plays to see if it is something that truly is for me. It certainly might be, but I have not seen enough to really know. All I have seen is launch stuff, and that sounded like a mislaunch, then Civ 7 mislaunched and I barely have room on my plate for it right now - and that is only because I am making room for Civ. Their is an expiration date on waiting for civ where I will 'check out' until later and try some competitors. But I am planning to give them the rest of this year to really hook me as I don't have time to explore other titles right now.

I personally like the reduced micromanagement.

Civ 7's problems stem from railroading, steamrolling, and poor immersion... Not the streamlining which is overwhelmingly a good thing... And I'd argue in modern doesn't go far enough.

I agree but the simplification of "settlement tile ownership" being "first come, first serve" among your own settlements irritates the hell out of me.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I do appreciate the idea that Pokémon got the idea to try to experiment more with their "Legends" games and see what might work out for their mainline games. Of course, those seem to be the games that generate great hype and praise.

I don't feel like Firaxis has had the luxury of experimenting outside of their mainline game, at least recently, and unfortunately aren't able to test to see how they would be received.

tbf, firaxis kinda did it with later dlc on 6–separating leaders and civs to a smaller extent with choices like eleanor of aquitaine, kublai khan; rise and fall ages correlating loosely to eras.

in their case, what they didn’t realize is the issue was never with the thematic existence of what they had in mind, but rather the implementation

 

[fjaoaoaoao]

Wow!

What a thorough and original analysis on what happened with Civ 7. Kudos and thank you for sharing. I haven't read some of the ending portions yet but I'll get there.

My main gripe where @Kenshiro70 may be a little misguided is on the issue of designer ratio. Re-iterating what some other people have said, game designers often wear many hats. So their role is to not just design and flesh out systems, and some of them can do the work that a developer would do in other tech industries. Furthermore, the issue might not be of "too many cooks in the kitchen", but rather the wrong or misguided head chef / restauranteur / general manager / executive-level collaborator in charge... or some cooks who just need better guidance than what was given. A design team could have talented and savvy designers but if a leader wants to go a particular direction... well so be it. Hierarchy, org chart, culture, communication, management, etc. all matter in an organization. The analysis on how an org is performing can't be so heavily on personnel and role numbers especially for a more generalist role like a designer.

Certainly, if most of the designers are twiddling their thumbs or aren't contributing much of value, then the criticism is more valid, but from the outside, I don't think there is enough evidence to attribute Civ 7's design failings to designer number or ratio.

 

[fjaoaoaoao]

The crazy part is that if Firaxis had not done age transitions and civ-switching, I think civ7 could have been the best of the franchise. Sure there are systems like religions and governments that need more fleshing out (expansions?) but a lot of the other mechanics like slottable resources, merchants trading resources, commanders, attribute trees, civ specific policies, are pretty great imo. And graphics are good. I think the base game is pretty solid. I find myself sad when the Antiquity Age ends because I had a good time. I don't want to change civs and skip time and jump into a new Age. I want to stay with the flow and see where the game continues with this civ.

I agree more about age transitions. Civ-switching could work if it was implemented differently: more optional and made more fluid (e.g. a player can elect to enter a civ during a certain civ-specific time period; also the switch is more gradual)

My civ 7 post-mortem:

I think Civ7 succeeded when it made changes that improved on the 4X part of the game. For example, commanders, slottable resources that buff settlements, merchants that trade resources instead of just providing yields, cities vs towns, diplomacy with endeavors and sanctions, war score, are all changes that improve the 4X experience. In fact, I would argue that if civ7 had just done those changes with no civ switching or age transitions, civ7 would probably be a very good entry to the civ franchice.

Civ7 also simplified city management, like removing builders and citizen management, which some players feel dumbed down the strategy. Civ7 also introduced legacy paths which made the game much more directed and less open ended. I think many fans, especially the more hard core civ fans, want that more open ended strategy where they can shape their civ however they want.

Civ7 completely failed when it deviating too much (in the eyes of many fans) from the perceived core civ "soul". Many civ players consider the core civ premise to be guiding a civ from the stone age to the information age, to "stand the test of time". Civ-switching and age transitions really upended that. In civ7, the player identity is more the leader and the player guides 3 cultures through 3 distinct Ages. Your civ is not standing the test of time anymore. Your identity is not the same civ. Also the player is not having that continuous game from the stone age to the information age but rather, is playing like 3 connected scenarios. It is a very different experience that is hard for some players to adjust to.

Lastly, poor marketing and an unpolished release left a bad first impression that made it an uphill battle to recover. When Firaxis first introduced the civ switching and age transition mechanics, it turned some players off even before the game was released. And when the game was released, poor UI that lacked information as well as missing quality of life improvements like auto explore gave players a poor first impression.

Lessons for civ7 developers:

• Be careful not to deviate too much from the core civ premise.
• Focus on making the 4X experience strategic and deeper.
• Make sure UI and quality of life improvements are done at release

Similarly, I don't think the first bullet point is justifiable from the arguments provided. That sounds more like something a parent says to a kid who doesn't know what the kid is doing, or more closely, what a business exec says to warn a creative head. As I posed in my comment above, civ switching could have worked; how it was designed, implemented, and communicated failed. Age transitions is less possible but could also work if done differently.

 

[fjaoaoaoao]

You're absolutely right; there's no black and white and people do wear multiple hats. But if I didn't de-duplicate, the number jumped to 34. Because it was such an important item, I scrutinized each of those 34 people individually when I winnowed them down to 12.

Also, I view Designers as the game industry equivalent of Product Managers on the enterprise side. At the end of the day, the requirements a PM documents and the gameplay mechanics a Designer creates become the authoritative statement on how the game plays. Both the PM and Designers are directing the engineers on the results they need to program to create. In effect, they are are "spending" a developer's time (=£££) when they do this. For that reason, there's only a limited number of people with that spend authorization.

As to the issue you raised around the ratio, fewer developers means they have less time to consider and deal with the exception cases. They spend most of their time handling the "golden path" case (i.e., when everything goes right), but when there are interactions with other systems, error conditions, and additional permutations (e.g., new Leaders and Civs) they don't have the time to anticipate those situations and create a robust solution in advance. Add in a brutal schedule, and it's very likely the code will need more upkeep later, which over time builds up a level of tech debt that slows down new development.

Sorry if I'm babbling on a bit - it's not every day that someone shows enough curiosity about these things that they'd be interested in discussing it. You made my day.

I see the intended parallel between designer and product manager, and while that works as a general statement connecting to other abstractions, it sort of falls apart when trying to do a detailed analysis of a specific use case.

Also, a designer could very well be the one handling, analyzing, and communicating non-golden path scenarios.

Metadata: Amazing, but too much of a good thing​

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...​

​

This approach is enormously powerful, because it allows you to create and test new buildings quickly, as long as they follow the basic template. ​

...​

This is where you can get too much of a good thing. If you could make five new buildings by following the template versus adding a new attribute to the template, which would you do? Did I mention that you've got to get four civs delivered this month for the next DLC? So you can see how over time there starts to be a bias towards using the existing templates.​

​

The problem is that from the player's perspective, what a designer would call "template", the players call "cookie cutter". Humans are very good at pattern recognition, and if you overuse the existing cookie cutters, they'll notice. It doesn't matter if this cookie has sprinkles on it and that one has green food coloring if the basic recipe is the same.​

​

That's essentially what's happened with the Leaders and Civs. They've got too many "+1 Food on improvement adjacency" abilities instead of unique abilities. Open up the "leaders-gameeffects.xml" file and read through it, and you’ll see that I mean. In fact, if you look at the 1.1.0 and 1.1.1 patch notes, the majority of items were tuning of parameters rather than code changes.​

​

The end result is that Leaders feel like cheap knock-offs of one another. It's hurting replayability because they don't feel that different to play.​

​

The only way out of this trap is that Firaxis will have to ratchet back on the template usage and enforce a ratio of 2 template-based abilities allowed for every new unique code-based ability.​

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That over-reliance on metadata is one of the more subtle traps and reasons that designers and developers can fall into.

I see how overreliance on metadata can end up just being busy work for the designers, and I also think it's a fair argument to make that fixating on metadata encourages spitting out copycats. But that's just speculation as to what the devs are doing as well as speculating the impact of metadata on design. One could argue metadata could also very well free up time and cognitive space so they can more easily do other work, they just need to be conscious and deliberate in doing so. The inclusion of a possibility of a behavior doesn't automatically detract from the possibilities of other behaviors. It certainly influences a kind of design, and it's hard to argue against that happening here because of how the game came out, but my issue is the issue of onus. Who is influencing the design? In a large org that creates a legacy product for a large customer base, it is not merely those with design and developer titles. It feels a bit unfair to describe metadata is a trap or reason that a designer/developer falls into when there are also very clearly structural and environmental reasons that encourage it.

In other words, you are sort of posing metadata as a temptress that beguiles designers/developers and the designers/developers are not skilled enough to recognize this as an issue, rather than describing metadata as just a tool that they happened to overuse for design, not necessarily a reflection of their design or development skill. So I like the mention of metadata as it adds some insight into some potential pitfalls, but I feel the wording on this is too conclusive and a little bit uncharitable to the designers/devs.

 

[McSpank01]

But it's not amazing. The streamlining which makes antiquity feel smoother ruins the rest of the game, this feature set is a hard trade off. Civ isn't just its opening chapter.

Yeah I also don't think Antiquity is 'amazing' in Civ 7. It is ok, it's pretty good. I think the first 20-50 turns are really fun. That is the point where the flaws in the game really spring up, because you start to remember that this is a game with 'Ages' and that is going to have a knock on effect to all your decisions.

The game might be more streamlined, but it's also lacking in long term strategic thinking, you aren't making many impactful decisions overall, adjacency is less relevant than it could be, tech choices are kind of limited and its barely noticeable if you went one way or another down the tree. But when ages start to become relevant you realise that there is little point building things or starting a war or doing much of anything, thats when it gets less interesting.

One of the reasons I think Antiquity feels fun for a while, is that you can forget about the age system, and when you do that, you can sink into the game and enjoy it.