First Game Impressions

[Vahnstad]

Tecumseh / Mayan AI is scary

 

[Hildebolt Von Berenreuthe]

Hi - finally got it working (on my work lap top - shh!). Love it but agree that the pacing is too fast - marathon with long ages and neither I nor the AI civs were able to do much before antiquity was 80% done

Not sure if it was deliberately designed and tested for quicker paces but I played quick speed with long ages and the pacing seemed perfect - for my taste at least. Each age still took 3 or 4 hours but it felt like everything that could be accomplished, was.

 

[Rob Airdrie]

Not sure if it was deliberately designed and tested for quicker paces but I played quick speed with long ages and the pacing seemed perfect - for my taste at least. Each age still took 3 or 4 hours but it felt like everything that could be accomplished, was.

Yes, thanks, hoping for a scaling of marathon but might try epic a eagle pursuit suggested

 

[Nikolai II]

I've actually spent all day playing it today (don't judge me, my dad died a couple of days ago and this is a great distraction from my mourning) and want to take back my initial comment. It's not boring, it's pretty fun!

There's a lot of issues with it though. The UI issues are well known. I don't know if many people have mentioned this, but the lack of a military overview menu is also really aggravating. The second continent in the exploration age is also weird. I am confused by it it was supposed to be so barren or if that was accidental. Like I was taking goodie huts there at the end of the exploration age and there was AI there who never did anything.

I also played at the default difficulty level and it was way, way too easy, even for my first play through. Next game I need to play a higher difficulty level.

I'm sorry for your loss.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Love it but agree that the pacing is too fast - marathon with long ages and neither I nor the AI civs were able to do much before antiquity was 80% done.

I find this really interesting as I prefer marathon speed on the older versions but normal with long ages I found to be a really good pace, plenty of time to do things and crisis came at a good point.

I'm in early modern age and it's taken 12 hours to get here.

 

[Jeppetto]

I'm a little bit disappointed in the terrain elevation (or lack thereof). In the trailers, they had these grand multi-layered landscapes with cascading waterfalls and long cliff faces. In the actual game, there is occasionally an annoying ski-jump of a single tile of elevated terrain. Alas.

View attachment 718540

This concerned me already after few live streams that also had suspicious lack of terrain elevation compared to trailers. I suspected that it has a lot of bugs and caveats that must be accounted for and they silently delayed it (set the default setting to minimum) until they finish it.

 

[UWHabs]

This concerned me already after few live streams that also had suspicious lack of terrain elevation compared to trailers. I suspected that it has a lot of bugs and caveats that must be accounted for and they silently delayed it (set the default setting to minimum) until they finish it.

That seems plausible. I can certainly see the map gen going off the rails with it creating like a plateau which you can't climb anywhere. Or possibly that after playing with it, they found that all it did was frustrate people.

 

[Jeppetto]

That seems plausible. I can certainly see the map gen going off the rails with it creating like a plateau which you can't climb anywhere. Or possibly that after playing with it, they found that all it did was frustrate people.

Yes, also you must make infrastructure make sense with it. There was the older Siam promo image where the Onsen Wonder had front entrance face defaultly toward terrain much lower than itself and with its stairs it looked like you could jump to your death when leaving the Onsen, it was hilarious a bit.

Songhai promo image shows what is needed - the wall adjusts itself to the city spanning multiple levels. Making buildings have deep base as was the case in Civ 6 already does not always cut it. There is much that can go wrong with terrain elevation.

 

[Melkus]

Experienced my first age transition last night, I'm not a big sceptic of the age change, but this went better than I expected.

I was determined to play it safe in the first game - take the logical road for Egypt into the Abbassids - but I had a more maritime empire than you'd expect in an Egypt game with a very long coastline on the "atlantic" ocean. So when I looked at my options, I just sat that for a solid half hour trying to decide my next civ before going with Chola (which I had unlocked a couple of turns before the age ended end by taking over a coastal city state, you need three coastal cities for them), because the fit for my particular situation was just way better.

I think I could hear Ed Beach laughing maniacally in the distance, because that must be exactly like Firaxis intended this to work.

The legacy rewards - there were 1 or 2 real decisions, but overall it seemed a bit obvious to me what to take? I expected more twists there. Maybe it was the particular situation, I had a boring 1 or 2 points in every category.

Played 40 turns or so into the Exploration Age - I'm a bit worried about the predictability of the two central new mechanics at the start of this (Exploring and Religion*), especially Exploring. It's fun, but just went a little bit too much as expected - build ships, find smaller "caribbean" islands behind two deep ocean tiles, find exotic resource, find big island behind the island chain. It's hardly a journey into the Unknown if you know what to expect to this degree.
I did suzerain the friendly city state of Constantinople on of the small islands, that was enjoyable. Also enjoyable: the special Chola ship that can shoot twice.

* Can't imagine they leave Religion in this very uninspiring state anyway.
I patiently wait for a more organic approach where Religion is this somewhat annoying thing that arises autonomously for you to deal with - tolerate it, fight it, coopt it?. Just treat it like a stubborn idea that's vertical to the linear development of states. But that particular ship has probably sailed for this game and been lost in the deep ocean.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

The legacy rewards - there were 1 or 2 real decisions, but overall it seemed a bit obvious to me what to take?

That might be a good thing, showing a natural affinity with certain things from Antiquity??

 

[TheSpaceCowboy]

I finished my first game (way too) late last night.
Friedrich, Baroque
Governor difficulty
Small Continents plus
Standard speed, Long Ages

I won a Militaristic Victory
I was two turns away from getting every Golden Age at the end of Exploration
By mid Modern Age I had snowballed to victory, so that I never got a chance to build an airplane

Thoughts:
I’m mostly positive, but have a lot of constructive criticism

1) Unpacked Urban districts suck;
You’re often too zoomed out to tell what things are at a glance.
Color coded districts were gaudy, but this ain’t it either.
I’d prefer more stylized, larger buildings

2) I hate overbuilding.
It’s not clear if you’re losing yields, and even if not, it feels like you’re losing something

3) Towns actually add more micromanagement if you don’t eventually turn them into cities;
Instead of taking several turns to produce something, they were having growth events every turn or two, turning late modernity into a slog

4) It doesn’t feel like you’re fighting against other civs or Leaders.
When I met Teddy in the Exploration Age, I kept thinking “there’s America”, even though he was a different civ (the fact that I can’t remember is itself telling)
Still, I love separating civs from Leaders
I just wish it was more obvious what civ is being led; a small icon of a bird isn’t enough

5) Units within Armies are too small
Civ VII did it much better with just a few large units

6) Leaders are even uglier than in the preview videos
I’m running all of the graphics at the highest settings
I think the problem is the skin and hair texture
They’re too detailed without being actually realistic
The more cartoony Independent Power leaders look better
I wish there were options to downgrade the visuals of the Leaders and give them flatter, more even textures

 

[Melkus]

That might be a good thing, showing a natural affinity with certain things from Antiquity??

Maybe - it just felt a little bit bland. There were mostly attribute points - and you have to know/check the state of the upgrade trees, or it's hard to wrap your head around the consequences. (Also took the money for antiquity trade routes, but that gave a flat 15 Gold/turn or something - hardly a strategic game changer in the long run.)

On the other hand, there's already a lot going on in this one turn anyway.

The civ change was much more impactful, it really felt like a fork in the road - do I look inward with the Abassids or do I go full naval exploration mode with the Chola? (The Songhai felt a bit weak however - maybe I'm missing some clever twist in the civics, idk)

 

[vorlon_mi]

Tecumseh / Mayan AI is scary

That's my first game as a human. Antiquity went really well. I'm working my way thru Exploration now. A little surprised at the amount of open/available space in Distant Lands.

 

[UWHabs]

Maybe - it just felt a little bit bland. There were mostly attribute points - and you have to know/check the state of the upgrade trees, or it's hard to wrap your head around the consequences. (Also took the money for antiquity trade routes, but that gave a flat 15 Gold/turn or something - hardly a strategic game changer in the long run.)

On the other hand, there's already a lot going on in this one turn anyway.

The civ change was much more impactful, it really felt like a fork in the road - do I look inward with the Abassids or do I go full naval exploration mode with the Chola? (The Songhai felt a bit weak however - maybe I'm missing some clever twist in the civics, idk)

Yeah, attribute points are fine as like a backup option, but it would be nice if there were more options. Especially sometimes if I got no attribute points in the earlier era, it can be like "I spent all that effort to get a point, and all I get is 2 gold on my palace".

 

[kaspergm]

1) Unpacked Urban districts suck;
You’re often too zoomed out to tell what things are at a glance.
Color coded districts were gaudy, but this ain’t it either.
I’d prefer more stylized, larger buildings

One thing to bear in mind is that now that you can combine buildings whichever way you want, it's going to be almost impossible to make things distinguishable at a glance from a distance, even more so with unique civ architecture. I think there was a popular demand for mix-and-match districts, so I guess people go what they asked for here. I think if they had stuck with the dedicated districts (which would have been my preference), there would have been more room to work with unique architecture of the buildings and still have some common colour-coding/emblemation on the district itself to make it easily recognizable on the game map.

 

[wesplaysciv]

4) It doesn’t feel like you’re fighting against other civs or Leaders.
When I met Teddy in the Exploration Age, I kept thinking “there’s America”, even though he was a different civ (the fact that I can’t remember is itself telling)
Still, I love separating civs from Leaders
I just wish it was more obvious what civ is being led; a small icon of a bird isn’t enough

I feel like they aren’t even consistent about labeling the leader vs Civ it in notifications or UI stuff. Just call everything Teddy that might help a bit!

 

[queenpea]

Just finished my first game, won a cultural victory with Hatshepsut and Buganda at the end.

Built the Eiffel Tower, and the flag that is displayed is blank and white. Is this a meme? Or is this a bug? Or a feature if not playing as France?

 

[Core Imposter]

In general, there is a lot of fighting in my games. I’m mostly a peaceful player in Civ and tend to focus on wonders and city building.

Between all of the leaders who want me dead and the IP’s who also want me dead, I’m having a hard time enjoying the aspects of the game that I usually enjoy.

The one friend I have, Augustus, keeps pulling me into his wars (or gets pissed at me when I say no) — and with the clock ticking down on the age and a long list of wonders to build—I’m finding it kind of anxiety inducing?

First post that made me interested in the game. A lot of fighting and anxiety is what Civ should be about. The only thing that could be better is if you had indeed ended up dead.

 

[queenpea]

First post that made me interested in the game. A lot of fighting and anxiety is what Civ should be about. The only thing that could be better is if you had indeed ended up dead.

Weird vibes and slightly threatening! Have a great weekend!

 

[tedhebert]

Rapid First impressions, since so many people already left theirs, I'll try not to repeat them too much.

Still in my first game, went Isabella with Mississippi as planned, Sovereign, normal map, normal age length, continent+.
I just started exploration (around 40 turns). I did very well in ancient era, led 3 out of 4 paths, and the 4th one I was just 1 away from leading.

The IPs in ancient are just so annoying, as everyone mentioned. You really can't play the "I won't even build any millitary units I don't need to" game like in VI. But they (the IPs) are now practically inexistant in exploration, at least on the starting continent.

Somehow now in exploration I can't seem to go forward. Had a pretty bad starting map was way south in tundra and all the distant lands were FAR from my 3 coastal cities, could barely get a cog across, settler won't make it except one place, and the AI already beat me to that place cause they were close.

Abbasid Xerxes kicked my butt with a three pronged attack (attacked three cities) and over 20 units. I managed to lose only one settlement, but it was a good one, barely survived the others and took one of his.... then on the peace deal, he gave me back my settlement he had taken ?
very stupid, I think the AI is trying to smooth out some of the bad rep he got with the war by not holding on to the settlement he stole... I sincerely hope this is fixed very early on in the support life, because why go to war if you won't hold on to your winnings ?

Apart from all those UI deficiencies already mentioned, the one that annoys me the most is that mouseover on a tile will NOT tell you how many moves going through a tile will consume.
You have to remember by heart each and every tile type move cost and pay extreme close attention to the move borders. It's annoying as hell, I mean how hard is it to tell on a mouseover : Will take 1 move, will take 2 moves will take 3 moves ?

Deception with Isabella; I don't know about the start biases weight, but the closest natural wonder was more than 20 tiles away from starting position. Talk about a bummer. And I only found 3 total so far. I don't think I'll play her often, honestly.

As for Mississippi, Burning arrow is as fun as expected, but... not so easy to play. The burning tiles are not very visually apparent. And they WILL burn your units too if you stay on them ! Now, you might think "How stupid is this guy if he walks on a burning tile he created",
and to that I will answer "well.... a little yes". But it's extremely easy to attack a unit with your burning arrow, NOT kill the unit, and then use a melee unit to finish off the enemy. What happens then ? Your melee unit walk right onto the burning tie and stops there
Believe me, it's easy to do ;-)

All in all a very worthy product so far, I feel very far from competent with the game (normal in your first game), and from what I've seen so far, I'm really not close to crank up to Immortal, never mind deity ! Sovereign is dealing me with a full hand so far.

And oh... I'm having a ball

To continue on this game..

Just finished Exploration. Really didn't go very well in the legacy path game... only got 3 legacy point.
- I couldn't get even 1 district to get the 40+ yields in science path.
- I'm really having difficulty deciding if it's ok to build over something already there, because the UI doesn't really tell you if the buildings there are ageless or not, so i'm always afraid to destroy something useful
- Treasure fleet game is fun, but the game should let you know nothing will start until you own 5 total fleet resource. I waited, and waited... and then it started. Thanks @Siptah for explaining this to us
- Because of the DL settlement game, I wound up at 13/9 settlements and therefore spent the entire age having happiness problems and town/cities that were unhappy and destroyed improvement and buildings. Very annoying
- diplomacy is tough. It doesn't seem like there's any way to make your status better with leaders then have declared on you (or vice-versa) you remain at -50 or -90 and it never ever gets back up again. Also annoying

So my direct neighbor was Xerxes King of kings who chose Abbasid. After wars in ancient and beginning of explo, we got to an uneasy standoff for quite a while. Then, to my surprise, Ashoka World Renouncer, who was extremely
far from me on the map, playing Chola, declared war on me and proceeded to dump 6 units by a lonesome town way south, I figure he did that by sea. I was impressed with the level of preparation needed for that. So I started
mobilizing troops from all over the place to help defend my settlement, but of course as soon as I moved my commander and many troops from the border with Xerxes, he then declared on me 2 turns later, making this a
two-pronged assault. Honestly, the AI is pretty cunning.

That's exactly when the crisis started. It was a religious crisis that attacked happiness if your settlements were not following your religion. So for those wondering, YES it's important in the end to convert your own settlements even if
the beliefs that give relics are only for DL other civs. So my happiness problem was compounded just as I was being attacked from two sides.

Of course Xerxes and Ashoka had plenty of naval units floating around the spot where my treasure fleet were deploying, so I had to defend those too.

In the end, I spent the whole age defending and surviving, and not much of it really being able to work on the legacy paths.

Now it would seem as if this is only annoying and not fun, but really I'm ecstatic that the game is giving me a real challenge and that it's not a walk in the park.

Now entering Modern, I hope this will reset my game. I have a lot of units after the transition, I'm doing pretty well in all yield aspect compared to the others, except for science where I'm lacking and culture which is just average. Money is pouring in.
I have 13/16 settlement, will NOT go over 16 this time around, unless I have to go on the warpath. Every other leader has between 8 and 10 settlements except one who has 5. And they're pretty much all competitive if I look at the banner, so I
expect a tough completion to this game.

I chose Mexico for modern, thought I might as well stay the regional path after Mississippi and Spain. I also wanted to try a civ with GP to see how fun THAT game is. I expect to go for the Industrial/economy victory since I'm lagging in science and culture,
but we'll see how it goes

To be continued ;-)

PS OH as someone already mentioned before, the IPs were pretty much inexistant in homeland, and few and far between in distant land... Just barely enough to give you a sweat after you crossed the ocean with your settlers barely surviving