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

[queenpea]

I am not playing the game. That's why I asked the question of people who are. What I was trying to get a feel for is whether an "animation loop" makes combat more satisfying than a "fish slap."

From my perspective, no it doesn’t.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Thank you.

 

[aelf]

I didn’t say that, but you are taking a more adversarial approach than what I really would hope for, and I no longer feel motivated to engage on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I hope you have a great day (or evening)!

I'd think that it would be less collegiate not to leave it as a difference in perception. But, in any case, if you want to make an objective claim, you'd better be prepared to support it with solid arguments.

 

[itix]

I've done the Antiquity culture legacy path exactly once to unlock the achievement. I never spam wonders willy-nilly either, and I don't think I'm "joking around" by doing that. So I find your characterisation of what I would consider normal gameplay odd.

I also distinctly remember that Civ 6 has eras, which encourage bending over backwards sometimes to score era points if you want to get a Golden Age or avoid a Dark Age.

It is only part of some DLC that you can (and should) turn off.

(IMO, it is quite weak and very annoying. Dark/Golden ages only change the loyalty modifier; you may struggle in Dark Ages to keep cities if your empire is not tightly packed.)

 

[King of Prussia]

I didnt mind 6s era system. It felt better than 7s imo. The mode that made it so you lost cities randomly in a dark age was a mixed bag. I modded it so no cities were lost, as i felt the loyalty pressure was enough to provide a challenge. Being able to slot the golden age policy cards was nice too.

 

[itix]

I am this year old to learn about golden age policy cards...

 

[UWHabs]

Your argument is incoherent. If you score points, you also push the age forward, therefore shortening the time you have to achieve your goals. If your goals are simply to score points, then that's a choice that you made. You can win quite easily without scoring some points. I regularly score only 1 point for the Antiquity cultural legacy path, and it does little to impede the rest of my game.

You seem hellbent on scoring points that aren't necessary. Your previous argument was that not completing Legacy Paths (before Modern, presumably) results in bad/subpar outcomes. This is demonstrably not as big a problem as you seem to think, even on higher difficulties (maybe more so on higher difficulties because sometimes you just can't complete some of them). And, guess what, getting a Dark Age or failing to get certain Golden Age bonuses like Monumentality in Civ 6 also results in bad/subpar outcomes.


On Immortal/Deity, there's almost no way you can deny the AI getting some wonders. You'd have to push hard to get 7 built and probably have to pick certain civs/leaders for that. And it's not going to make much of a difference, considering the opportunity cost. And if your aim is to deny the AI wonders just so that it can't score points, well, that's a very suboptimal way of playing the game, and it's entirely down to your own choice to do so.

Yeah, learning that you can still win a cultural victory even if you haven't completed the earlier cultural legacies does free you up a little. The attribute points are obviously nice, and in some ways, they make some of the underwhelming wonders a little better to aim to build.

Especially since you can only keep one golden age legacy choice, and even at that, they're not really game-breaking that I won't even always pick them.

I mean, I do think the game does try to push you down some paths, for sure. I've definitely found myself trying to build one last wonder to get the next point level, or making a different choice on whether to settle another city. Certainly in the exploration age - without the legacies, there's some ages where I'm sure in civ 6 days I'd have focused my military on clearing my continent, rather than settle some of those random island cities. Depending on which religious policies you get, you get forced into a specific path for where to use your missionaries. And you are often forced down some paths earlier than you would be in 6, just because sometimes you have a limit to get things done before the era ends.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I am not playing the game. That's why I asked the question of people who are. What I was trying to get a feel for is whether an "animation loop" makes combat more satisfying than a "fish slap."

It took a little getting-used-to, having spent some time playing Civ3 where nearly every combat ended in the death of a unit. Is it more satisfying? Indirectly.

I will attack an enemy unit with mine; they stay fighting, so I didn't kill it. I attack the same unit with a different unit. My second unit kills it, moves into that tile, and the animation stops. THAT feels satisfying, at least a little.

To the larger topic, being pressured / encouraged to achieve certain short-term goals, I feel that Civ7 is more explicit than previous games.
In Civ3, I raced the AI to discover Philosophy for the free tech. In Civ4, the race was to be the first to Liberalism.
Civ6 had goals for establishing your religion, along with the accumulation of era score in each era. Yes, it's from an expansion pack, but (based on these boards) hardly anyone plays vanilla Civ6.

I would explain a Civ game to a family member who asked why I liked it so much as "a combination of short-term goals that lead to a longer term goal."
Civ7 makes those short-term goals explicit: collect codexes / codices, dig up relics, hook up resources, factory-process resources.
SInce every map is different, and every mixture of opponents are different, and specifically your neighbors are different, I will need to take different steps to achieve those short-term goals. But the short term goals are always the same, always explicit. If you want legacy points, to get the attribute buffs, you need to fulfill the short-term goals to lead to the longer term goal.

The Civ7 legacy path for building wonders actually conflicts with strategies (or meta-narrative) from earlier games. In those games, the better play was to let an AI expend a whole bunch of production to build the wonder, then you showed up with your army to conquer it. I developed habits of avoiding most early wonders, aiming for the later wonders after my cities and empire were more developed. Civ7 changes the calculus a bit. Given the territory around my city (or couple of cities), which wonders can I build? What tradeoffs do I want to make to achieve the full legacy path? Maybe I decide that only 2 or 3 wonders really fit well, so I choose not to build all the wonders. Old habits die hard...

 

[Skojardu]

I encourage everyone to watch Emotional Husky narrate a game of Civ 7. The leaders mismatching the nations make it feel like cringe comedy- "I met Napoleon of the Han, then Himiko of Greece!" Ha! The Civ franchise broadly celebrates human history, Civ 7 celebrates pseudo-history.

 

[MutilationWave]

It took a little getting-used-to, having spent some time playing Civ3 where nearly every combat ended in the death of a unit. Is it more satisfying? Indirectly.

I will attack an enemy unit with mine; they stay fighting, so I didn't kill it. I attack the same unit with a different unit. My second unit kills it, moves into that tile, and the animation stops. THAT feels satisfying, at least a little.

To the larger topic, being pressured / encouraged to achieve certain short-term goals, I feel that Civ7 is more explicit than previous games.
In Civ3, I raced the AI to discover Philosophy for the free tech. In Civ4, the race was to be the first to Liberalism.
Civ6 had goals for establishing your religion, along with the accumulation of era score in each era. Yes, it's from an expansion pack, but (based on these boards) hardly anyone plays vanilla Civ6.

I would explain a Civ game to a family member who asked why I liked it so much as "a combination of short-term goals that lead to a longer term goal."
Civ7 makes those short-term goals explicit: collect codexes / codices, dig up relics, hook up resources, factory-process resources.
SInce every map is different, and every mixture of opponents are different, and specifically your neighbors are different, I will need to take different steps to achieve those short-term goals. But the short term goals are always the same, always explicit. If you want legacy points, to get the attribute buffs, you need to fulfill the short-term goals to lead to the longer term goal.

The Civ7 legacy path for building wonders actually conflicts with strategies (or meta-narrative) from earlier games. In those games, the better play was to let an AI expend a whole bunch of production to build the wonder, then you showed up with your army to conquer it. I developed habits of avoiding most early wonders, aiming for the later wonders after my cities and empire were more developed. Civ7 changes the calculus a bit. Given the territory around my city (or couple of cities), which wonders can I build? What tradeoffs do I want to make to achieve the full legacy path? Maybe I decide that only 2 or 3 wonders really fit well, so I choose not to build all the wonders. Old habits die hard...

This is the only legacy path I have never finished. Wonders are just too hard to get on deity, so I would have to gear my choices all toward that. Then I'd probably miss the other legacy paths. It definitely hampers several strategies, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

 

[vorlon_mi]

For @Gori the Grey and others who don't have the game yet, a word of explanation.

Each age/era (Antiquity, Exploration, Modern) has exactly 4 legacy paths: Culture, Economy, Military, Science.
Each legacy path has milestones along the way. If you complete a legacy path, you get a specific bonus for the next age.
If you complete a legacy path in the last age, you unlock a victory condition, usually requiring performing some final task.

But each milestone, on each path, in every age, gives a least one bonus.. Those bonuses often include an attribute point to buff your leader.
Choose the right attribute points to make your eventual victory easier, indirectly. Achieving more than one legacy path in a given age gives an in-game achievement, that enables the memento system (topic for another thread) to help your *next* game.

Others will point out that one can win the game without completing any milestones (or paths) in the first two ages.
Technically true, but it's not in the spirit of the game. That type of gameplay doesn't really reflect, "Build something you believe in."

 

[aelf]

For @Gori the Grey and others who don't have the game yet, a word of explanation.

Each age/era (Antiquity, Exploration, Modern) has exactly 4 legacy paths: Culture, Economy, Military, Science.
Each legacy path has milestones along the way. If you complete a legacy path, you get a specific bonus for the next age.
If you complete a legacy path in the last age, you unlock a victory condition, usually requiring performing some final task.

But each milestone, on each path, in every age, gives a least one bonus.. Those bonuses often include an attribute point to buff your leader.
Choose the right attribute points to make your eventual victory easier, indirectly. Achieving more than one legacy path in a given age gives an in-game achievement, that enables the memento system (topic for another thread) to help your *next* game.

Others will point out that one can win the game without completing any milestones (or paths) in the first two ages.
Technically true, but it's not in the spirit of the game. That type of gameplay doesn't really reflect, "Build something you believe in."

"Not in the spirit of the game" is definitely a matter of perception.

Again, I'd point out that the eras in Civ 6 operate in a similar way. Ignoring the era score is suboptimal (especially when Monumentality is on the cards) and arguably "not in the spirit of the game." However, if I play strategically and still miss a Golden Age or two or even get a Dark Age, I believe I'm still playing the game as intended. Same for Civ 7. You don't need to bend over backwards to complete legacy paths. Get those that make sense for your strategic plan - and you may not even have to specifically plan to get them.

 

[Kev1916]

Those bonuses often include an attribute point to buff your leader.

that enables the memento system

Words that I would never expected to read re a "Civ" game

 

[Rotomagus]

I do not own civ7 and I do not plan to ever buy it. What I saw/read (extremely bad reviews everywhere, no AAA-game had that in like EVER) is more than enough (up to this day I regret buying 3, 4, 6...stupid hopium for a good game...). Civ-Aera-transitions was massively criticised in Humankind, and they implemented it in civ7? Who was so s....pid to decide that/thus!?
I was a heavy criticiser of Civ after iteration 3, no one wanted to hear it.
Ridiculous AI-Bonuses, ever increasing stupid design decisions, that did not only NOT make fun but felt like fraud through and through (or were just irrelevant), AI-cheats so plainly visible that it was just and only ridiculous (again), restrictions on the wrong side, freedoms on the wrong (other) side....
Civ7 is the inevitable outcome of all of this. I regret to say it but CIV is DEAD. Unrevivably DEAD. A game with so many wrong design-decisions cannot be 'saved' by any number of DLSc or updates. Do they know this? Firaxis could go bankrupt by this. Seeing so many bad 'decisions' the last 30 years... it's well deserved. And yes, ALL other 4X-Games are sh!t too since decades, can you imagine? And now, the Top Dog is dead. I'd even say, that Civ7 is the nail in the coffin of the whole genre. How could it come to this?

 

[Gori the Grey]

But tell us what you really think.

 

[stealth_nsk]

One of the things to note about bad reviews, is that a lot of them are left by people with 100+ hours in game, some with 300+. One of the 5 recent reviews (and one of 3 negative among them) has 321 hours in and based on the text, it's only negative due to crash issue in the last patch (which was just fixed today). It's really hard to see the picture based on those reviews, because positive reviews sometimes hold more negativity than negative ones. I believe it all goes down to the expectations of the player.

Of course, negative reviews are not great thing and they surely mean a lot of things. It's just not something I'd base my opinion on a game on.

 

[McSpank01]

"Not in the spirit of the game" is definitely a matter of perception.

Again, I'd point out that the eras in Civ 6 operate in a similar way. Ignoring the era score is suboptimal (especially when Monumentality is on the cards) and arguably "not in the spirit of the game." However, if I play strategically and still miss a Golden Age or two or even get a Dark Age, I believe I'm still playing the game as intended. Same for Civ 7. You don't need to bend over backwards to complete legacy paths. Get those that make sense for your strategic plan - and you may not even have to specifically plan to get them.

I think a lot of people’s response to the legacy points system, and ages comes down to how it feels.

The Era Points system in Civ 6 was never great, and pushed you to take specific actions, but those actions were more tied to general achievements that felt somewhat believable. In Civ 6 you got points for doing something rather exceptional or special, like discovering a natural wonder, or being the first to circumnavigate the globe. Yes it was a points system but it also felt natural in the context of a civilisations progress.

In contrast Civ 7 makes you go on a series of numerical achievement tasks to get legacy points. There is often an arbitrary number attached to completing a legacy point like building X number of wonders or X number of treasure fleets.

What an amazing way to break the illusion and make people realise they are playing a video game. What civilisation became great because it contained X number of relics? By trying to achieve a specific number you are constantly reminded that this is just a game.

It’s also almost entirely like playing Solitaire too, most of the legacy paths don’t really interact with other players, I can get all my codices and there is no effect on or from other players. It’s very dull and barely a game in of itself.

Just to address the point that you don’t HAVE to complete these legacy paths, it’s true you don’t, but the game goes out of its way to encourage you to do that and it FEELS bad when you don’t. Why have a system seem so integral to each age if it isn’t important?

Just another design flaw I think.

 

[0urBall]

In Civ 6 you got points for doing something rather exceptional or special, like discovering a natural wonder, or being the first to circumnavigate the globe. Yes it was a points system but it also felt natural in the context of a civilisations progress.

Also just to add, in Civ 6 there is a far broader scope in obtaining the Era score, that in some parts is driven by the type of game the player is playing. It's impossible to get every Era point available in the game, but it's also not necessary. There's also a slight buff for being the first to do something that gives Era score that gives a sense of competition between the player and the AI.
Ursa Ryan put it well in one of his recent videos that there's very little to stop the player from getting all of the legacy points for each different type of victory condition in each era, as there appears to be enough points to go around between all players in all games. Apart from the cultural legacy path, the only thing the player seems to be playing against is time, rather than the AI

 

[user746383]

I could see how they might have wanted it to be a secondary system, but if that's the case I think they made a big mistake by implementing it so front and center as a quest and leader leveling system. It causes it to have an impression of being the most important thing to focus on, in the way it looks and works like an MMO where that leveling system is essentially the game. Lots of review feedback and comments seem to indicate people got the impression that this was something they were supposed to focus on.

 

[McSpank01]

Also just to add, in Civ 6 there is a far broader scope in obtaining the Era score, that in some parts is driven by the type of game the player is playing. It's impossible to get every Era point available in the game, but it's also not necessary. There's also a slight buff for being the first to do something that gives Era score that gives a sense of competition between the player and the AI.
Ursa Ryan put it well in one of his recent videos that there's very little to stop the player from getting all of the legacy points for each different type of victory condition in each era, as there appears to be enough points to go around between all players in all games. Apart from the cultural legacy path, the only thing the player seems to be playing against is time, rather than the AI

Yeah exactly. I was never a huge fan of the Civ 6 system, but it wasn't completely intrusive in the way that Civ 7's feels. Yes there were times in Civ 6 where it felt like I needed to do something that wasn't part of my overall plan just to hit an arbitrary target, like if I had to build a galley for no reason other than to prevent myself hitting a dark age, but it was relatively rare. You could just make the era score work with how you wanted to grow your empire, not developing your empire with the goal of hitting an era score. That is an important distinction I think.

I could see how they might have wanted it to be a secondary system, but if that's the case I think they made a big mistake by implementing it so front and center as a quest and leader leveling system. It causes it to have an impression of being the most important thing to focus on, in the way it looks and works like an MMO where that leveling system is essentially the game. Lots of review feedback and comments seem to indicate people got the impression that this was something they were supposed to focus on.

It's hard to see how any playing the game could think the system was secondary, until they have completed a few games first hand. Everything about the way it is set up communicates that completing Legacy paths is your goal in each era. The era moves forward depending on how many you have completed, you are given visual reminders of just how well you are doing vs other players.

Also, as a Civ 6 player, there seems like a direct translation of victory conditions and legacy paths: I need to go through each type, see how well I am doing, how well are other players doing. Even subconsciously they feel the same, and if you are used to thinking in that way, it makes sense that the new system seems to be vital in how you win a game. That you can win games and not mess too much with legacy paths or optimise them is actually a weakness in the game itself.