If it's not too late, I'd like to chime in a little, just add my little 2 cents.
I also, like many others here, feel strongly that the cohesive DLC history we've had with CIV has been very mostly positive, be it R&F and GS for 6 or those for the previous version that, in my mind, greatly enhanced the experience.
Have they been all perfect ? No of course not. But I think that they've all been positive.
NFP, on the other hand, was in my mind an experiment on your part. Partly because of the Covid situation, partly (and I may be wrong here) for trying out a completely different development process from what had been used before, that fits better with the working from home paradigm.
While I'm not AS negative as most people here on the results of that experiment, I also feel that this is NOT what I'm hoping the future holds for the CIV Franchise. And the reasons is exactly as described by most other contributors here:
1) It's not cohesive with the global game at all. They're mostly great to interesting ideas that could've added depth to the game, but in the end they mainly wind up uninteresting because they're either broken or the player gets a LOT better advantage than the AI can.
2) I feel the cycle was too fast for the dev Team, or at least the QA in the dev team. Being from the IT world, I understand how the new dev processes all promise magical automated testing, but the bugs we've seen in NFP mostly seem related to global breaking of ANOTHER system in the game, not the actual system put in place.
As a result, and I'm talking FOR ME only here, I wind up using tech/civic shuffles all the time (this should have been in the original game btw, as a simple yes/no box option at game creation), Secret societies most of the time because I just love owls and Sanguine pact... Still, even here, 50% that I DON'T use....
As for the rest, Heroes and Barbarian clans were fun for a while but I turned them off now, Dramatic ages and Apocalypse I tried once and never returned. Zombies I never even tried it, but hey, that's just me... Monopolies and Corporations was a fantastic idea, unfortunately badly implemented and unuesable because of
a never fixed bug... Still can't get over than one, honestly !
In the end, I'm happy about one and a half of the 8 modes offered, plus ALL the new civs (this must be noted... new interesting civs are important). AND the game wound up pretty bugged after NFP, so I feel it's quite normal that we all feel VERY concerned about the possibility of this pattern repeating itself for CIV 7. I can't think of any way that analysis of the results from NFP could be construed as positive; The game wound up in bad shape because of this, and the only game saver is that we CAN turn them off. I know money speaks, but you guys must also be wary of the fact that many people bought NFP but would NOT buy it again...
My personal opinion is that the CIV franchise magic lies on two pillars: 1) A wide offering of Civs and Leaders that have abilities, strengths and weaknesses that greatly differentiate them from one another and 2) A collection of systems/features that also greatly helps replay value; Distinct maps, tiles features, resources, districts etc...
I sincerely hope that you guys will not stray too far from those two ingredients.
Finally, thanks for being on the lookout for our opinions. Very appreciated. Hope we hear from you soon
I'd say I have a fairly similar opinion. I do think the optional game mode setup of NFP worked because the features were mostly well beyond the scope of a regular civ game. Although I would probably argue that were the modes fully balanced and bug-free, Barbarian Clans and Monopolies should be 100% defaulted on in the same way that governors and loyalty are. Tech shuffle and Dramatic ages are very good "optional game modes" in the same mold as stuff like No Goody Huts, No Barbarians, etc... - sometimes it can be good to change it up and play that way, but I understand not wanting to play with them. The other modes tend towards the fantasy, and are more like playing a scenario on a regular civ map.
But yes, the problems to me were mostly:
-the cycle was too fast. Civ games are long, so personally I'd often barely get in a handful of games with the mode before the next ones were released.
-the cycle seemed rushed. Development is hard, I know. But most of the game modes had some serious balance issues or bugs on launch, and due to the way it worked, often didn't get corrected until 3-4 patch cycles later.
-the modes did not mesh. I think that's the nature of so many optional setups, they just end up with a very limited scope. It's like trying to load on a bunch of mods - the more you have, the more chance they step on each other and cause deeper issues. That just ended up causing the modes to feel too disconnected. There are no Secret Society policy cards. There's no Monopolies+Corps interaction with trade routes.
Especially as someone who basically buys all the expansions anyways, I'd rather one coherent full expansion rather than a set of disjointed smaller DLC, especially since NFP basically came in at the same price as a regular expansion pack without necessarily having more content than you would find in an expansion pack. But if the issues could be solved - ie. enough time for the DLC items to be properly balanced, and a more deep and thorough integration with the rest of the game components, then at that level it doesn't matter quite as much if the updates come all at once, or spaced out over time. The good part of the NFP was that each update, you could focus on the new feature, rather than having to learn a bunch of new stuff coming at once in an expansion.
![Andrew Johnson [FXS]](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/326/326908.jpg?1589646534){kind=avatar}
) doing any purchases 'til then -- and can light heartedly skip, if appropriate.
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