First Game Impressions

[Isengardtom]

Some updated impressions on the gameplay after 10 hours and completing Antiquity and Exploration

1) Antiquity age
- as always the exploration part is very fun as is looking for new locations to settle
- the scouts and army commanders are big improvements - especially the scouts abilities
- I like the resources and their bonuses - Camels are strong !! And the optimisations of moving them around. I prefer that kind of micro over managing builders.
- I love the mechanics with the independent powers - if hostile they can be a bit of a challenge and I like how you can go from hostile to friend to suzerain to part of your empire. Maybe a few more suzerain options could be added.
- I like the narrative events in the sense that they offer choices . Some more impactful then others. The stories themselves I barely read if I’m honest. And they do come back, in new games, at least if you play the same leader again (only played Hatshepsut so far)
- city building is a lot of fun with the unique quarters and trying to optimise for adjacency - lots to learn still here
- the legacy paths in Antiquity are fun

2) Age transition Antiquity >> Exploration
- the crisis are not very impactful. I had expected more from this. I’m considering disabling them for future games until this is more fun.
- I like the way you unlock your next age civ options: Historic choice, Geographical choice and player unlocked choice
- choosing the legacies is nice I think. They could be fleshed out a bit more maybe with some more options
- the first turn of the new age you are asked to do a lot of actions which is ok, but if you have many units you have to do a lot of clicking on the turn wheel to give them all commands.

3) Exploration age
- exploring the seas and distant lands is great fun as is finding settling locations
- legacies :
* I really like the science legacy with the specialists and trying to get those big yields. As I had a lot of wonders from Antiquity it was not that difficult
* traseure fleets are fun too but you do have to be lucky with finding the resources. I had 5 and came up one short to get the golden Age which was a bit frustrating but it’s good to have a challenge and getting the science legacy pushed forward the age progression
* I dont like the cultural legacy path with the religion at all. I was already sceptical but it’s even less fun than I expected. I’d love for the legacy path to be reworked, maybe with great people / works of religious art and relics that way but I think the spreading of religion should be taken out and replaced with religion just as buff system for your empire (I know not everyone will agree with me here). At least it’s contained to this age in terms of being important
- overbuilding is fun but there’s a lot of buildings so can be a bit overwhelming where to put everything
- Yields : in exploration I had way too much gold available. At some point 10.000 which is a bit silly - needs some rebalancing . Influence is better balanced in my view.

4) general
- I like the concept of the celebrations - 1 general bonus option and one that’s tied to timing your strategy
- the attribute points are also a good mechanic. Feel they offer more relevant strategic choice than the governors in civ 6

 

[Von Falkenheyn]

really appreciate your in depth analysis. Lots of substance here. Have you played into the 3rd age?

Haven't had the stomach for that yet, I've only played Antiquity so far, but I'm going to make this assumption (I might be wrong, I hope I'm wrong...I so want to enjoy this game): if, as the game stands now, I'm having issues regarding information collection and other, general UI problems when I'm managing 1 city and a few towns, then what will happen when I have to manage an empire full of cities and towns and command a dozen armies?

 

[local_hero]

Played through the Antiquity and Exploration age yesterday, some impressions:

- Had by biggest and best city (not my capital) rebel during the Antiquity age crisis. I reloaded an earlier autosave but couldn't find any way to prevent it happening. Maybe I could have researched a tech with more happiness buildings in hindsight, but doubful. That felt pretty awful, and I was only one city over the settlement limit. One of the suggestions, besides increasing happiness obviously, was to station an Army Commander there but that did nothing, so this is one of the things I feel can be communicated better to the player. I played with Long ages too, so the crisis went on forever before the age ended and plenty of time for settlements to flip.

- The exploration crisis on the other I got through very untroubled. Though I was more careful to not get over the settlement limit.

- Some other small niggles, like the merit commendation seemingly not granting XP to the commander from units in the second ring? Or that the Naval Commander "vacuum" button says it will collect nearby land units etc.

- Regarding UI: not an exhaustive list but a bit thrown off that not all Wonders show up unless you click a box to also show those you don't have an appropriate tile for. I think I wish(?) that the UI showed what already established buildings would become better if I placed down a building/wonder on a tile.

- Beautiful game, especially when you zoom in, but I gotta say that the civ6 style is easier to read. But i guess it will be easier as I get more used to it.

- A little bit overwhelmed by all the buildings I can build, and hard to grasp what the implications will be later, especially about ageless buildings.

- It definitely had that "one more turn" quality, I went to bed far too late and was as lively as a zombie when the alarm clock went off. Had a very fun time still, despite it being easier to remember the things that chafe.

 

[UWHabs]

Some updated impressions on the gameplay after 10 hours and completing Antiquity and Exploration

1) Antiquity age
- as always the exploration part is very fun as is looking for new locations to settle
- the scouts and army commanders are big improvements - especially the scouts abilities
- I like the resources and their bonuses - Camels are strong !! And the optimisations of moving them around. I prefer that kind of micro over managing builders.
- I love the mechanics with the independent powers - if hostile they can be a bit of a challenge and I like how you can go from hostile to friend to suzerain to part of your empire. Maybe a few more suzerain options could be added.
- I like the narrative events in the sense that they offer choices . Some more impactful then others. The stories themselves I barely read if I’m honest. And they do come back, in new games, at least if you play the same leader again (only played Hatshepsut so far)
- city building is a lot of fun with the unique quarters and trying to optimise for adjacency - lots to learn still here
- the legacy paths in Antiquity are fun

2) Age transition Antiquity >> Exploration
- the crisis are not very impactful. I had expected more from this. I’m considering disabling them for future games until this is more fun.
- I like the way you unlock your next age civ options: Historic choice, Geographical choice and player unlocked choice
- choosing the legacies is nice I think. They could be fleshed out a bit more maybe with some more options
- the first turn of the new age you are asked to do a lot of actions which is ok, but if you have many units you have to do a lot of clicking on the turn wheel to give them all commands.

3) Exploration age
- exploring the sees and distant lands is great fun as is finding settling locations
- legacies :
* I really like the science legacy with the specialists and trying to get those big yields. As I had a lot of wonders from Antiquity it was not that difficult
* traseure fleets are fun too but you do have to be lucky with finding the resources. I had 5 and came up one short to get the golden Age which was a bit frustrating but it’s good to have a challenge and getting the science legacy pushed forward the age progression
* I dont like the cultural legacy path with the religion at all. I was already sceptical but it’s even less fun than I expected. I’d love for the legacy path to be reworked, maybe with great people / works of religious art and relics that way but I think the spreading of religion should be taken out and replaced with religion just as buff system for your empire (I know not everyone will agree with me here). At least it’s contained to this age in terms of being important
- overbuilding is fun but there’s a lot of buildings so can be a bit overwhelming where to put everything
- Yields : in exploration I had way too much gold available. At some point 10.000 which is a bit silly - needs some rebalancing . Influence is better balanced in my view.

4) general
- I like the concept of the celebrations - 1 general bonus option and one that’s tied to timing your strategy
- the attribute points are also a good mechanic. Feel they offer more relevant strategic choice than the governors in civ 6

1) Agreed. Lots of good there. I wouldn't mind if a few of the suzerain bonuses even were "simpler" - like, have a bonus for militaristic give you +25% or +50% bonus to building military buildings, or just like a general bonus to building units.
2) Need a lot more samples to really understand. I'm pretty sure I'll keep them on because they spice things up a bit. The new age start is a long turn to re-set everything.
3) I haven't played yet, so will reserve judgement.
4) Celebrations are good, but I kind of feel that policy cards are a bit more meh on the whole, certainly compared to civ 6. Not so much in that celebrations aren't worth it, but especially since you just get a new slot each celebration, I almost feel like the policy cards should just be permanent for the rest of the era once you slot them in. Although obviously that would suck for the last cards you unlock, unless if you get a late celebration.
Attribute points agreed are an interesting legacy through the ages. Although I do think they need some rebalancing. It feels like the first point you get is worth like nothing, but once you get like 3 rungs deep on the tree, you have policies that are like a 50% boost on influence, which is kind of crazy. I wouldn't mind if the first points were a little better, and the deeper ones weren't necessarily so OP.

 

[Isengardtom]

- A little bit overwhelmed by all the buildings I can build, and hard to grasp what the implications will be later, especially about ageless buildings.

Same here . There’s a lot to build and not always clear what makes sense or not and where it makes sense

 

[Uberfrog]

Lafayette/Rome/Sovereign.

Managed to finish the antiquity age before work this morning. The revolt crisis (as I detailed in another thread) was irritating enough that I had to try to stop practically all my towns from flipping. There doesn’t seem much you can do during the crisis, except declare war and take them back? So I did. The crisis itself lacks any sort of context or character. It is just as if you lose all your sources of happiness with very little mitigation possible. I suspect you need to prepare your empire carefully enough before the crisis; once it has begun your citizens just keep burning down all your resource improvements…

Ended up with more towns than I started the crisis with, thanks to a successful war against Benji and Charlie who was in possession of some rather nasty elephant units that somewhat troubled my legions. This helped me down the Military path (annoyingly just 1 point from completing it!) Annoyingly I lost a town I was hoping to make my Exploration capital to my ally Himiko .

Relieved to have a functioning happiness system now it’s the Exploration age. Looking forward to dominating the new world as Spain, after a rather shaky Antiquity era.

 

[local_hero]

Lafayette/Rome/Sovereign.

Managed to finish the antiquity age before work this morning. The revolt crisis (as I detailed in another thread) was irritating enough that I had to try to stop practically all my towns from flipping. There doesn’t seem much you can do during the crisis, except declare war and take them back? So I did. The crisis itself lacks any sort of context or character. It is just as if you lose all your sources of happiness with very little mitigation possible. I suspect you need to prepare your empire carefully enough before the crisis; once it has begun your citizens just keep burning down all your resource improvements…

Ended up with more towns than I started the crisis with, thanks to a successful war against Benji and Charlie who was in possession of some rather nasty elephant units that somewhat troubled my legions. This helped me down the Military path (annoyingly just 1 point from completing it!) Annoyingly I lost a town I was hoping to make my Exploration capital to my ally Himiko .

Relieved to have a functioning happiness system now it’s the Exploration age. Looking forward to dominating the new world as Spain, after a rather shaky Antiquity era.

My city flipped to my only friend and ally through the antiquity and exploration age, so I "couldn't" even do that

 

[Isengardtom]

My city flipped to my only friend and ally through the antiquity and exploration age, so I "couldn't" even do that

Bit unrelated but A strategy I found myself doing a is becoming suzerain of a city state and as the age ending is approaching incorporating them into my empire because they don’t carry over anyways

 

[evonannoredars]

Finished first game as Maya-Inka-Mexico Rizal on a low difficulty. Overall I really enjoyed some parts of the game and others were more boring. I'm really mostly just going to list things I didn't like because there's not as much to talk about what I do like, but I'd give it a 7/10 atm (and could easily be brought up to 8 or even 9 with UI improvements).

- Having so many resources (especially city ones) became a hassle, I stopped caring where any were slotted eventually. Imo having multiple copies of one city resource become one more powerful city resource would be a better way of doing this, or some way to auto/mass assign resources.
- Religion I didn't like as it's too much micromanagement and it's hard to be aware of what's going on there. Basically would need an entire overhaul for me to engage with.
- Building cities was very fun at first, but after the first age just became mindlessly slapping down buildings wherever the yields for them was highest. Likewise an auto-overbuild toggle would be appreciated.
- Military victory was pretty anticlimactic, was hoping I'd be able to choose where to launch operation ivy rather than have a 'activate this then just wait to win' situation.
- Crises barely affected me, hoping higher difficulties will remedy that. +10 age progression from future tech really should be +2 at most imo.
- Had a fun world war in the modern age, except it actually being like twenty individual wars diminished that a bit. AI wasn't very good at fighting back, but then again I was on a low difficulty.

My other issues are very minor, eg. I wish the architectural styles of old palaces and conquered cities weren't overridden and that narrative events were longer than two text boxes. I enjoyed the quest format narrative events, I hope they add more of those to do.

 

[Potworny]

Yeah the game could have used some more time in the oven, but I've now arrived late to two different social gatherings due to playing too many one more turns. So it's a civ game alright.

 

[SaberSix]

Only at turn 38 on pure tutorial as I have been paralyzed/frustrated by the UI and lack of info (explanation of the possible impacts of a choice).

This thread has been very helpful. VII in game tips seem only helpful to a first time CIVer as they usually only give broad brush info that states the issue/problem, not the solutions or their ramifications. As with legislation in the old days I do not want to have to vote for it to know what's in it. In earlier Civs a small choice can have a colossal impact in later eras. I assume VII is the same and want to know as best I can the ramifications of a choice before I waste time going down a rabbit hole.

I have played Civ since the first one and have over 9,000 hours on VI. I know I have no life but it is the only game I have played since Atari ST days.

The UI and Civilopedia are significantly challenged. This thread has helped find things that are hidden well: city states/IPs), timeline, victory score. opponent guv & # of cities, etc. I guess I needed to read/watch the overwhelming number of trailers and websites that spoon fed portions of VII. There is too much to know (which is a good thing). There will be a steep learning curve that probably will require many games, leaders/civs and hours to learn things until a comprehensive guide is made/available

Since the UI & Civilopedia are of little use to help me figure out what to so or even how to do things, I use an AI (Perplexity) which I have found very useful and faster/better than using a search engine or sifting thru many posts.

 

[Ornen]

anyone else finding the game plays slower than Civ 6? Antiquity went by fine, but my Exploration era is taking a long time to play through.

they’ve got rid of builder micro, but now we’ve got more wars and somewhat involved minigames involving treasure ships & missionaries, as well as busywork setbacks called crises. playing on standard speed

 

[JR Magallanes]

Just finished a succesful playthrough as J Rizz.
I went Maya → Hawaii → Mexico
My culture + happiness yirlds were through the roof.

My first playthrough was Maurya → Hawaii → Siam and I was stuck in modern age because I cant find relics anymore. So relics are finite resources and more difficult to find especially on higher difficulties. I wish there's was an espionage option to steal relics.

Some thoughts:
- there should be a visual cue if your civ is celebrating (akin to the shiny aura of your civ when youre on a golden age on civ vi) and there must be a ticker so as to know when will be your next celebration
- i loved the age transitions. It was a nice change of pace in the game. I just wished there's crises are a bit more impactful. (Maybe it wasnt because i got ao much happiness from Rizal's leader ability.
- Mexico's unique building is kinda lame if youre going for a culture victory


- diplomacy was superb. I find it very rewarding.
- resource management was great!!!
- i had fun with treasure fleets and I hot an economic golden age.

 

[StargazingDog]

anyone else finding the game plays slower than Civ 6? Antiquity went by fine, but my Exploration era is taking a long time to play through.

they’ve got rid of builder micro, but now we’ve got more wars and somewhat involved minigames involving treasure ships & missionaries, as well as busywork setbacks called crises. playing on standard speed

So far, my first game has taken about 12 hours, and I am halfway through exploration age. This is definitely the longest any Civ session has taken me. I assume it's partly due to just learning the game. I believe I wasted three hours until discovering my mistakes in regard to treasure fleets. Now that I fully understand how they work, I have three cities each sending out 2-3 treasure goods every few turns, and my turns are going by quickly.

Since I fully committed to the economic track, I haven't been attempting, or even looking at, the other tracks. This surely slows down the game as well. I bet I could easily get a few points in the other tracks if I tried, which would accelerate the game.

I'm guessing this particular session will be 18 hours when I am done, with future games sticking to the 10-12 hour target stated by Firaxis. I'm fine with the length as long as the game stays his engaging until the end. Almost every Civ 5 & 6 game had about 1-2 hours of going through the motions at the end since victory was inevitable (waiting for space parts, waiting for UN, etc).

 

[JR Magallanes]

Why cant I assign resources to specific cities that have a spot open ? What am I missing ?
View attachment 718455

Because the resource is city-specific. You can slot bonus resources into towns

 

[StargazingDog]

there should be a visual cue if your civ is celebrating (akin to the shiny aura of your civ when youre on a golden age on civ vi) and there must be a ticker so as to know when will be your next celebration

I agree about the visuals. I never have any idea if I am celebrating.

As for a ticker, you can hover your mouse over something to see how many turns until celebration. I forget what, but it's there on the main screen.

 

[Ornen]

So far, my first game has taken about 12 hours, and I am halfway through exploration age. This is definitely the longest any Civ session has taken me. I assume it's partly due to just learning the game. I believe I wasted three hours until discovering my mistakes in regard to treasure fleets. Now that I fully understand how they work, I have three cities each sending out 2-3 treasure goods every few turns, and my turns are going by quickly.

ha, that was my experience too. I had four settlements with treasure goods, but two weren't producing anything. couldn't for the life of me figure out why, I assumed they were just too far from my other cities — but it turns out I just needed a quay

 

[Nineliveslost]

finished the game by domination. End cut scene was very simplistic and maybe one sentence spoken

I don't know what to think about this game. Maybe I am looking for more sandbox instead of pigeonholing you down certain paths

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

2nd post about my Machiavelli as Mississippians: I think he may be OP? Granted, it IS default level, I went for extra Influence often when given choices. Never had neg relations with anyone and likely could have Allied them all but I got bored. Gave up on Antiquity 2/3 of the way thru crisis. Boring as hell. I just don't care what I build, nor buy. I smack down the occasional new camp [edit: crisis IP] or whatever and it's a cakewalk. I gave up on expanding at 7/7 in part because I wasn't sure if I would have an Unhappiness crisis or what. Also, the fact that I was pretty sure I would start a new game soon made me lose more interest. I'm clearly winning big-time, which is what always got me in 6 around the same time (t120-150).

Pros - there are certainly times when I feel like I'm making interesting choices. Exploration with Scouts was fun, but it ended very early (I usually play Enormous or bigger maps in 6). The variety of terrain and elevation is intriguing. Combat is interesting so far. The civic and tech trees seem interesting. I built a few wonders - I prefer the constant wonder animations in 6, but the patterned BUMMM with subwoofer in the animation adds gravitas and a true sense of "wonder'. So well done (I'm an animator and producer)!

Cons - I find the map incredibly ugly. I started in a desert area with rivers - drab as could be. Nearby woods were not inviting, they look dried up and washed out. Zooming in the terrain and settlements are lovely and interesting, but why would I zoom in on terrain much when playing a 4X? Unit movement often feels like I have drunken soldiers falling into hidden potholes. The lack of a Trade Route screen is mind-boggling. A very unfinished product, but I will enjoy experimenting over the next few days and hopefully months, years, etc.

 

[StargazingDog]

finished the game by domination. End cut scene was very simplistic and maybe one sentence spoken

I don't know what to think about this game. Maybe I am looking for more sandbox instead of pigeonholing you down certain paths

I'd argue that this iteration is much more flexible than prior games. In Civ 6, if I didn't start the game completely focused on culture and tourism, getting a culture victory would take a verrrrry long time. Every victory feels that way in Civ 5/6: I have to keep laser focused on the end goal otherwise I am in for a slog.

Here, I can just do what I want and still earn points that advance the age and improve my leader. I can change my main path each age without much effort.

Are you saying that you'd prefer every game just be score victory? How did you win in previous games? They each would require you to focus on one area to get an early victory.