Discussion On Why Civ 7 Doesn't Feel Like A "Civ" Game

[Haig]

I guess this is a matter of taste, but for me who is more of a sandbox and storyteller -type Civ player, it feels harder to attach to the empires this time.

One reason is the civswitching and other is how game sprays you with so many bonuses it's hard of me to keep track of them all.

If someone writes that Sumeria is their fave Civ 6 civ, I can instantly think of donkey chariots, ziggurats and clearing of barbarian camps.

I guess it never was a problem to me that America had it's unique unit in late eras or you had to wait for renaissance to get winged hussars.

Going back playing Civ 6 I also feel that some things like builders were not really a problem. Choosing what do do with the builders and rescuing the poor dudes from barbarian camps are actually good "mini quests" inside the game.

 

[Siptah]

One reason is the civswitching and other is how game sprays you with so many bonuses it's hard of me to keep track of them all.

If someone writes that Sumeria is their fave Civ 6 civ, I can instantly think of donkey chariots, ziggurats and clearing of barbarian camps.

I think this a matter of getting used to besides the objective more information to keep in mind. There are some civs that I have pretty memorized after playing them twice, from bonuses to traditions to buildings to units. E.g., Rome, Spain, Greece, Mayans, or Abbasids. Others are more difficult because their set isn't as 'round' imho (Normans) or one bonus steals the show (Songhai). It think a better overview over bonuses would still help a lot and is absolutely necessary. Not just when choosing the new civ, but also when clicking on my leader in-game. Show me the full picture of what I currently have going, and show me the options that I can unlock in the civic tree or via diplomacy as potential bonuses there.

Going back playing Civ 6 I also feel that some things like builders were not really a problem. Choosing what do do with the builders and rescuing the poor dudes from barbarian camps are actually good "mini quests" inside the game.

This is subjective of course, but I hated builders Give me workers that I can automate after the early game or give me civ 7's way of handling improvements. Keeping builders around to repair pillaged tiles was ***. Barbarian camps on the other hand I miss a bit. The hostile IPs are either super aggressive (esp. near coast when they build ships) or rather lame. Barbarians in civ 7 proved a nice middle ground there. Also the fact that new camps spawned in unoccupied territory. I wish the IP in civ 7 would expand if no one attacks them or turns them into city states.

 

[Xur]

I guess this is a matter of taste, but for me who is more of a sandbox and storyteller -type Civ player, it feels harder to attach to the empires this time.

One reason is the civswitching and other is how game sprays you with so many bonuses it's hard of me to keep track of them all.

If someone writes that Sumeria is their fave Civ 6 civ, I can instantly think of donkey chariots, ziggurats and clearing of barbarian camps.

I guess it never was a problem to me that America had it's unique unit in late eras or you had to wait for renaissance to get winged hussars.

Going back playing Civ 6 I also feel that some things like builders were not really a problem. Choosing what do do with the builders and rescuing the poor dudes from barbarian camps are actually good "mini quests" inside the game.

I agree, but I would prefer the workers instead of builders. The fact that a worker has to stay put for several turns, makes for better gameplay - defense of the unit, possible attack against the unit. It was easier to predict were the worker would be next turn - the builder was chaos. The instant build nature of the builder never made sense to me in a turnbased game. Builders were also more annoying to micromanage because you have to build more constantly. I'd rather have an immortal worker, like my immortal warrior I never upgraded or my immortal leader.

 

[queenpea]

Barbarian camps on the other hand I miss a bit. The hostile IPs are either super aggressive (esp. near coast when they build ships) or rather lame. Barbarians in civ 7 proved a nice middle ground there. Also the fact that new camps spawned in unoccupied territory. I wish the IP in civ 7 would expand if no one attacks them or turns them into city states.

I miss the uniqueness of city-state bonuses in Civ VI. I find collecting city-states in VII to be repetitive and dull. Ultimately, you're just going for a high number of them to buff specialists or whatever little policy card/tradition you have in your deck.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I agree, but I would prefer the workers instead of builders. The fact that a worker has to stay put for several turns, makes for better gameplay - defense of the unit, possible attack against the unit. It was easier to predict were the worker would be next turn - the builder was chaos. The instant build nature of the builder never made sense to me in a turnbased game. Builders were also more annoying to micromanage because you have to build more constantly. I'd rather have an immortal worker, like my immortal warrior I never upgraded or my immortal leader.

I suspect I'm in the minority, but moving workers around is probably one of my favorite parts of Civ V, midgame, at least. Early game, it feels as though there's an obvious best thing for them to do. Late game there isn't much for them to do. But midgame, I think they make for those "interesting decisions" that are supposed to be at the heart of a Civ game: what's the relative value of a road to a size four city to which I might need to move troops vs three more farms in my second city?

 

[McSpank01]

I suspect I'm in the minority, but moving workers around is probably one of my favorite parts of Civ V, midgame, at least. Early game, it feels as though there's an obvious best thing for them to do. Late game there isn't much for them to do. But midgame, I think they make for those "interesting decisions" that are supposed to be at the heart of a Civ game: what's the relative value of a road to a size four city to which I might need to move troops vs three more farms in my second city?

I don't think you are in the minority. I know PotatoMcWhiskey always described that little 'minigame' of deciding what to do with your workers as quite fun early on.

It does kind of get to the heart of the problem with these games though, the early game is fun because the world is open and every decision you make seems to make a difference, and later on, each decision just becomes less important, to the point where do you don't think about it at all. A late game farm vs mine decision makes literally no difference to whether you win or lose, but could hugely impact the outcome in the early game.

I think part of the issue with Civ games is that you still play the same 'minigames' late on, but they are not so relevant. Civ 6 and others recognised that by creating new minigames for you to be playing, maybe that was hunting artifacts or making tourism. I guess Civ 7 does try and mix it up a bit in the late game, but honestly I think it could have gone a lot further with it, maybe each age plays dramatically differently to the last, which I don't think is really all that true right now.

 

[UWHabs]

Something about the specificity of Civ7 victory conditions make them feel like Quests. Probably because old victory conditions used to be a lot more open-ended, whereas the new conditions feel more narrow.

I think the culture victory is a good example. You used to have to get every nation on earth to be "Dominated" under your Influence (Civ5), but you could go about that in like a dozen different ways. For example, ridiculously high tourism, OR you could eliminate the opponents who are standing in your way culturally, OR you could station tons of Diplomats, open borders and trade routes.

Now, the victories have to be smaller / narrower scope just due to the innate design of the game. The Civ7 culture victory is very specific and comparatively very boring, right?

I miss the civ 6 culture victory, yes, especially because it was so open-ended, with different paths to it. And it's annoying in that the worst victory in 6 (diplomacy) seems to be more in line with the new victories in how they are setup.

That all said, I know that the culture victory in 6 was confusing to many people. I "knew" how it was calculated, and basically it still ended up being a magical counter that went up slightly randomly. So I do appreciate a level of simplicity with it that we didn't have before. But yeah, I miss having multiple ways to attack it. And I do definitely think that the Modern victory conditions suffer by not being overly synchronized with the earlier eras. Even just something like letting my explorers dig at ancient era wonder sites and sites which housed relics in the exploration era, would better tie the game together. Let my cities with museums do their own digging on sites in their territory, so I don't have quite as much moving back and forth. But yeah, more basically to make it feel like me having developed this great and glowing empire for the whole game is the reason why I can complete the culture path, not just that I can run around the map faster than someone else.

 

[Xur]

I don't think you are in the minority. I know PotatoMcWhiskey always described that little 'minigame' of deciding what to do with your workers as quite fun early on.

It does kind of get to the heart of the problem with these games though, the early game is fun because the world is open and every decision you make seems to make a difference, and later on, each decision just becomes less important, to the point where do you don't think about it at all. A late game farm vs mine decision makes literally no difference to whether you win or lose, but could hugely impact the outcome in the early game.

I think part of the issue with Civ games is that you still play the same 'minigames' late on, but they are not so relevant. Civ 6 and others recognised that by creating new minigames for you to be playing, maybe that was hunting artifacts or making tourism. I guess Civ 7 does try and mix it up a bit in the late game, but honestly I think it could have gone a lot further with it, maybe each age plays dramatically differently to the last, which I don't think is really all that true right now.

That’s why you could automate workers, when it got too tedious. Workers were perfect.

 

[Skojardu]

I suspect I'm in the minority, but moving workers around is probably one of my favorite parts of Civ V, midgame, at least. Early game, it feels as though there's an obvious best thing for them to do. Late game there isn't much for them to do. But midgame, I think they make for those "interesting decisions" that are supposed to be at the heart of a Civ game: what's the relative value of a road to a size four city to which I might need to move troops vs three more farms in my second city?

In Civ 4 FFH, the Doviello can pay to upgrade their workers into soldiers. Possibly workers could also switch into engineering specialists. (Or you could pay to turn them into Great People - Masons - )

 

[uppi]

I think part of the issue with Civ games is that you still play the same 'minigames' late on, but they are not so relevant. Civ 6 and others recognised that by creating new minigames for you to be playing, maybe that was hunting artifacts or making tourism. I guess Civ 7 does try and mix it up a bit in the late game, but honestly I think it could have gone a lot further with it, maybe each age plays dramatically differently to the last, which I don't think is really all that true right now.

And one of the problems of Civ 6 was, that it never took those old minigames away, so you were still playing them (or should have been playing them when trying to play optimally) when they were no longer really relevant.

I agree that Civ 7 could have gone much further, but given the reaction to the changes between the ages it does, maybe that would have been not such a good idea. Maybe late game tedium is what makes a game feel like Civ?

 

[CliffCo]

They apparently introduced the eras at least in part to encourage players to finish the whole game, but personally unless i was losing so bad early game that there was no way to win i always finished all my games as i wanted my gameplay recorded in the hall of fame, which is something that should have been included in 7.

 

[Xur]

And one of the problems of Civ 6 was, that it never took those old minigames away, so you were still playing them (or should have been playing them when trying to play optimally) when they were no longer really relevant.

I agree that Civ 7 could have gone much further, but given the reaction to the changes between the ages it does, maybe that would have been not such a good idea. Maybe late game tedium is what makes a game feel like Civ?

Firaxis removed the posibility to automate things - that's why late game got even more tedious. Something that is interesting early game, can be tedious late game - like workers and even some small cities. In previous civ games you could automate entire cities and workers. It's an option to help the player, and not a sign of tedious gameplay in itself. Fast forward to civ7 and Ed Beach had problems with even automating something as simple as a scout.

Firaxis can identify the problem, but instead of keeping the fun and adding automation, they remove entire systems and replace it with shallow and instant gratification systems. It's like we got a doctor that can see the wound on a leg, but instead of patching up the leg, they just cut it off.

 

[McSpank01]

I think in some ways you still end up playing the same mini games in Civ 7, all the way through, the games doesn't feel dramatically different throughout the ages, which I think Firaxis were hoping to achieve. So in exploration I need to go and explore distant lands, well maybe, and I can send missionaries now for religion (though that is really basic). Really though the games doesn't 'feel' very different. Now I need to do all this overbuilding and do all the basic minigames of setting up my settlements again.. well that is just boring isn't it? All the same research and diplomacy feels basically the same, time just resets a bit and you start again.

 

[Yzman]

I hated workers. Worst part of game for me.

That’s why you could automate workers, when it got too tedious. Workers were perfect.

 

[CliffCo]

Firaxis removed the posibility to automate things - that's why late game got even more tedious. Something that is interesting early game, can be tedious late game - like workers and even some small cities. In previous civ games you could automate entire cities and workers. It's an option to help the player, and not a sign of tedious gameplay in itself. Fast forward to civ7 and Ed Beach had problems with even automating something as simple as a scout.

Firaxis can identify the problem, but instead of keeping the fun and adding automation, they remove entire systems and replace it with shallow and instant gratification systems. It's like we got a doctor that can see the wound on a leg, but instead of patching up the leg, they just cut it off.

I never liked scout automation especially on land as they were easily lost to barbarians so even if they get added to 7 i'm unlikely to use them except for maybe on ocean tiles. I think they recognised this as an issue and it's why they weren't included in the game at launch.

 

[Xur]

I never liked scout automation especially on land as they were easily lost to barbarians so even if they get added to 7 i'm unlikely to use them except for maybe on ocean tiles. I think they recognised this as an issue and it's why they weren't included in the game at launch.

That's the beauty of automation - it's an option. I don't see how anyone can justify the removal of an option just because some people prefer to do everything manually. Your argument is also a problem related to the AI. It's not like the AI players have better scouts and exploration than our automated scouts - it's the same AI logic. They should improve the AI then, instead of removing automation.

 

[AD1730]

That's the beauty of automation - it's an option. I don't see how anyone can justify the removal of an option just because some people prefer to do everything manually. Your argument is also a problem related to the AI. It's not like the AI players have better scouts and exploration than our automated scouts - it's the same AI logic. They should improve the AI then, instead of removing automation.

I believe many of the (poor) design choices in Civ 7 flow from an inability to improve the AI.

 

[Gorbles]

That's the beauty of automation - it's an option. I don't see how anyone can justify the removal of an option just because some people prefer to do everything manually. Your argument is also a problem related to the AI. It's not like the AI players have better scouts and exploration than our automated scouts - it's the same AI logic. They should improve the AI then, instead of removing automation.

Which is then time not spent improving other systems. Everything has a cost.

 

[CliffCo]

I believe many of the (poor) design choices in Civ 7 flow from an inability to improve the AI.

I don’t really have an issue with the AI or the new game design, I’m actually enjoying the game, they just need to continue working on fixing some of the bugs.

 

[GeneralZift]

I miss the civ 6 culture victory, yes, especially because it was so open-ended, with different paths to it. And it's annoying in that the worst victory in 6 (diplomacy) seems to be more in line with the new victories in how they are setup.

That all said, I know that the culture victory in 6 was confusing to many people. I "knew" how it was calculated, and basically it still ended up being a magical counter that went up slightly randomly. So I do appreciate a level of simplicity with it that we didn't have before. But yeah, I miss having multiple ways to attack it. And I do definitely think that the Modern victory conditions suffer by not being overly synchronized with the earlier eras. Even just something like letting my explorers dig at ancient era wonder sites and sites which housed relics in the exploration era, would better tie the game together. Let my cities with museums do their own digging on sites in their territory, so I don't have quite as much moving back and forth. But yeah, more basically to make it feel like me having developed this great and glowing empire for the whole game is the reason why I can complete the culture path, not just that I can run around the map faster than someone else.

The main issue with Civ6's culture victory was that vague Tourist bar, which was so easily remedied by making it like Civ5's culture victory. They're so nearly the same exact thing, that it baffles me why they changed it for the worse (for something far more confusing)

Of course with all due respect to the improvements they did make - like National Parks - which I really enjoyed.