First Game Impressions

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

A thread for your impressions from your very first game of Civ 7

Confucious, Han China, finished Antiquity age.

There's so much information on the map I really had a hard time trying to figure out what the best thing to do was when growing. Just headed for the resources.
It was hard to keep track of other civ's units. It could be me but it seems like they would move without me knowing what happened.
My first commander was killed because I only brought one unit against a IP attacking me.
Machiavelli started denouncing me after I settled too close and eventually declared war. he took the city which turned it into a town - 500 gold wasted. I just gave it to him for peace so I could go back to trying to get codex's. It rebelled and joined me later.
Crisis polices were making my cities go into the negative happiness. Luckly the age came to an end. Saved by the bell.

 

[theadder]

It’s sublime.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Only got a chance to play a couple dozen turns: Ibn Battuta, Rome. Very First Impressions:

Lafayette made contact within 4 turns, made nice, and then every 3 - 4 turns bombarded me with Things to React To. If this is normal, the AIs are going to get very annoying, very quickly.

As posted above, there seemed to be a mass of things all over the map to keep track of. On the other hand, familiarity will doubtless change that: after 100s and 1000s of hours in Civ VI I could glance at the map and see where and what everything was. Can't happen too spon in Civ VII.

Even in a few turns, I could tell the UI sucks. There are just so many bits of information that the gamer needs and are not available. Only being on t he CivFanatic forums for the past 6 months gave me some idea of how much I was missing. Brand new gamers are going to feel like the game is designed to screw with them.

Not being able to name or rename cities also sucks. My first settlement outside the capital went on the coast, so Of Course I wanted to name it Ostia. Couldn't. This hurts my personal Immersion more than I realized. Grit my teeth for now and bear it.

Hostile IPs are a *****. Lost my first scout AND my second one within 20 turns.

Tomorrow plan to marathon game. More after that.

 

[Graethyenne]

2/3s of the way through antiquity as King of Kings Xerxes leading Persia. Funniest detail - Benny was eliminated by.....IPs!

Despite having watched like 80% of the preview stuff that dropped before yesterday (and a decent chunk yesterday and today) it is amazing slowly and methodically I am playing, because I don't automatically know what I should do at every decision point.

I'm having a blast, but my legacy progress isn't great. On the other hand, I think Izzy and I are going to eliminate Charlie, at which point it will just be the two of us on this rock (at least until Exploration). If I can unlock Mongolia I may decide to wipe her out too!

 

[Professor Phobo]

UI bad, as expected.

Loving army commanders, navigable rivers, and most of the city building changes. I think urban districts maybe sprawl too much and rural districts maybe not as valuable as I'd like them to be. Diplomacy feels a lot better - influence is precious. Map is borderline illegible but very pretty.

All in all, this is going to eat my spare time up like some sort of cookie monster but for turns.

 

[Albertan Civfanatic]

The art style is like it's airbrushed, elegant and beautiful, a massive step up from the cartoony graphics of 6.

 

[lymond]

The UI and Pedia need a tremendous amount of work.

I played some turns as Isabella and then realized I was not playing her right, plus I did not find any Natural Wonders remotely close. I then start a game as Confucious Han. The first scout build is one turn, and the next is very slow. I have no clue when to start building cities, but as Conf your cap grows very fast with his food bonuses..

I have no idea how some things like science are calculated. I looked through several screens and could not find the information. Ofc, I see what the base yield of the cap is which was +1 beaker, but I was making 11 beakers early with no clue how. The in-game info right now is either really bad or I do not know where to look.

IP galleys will kill your scout and have already lost 2 or 3 due to IPs.

The tutorial is just annoying. I turned it off. What they should add is like a tutorial scenario game.

Lastly, I had a commander and warrior and went out to kill a hostile IP scout. Took me forever to figure out how to attack him and when I did they just stood there fight but the fight didn't complete. I think I missing something basic there.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

Played about an hour as Machiavelli of the Mississippians. 3 Scouts early, Granary, eventually 2Warriors and Archer, gifted a Warrior by CS I suzed. Struggled to find hostiles to fight where I thought they were. 2nd City is OK, 3rd coming soon. Obviously I'm not sure what to do some of the time, which is making me sour a tad. Lots of pop up choices - I tend to go with whatever I'm lacking most? Except if I can get Influence. Met 3 civs, seems like a lovefest brewing, that Diplo spending on them is slowing down suzing more CS. So far no opponent has kicked me or thrown a lightening bolt.

I must admit the main graphics are a bit disappointing so far. I've never been one to zoom in, so I should do that more. They aren't exactly horrible...

The interface is sucking bad. I don't know how many times I hit Esc to get out of a window that needs a click. Except sometimes Esc works on that very same window. It's very confusing. Having no keyboard control is driving me nuts. Simple things like when Saving a game I have to mouse to the name. The Name field should be active. The civilopedia is seriously lacking. You can't even search some basic terms that are popping up in the tutorial prompts.

Tomorrow will be a long day of play, I'm sure familiarity will begin to help my perspective.

 

[Sprenk]

I'm having a great time. Would stop to say more, but need to get some sleep so I can get back to it tomorrow!

 

[Krumm Nonster]

So far so good. People keep complaining about the UI but idk what about it? Maybe idk what UI means in this context since everyone is complaining.

So far- the life bars on military units are too small. It was a struggle to see after each attack how much life each unit had. Sometimes the units blend in with the terrain a bit too much as well. Very minor, overall I'm having fun. I like the graphics, they're gorgeous. I like the army commanders. The building/improvements/urban/rural situation still isn't super clear to me, but I'm only 3 hours in so I'm sure it will make more sense.

I haven't been bombarded by things to react to like other posters.

"Harriet Tubman has declared war on Confucius"....there's something you don't see every day.

I'm off for the next 4 days, so....yeah. We'll get into it lol. I like it a lot.

 

[Brutus2]

My initial notes:

1. The font scale option doesn't change much at all. I set it to Extra Large text and it only changed the text in a couple places. All of the tooltips in tech and civic tree still has absurdly small text.
2. Basic game info is lacking. I wanted to know how healing works, like exactly how much HP do you heal in friendly, neutral or hostile territory? Do you only heal if you actually use the rest until healed button or will you heal even if you just skip turn? How about if you are packed in a commander, are you healing? Obviously I can figure it out by playing but why can't I find basic game info like this anywhere in the cyclopedia?
3. I wanted to buy walls in a town but was just a little short of the needed gold so I figured I would buy them on the next turn. Then on next turn, the walls are no longer listed as an option to purchase. Completely gone from the menu, even when show hidden is checked. Why? My best guess is it's because a hostile unit moved next to the town but if that blocks you from buying walls, when was the game going to tell me that? I'm just guessing that's the reason.
4. You can't really see any info about enemy units. When you mouse over a unit all you get is the tooltip for the hex yields. You can't select an enemy unit. You have to mouse over the very small unit icon but that just tells you the unit name and civ. You can't see how many HP they have left, just have to guess from the tiny HP bar.
5. The game tells me to station a commander on a captured city to reduce the unrest but there is no information on exactly how much happiness it gives, or how that works. I moved my commander in and had no idea if it did anything.
6. The menu that lists all the independent powers just shows their name. You have to open each of them one at a time to get any information about them. As far as I can tell the only way to know if they are hostile is to find a unit on the map and look for the red border. Why wouldn't you have the word Hostile prominent on the list or on the screen somewhere. I have the hardest time knowing who is hostile unless they happen to have a unit I can see. Is there a way to easily cycle between each independent people?
7. You can only select one civic or tech at a time, can't select one further ahead to queue up a few.
8. Units standing on a city center completely disappear after their turn. If you zoom in, even the icon goes away. They are completely invisible until next turn. Is this intended? Why?
9. We really need better tooltips and better info. I have one city with negative happiness but in the city information screen it just says something like "Malus Deduction -8" (can't remember the exact words). That is not helpful. Why can't you give me a breakdown of exactly what is causing the deduction. Is it settlement limit? Is it war weariness? Is it both and if so, how much for each so I know which problem to address first?
10. Sadly, they are still using red text for numbers when you can't afford something. Red text on a dark background is nearly impossible to see and color blind options don't help. PLEASE, STOP using red text!!

** Please understand this is just my feedback on little things that could be tweaked and maybe some of it might be me not understanding something. This is not meant to suggest the game is bad in any way. I am having a lot of fun with it.

 

[AriochIV]

1. Sadly, they are still using red text for numbers when you can't afford something. Red text on a dark background is nearly impossible to see and color blind options don't help. PLEASE, STOP using red text!!

And they compound the issue by darkening an item which can't be purchased, so it's red text on a black background AND darkened.

 

[Ellye]

Refunded.
I knew the UI was bad from screenshots and videos, but actually playing with it felt a thousand times worse than I expected.
I really can't accept that UI.

It's a shame because aside from the UI (and, for me, the pacing), it seems a fine game. I'll try it again in the future if they improve it.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

The first scout build is one turn, and the next is very slow.

The first build is basically your initial scout or warrior so only takes one turn, the second unit uses your production.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I've played 3 hours and it's a much much better experience than I was expecting, I'm sure I'm not playing optimally but most things are pretty logical to figure out. Yeah the UI is a doozy, what's taking you so long @sukritact , but overall very happy.

 

[HelloIAmW]

Played maybe 100 turns on Steam Deck. Gameplay is solid, but I really wanna talk to whoever came up with the UI... The gamepad controls are also unintuitive but worked fine with a traditional mouse and keyboard.

The combat feels the best in any Civ I've played, and the diplo feels good too. There is potential here.

 

[Isengardtom]

Had fun - even though I was playing very bad ; some notes

I have only played about 40 turns in Antiquity age - Hatshepsut/ Egypt / Viceroy

- I dispersed an IP and few turns later their surviving boats caught me off gard and raised by town and were coming up the river towards my capital. Needed to buy a few units to destroy them
- AI beat me to my Hanging gardens - the wonder I always try to build no matter what
- the usual map exploration in Antiquity is a lot of fun, as are the scouts and finding goodie huts
- city planning and unique quarters are fun - I like how initial tiles are pretty weak but when you start building your city they improve a lot
- liking Diplomacy a lot
- plays well on a pretty low end Mac system (so far but I’m only turn 40)
- city buildings could use some more visual highlights so you can identify them better, map itself is beautiful even on my low graphics settings
- took a while for me to figure out how the merchant works
- UI is indeed this game’s weakest point at this moment

It’s a lot of fun and feels a lot like a civ game but still very new/different. After the initial 20 minutes of feeling weird, I was really sucked into it and ended up playing until 02h45 AM which I will pay for today
Luckily I have tomorrow off to play the game all day

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

I presume I am very much in the minority as primarily a console player. Anyone tried it on console yet? Curious to know how it looks and performs and won't be playing until next week.

 

[Nikolai II]

The font scale option doesn't change much at all. I set it to Extra Large text and it only changed the text in a couple places. All of the tooltips in tech and civic tree still has absurdly small text.

Did you toggle the high resoulution UI option underneath?

 

[Mazisky]

Can anyone be so kind to post a screenshot of the graphic options menu and of the gameplay option menu aswell? Much appreciated