Von Falkenheyn
Chieftain
I'm a CIV series veteran since the days of CIV II. Like many other grognards in here, I'll tell you that CIV IV was probably the best itteration of the series. I'm not adverse to change mind you and I do understand that change is always necessary in games. I pre-ordered the CIV VII deluxe edition really hoping that I'd enjoy this just as much as I did the previous versions. Departing from CIV IV, I will say that I liked CIV V more than I did CIV VI but again, both games were really engaging, each in their own way. With CIV VII...I just don't want to play anymore. I find it, just not enjoyable enough for a series of reasons which I'll explain bellow:
- The game feels dumbed down: The game tries to cater to the needs of too many crowds and fails at pleasing all of them I fear. At the very least, I feel that this game fails to please those of us who still play on a PC. For me the game interface feels like a cheap port from a console game. Then there is the core of the gameplay at its essence; playing CIV VII feels like talking a walk in a forest path which is lined with too many guard rails left and right. It feels like an "open world RPG" which doesn't really let you explore everything that you can see. You can watch but you can stray from the path. This is not how I want to play CIV, this isn't a 4X, this is a maximization gimmick.
- Civilization Switching/Leader Switching: I am not adverse to the change of civilizations over time however the way they chose to do this doesn't make sense. What Humankind and CIV VII are trying to emulate is a mechanic first introduced in an old Avalon Hill 80s board game named "History of the World". That board game tried to emulate 4000 years of human history and condense it in 4-5 gaming hours. To keep things interesting they had disected this timeframe in seven eras and whoever was the weakest player (taking into account civlization strength and player victory points) got to draft a civilization first for the next era. Thus if you had chosen the all mighty Romans in Era III, you would most likely end with the Khmers in Era IV who were quite weak. This worked fine for a board game and the limitations it faces but here we're talking essentially about a much more complex and time consuming historical emulation. In my view, the proper solution to this is the approach taken by the enldess space and endless legend series (of the latter, I've had the privilege of playtesting the closed beta version of Endless II). What they did was the assimilation of foreign populaces within your cities. Historically, populations integrated through three main methods: peacefull migration (Hellenic & Phoenician colonizations), invasions (4th Century AD great invasions) and mercenary integration (Normans, Varyags, etc). In the Endless series, each city has populace slots. Each population has different characteristics (advantages and disadvantages) and this game mechanic mixing I believe very well emulates historical intermixing of populations. Conquered cities would begin having exclusively foreign, hostile population but gradually the conquering civilization would introduce its own thus assimilating the conquered city. In the age of nationalism, assimilating foreign populations should become increasingly difficult unless you either follow an absolutist (read: dictatorial) approach or an "american dream" approach. As far as leaders are concerned, I believe that the current avatar system is obsolete and only exists for money-making DLC policies. I would migrate towards an Age of Wonders IV or Crusader Kings III approach towards leaders. This means, I would let the player create his or her own leader as he sees fit and if I wanted to profit from cosmetics and other such DLCs I would then introduce leader dress or palace customizations. Forcing static historical personalities on civilizations, even for just an age feels a bit out of touch nowadays.
- Age Changing: I get that what the developers where trying to do was to make each age self contained and give incentives to players to see their games to the end but this is not the way to do it. First of all, the current age system feels half baked and it's practically common knowledge by now that they were planning for more ages but had to back out in order to meet publisher deadlines. Personally, I'm not so sore about the Atomic Age missing (post WWII content) as I'm particularly baffled by the jump from the Ancient Age to the Age of Exploration. As the game stands today, it feels like I'm plucked from 2nd - 3rd century AD straight to the early rennaisance era with nothing happening in between. All my progress is lost, all my units are swapped for something else or gone, all my choices are nullified. This is not what I want to play. Yes, I'm in favor of crisis events but not like this. This feels like running a lab test where the result is always the same.
- Technology Trees: Linear tech trees are obsolete in 4X games period. Tech trees should be non linear. Make me choose my own path down history, you don't have to hand hold me with very simplistic linear trees. This doesn't feel like I'm making choices, I'm just clicking boringly clicking my way down a line. Make me choose X technologies for Y Age/Era in order to progress to the next set of technologies. Use prerequisites for some key techs if that's necessary. Technologies should be split in several broad categories forcing the player to make tough choices (is it bread or butter or something else?). As it is, you either min/max your techs or you boringly click on the next icon available and simply chug allong.
I see what you did there. I'm afraid I'm not being adversarial at all and am keeping things quite collegiate.
