Civilization VII - Official Gameplay Showcase Discussion (8/20)

[Thenewwwguy]

@CivLuvah you covered so much of what I was thinking with this post in a way that's a lot more organized than I've been able to express it, lol. I have a couple of thoughts, however.

I have no problems with cultural, scientific, or philosophical personalities as leaders. The Philippines, in real life, has a novelist as its national hero. Who's to say Lao Tzu can't lead China?

I think the key difference here is Jose Rizal had a political role in the Philippines' independence. Lao Tzu defined Taoism as a guiding philosophy for thousands of years of Chinese history, but I don't think it makes sense to use him as the leader representing China because your civ leader should've actually *led* the country, in my mind. Even the leaders in the modern civ games who aren't explicit political leaders had political weight, hence why they make sense

However, despite these "improvements" to the mechanic, I fear players would still feel alienated by what they're playing as. I'm not going to say the words "break immersion", because having America exist in 4000BC in previous games is already immersion-breaking in itself. Furthermore, as @Thenewwwguy pointed out (which I did not consider in my very first thoughts), the implications of this restrictive version of the Humankind succession mechanic for pre-colonial and indigenous societies is... Ironically, Humankind was better in that aspect, in my opinion.

Just to add on, the guided paths are equally as problematic in cases whcih don't have anything to do with colonialism because a lot of civs striaght up don't have direct successor civs. So Aksum and Egypt directly leading to Songhai is ridiculous, and to go from Songhai to Buganda is jsut as bad, if not worse.

But yes, this is probalby my biggest complaint with this new system. I don't want to be forced to "replace" my indigenous civ with its settler-colonial successor state. I'm not a huge fan of the rhetoric used in the reveal of this mechanic either...The genocide of the Aztecs, or the Maori, or the Cherokee was not them "failing to adapt" to changing times. It was them being genocided.

We don't know what the victory conditions will be yet, nor how they'll be tied to the new civ-changing system.

This is really key for me because the implication of the new system is apparently that your gameplay is fully reset in between eras, down to the buildings and districts...which means your progress in the ancient and exploration eras is all for naught. Very interested to see what this will mean for win conditions since a good ancient or classical playthrough can often snowball all the way to a win pretty easily as things stand

I really like the idea that separate settlements might form independent from your civilization. That's what I wanted/expected from Civ6 with their loyalty mechanic. What they'll turn into, though, we have to see.

Seems like some of the Ancient "independent peoples" like the Magyars and Slavs are direct predecessors to civs in their own right. I wonder if unused civs in a game might show up as independent peoples, or we'll have AI-only civs which can pop up from Independent Peoples, since Hungary and Poland/Russia could directly spawn from those.

 

[CivLuvah]

One thing bugs me is we had leader and Civ mix-and-match in Civ IV but it's treated like this is first time.

Yeah, but that was an option for when you have a custom game, not something you have when you click "Let's Play".

 

[Fletchers_Requiem]

Honestly I'm kind of excited by all these new mechanics, and I think it'll be interesting to see what directions Civ7'll go even IF they don't work out in the end. I always tend to struggle with the midgame slog so, as a slightly more casual player than most, I'm certainly looking forward to seeing if this ends up helping me feel more engaged during a playthrough rather than trying to rush between the exciting parts and hoping I don't lose interest midway through.

 

[CivLuvah]

My admittedly uninformed guess is that when you're in the Age of Antiquity, you'll meet Leaders from Antiquity-exclusive Civs. Then, when you go into the Age of Exploration, the Leaders you've met will stick around but evolve into new Age-exclusive Civs based on some sort of AI strategy or agenda, but when the map expands, you'll meet Age of Exploration-exclusive civs with their appropriate leaders specific to that age. And again with the shift into the Modern Age.

So, for an example, you're in Antiquity, and you meet Ashoka and Julius Caesar as Maurya and Rome, respectively. When you hit the Age of Exploration, Ashoka is now leading the Mughals, while Caesar is running the Ottomans, but with the expanded map you meet England as led by Elizabeth I and Siam as led by Borommatrailokkanat or what have you. Then, in the Modern Age, Ashoka is leading India, Caesar is leading Turkey, Elizabeth I is leading the UK, and Borommatrailokkanat is leading Thailand, but you meet Eva Perón leading Argentina and Bismarck leading Germany.

Again, I could be wrong, but that's just my guess, and what I think would be the coolest and most immersive way to do this.

That is rather cool, reminds me a lot of the Rhye's and Fall of Civilization mod for Civ4, except less dynamic.

Maybe.

I’ve only been following Civ fans online since the Civ 5 came out and with every entry it’s a variation of:

“Why can’t this be more like Civ (x)?? Going the wrong direction, I’m out. I’ll just stick with Civ 4”

“Why can’t this be more like Civ (x)?? Going the wrong direction, I’m out. I’ll just stick with Civ 5”

“Why can’t this be more like Civ (x)?? Going the wrong direction, I’m out. I’ll just stick with Civ 6”

Thus the cycle continues. Life... balance... change... learning... I was part of that cycle... now I know better.

 

[Potworny]

I think I could like, maybe even love everything I've seen today if it didn't remind me of Humankind this much (and if Humankind didn't exist?). Even the smaller rivers being part of the tiles are similar, and the bigger ones are kind of the only thing that differentiates this game from Humankind. I was eagerly waiting to see something big I didn't see in Humankind

 

[Core Imposter]

Maybe.

I’ve only been following Civ fans online since the Civ 5 came out and with every entry it’s a variation of:

“Why can’t this be more like Civ (x)?? Going the wrong direction, I’m out. I’ll just stick with Civ 4”

“Why can’t this be more like Civ (x)?? Going the wrong direction, I’m out. I’ll just stick with Civ 5”

“Why can’t this be more like Civ (x)?? Going the wrong direction, I’m out. I’ll just stick with Civ 6”

Meanwhile back in Civ IV I have now played 750 turns adjacent to Monty and he has still not declared war on me. I have marched to the east and crossed two oceans, vassalized 3 civs, and created 2 colonies without attacking anyone that didn't attack me first and now border Monty on his east and on his west. What will you do now Monty? Are you threatening me with that 50-unit stack?

But oops, in the Northern hemisphere Hatty is at least 5 techs ahead of me and has built at least 12 wonders to my two. That might be a problem.

Can Civ 7 give me gameplay like this? Can it give me a six continent 200 city, 18 civ map with maybe a thousand units running around and not a single glitch? Civ 7 looks pretty. I am sure most people would be horrified that I have two dozen workers 750 turns in and they all still have stuff to do. Civ 7 sounds great.

When I get tired of Civ IV I'll maybe ... nah. Gone in the wrong direction.

 

[Drakarska]

I find it astounding that this lack of constructive criticism from the rest of the internet has seeped into the forums. Like, I've seen loud criticism of Civ6 here when it was announced, but not in the doom-and-gloom way people are talking about it now.

I view it more as an individuals personal perspective regarding the current topic, rather than a blanket statement of doom and gloom. Additionally, quite a few comments in this thread had salient points, and constructive criticisms.
My personal perspective is this. At the start of the series, Civ was a 4x game. Not a history simulator, not a card game, not a city builder. It was a 4x game.
When Civ V showed up, players got heavily penalized for eXpanding ( one of the tenets of 4x). Suddenly, the only viable strategy was going tall, at least until updates, patches, etc started happening. Even after, trying to expand your empire beyond 4-5 cities was pointless. Shout out to the VIP Techno-Wizards for their serious modding skills.
Civ VI introduced districts and cards ( seriously, why do I need cards in a 4x game?). Now I'm playing a 4x game who's primary focus is city building ( districts), and I'm still getting penalized if I expand, so one of the X's in my 4x game no longer applies. I didn't really enjoy VI that much, and dropped it.
Now we get a preview of VII, and peeps are giving their opinions based on their own perspective, and interpretations of a video. If people want to doom and gloom or say NAY! Then I'm ok with that. If they want to drool over a shiny new toy? Then I'm ok with that as well.
My personal perspective over this is that this iteration is going to be history simulator ala Humankind or Ara. Not an actual 4x game. If that's the case, then I'll take a pass and wait a year or so before I bother to investigate if Civ VII will be worth spending the money on. There's quite a few 4x games on my wish list that I can choose from, and I'm old enough not to worry about FOMO.

 

[Harkodos]

Don’t the leaders stay the same though?

My understanding is that the "new civ" is actually 3-parts entity.
1. The leader which stays the same but he/she is developed through the game. There were screens showing leader abilities in a form of a tree with selectable nodes (like unit promo tree).
2. Some "civ-core" which also is developed through ages (?) There are screens showing abilities of civs as sceintific, militaristic, etc.
3. Actual civ like Mongolia, Egypt, etc.
Also, those civs from p.3 are somehow dependant and probably will be historically linked.

Ah, well I was unaware of that. I guess I got mixed up with how things were presented.

Also, someone mentioned that there won't be Workers/Builders? That's...interesting. Certainly different.

 

[Drakarska]

Meanwhile back in Civ IV I have now played 750 turns adjacent to Monty and he has still not declared war on me. I have marched to the east and crossed two oceans, vassalized 3 civs, and created 2 colonies without attacking anyone that didn't attack me first and now border Monty on his east and on his west. What will you do now Monty? Are you threatening me with that 50-unit stack?

But oops, in the Northern hemisphere Hatty is at least 5 techs ahead of me and has built at least 12 wonders to my two. That might be a problem.

Can Civ 7 give me gameplay like this? Can it give me a six continent 200 city, 18 civ map with maybe a thousand units running around and not a single glitch? Civ 7 looks pretty. I am sure most people would be horrified that I have two dozen workers 750 turns in and they all still have stuff to do. Civ 7 sounds great.

When I get tired of Civ IV I'll maybe ... nah. Gone in the wrong direction.

Right? lol, IV is still such a saucy wench, even after all this time.

 

[Moriarte]

Promising!

I am puzzled by the idea of swapping civs like gloves during the dawn of the new Age. Sounds complex. Specifically in the context of 7-8 players ... and each one swapping his civ for another one a couple of times during the game? semi-randomly? That's one hell of a kaleidoscope! And a whole new dimension of information one needs to internalise on the fly, including specific bonuses of new civs overlayed onto old resources. This civver is unconvinced. I need to see it to believe it!!!

 

[IgorS]

Maybe.

I’ve only been following Civ fans online since the Civ 5 came out and with every entry it’s a variation of:

“Why can’t this be more like Civ (x)?? Going the wrong direction, I’m out. I’ll just stick with Civ 4”

“Why can’t this be more like Civ (x)?? Going the wrong direction, I’m out. I’ll just stick with Civ 5”

“Why can’t this be more like Civ (x)?? Going the wrong direction, I’m out. I’ll just stick with Civ 6”

True, but there is a HUGE difference this time around, because the new game has taken away a very basic concept of Civilization, something that makes Civilization stop being Civilization. This is something previous games did not do, they all remained true to the main concept of the game.

 

[acluewithout]

Twitter announcement

https://twitter.com/x/status/1819040932282687883

Note: Thread is now unlocked.

Stream goes live at:

• 1:30PM PT (Pacific)
• 4:30PM ET (Eastern)
• 9:30PM GMT (UK)
• 10:30PM CEST (Central European)
• Additional times can be found HERE.

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Sid Meier's Civilization VII - Official Gameplay Showcase

Spiele-Veranstaltung von Sid Meier’s Civilization und Firaxis Games am Dienstag, August 20 2024. 2.009 Personen sind interessiert und 336 nehmen teil. 6 Beiträge in der Diskussion.

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Twitter Stream: TBD

OMG!

We’re back guys! We’re back!

Is it bad the thing I’m most excited about is CivFantatics chat?

Some of my favourite people have been here since we wrapped up C6. Hoping some of my other best people make it back here for Civ 7.

I loved Civ 6, which to me was the most itself that Civ had ever been - if really was the most Civ-y Civ that ever Cived.

My hope for Civ 7 is that it would just keep running with Civ 6’s design. And maybe roll over a bit more of Civ 5’s ideas and maybe go back to earlier Civ’s retro graphics.

Well, pretty clear from the trailer etc that Civ 7 is Civ 6 2.0 (in a good way), including all the District related fun. No idea if more Civ 5 will make its way into the game. And clearly a no on more retro art (but that was always a stretch). But, yeah, looks good.

Three things.

One. I’m in no hurry to buy / play. I might pre-order, because I’ll end up buying anyway, but there’s no rush. If Civ 7 is more Civ 6, then I’m OK sticking with the earlier game for a while longer. And anyway, I’m trying to find more time for the earlier versions esp C5 and C4. I’ll get to C7 when I’m ready.

Two. Changing leaders. Distinct Eras. I’ve put my views here: link. TLDR, looks fine.

Three. As in point 3, but also ‘3 Eras’? Ugh. I mean, FXS can only deliver so much game on day 1. So, stuff you want in the game is going to be missing until you get expansions. Meaning the wait for a new Civ ends up extending way past the launch of a new version, and well into ‘when do we get the world congress? When will they being back disasters? When is the next expansion?’ territory. It is what it is. But, yeah, interesting that the way they’ve doing it this time is holding back entire ‘Eras’. I’m fine with that, but suspect people will be really waiting on adding in one or two more Eras - 3 feels much too few.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I think I could like, maybe even love everything I've seen today if it didn't remind me of Humankind this much (and if Humankind didn't exist?). Even the smaller rivers being part of the tiles are similar, and the bigger ones are kind of the only thing that differentiates this game from Humankind. I was eagerly waiting to see something big I didn't see in Humankind

ppl liked this idea before humankind launched too, fwiw, myself included. everyone thought it was very innovative and unique. The game proved it isn’t something that would really work in the way that civ and its clones want. it’s not like humankind uniquely implemented it badly (though that’s true), but the very idea that you can’t play as one civ for the entire game is just not in the civ spirit, in my opinion, since you’re supposed to be building your own history, not forced to follow the real world’s

 

[robal1991]

Here it seems that there are some elevation level barriers and the unit cannot go left.


And some screens from boesthius gameplay:
Victory conditions

Crisis

Combat preview

 

[KayAU]

My initial thought on the things I picked up from the trailer:

Narrator
Gwendoline Christie, not a bad choice at all. I approve.

Visuals
The visual style reminds me most of Civ 6, but more high fidelty. Not bad. The bare map looks a bit sparse to me, but the building visuals are absolutely lovely.

Changing civs
This was a big surprise for me, I was not expecting them to take the Humankind route. I did like this feature of Humankind though, although it was far from perfectly implemented. Part of the problem with it was that with such anonymous leaders, it felt quite schizophrenic when both you and your neighbors suddenly "became" someone else. I think Civ 7 will manage this better though, with its much more fleshed out and recognizable leaders, fewer changes, and hopefully better mechanics.

Decoupling leaders from Civs
Good, this is good. It was necessary for the civ change mechanics, but even without that, I would always be happy for the opportuny of playing as Pocatello of the Sumerians.

Eras
It remains to see what this means in practice, but the idea is promising, and I noticed how they pointed out that what you do in the different eras could change. This could help address one of the main problems with most 4X games of this type, and especially Civ 6: those things which were impactful and fun in the early game. tends to become very tedious in the mid to late game. In Civ 5, this was less painful due to usually having fewer cities, better production queues, and ideology coming along to give you something new to do in the late game. If they use the era system to phase out the micro management and "zoom out" as the game progresses, it could be a very good thing.

No more builders/workers
So many games do this now, so no big surprise here. I think it is a good change. It will hopefully reduce micromanagement.

Navigable rivers
This is a good change.

Commanders/armies
Well...I am happy with this in general, although it was not the implementation I expected. It seems you use commanders to "pack up" a group of units, but you then unpack them again for combat, like some kind of troop transport? It's certainly novel, but I'll reserve judgement until I know more.

Leader skill trees
I love it. A very welcome addition. Beyond Earth had a version of this too.

Eurekas are gone
Good. The idea was cool, but the way it was implemented in Civ 6, it ended up as a series of fetch quests and tedious busywork to swap techs in and out.

From another video I picked up about the new "influence" currency. I think this has a lot of potential.


Overall, I am intrigued, but await more information before I decide to buy. There's a lot that's interesting and promising here, but it remains to see how it is all comes together. I hope they go for more interaction between and refinement of systems, rather than just a vast amount of content this time around.

Right now though, Ara: History Untold is the next big thing for me, and it's due out soon.

 

[Uberfrog]

And some screens from boesthius gameplay:
Victory conditions
View attachment 700119

Interesting! This explains what they mean by being able to play a game within just one era. I have actually wanted different/evolving victory conditions at different stages of the game for some time. So I actually approve of this.

 

[Binkov]

Does anyone know what happens with a city, its buildings and military units when a new age starts?
For example, do some of the old buildings simply disappear? Or do new, additional slots appear in urban districts, allowing the player to gradually add new buildings alongside existing ones?

What about the units? Will my old units disappear? Will some of them disappear? If so, what decides which units disappear? Does one get compensated for units that disappear in some way?
Or do all/most of the units stay where they are? Basically, if I was a military powerhouse at the end of one era, will I start the next era as a military powerhouse?

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Funny to see how the community has gone from give us more micromanagement to I'm glad they got rid of workers, so we don't have to micromanage so much anymore. I've always played Civ because it was heavy into micromanagement so for me, I'll miss workers or builders. Why even play Civ if you don't want to micromanage???

 

[Drakarska]

Yeah, I'm still wondering how they're going to implement roads and rails.
I don't even have a WAG. Maybe something in the plot improvement screen when you get the available tech?
If this is leaning towards a historical simulator, you'd figure roads and rails would be historically significant.... Maybe? Possibly?

 

[Core Imposter]

Civ 7 is undeniably pretty.