First Game Impressions

[SammyKhalifa]

How is the narrator? It's that woman from Game of Thrones, right? She's a fine actress but I don't know if she has the gravitas to be near as good as the previous narrators. She's no Leonard Nimoy, Sean Bean, or William Morgan Sheppard.

She's excellent.

 

[bladex1200]

1) Quality is a completely subjective measure, I'm sure the 1/3rd of the playerbase still playing V over IV at any given time will tell you that.

2) In your opinion, playing tall is the bane of 4x games. In my opinion, you are wrong

3) your argument falls apart when you realize you can win 4x games without exterminating other civs and that the explore part of the 4x formula usually gets thrown out half way through most 4x games.

1. Quality is a qualitative measure, it's not a completely subjective measure. There are many data-driven attributes that can be judged for high quality of a game, such as how many players out of the overall pool engage with different mechanics and what percentage of players continue to replay a game past the initial one or two playthroughs. Just because some people prefer something that has worse mechanics and less-engaging gameplay, doesn't mean somehow that thing is of better quality. By this logic, we could never judge any films as being better than any others because there are people who enjoy intentionally poorly-made films or whose idea of good storytelling is crude and unintelligent.
   
   
2. We've established that, that has nothing to do with my argument as to whether my opinion constitutes a correct notion or not. Opinions can be completely unsubstantiated, substantiated, or some degrees in-between. Not all opinions are created equal, as my history teacher in high school was once fond of saying.
   
   
3. It doesn't, actually. Being able to win despite engaging suboptimally with systems is 100% part of strategy gaming, and plenty of players enjoy the challenge imposed from not simply aiming for the crudest, most direct path to victory. I could also argue that you can win 4x games without building every single building or tile improvement relevant to your strategy, that doesn't mean eXploit is somehow any less part of the 4x formula.
   
   The eXploration portion being thrown out halfway through most 4x games is also not inherently a refutation to my argument. It WOULD be a refutation if the eXploration portion was thrown out at your leisure - that is, I could leave half the map unexplored because exploring it wouldn't net me any benefits. But in most 4x games, the reason eXploration ceases to be relevant is because everything that can be explored has been explored and the player is able to acquire exploration knowledge through other means like map trading, espionage, using special abilities to explore and gain vision remotely or through magic, etc. By the logic you're arguing, again, eXploitation wouldn't be a core part of 4x gameplay since in many 4x games cities run out of infrastructure and resource improvements to construct partway through the game and end up building units or converting their production to other uses. But obviously we know that isn't the case.

I'll also point out that you're wrong about 4's maitanence mechanics as they did very little to limit ICS, which was hands down the best way to play IV. This is a problem that even Soren Johnson, the head devoloper of the IV awknowledged and is exactly why Old World moved to having predetermined city sites

I disagree that 4's maintenance mechanics failed to limit ICS, I just think many players misunderstand what ICS is. ICS is packing as many cities as possible as the priority regardless of whatever else is happening across the game space, which is true in Civ 3 but IMO not true in Civ 4. I appreciate that Soren was aiming for a different style of gameplay in Old World and aimed for predetermined city sites to avoid sprawl in the middle of the desert and to better-reflect the limited exploitation capacity that classical-age civilizations had (most land was of such marginal use that they wouldn't bother settling it), but I disagree that that was a core issue in 4. I would like to see his argument specifically about it being a core issue in 4, as I haven't read much about Old World's development.

Incorrect, lots of times playing tall in V involves going to war and puppeting the cities of larger nations after you create a much stronger, leaner, and more productive core of cities. Also no where am I arguing that playing small should ALWAYS beat wide play or that a leaner empire should be "inherently more competitive" in raw output than a larger one. That actually is a strawman

I would argue going to war and puppeting cities of larger nations is not playing tall at all and if that's what you're arguing for then we're in agreement. It's always better to be big, but it should be difficult to get big (e.g. you have to go to war with these bigger civs to cut them down to size). My argument is that Civ 5 allows players to win peacefully without conquering through use of limited city placement, at least it did earlier in the game's life without mods (I rarely played it until recently and now, with mods, I would argue Civ 5 actually doesn't promote tall play nearly as much anymore and is tolerable), and that is in my view anathema to a 4x game.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

kind of a bummer. I stopped playing last night right at the transition to modern, choosing siam because I wanted to play with city states. There aren't any to be found that I've uncovered. Then, I saw this morning that they did the patch to have citystates stick around instead of disappearing during that time. And the autosaves are nowhere to be found because lthey go away after age transition. Kind of feel like I'm stuck with a civ with no abilities unless I want to replay the last 30 turns of exp.

 

[StargazingDog]

That's why I was attentive enough to place the caveat of not even having finished a second game. I didn't even know this but am looking forward to trying out two or three urban cities with some towns feeding into them. Thanks for the help!

I understand. It took me until about halfway through my second antiquity age to fully grasp the city/town relationship. The tutorials are handy! I expect I will have them on for my first dozen games.

I am definitely being more careful about which settlements I convert to cities. It's a little skewed in my current game, since I started as Rome, and I have civics that reward having towns. I am halfway through exploration age, and only have two cities with six towns. I plan on creating a city somewhere, but not yet sure where. My town yields are just so satisfying. I'll have to upgrade a couple soon, though. Gold spends very quickly if you try to build in several towns, as well as buy units.

I will say that with this town system, the tall/wide balance is perfection, IMHO.

 

[Daigotsu Max]

She's excellent.

Not only this this true, but the quality of quotes is VASTLY superior to Civ VI. Goodbye, Isladeb and Kilimanjaro wifi. You won't be missed.

 

[bladex1200]

Not only this this true, but the quality of quotes is VASTLY superior to Civ VI. Goodbye, Isladeb and Kilimanjaro wifi. You won't be missed.

Yeah, agreed. Huge fan with the thematic direction their historian decided to take with quotes selection. A few funny quotes are welcome but the vast majority should be serious and dignified, as befits the series.

 

[Sagax]

How is the narrator? It's that woman from Game of Thrones, right? She's a fine actress but I don't know if she has the gravitas to be near as good as the previous narrators. She's no Leonard Nimoy, Sean Bean, or William Morgan Sheppard.

With all due respect to him, but… Sean Bean had gravitas in Civ 6?

 

[TheGrayFox]

1. Quality is a qualitative measure, it's not a completely subjective measure. There are many data-driven attributes that can be judged for high quality of a game, such as how many players out of the overall pool engage with different mechanics and what percentage of players continue to replay a game past the initial one or two playthroughs. Just because some people prefer something that has worse mechanics and less-engaging gameplay, doesn't mean somehow that thing is of better quality. By this logic, we could never judge any films as being better than any others because there are people who enjoy intentionally poorly-made films or whose idea of good storytelling is crude and unintelligent.
   
   
2. We've established that, that has nothing to do with my argument as to whether my opinion constitutes a correct notion or not. Opinions can be completely unsubstantiated, substantiated, or some degrees in-between. Not all opinions are created equal, as my history teacher in high school was once fond of saying.
   
   
3. It doesn't, actually. Being able to win despite engaging suboptimally with systems is 100% part of strategy gaming, and plenty of players enjoy the challenge imposed from not simply aiming for the crudest, most direct path to victory. I could also argue that you can win 4x games without building every single building or tile improvement relevant to your strategy, that doesn't mean eXploit is somehow any less part of the 4x formula.
   
   The eXploration portion being thrown out halfway through most 4x games is also not inherently a refutation to my argument. It WOULD be a refutation if the eXploration portion was thrown out at your leisure - that is, I could leave half the map unexplored because exploring it wouldn't net me any benefits. But in most 4x games, the reason eXploration ceases to be relevant is because everything that can be explored has been explored and the player is able to acquire exploration knowledge through other means like map trading, espionage, using special abilities to explore and gain vision remotely or through magic, etc. By the logic you're arguing, again, eXploitation wouldn't be a core part of 4x gameplay since in many 4x games cities run out of infrastructure and resource improvements to construct partway through the game and end up building units or converting their production to other uses. But obviously we know that isn't the case.

1) What is quality is subjective and varies from person to person. You can ask anyone what the 10 best movies are and that list will completely change from person to person but even if you wanted to make an argument that the quality of art and video games can be qualitatively measured, V was a darling among critics and the second best recieved title in the series according to both fans and critics

2. Sure opinions can be argued but ultimately your idea that Civ V is bad and playing tall is the bane of the genre is your opinion

3. No actually it does , if you can win and enjoy myself without ever engaging in one of the 4xs the genre is named after than why is playing tall the anti-thesis of the genre and not playing peacefully? There is actually a fault in your logic here.

I disagree that 4's maintenance mechanics failed to limit ICS, I just think many players misunderstand what ICS is. ICS is packing as many cities as possible as the priority regardless of whatever else is happening across the game space, which is true in Civ 3 but IMO not true in Civ 4. I appreciate that Soren was aiming for a different style of gameplay in Old World and aimed for predetermined city sites to avoid sprawl in the middle of the desert and to better-reflect the limited exploitation capacity that classical-age civilizations had (most land was of such marginal use that they wouldn't bother settling it), but I disagree that that was a core issue in 4. I would like to see his argument specifically about it being a core issue in 4, as I haven't read much about Old World's development.

ICS was still king in IV. If you disagree with that assessment. you might want to take your disagreement up with the head devoloper of the game in question.

The predesigned city sites in Old World were not designed "to better-reflect the limited exploitation capacity that classical-age civilizations" or to avoid sprawls in desert, Soren Johnson specifically designed pre-determined city sites as response to the ICS being problem in 4x games. If I remember in his post-mortem explaining design decisions of Old World he specifically called ICS "the bane of civ devolopers"

I would argue going to war and puppeting cities of larger nations is not playing tall at all and if that's what you're arguing for then we're in agreement. It's always better to be big, but it should be difficult to get big (e.g. you have to go to war with these bigger civs to cut them down to size). My argument is that Civ 5 allows players to win peacefully without conquering through use of limited city placement, at least it did earlier in the game's life without mods (I rarely played it until recently and now, with mods, I would argue Civ 5 actually doesn't promote tall play nearly as much anymore and is tolerable), and that is in my view anathema to a 4x game.

and I would argue that you're wrong.

if I choose to only settle 4 cities and go tradition and then end up puppeting a bunch of other cities in the course of playing tall and winning the game without building another settler, I am still playing tall by Civ standards.

 

[AriochIV]

How is the narrator? It's that woman from Game of Thrones, right? She's a fine actress but I don't know if she has the gravitas to be near as good as the previous narrators. She's no Leonard Nimoy, Sean Bean, or William Morgan Sheppard.

I think she does a fine job. She has a pleasing voice and she reads the lines like a Shakespearean actor would... it feels appropriate.

 

[Taefin]

. If you aren't specializing, you are indeed playing "wide" and will spend a lot of unnecessary time deciding where to place citizens. By definition, to play "tall" you must specialize your towns.

I’m no advocate for tall play, though I enjoyed having my first game being 3 cities, and using the specialist bonuses for 3 or fewer. But town micro could be made much less cumbersome. A minimum 7 pop town will generate much fewer resources if specialized immediately, and there is necessarily an optimal point to switch between benefitting from a town’s growth bonus (getting empire-wide pops higher, and thus more gold) to cashing in by sending their food to cities, where it takes so much more food per pop.

If the city/town and growth screens had more info (eg towns current yields) it would be easier to follow a towns strengths, or if growth locations could be queued or planned with markers, these benefits could be obtained without so much jarring micro.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

After looking at all of these comments, and earning my 20 year badge, I'm going to do what any 20-year-badge player would do.

I'm going to reinstall that cool Civ 3 mod (that improves all the bad things) and remember the Glory Days where Civ was Civ.

P.S. When I hit 30 years, please don't send me a badge saying that, just a "You're freakin old" one would suffice. Love you CFC!

 

[Jazz_Bassist]

Been awhile since I posted on here.

Got the Deluxe Edition yesterday for the PS5. I have to say it took me a bit to get used to. I am old school I still have the Civilization board game from way back and was in the 5th grade when Civilization I was released on PC. That said the only one I just couldn’t get into was Civilization VI. I have it and sometimes tinker with it, but something about it felt off. So I will say I was reluctant to try VII. So far I really enjoy it. I don’t think the UI is to bad, just a bit cumbersome in some places. I feel like this Civilization installment sorta did for the franchise what the fifth installment did for Gran Turismo. Added dynamics to a classic instead of just remaking the same game with better graphics and a few extra mechanics. I think all in all after some patches and more playing, and sharing of strategy by the community, the game will become more and more appreciated.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

After looking at all of these comments, and earning my 20 year badge, I'm going to do what any 20-year-badge player would do.

I'm going to reinstall that cool Civ 3 mod (that improves all the bad things) and remember the Glory Days where Civ was Civ.

P.S. When I hit 30 years, please don't send me a badge saying that, just a "You're freakin old" one would suffice. Love you CFC!

I've been debating on buying Civ VII but I kind of had the same feeling as you. I haven't played Civ V in over 4 years, and it might be time to do that instead of buying the new game. It would be like a new game for me since I haven't played with Vox Populi Mod Pack.

 

[TheGrayFox]

I've been debating on buying Civ VII but I kind of had the same feeling as you. I haven't played Civ V in over 4 years, and it might be time to do that instead of buying the new game. It would be like a new game for me since I haven't played with Vox Populi Mod Pack.

V with VP is the pinnacle of the series (imo) so you'll have a great time learning how their actually very intelligent changes to the base game work and how well tested and meticulously balanced all its components are. It's still familar to base V but improved in almost every single way imaginable.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

V with VP is the pinnacle of the series (imo) so you'll have a great time learning how their actually very intelligent changes to the base game work and how well tested and meticulously balanced all its components are. It's still familar to base V but improved in almost every single way imaginable.

Thanks! Just navigating through the mod system is a game unto itself. Seems the Steam Workshop is closed, and they are running all the mods from the Civfanatics Community Patch Project. I got a peek at the tech tree and all I could think of is wow, just wow.

 

[TheGrayFox]

Thanks! Just navigating through the mod system is a game unto itself. Seems the Steam Workshop is closed, and they are running all the mods from the Civfanatics Community Patch Project. I got a peek at the tech tree and all I could think of is wow, just wow.

yeah you have to download from either civfanatics or their discord but the mod has its own little installation.exe and everything that makes it pretty easy to install and keep up to date with. It's really impressive work

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Just played my first 100 turns of civ7. Playing as Augustus of Rome. Napoleon and Amina declared war on me. Napoleon was the only close enough. He sent several units to attack me but I had a commander with a couple legions and an archer and was able to fend him off. I then signed a white peace with both. One Independent People sent boats and took one of my towns but I was able to take it back. Overall, the first 100 turns have been action packed. I've expanded to 6 settlements, gone to war. I am currently building the Collosseum. I built my unique quarter.

The game is very different than civ6 for sure but it has the same just one more turn fun. I'm already hooked, way more than I was with civ6. The game keeps you engaged with interesting choices. I am really liking the new mechanics like commanders. They make moving units and 1upt more interesting. The new mechanic of expanding cities by improving reminds me a lot of the similar mechanic in Millenia. In many ways civ7 feels like a better version of Millenia.

 

[reddishrecue]

The game is a bit complicated because I am still yet learning to get a victory. I have played a few times online and offline and I noticed that I have been improving and even though I been improving I still got a lot to learn. The complications of obtaining a victory are less now and I only got to finish it like twice and I didn't even get a victory yet.

 

[Archanist]

How do you view the XML

\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VII
files for the base game and dlc are there, just snoop around.
Anything that can read a text file will be able to read the xml

 

[Yzman]

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.

You need to play the game more...when you slot resources they give specific bonuses. Not quite sure how you missed this as it it crucial to the economic track of the game...