Civ7 is the most bizarre game in the franchise so far.

[LastSword]

Sigh, do not use a promotional videos or screenshoots (especially those 4k resolutions zoomed over a single city). This is an artificial marketing stuff, not how the game will be played. You have been played.
There is already enough in-game footage. Buildings are not readable. Cities are just an endless sea of whatever.
If anything we are in this weird spot where art style better supports marketing than an actual gameplay.

@6-10 hexes, 10-20 hexes settling limit
One man dream is another man nightmare. At this point I would actually prefer some sub-grid for cities.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

.
@6-10 hexes, 10-20 hexes settling limit
One man dream is another man nightmare. At this point I would actually prefer some sub-grid for cities.

Ive been thinking for a while myself how it would be nice to get a zoomed in extra map withing a city, I'm well up for that idea rather than sprawl.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

People keep talking about "readable" cities, what does this mean in relation to Civ exactly? It's perfectly possible to recognise which buildings are on a tile, and the tooltips tell you anyway. How much more readable do they need to be? Sure, maybe you need to pause a moment to actually look, but it's a turn-based game, it's not as if you need to be able to understand everything in an instant in order to react.

Ive been thinking for a while myself how it would be nice to get a zoomed in extra map withing a city, I'm well up for that idea rather than sprawl.

Yes, I can see that being the next step, I think that could work really well to get the best of both worlds.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Agree wrt Antiquity and Exploration, but the few Modern Age screenshots we’ve seen have been very cluttered urban sprawl so I’m still nervous. I’ll probably change city spacing to 4 and increase map size if it’s too bad - I preferred playing Civ 6 that way also.

I'd wait for modern livestream, screenshots often don't represent actual game. But if Civ6 feels to cluttered for you, high chances Civ7 will be as well.

 

[Seek]

If I'm being honest, this looks right to me. A cluster of developed settlements that I've been working on for Ages should take up a lot of space, and those beautiful buildings won't make me suffer for it. I like building cities, I like looking at the cities I've built, and I REALLY like this.

I hear ya, and I love aspects of it too!

But to explain myself better: I worry that *every* tile of every land mass will be city-like in Modern. An entire continent shouldn't look like it's New York with a few mountains poking out imo. That screenshot just looks claustrophobic.

I hope the new Urban Towns will help with the city sprawl, but cities covering the entire map - as they ended up doing in Civ6 as well - is definitely a major concern of mine. I had hoped to see a different system, where each city had a much larger workable radius - like 6-10 hexes - and you could place satellite rural towns (think City Lights mod) in the outer rings to bring in resources and urban districts in the inner rings only.

Civ7 system may end up achieving a bit of the same if rural towns are placed between cities, but I would rather see a much larger city settling limit, like 10-20 hexes, a bit like regions in Humankind or locked sites in Old World. But of course that will require a much larger map.

I like this idea - definitely worth exploring as a mod!

I understand people with horrible allergy to CIv 6 art style.

I fail to understand how anyone can think that Civ 7 is ugly.

I love the art style, I just don’t want to see gilded age Coruscant every game

Ive been thinking for a while myself how it would be nice to get a zoomed in extra map withing a city, I'm well up for that idea rather than sprawl.

I’ve been thinking the same, it would solve a lot of the scaling issues we see in modern Civ games. A meta-tile system where each tile holds maybe 61 (4 wide ring) sub-tiles that could be explored independently; cities and battles could spread out more, utilizing terrain in more unique ways and overcoming 1UPT and city sprawl; there could be better interactions with independent peoples, etc. There’s a lot of possibility here.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I've been thinking for a while myself how it would be nice to get a zoomed in extra map withing a city,

Like this?

With the city as one hex on the game map, and Civ 7's graphics for doing this same kind of thing?

The one-hex city on the game map could still reflect your civ's major building accomplishments.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I hope the new Urban Towns will help with the city sprawl, but cities covering the entire map - as they ended up doing in Civ6 as well - is definitely a major concern of mine. I had hoped to see a different system, where each city had a much larger workable radius - like 6-10 hexes - and you could place satellite rural towns (think City Lights mod) in the outer rings to bring in resources and urban districts in the inner rings only.

Yes I was disappointed to learn the workable radius sticking to 3 also. If only it could have been more modular, dynamic (according to your territory) but no.

I fail to understand how anyone can think that Civ 7 is ugly.

Think of social housing.

 

[Civinator]

Maybe not that big, but certainly in the wrong direction!

Is it moving in direction Scotland?

 

[Gori the Grey]

They died to the long running trend in game design of getting rid of separate screens and menus.

I get it. But in a game that centrally involves 1) cities and 2) vast territorial expanses, could players tolerate one single extra click to see the beautiful version of their city (and manage game-tasks such as district placement), as the price for also enjoying a magisterial survey of the sweeping terrain that their armies have conquered (/colonists have settled)?

 

[pokiehl]

I absolutely don’t want a separate click to view anything.

A game centered entirely upon a map should be readable and playable on that screen. Separate menus and screens are tedious and unimmersive.

I don’t want to click anything to view my beautiful cities. I just want them there.

 

[Krikkit1]

I absolutely don’t want a separate click to view anything.

A game centered entirely upon a map should be readable and playable on that screen. Separate menus and screens are tedious and unimmersive.

I don’t want to click anything to view my beautiful cities. I just want them there.

Also you should have both…you should have built up cities where 70% of the available 18 tiles are buildings or Wonders

You should also have many towns to feed the specialists in those cities
towns that only have 2-3 hexes of buildings and the rest open farms or pastures or mines in the open land.


I think 1 Town:1City should actually make those cities a bit too small

Good size cities will hopefully need 2+Towns per city.

 

[pokiehl]

I guess you're also strongly against the tech tree being in its own screen too then?

And who says that Civ should be "centered entirely upon a map" in the first place? That's an idea that only started with Civ5, if not Civ6. Anyway both those versions, and earlier entries, already include many abstract concepts that aren't immediately visible on the map (ie, religion, government type / policies, technology, specialist pop, city build queues, unit promotions, etc...). It seems a bold claim to say that having buildings be on a separate screen is so "tedious and unimmersive" that this can be asserted without argument, while all the other things mentioned are not worthy of complaint.

I thought it was clear from context that I'm talking about the city building aspects of the game.

A massive draw of these games is seeing what you've built laid out on a map. Zoom out, scroll the map, and behold what you're created. It's also essential to keep these aspects on the map for immediate readibility and situation assessment.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I thought it was clear from context that I'm talking about the city building aspects of the game.

A massive draw of these games is seeing what you've built laid out on a map. Zoom out, scroll the map, and behold what you're created. It's also essential to keep these aspects on the map for immediate readibility and situation assessment.

I would love additional screens that are also beautiful maps over the layers and layers of bland grey text box screens that the series has been leaning towards, but that's me

Good Dev work would make it so you could click or scroll on your mouse to go to the lower level city map screen seamlessly from the main map

 

[pokiehl]

That would imply that Civilizations 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Colonization, Alpha Centauri, Beyond Earth, etc... lacked a massive draw because so little of the city building aspect is visible on the map. I would suggest that is patently not true.

Cities from 5 and before look tiny, unimpressive, and don't convey useful information to the player. Allowing wonders and buildings to be placed on the map and integrated with visual filler elements is by far the biggest conceptual visual upgrade the series has ever had. It's revolutionary.

If you want to go back to tiny, undetailed specks on the map, then that's totally fine: you just listed 8 games you can return to!

But it's *not* readable when you zoom out. That's the entire point I made in #69! I wonder how far into a game of Civ7 one could get with the tooltips turned off, so you can't read what district / unit / buildig something is and have to tell purely from the graphics, before going insane with frustration.

I've never had a problem reading any cities in 6 zoomed out. Civ 7 looks similar. You really just need to understand the game's visual language. In Civ 6 it was about colors. In Civ 7 it will be about building shapes. It's not hard. "Going insane with frustration" is a pretty big exaggeration.

 

[Seek]

I absolutely don’t want a separate click to view anything.

A game centered entirely upon a map should be readable and playable on that screen. Separate menus and screens are tedious and unimmersive.

I don’t want to click anything to view my beautiful cities. I just want them there.

Just have separate zoom levels with different levels of abstraction - similar to how Humankind did it (but better) or like civ4’s globe view. Right now Civ 7 is losing its sense immersion for many because its scale is so far off.

 

[pokiehl]

Just because there are games I can play that do things one way doesn't invalidate criticism about a different game. I could just as well say: Why do you want buildings scattered across the map in Civ7? You can go back and play Civ6 if you want that. This line of thought is terrible fanboyism and the opposite of meaningful discussion about game design.

We're talking about the progress of the series and how that game design has evolved and improved. Civ 6 started this, but did a poor job of making the unstacked cities look impressive. Districts unadjacent to the city center did not generate filler buildings, and the colorful district buildings didn't mesh with the rest of the city architecture at all. In Civ 7, the concept of unstacked cities has now been expanded and iterated upon and looks way better. Gameplay buildings are clearly identifiable yet blend in with the city architecture. On top of that, the volume and scale make cities look actually impressive and noteworthy.

So looking at the map, I get a visual treat and I get critical gameplay info all at once. I don't want to go back to the looks of Civ 6 or earlier; Civ 7 looks absolutely awesome. But if you don't like the looks, at least there are other games to revisit.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I want to use two monitors to play 7. One zoomed in like in the previews and one zoomed out.

 

[pokiehl]

What you call "impressive and noteworthy" many others find "sprawling, cluttered, and out of scale". Just because you call it progress doesn't mean that others are compelled to like it.

It’s objectively progress: a progression of the system they started in Civ 6. Whether you like it or not is a different question.

Sure, it looks pretty. But I want to look at the map and see an empire, not an interconnected mass of housing that looks like a large city with a few natural parks thrown in the middle. Especially before the modern age.

There were sprawling cities and empires far before the modern era. And looking to see an empire is indeed the entire point I’m making: going back to 5 or 4 doesn’t feel like an empire. I see one tiny square or hex with some generic buildings surrounded by mines or farms. It feels like looking at a Settlers of Catan board, not looking at a massive empire.

Is this a deal breaker for me? Not at all. If it does end up as readable as you claim then it will at least be an improvement on Civ6. But, as others have suggested, a sliding scale of abstraction and detail in the art as you zoom in and out would be nice and have the same effect as having separate screens while saving you the enormous inconvenience of an extra click.

Again, breaking up these details only would take away from the full picture they’re trying to get at. I don’t think you get the “same effect” at all.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Anything is progress if it happens after something else though, that's such a silly hill to die on

 

[Gori the Grey]

I’m looking at a slide from the Exploration Era live stream. They’re showing Greece and Egypt in late Antiquity. There are approximately 70 land tiles in the picture. 11 of them are urban tiles in my Chalkis, Argos or Khemenu. One seventh of the earth’s surface is covered by cities by 900BC.

But that’s not the real problem. The real problem with city sprawl is that the distance from the NW-most quadrant of Chalkis to its wharf (a walk that one of my citizens could presumably make in an hour or so) is the same distance as from my city to the frontier city of a rival nation: 5 hexes.

I. HAVE. BEAUTIFUL. CITIES. No doubt.

But ALL I feel I have is one big megalopolis. Not an empire.