First Game Impressions

[Disgustipated]

I wish it would say WHAT had just gotten finished

Civ 6 was the same way at launch. Sigh. I can't play yet, but this is already going to annoy me. I know we'll have less cities, at least in the early game, but I'll probably still forget what I was building. Sometimes I think they intentionally do these things (like the renaming cities thing) so they can change it later and make it look like they are improving the game. But really there is no reason this shouldn't have been in the game from the start.

 

[sethjohnson]

I'd like to see something like the loyalty mechanic come back - i've got the AI settling in any random space between my cities settlements

 

[ThichN]

I couldn't possibly care less what click bait Youtubers think, eithe way. I haven't watched nor will I watch one video there about this game. Having said that, this is the endless thing with the internet that just because it's an opinion you disagree with, you're bothered by it. I'm sure you wouldn't have this same reaction to a Youtuber with "TOTAL MASTERPIECE" in the thumbnail instead of "DISASTER".

I'm extremely disappointed it and have already essentially stopped playing. It's all opinion....if some are enjoying it that's great for them. But the changes have made it a totally different game and it really should have been renamed because this is absolutely not "Sid Meier's Civilization". Again you personally obviously like it, and that's great for you. But if you can't understand why anyone who has played a lot of Civilization would be put off by a completely different version of it....then you're guilty of the same thing you're frustrated at when it comes to YouTube.

As I said, I'm not so much bothered by the opinion, as the idea of "we deserve X" from a team of creative professionals, as well as what I believe to be an outsize focus on technical wrinkles. And sure, it is the culture we live in. Btw, my (with love) hyperbolic first impression is about the game itself (and in a thread for this, on a forum for fans of the game, and not to be seen by hundreds of thousands of people, and not generating income), and not the issues at launch. And I think it's because I've seen much worse launches at similar pricepoints, or launches where a devteam gaslights the community.

Your opinion above has less to do with the launch, and more to do w/the game itself. And guess what? I totally respect that opinion. You and I could certainly be comrades in hyperbole but I can relate. Civ6 never hit a chord with me for whatever reason, but this one does. As a fellow long-time Civ fan, I think it very much does deserve the Sid Meier's Civ moniker. Here's to VIII being more to your liking.

~

Latest game: Khmer to Majapahit, Himiko, now in Exploration. First time playing with "long ages" and "epic" speed. Antiquity lasted a while, but I never felt bored. I actually preferred it! The crisis this time knocked me on my butt (lots of new IPs made which threw huge armies into the field), but I survived. Nearby Isabel fared far worse, and is ripe for plunder, so things should even out. Did not manage to get the military/economic legacies, but culture/science ticked. One thing I love which others have mentioned is the ability to pivot. It keeps the game tense.

 

[Melkus]

What used to be a slog of endless production queues is now a slog of endless citizen assignments.

I've felt this emotional ping of "oh no, another assignment" too, even though I'm still in the middle of my first playthrough.

A big part of it is that the city screen for expansion is so hard to parse at a glance, just a bunch of 3-4 yield tiles (early game). I know that these are meaningful decisions (and that is good) but it feels like I want to get through it quickly. It's a real mental effort to hit the brakes and think about where I want to go.

It's slightly easier if you build something (but still dangerous to just mindlessly click on the highest yield and mess up your city layout).

 

[Giskler]

I've come to find all the celebration length modifiers to be a bit of a trap. Ideally you'd want celebrations coming in as quick as possible so you can unlock more policy slots, but with ever increasing lengths you end up being unable to utilize a lot of policies in the Modern Age.

 

[Eramas]

Machu Picchu is insane if you have a good spot for it, it can basically finish the entire scientific path by itself in the exploration age.

 

[StargazingDog]

I've felt this emotional ping of "oh no, another assignment" too, even though I'm still in the middle of my first playthrough.

I suspect this is why. I had the same feeling my first play. I am on my second play, and now that I am more familiar with the mechanics and flow of the game, I find these to be interesting decisions.

The game was also extremely easy on the default difficulty. I am one level up now, and almost got wiped by a counterattack from the Mayans led by Napoleon. I failed an attempt to protect an independent power from them, and paid a hefty cost. I managed to come back and exact some revenge (thanks to help from Benjamin Franklin). My point is, every decision now seems more important that I have a better feel for the game.

 

[Manpanzee]

Finished my first full playthrough. Difficulty 4/6 culture victory as Catherine, going Mississippi --> Ming --> Russia.

--Highlight of the game for me was playing Ming in the Exploration era. They are a bonus/malus civ with a UA (science penalty for each non-tradition social policy slotted) that definitely needs to be played around. Navigating that significantly warped my build for the era, and the obligation to use traditions makes your previous era civ choice continue to feel impactful. Pretty cool.

--The core gameplay sufficiently “feels like civ” that I don’t have major complaints. I do think that the pacing of the eras looks very challenging to balance and will require significant tuning attention going forward.

Exploration era for me was 40 turns shorter than Antiquity, then Modern era was another 50 turns shorter than Exploration. With the empire size scaling up, Antiquity and Exploration took me about the same time to play through. Modern era was significantly shorter.

The Antiquity era in my game slightly overstayed its welcome and had a bit too much next-turning to the end. Inexperience certainly played a part, as did wanting to stay peaceful and set aside warmongering for my first playthrough, which limited my progress on the militaristic and cultural paths. We’ll see if experience and stronger AI are enough to sufficiently shorten the age on their own, or if it turns out that a bit of warmongering ends up being obligatory to progress the age counter.

I had very high science generation in the Exploration era, and was able to research Future Tech three times in 100 turns. That made a major contribution to the era progression, and felt a bit off.

Modern era felt very short. Part of that is probably difficulty level, as I had no trouble outracing the AI to dig up artifacts. If stronger, more competitive AI forced me to go warmongering to seize the requisite artifacts, it obviously would have taken longer. But I’m not even sure that the short Modern era was necessarily a bad thing, as even with the changed game structure it felt right to go straight into victory-racing mode and not have much more infrastructure buildup. Culture victory has also been one of the faster victory conditions in past editions, so maybe the very short Modern era I experienced was specific to my choice of victory type.

 

[playshogi]

The game played well on my 9 years old computer that barely meets specs. I have extra RAM and only SSD, so that probably helped. They need to offer a way to turn off unit animations! Wars are brutally slow because of commander animations and ships are slow too.

My first game on sovereign ended in defeat by two turns by an "own goal"! I was 2 turns away from science victory when I completed future tech. +10 to age progression ended the game. I over-teched and I was not efficient building my projects. Civ is not "one more turn"; it is more like "click next turn" because so many of the late era decisions are truly pointless.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'd like to see something like the loyalty mechanic come back - i've got the AI settling in any random space between my cities settlements

Don't think I'll miss loyalty, but yeah this is a problem. At the very least it looks very "messy". The solution would be to put cities closer together, but with the settlement cap, and the desire to get new resources makes this difficult. The settlement cap is just so strict right now.

 

[Xefjord]

I will be comparing to Ara a bit since that's my main game as of late, but so far for me, this is my first impressions:

Positive vibes

1. The game is very visually engaging, and the specific cultural nuances behind every building, unit, animation, and element of sound design is phenomenal.

2. The diplomacy is really cool and really interesting in how it was implemented. It feels like I have a ton of ways to interact with Civs and city states from the get go. I have been playing a ton of Ara which has super bare bones diplomacy, and I forgot how much I missed espionage and these detailed diplomacy options.

3. I think the level of profile customization, and the ability to level up individual leaders to get tons of little perks is super cool. I definitely feel way more attached to the leader I have built up and leveled up over time. It by itself pushes me to want to finish games just so I can collect those items.

4. Everything loads extremely fast and the game is surprisingly small in size. Which all seem like really good optimizations for the amount of content and high quality of the graphics.

Negative vibes

1. I know everyone says the UI is awful. That same criticism got lobbed at Ara too, and it took some getting used to there, but it eventually made sense. Definitely as a first impression though, I am very confused navigating the UI for Civ 7. Imo, far more confused than I was when I first started playing Ara. There are so many pictures, icons, numbers, etc all over my screen and I don't know what most of them are. Many times helpful information is hidden behind an icon that I wouldn't know brings me to that page.

2. Readability is a serious struggle. And it's most apparent when I am trying to plan my city. I feel like I have a basic understanding of how the new city building mechanics work, but it was never explained well to me. I can't easily tell what buildings I have across my entire city though, what they are contributing, or why I can build some things in some areas but not in others. Why can't I build the great wall on any owned tile at the edge of my city? The heck? Everything about the city planning just feels awful compared to Ara. Obviously Ara focuses on that though so it feels way better. Ara doesn't have the same cartoon symbolism as Civ 6 with the colored roofs, but it just feels better, looks better, and plays better when it comes to the city building in pretty much every way to Civ 7.

3. Switching back to luxuries just giving very flat bonuses and happiness kind of sucks. I like that I actually think hard about the utility of every resource in Ara when planning what I grab. I get excited for specific resources because of the potential products I can make with them. In Civ 7. I am looking at Silk like "Oh boy! What can I do with this?" Nothing. The answer is nothing. I just expand my city onto it then it gets a passive buff. I did see I can slot some resources into cities. But I am not sure what it did if anything? This is another case of feeling quite spoiled by the gameplay complexity of Ara that they bring to resources, and feeling pretty disappointed with Civ.

4. I forgot how prevalent desyncs were in Civ games, since that's something I feel like I rarely if ever encounter in Ara. That and just general glitchiness. I had multiple friends crash, and I got stuck in a diplomacy screen totally unable to move or exit out. I had to crash the game and reload. Then we had an issue where everyone's turn got stuck on please wait. And we just had to all leave and rejoin. For one reason or another we had to have someone leave and rejoin like 5 times within 30 turns.

5. Speaking of 30 turns. While it feels like there should be less to do than Ara on the micromanagement side (the biggest complaint people normally have about Ara), it sure doesn't feel that way. Between the 4 of us playing in my friend group, it took us like 2 hours to get roughly 30 turns in. And this was despite me having many turns where I was kind of just moving units and hitting end turn because it wasn't clear on what I was supposed to be doing. In many ways it just feels like there is less to do per turn than Ara. But the turns still take longer. Which feels bad. I would be on turn 60-80 at least in an Ara game.

Meh Vibes

1. The game does a very good job of focusing everything on the leaders. In this sense, I barely even noticed when some of the AI were doing weird matchups (Like Napoleon leading Persia or Xerxes leading Aksum) but at the same time, it felt like the actual Civs of other players was rather unimportant. I notice the many interesting civ details when looking at my own Civ. But I feel like a ton of identity was lost for others. I still prefer the old Civ and current Ara system of leaders being tied to Civs and playing one Civ for all of history. That said, I adjusted to Civ faster than I thought I would. It's not so much a deal breaker at this point as much as a mild disappointment.

Ultimately the turns are moving forward. I am definitely enjoying the spectacle of Civ 7. But I wouldn't say I am having "fun" yet.

It feels super mixed to me. Some features are definitely cool, but I feel like I am pretty lost in the sauce right now and there is so much I need to be working towards I don't know about while I am still trying to relearn how to play the early game.

My friends are all Civ megafans, but they were nonstop complaining about a ton of stuff but then had to keep prefacing every complaint with "It's still fun though". I dunno. It felt more like a coping affirmation, they were still playing, but it didn't feel like they were having a ton of fun.

This is by no means a final comprehensive review though. I think Civ 7 and it's UI are awful at onboarding given how much has changed, and we may have a ton more fun when we fully understand the game better. But it's just been a rough early impression. I totally understand why it's sitting at mostly negative right now on steam.

Replying to myself, as an update 30 hours in. I am enjoying the game dramatically more than my first impressions. I have finally finished a whole game, and while I definitely still have some gripes, I would upgrade this game from a 5-6 out of 10 to an 8 out of 10 on the enjoyable factor for me. And the ages system really helped me in completing a Civ game. 1000+ combined hours across Civ 5 and 6 and I don't think I had ever completed a Civ game, I completed a game in Civ 7 and it felt good.

 

[Xefjord]

Don't think I'll miss loyalty, but yeah this is a problem. At the very least it looks very "messy". The solution would be to put cities closer together, but with the settlement cap, and the desire to get new resources makes this difficult. The settlement cap is just so strict right now.

I did not like the loyalty mechanic either, it bugged me immensely in Civ 6 as a TSL player.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Replying to myself, as an update 30 hours in. I am enjoying the game dramatically more than my first impressions. I have finally finished a whole game, and while I definitely still have some gripes, I would upgrade this game from a 5-6 out of 10 to an 8 out of 10 on the enjoyable factor for me. And the ages system really helped me in completing a Civ game. 1000+ combined hours across Civ 5 and 6 and I don't think I had ever completed a Civ game, I completed a game in Civ 7 and it felt good.

Really happy to hear that, fingers crossed it has a similar effect on me. 2 more sleeps to go!

 

[ThunderLizard2]

First impression are very poor. Refunded.
* UI is a joke
* AI can't play the game properly (worse than Civ VI?)

 

[Xefjord]

(First) Impressions after finishing my first game all the way through.

Antiquities felt fun in the beginning, boring in the middle, then super challenging (and engaging) as the crises started to stack up.

Exploration was probably my favorite era, the imperialistic feeling of taking gunboats to conquer others Civs and colonies definitely makes you feel powerful. I originally wanted to not do the economic or military legacies though, I wanted to do science, but for the life of me couldn't figure it out how to get the high yields it was requesting of me, which was disappointing.

Modern was interesting I don't feel like I had a great idea of how the railroad points worked though, and honestly by the middle of the modern age I just had too many cities and stopped trying to develop any of them. I had some cool battles and enjoyed combat in this age, but by the time I built the Manhattan project, I was kind of painfully trying to put all my units to sleep and give my towns focuses so they would stop pestering me and I could just spam next turn to end the game. That part was not fun. I was tired and it was a pain.

A couple thoughts:

The crises and wars in the antiquities were actually challenging, but the crisis in exploration was a total joke and barely affected me. Some kind of financial crisis. And of course there was no crisis in the modern age. The AI was also extremely bad at fielding a military (but to be fair, I had like 30 settlements and they had like 5 each)

The settlement cap and happiness were actually concerning in the antiquities, but by the exploration age and modern age they really didn't affect me at all. I have mixed feelings. On one hand I want it to be possible to be able to conquer the whole world, but on the other I really should have encountered far more problems than I did.

I had insane national happiness (in the hundreds) but all of my settlements were like -30 happiness. It seemed like very few luxuries actually give happiness as well. Based on how things went in the antiquities, I expected most of my empire to be revolting. But I have no idea why that didn't happen. It feels like there should be negative consequences to having such low happiness, but at the same time, I saw no reasonable way to increase my settlement's happiness because the buildings were weak and the happiness boosting resources were very rare. It's only because the consequences were so mild that I was still able to have fun. But that feels like a bandaid not a fix.

The whole settlement limit, resource management, and happiness interactions just felt all around odd.

I definitely had more fun than not though. The ages were great at actually getting me to complete games. And I feel an urge to stick out a game at least to the age up I can level my leader. Thats all good.

I really can't wait for Gedemons earth map though because when my empire got big I had no attachment to most of the cities I conquered or specific bits of land. I saw my my antiquity cities as my homeland, but the rest of the map was meh

 

[StargazingDog]

It feels like there should be negative consequences to having such low happiness

Yields and production are cut drastically when you have negative happiness. You may not notice it much on towns, since these numbers are a bit opaque, but trying to build anything on cities with unhappy people can be a nightmare.

 

[Xefjord]

Yields and production are cut drastically when you have negative happiness. You may not notice it much on towns, since these numbers are a bit opaque, but trying to build anything on cities with unhappy people can be a nightmare.

That explains why my late game production was awful. How do I increase happiness though? It feels like most cities don't have enough luxury slots and few luxuries give happiness. (I am playing Charlemagne btw)

 

[Giskler]

(First) Impressions after finishing my first game all the way through.

Antiquities felt fun in the beginning, boring in the middle, then super challenging (and engaging) as the crises started to stack up.

Exploration was probably my favorite era, the imperialistic feeling of taking gunboats to conquer others Civs and colonies definitely makes you feel powerful. I originally wanted to not do the economic or military legacies though, I wanted to do science, but for the life of me couldn't figure it out how to get the high yields it was requesting of me, which was disappointing.

Modern was interesting I don't feel like I had a great idea of how the railroad points worked though, and honestly by the middle of the modern age I just had too many cities and stopped trying to develop any of them. I had some cool battles and enjoyed combat in this age, but by the time I built the Manhattan project, I was kind of painfully trying to put all my units to sleep and give my towns focuses so they would stop pestering me and I could just spam next turn to end the game. That part was not fun. I was tired and it was a pain.

A couple thoughts:

The crises and wars in the antiquities were actually challenging, but the crisis in exploration was a total joke and barely affected me. Some kind of financial crisis. And of course there was no crisis in the modern age. The AI was also extremely bad at fielding a military (but to be fair, I had like 30 settlements and they had like 5 each)

The settlement cap and happiness were actually concerning in the antiquities, but by the exploration age and modern age they really didn't affect me at all. I have mixed feelings. On one hand I want it to be possible to be able to conquer the whole world, but on the other I really should have encountered far more problems than I did.

I had insane national happiness (in the hundreds) but all of my settlements were like -30 happiness. It seemed like very few luxuries actually give happiness as well. Based on how things went in the antiquities, I expected most of my empire to be revolting. But I have no idea why that didn't happen. It feels like there should be negative consequences to having such low happiness, but at the same time, I saw no reasonable way to increase my settlement's happiness because the buildings were weak and the happiness boosting resources were very rare. It's only because the consequences were so mild that I was still able to have fun. But that feels like a bandaid not a fix.

The whole settlement limit, resource management, and happiness interactions just felt all around odd.

I definitely had more fun than not though. The ages were great at actually getting me to complete games. And I feel an urge to stick out a game at least to the age up I can level my leader. Thats all good.

I really can't wait for Gedemons earth map though because when my empire got big I had no attachment to most of the cities I conquered or specific bits of land. I saw my my antiquity cities as my homeland, but the rest of the map was meh

For Exploration sciene track you need to stack specialists.

 

[Xefjord]

For Exploration sciene track you need to stack specialists.

So it needs to be at least 2 specialists on a single district outside of the city center to count? How about getting yields above 40, is this also done by just putting down a bajillion specialists?

 

[Giskler]

So it needs to be at least 2 specialists on a single district outside of the city center to count? How about getting yields above 40, is this also done by just putting down a bajillion specialists?

Yep.