Crisises break the game !!

[Siptah]

Ive had the same crisis in all 3 games in both ancient and explo eras.(plague and religious) If i keep getting the same ones, i might as well turn them off.

With that said, i dont think they are that strong. If you are in a weak spot, they will hit a lot harder.

I'm not sure if they are completely random or whether the selection is at least partly based on your play style. Did you play three very different games?
I had all the antiquity crisis, and I always got the "worst": plague in a militaristic game with many units, barbarians in a peaceful game, unhappiness in a game where I had way too many settlements.

 

[Disgustipated]

Probably not a crisis problem, but a problem the game just doesn't really want you to go over your settlement cap. What was your cap? The happiness penalties are rough in this particular crisis. I admit I'm a bit dismayed by the penalties towards wide play.

 

[King of Prussia]

I'm not sure if they are completely random or whether the selection is at least partly based on your play style. Did you play three very different games?
I had all the antiquity crisis, and I always got the "worst": plague in a militaristic game with many units, barbarians in a peaceful game, unhappiness in a game where I had way too many settlements.

My first game wasnt very militaristic. My 2nd one was. My 3rd one was inbetween the 2. The latter 2 i did a better job at having a decent military. I am almost always at or over my settlement limit. The barbarian one is the one crisis i want to try, as it sounds like it could be a fun challenge.

 

[friendlysavage]

I love the crisis system, I just hope they make it more punishing because most are quite easy to handle

 

[moysturfurmer]

I feel like all of the crises need some element on the map to help them feel a little more tangible. Barbarian Invasion and plagues are good, but the happiness one seems so arbitrary. Even if it’s something like roaming civilian Rabble Rouser unit that moves from city to city. Just something on the map to make it feel like a part of the world. A universal decrease in yields and some flavor text is so dry.

 

[Siptah]

I feel like all of the crises need some element on the map to help them feel a little more tangible. Barbarian Invasion and plagues are good, but the happiness one seems so arbitrary. Even if it’s something like roaming civilian Rabble Rouser unit that moves from city to city. Just something on the map to make it feel like a part of the world. A universal decrease in yields and some flavor text is so dry.

If you mess up, the happiness crisis is also quite visible on the map. There are no units, but I saw cities and towns that looked outright horrible, with every district pillaged by raging mobs.

 

[Giskler]

The crises are too weak, kinda meaningless.

 

[The Economy]

I just rage quit this game because of wierd crisis system. Yes i know you can disable it but i wonder if other people found it annoying. I was doing well and i suddenly get a crisis where all my cities get unhappy this is just random and you can't fix it. I don't mind it are small things you have to fix but its just a massive blow wich causes you to lose why in gods name? . all my cities revolted why?

This is the entire point of the crises, my guy.

 

[Leyrann]

I think crisis severity should scale with difficulty. So people who aren't very good at the game get easier crises, while people who can take a punch get more severe penalties.

 

[SeBounart]

Crisis is a cool feature. It's like a final boss of the age and get you out the end game lethargy (age in the case of Civ VII) where you just push "next turn" button. It's not anymore "Ok I do my job here, let's wait until the game declares I'm the winner", now the game is more like "It's a nice civ you got there. It would be a shame... if a plague occurred now!". It reminds me the apocalypse mode in Civ 6 but in less destructive, more diverse and more fun.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Probably not a crisis problem, but a problem the game just doesn't really want you to go over your settlement cap.

I think the settlement cap is really well designed, it's not a hard limit but the more you go over it the more carefully you have to manage your Empire. It's a helpful guide for new players and the AI as well. Civ IV was brilliant but you could easily over extend yourself and end up in an unfixable mess, Civ V and VI the AI was too passive about expanding now they seem to generally expand as their cap grows.

 

[Leyrann]

Crisis is a cool feature. It's like a final boss of the age and get you out the end game lethargy (age in the case of Civ VII) where you just push "next turn" button. It's not anymore "Ok I do my job here, let's wait until the game declares I'm the winner", now the game is more like "It's a nice civ you got there. It would be a shame... if a plague occurred now!". It reminds me the apocalypse mode in Civ 6 but in less destructive, more diverse and more fun.

The issue is that they don't actually do this. In my current game the Exploration Era plague got to infect one city before the age was completed because that's just how fast it goes if you hit all the milestones like a series of dominos.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

In my current game the Exploration Era plague got to infect one city before the age was completed because that's just how fast it goes IF you hit all the milestones like a series of dominos.

I've bolded the key word there - we've had people bemoaning that crises are insignificant and that they've ruined their game and everything in between! Very early days yet and no doubt there will be fine tuning but I think it's promising - it shouldn't be a system that cripples you regardless of how well you have built your Empire,

 

[Leyrann]

I've bolded the key word there - we've had people bemoaning that crises are insignificant and that they've ruined their game and everything in between! Very early days yet and no doubt there will be fine tuning but I think it's promising - it shouldn't be a system that cripples you regardless of how well you have built your Empire,

If, in my second game (didn't finish my first), I hit all four legacy path golden ages within 100 turns on Immortal difficulty, something is not balanced.

And it shouldn't necessarily cripple you, but it should absolutely be a serious threat, because if building your empire well enough completely negates it as a threat then what's the point of it being in the game? Unlike historical civilizations, players do not forget the lessons learned between games. Once you've learned the lesson of how to build an empire 'well enough', you don't not build your empire well enough anymore. Which means crises stop being a threat at that point (if you're following the philosophy that they don't do anything against well-built empires). And that means you're back to the issue of 'late-game is boring'.

 

[UWHabs]

My first game wasnt very militaristic. My 2nd one was. My 3rd one was inbetween the 2. The latter 2 i did a better job at having a decent military. I am almost always at or over my settlement limit. The barbarian one is the one crisis i want to try, as it sounds like it could be a fun challenge.

I just went through the barbarian crisis. While it wasn't hard necessarily to deal with, at the start I didn't even realize anything was going on, but once it got to the middle of the crisis, one of the independent camps actually ended up wiping out nearly my whole army. I had to slot in enough cards that either I had a big combat penalty, lost a bunch of happiness, or started to run a bit thin on gold. I don't think I was ever truly in danger, and I could still rush to get that last wonder in, and that last settler out, with like a turn to spare. If the age wasn't ending, I'd probably have to switch my cities to military production to deal with it.

All in all, I think it was a little challenge, something you need to care about, and certainly it can make a difference as you're trying to get those last points. If the camp started a little earlier, or if there was another camp that was hitting me from another side, I definitely wouldn't have gotten those last couple items out and would have cost me a couple legacy points at least.

 

[Krikkit1]

They do appear imbalanced (almost all of the very hard comments has been the loyalty one)
And perhaps finishing a legacy During the crisis only advances the age 1/2 as much (5% instead of 10%)

 

[pietro1990]

I was kind of blindsided by the happiness crisis. I hadn't watched any playthroughs so no idea it was coming. I had overextended a bit city wise, one or two settlements over the cap before the crisis, so it was pretty bad. Lots of stuff pillaged every turn. Two AIs had declared on me, and the other was also getting pillaged, so no happiness resources to share. Just had to wait until I had lost enough cities to get under the cap. I think I'm still in OK shape for the next age but we'll see. It did feel kind of arbitrary; no particular reason to have a crisis from an immersion standpoint. Everything was going fine.

Thats my point it seems to powerfull this crisis and there is nothing to do against it just seeing all you're cities revolt. it can even happen if you are doing well and there is nothing hapenning. It is just anoying and wierd. They should give the player some extra bonusses to sovle the crisis like you can buy hapiness buildings cheaper and also in towns for example..

 

[Leyrann]

They do appear imbalanced (almost all of the very hard comments has been the loyalty one)
And perhaps finishing a legacy During the crisis only advances the age 1/2 as much (5% instead of 10%)

I had the loyalty one in my current game and the only reason why I even had some issues (army commanders were enough to stop secession, but a bunch of riots did happen) was because I got greedy and went three settlements over my cap.

Thats my point it seems to powerfull this crisis and there is nothing to do against it just seeing all you're cities revolt. it can even happen if you are doing well and there is nothing hapenning. It is just anoying and wierd. They should give the player some extra bonusses to sovle the crisis like you can buy hapiness buildings cheaper and also in towns for example..

The happiness crisis literally unlocks buying Villas in towns already.

Also, I'd argue that the policy slots mechanic actually makes it too easy. If it gives me the option between a happiness penalty in towns or in cities, I just check my resource overview and select whichever category has more leeway - in my case cities. And if I can't handle another happiness penalty card, I'll just slot in the -1 influence per settlement card. Yeah sure I'm losing 9 influence per turn compared to before but it's not that big of a deal. Worst case I'll have to accept a few proposals that I'd have liked to support instead (except I was playing Himiko so I could support them for free, but obviously that's a leader-specific thing). Influence loses tremendously in value near the end of the Age anyway. Independent Powers are taken, you're not going to meet anyone new, and in fact the lines of who likes and dislikes each other tend to be pretty clearly defined, and you're about to get a reset on most stuff (relationships, ongoing endeavours, wars, etc) no matter what.

 

[Taefin]

I’ve gotten the antiquity happiness crisis both times.

I think it’s incorrect to say someone is playing wrong if the crisis hurts. One of VII’s strengths with the age resets is that you can make different sacrifices, e.g., building military and expanding before creating a strong enough economy to completely trivialize happiness, or getting over-extended and facing the happiness consequences in one age, to start the next age with more settlements.

Edit: typo

 

[sav]

Can someone point me to where the unhappiness is coming from in the crises? I have one now, but the crisis card I chose should have upped all the happiness in every city without my religion - which is all of them except one. BUT... most of my cities now have negative happiness, and I don't know why. Is there somewhere to find this info? It just says 'minus deductions' - what deductions?!