First Game Impressions

[Potworny]

I decided to play my first game on Deity and I won

Spoiler :

It was fun, the one turn syndrome was definitely there, but I'd say the game was too easy. I was allowed to play very suboptimally by the AI, they mounted some scary attacks but none of them really derailed me. I felt a little overwhelmed in the end, but it wasn't as tedious as Civ VI end game.

 

[Jkchart]

If I can make one recommendation for new players, my advice is: if you're an experienced player and you've been following the game's development, start on a higher difficulty level than the default (which is Governor). On that setting, the AI is very passive. I think nobody even founded their second cities until turn 50 or 60.

I'm on turn 79 in the Exploration Age in my first game (I started some other test games since to check things out), and I'm so far ahead that it's kind of boring... the Age Progress meter is at 44%, but I'm most of the way through the tech tree, there's nothing for my capital to build and I have more gold and influence than I can spend. I can't really buy units and conquer everybody, because I'm over the settlement cap as it is.

My first game was at Viceroy, decent enough challenge for a first game but still ended in a pretty complete victory, second is Sovereign which is noticeably more difficult. With the new mechanics still being learned by me it was tough to try and complete even a single Legacy path in antiquity (I missed but at least got several milestones), so I think that’s a solid Emperor-level challenge for me.

My siblings both started Immortal on got immediately trounced and had to lower difficulty. The AI bonuses and early aggressive Independent People are no joke imo. My longest war this second game on Sovereign was against the Israelites which immediately forced me onto a defensive foot until I could get enough units to improve my position.

 

[Jeppetto]

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?

It's the color of your civ. Multiple buildings and units if not all should have accents like that

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A comment on several previous posts:
After 5 all or partial Antiquity playthroughs and 2 Exploration Age plays, I have consistently found that the Hostile IPs in Antiquity are more trouble than the AI Civs. Major points:

1. Don't build too many Scouts. I started my first few games building 2 scouts, and never had both of them survive more than 10 - 15 turns. Hostile IPs not only roam the map with larger units, they get Slingers Very Early and shoot your scouts to bits. 1 Scout to start with is enough, and plan to be shut out of large parts of the continent until somebody clears out some of the hostile IPs by extermination of conversion to non-hostile.

2. Hostile IP ships are a major Pain. As in Civ VI (same algorithm?) any coastal IP builds them by the bucketful, and they all have long range missile capability, so they will trash any unit of yours near the coast. And your own archers take forever to destroy one of the little boatly varmints unless you mass your archers for that purpose only. It is actually probably a very good model of the problem of classical Piracy or Sea Peoples raiding the coast, with 'ranged factor' taking the place of 'putting pirate groups on shore', but they are more annoying than a rap artist with a speech impediment.

3. Once you do Suze them, IPs are right handy. Lesson: don't fight them unless you have to, but save up your Influence and start making friends as soon as you can - it pays off far better in the long run.

4. Which brings up the last point: If your Starting Position is not on a tiny peninsula with only a one-tile entrance (and yes, I got two starts like that!) expect to get visited by hostile IP groups of 4 - 6 units (but without Army Leaders until late in the Antiquity Age) so that you Must build defensive units early on. One lonely Warrior or a Slinger will not be enough: Ideally before the first herd or horde comes a'calling, you should have an Army Leader with 3 - 4 units ready for them. - And city walls are not a construction to be put off forever, either: I had one start with hostile IPs on three sides of me, one of which turned hostile after I originally met them, so that I spent most of the first half of the Antiquity Age fighting or befriending IPs.

Overall, I had far more military interaction in all the Antiquity games with hostile IPs than with any AI Civ. The Diplomatic interactions with the Civs were very interesting and useful, but in 5 games I only fought two (short) wars with hostile Civs, while I had numerous combats in every game with hostile IPs from the earliest turns.

 

[Taefin]

I just started modern on immortal. I’m used to pretty stiff AI advantage and had a similar experience of being surprised by IP threat (I couldn’t think about invading AI until I had hostile IPs disbanded). When I started fighting the AI I found I was winning by having 2x the number of units as them, but nearly exhausting my armies by the time I captured the major city I targeted each time (first I was crossing a navigable river to attack in ancient, second I attacked a city with 6 districts of medieval walls and ranged units inside several, which give +15 CS to defender, +5 because I declared surprise war, +5 for immortal). It felt pretty epic marching a 20-unit army against Napoleon’s large city, and I got siege units online a few turns after my capture stalled, and they cut through the remaining defenses like butter. Commanders really felt natural, being able to load and retreat wounded units, being able to park an army on another units space helps a group of units move through narrow terrain they couldn’t otherwise. It felt like I was managing a siege, without the movement becoming painful (some micro around terrain, but so much better than it would be otherwise).

Speaking to the AI, in hopefully there are some smallish tweaks that will change this:

-they built so few settlements, all ending exploration with around 6/16, despite swaths of both continents being empty. I sat and stared at all these beautiful settlement sites overflowing with resources, but was over cap already and the AI only built a few towns in them. I was playing 5+3 civs on the largest “standard”, continents map (only one tiny island, but continents still very close together).

-AI Napoleon was outnumbered (he had maybe 10 units to my 20) but he made this worse for constantly having 4 units embarked on navigable rivers. I didn’t bring much ranged, so it was slow going attacking them, but these units would have been difficult to fight if they defended in his empty walled districts. Hopefully FXS can tweak the behavior to always try to exist a river. Admittedly these units were city built in rivers immediately surrounding another city, so it’s possible they were trying to form a defensive cluster around it, which just happened to include river. But they still should have returned to land.

-AI progression on legacies was very slow. I’m not sure if there was a single war in exploration that I didn’t declare, and they only built a few towns on DL, and pretty late. I wonder if it’s IP that are hampering them. Might need to give AI some CS advantage here.

-Given how much difficulty I had taking a large, lightly defended city (at least until I got siege) I suspect AI would benefit from some extra CS against districts (luckily there is a leader attribute that does this, so that should be a modifier in the game files).

If AI unit numbers were scaled up by their lack of settlements (if they had 2.5x as many units), I suspect this would have been quite challenging.

 

[Brew God]

Almost done with my first game. Playing on Scribe with Tecumseh and the Shawnee then going American. After playing Civ 6 for the past 7 years with quick movement and online game play speed the next update seriously needs to address this mechanic / options. The game is great yet takes 3-4 times longer than it should.

Who else is having a problem with the units moving in slow motion? I do love the game and look forward to another 9,000 hours of gameplay which I have with Civ 6.

Brew God

 

[Riconatic]

How has the exploration age legacy path balance felt?

In long ages game I tried to play treasure fleets. Ai went all in on relics. At least two.

I had no chance at all. Took me three times the time. But I had more money than god. Waging war would have been very possible, but I did not want to.

 

[kaspergm]

After 5 all or partial Antiquity playthroughs and 2 Exploration Age plays, I have consistently found that the Hostile IPs in Antiquity are more trouble than the AI Civs.

I had hoped we were moving on from the situation in Civ6 where the biggest thread for the first half of the game was barbarian camps swarming you with armies double the size of even the strongest empires within 10 turns of spawning, but I guess not.

 

[AriochIV]

I'm playing a Rome -> Norman -> America game, and in the Modern Age all my Roman and Norman regular buildings have transmogrified into the Mayan and Shawnee models. So much for "building in layers."

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

It was my second game, but I actually enjoyed the heck out of Machiavelli. I had to badly overextend my settlement limit in Exploration in order to outcompete Himiko HS. As a result, half the civs tried to break me apart right at the beginning of the Modern. Fortunately, I had a stockpile of cash and influence, and I was able to defend my farflung empire through excessive war support and a handful of Marines.

 

[Aurelesk]

It's the color of your civ. Multiple buildings and units if not all should have accents like that

That makes sense, thank you. I was off to recreate a game to find out the ins and outs.

Just for a color story. It makes me realize why I get so easily lost in the game.

The game has potential. If I have to summarize: the desire for cohesion, plausibility and beauty greatly impinges on readability. I never thought I would say this one day: I miss the thematic and fluorescent colors of the buildings in Civilization VI.

I will give examples. The buildings had the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple for military, industrial, entertainment, housing & food, maritime, scientific and cultural buildings. Let's add brown and white for industrial and religious buildings.
I admit that I would love a mod that would allow me to distinguish by color. The buildings are not as stereotyped which do not allow them to be detected at a glance. Colors could be bright or dull, depending on whether they are usable or obsolete (and therefore: eligible to overbuild).
The same color code could be used, except that white would be suitable for Influence (or purple, and makes Culture more magenta?). For example:

Spoiler Quick Mspaint edition masterpiece :

Spoiler The original screenshot :

Readability is improved, at the expense of immersion (I suppose).

The same can be said for the technology and civic trees. It's written small, the tooltips have a lot of text, and nothing is instinctive.

I would have preferred that the + where the yield changes are written were more visual. For example, we could have an image of a Farm, with a Food symbol at the bottom right, preceded by a written "+1". Civilization V and VI had the same problem. So I guess it will stay as is unfortunately?..

Buildings and units should not be detailed by hovering over the technology, but by hovering over its icon. Each tooltip is so detailed that I no longer read them.

 

[James_Champagne]

Still on my first game, 80% through the first Age. Yeah, my computer is slow.

One thing (well, okay, yet another thing) I wish: when a city finished production on something, I wish it would say WHAT had just gotten finished, because sometimes if it's been awhile since I checked in on that city I forget what it had been building and have to go back and check my notes (yes, I keep notes as I play, kind of have to as this game as far as I can tell has no timeline function).

I know I complained about this before, but these two volcanos are pretty much the bane of my existence. The one in the center explodes CONSTANTLY (most recently, 710 BC, 610 BC, and 570 BC), and as a result the tiles near it are perpetually in need of repair. I rue the day I picked "moderate disaster intensity" when I was setting this game up.

 

[Kulko]

Still on my first game, 80% through the first Age. Yeah, my computer is slow.

One thing (well, okay, yet another thing) I wish: when a city finished production on something, I wish it would say WHAT had just gotten finished, because sometimes if it's been awhile since I checked in on that city I forget what it had been building and have to go back and check my notes (yes, I keep notes as I play, kind of have to as this game as far as I can tell has no timeline function).

I know I complained about this before, but these two volcanos are pretty much the bane of my existence. The one in the center explodes CONSTANTLY (most recently, 710 BC, 610 BC, and 570 BC), and as a result the tiles near it are perpetually in need of repair. I rue the day I picked "moderate disaster intensity" when I was setting this game up.

I fully agree with that, although I believe the City build screen isn't the worst offender. All the narrative choices have there result only printed a tooltips, so if you fastclicked something (especially the lines without choice) you have no way of finding out what happened.
This game definitely should have a journal, where all these things could be looked up at least.

 

[The Economy]

Disasters are absolutely awful and unfun. It's set on the lowest level yet I'm still having to repair something every other turn. At least as annoying are the notifications that pop up every time a disaster happens anywhere on the planet.

I have no idea why we can't just turn them off completely.

 

[RockTheCazbah87]

+1 on disaster frequency needing a desperate look. "Moderate" here makes the most intense setting from Gathering Storm look like child's play.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The Aksumite Dhows are pretty fun. I like being able to explore and make a trade route if I happen to meet a neighbor

 

[Groff]

First things first, I have not played a Civ game in quite some time and I was never a good player anyway.

First, and only, game so far I'm playing Pachacuti / Maya and so far it's going like this:

Ended up like that after deciding to attack the weakest AI, which was coincidentally allied with the AI leading in pretty much everything.
Harriet kicked my ass after I declared war on her and took a tonne of penalties.

I thought I had a chance of taking her out with my two commanders, spearmen and two ballista as she only had her capital.

Transitioning into the next age with only my capital left was interesting and just as I managed to squeeze in a town to try and rebuild what I could, Spain decides to declare war and takes it.
Still playing this game, but I don't see a way out of this hole.

I am very much enjoying Civ VII so far.

 

[StargazingDog]

Just finished my first game. Steam says 22 hours played. I'm hoping future games are about half that. I definitely wasted a lot of time and did not maximize anything except gold. But every minute of it was fun! Even fighting wars.

I aimed for economic victory with Hatsheput. The game ended on the turn that I would have founded the world bank. I was robbed of that! I had captured quite a few cities, so I guess that pushed the era timer forward. I went fascist in the final age and boy the rest of the world didn't like that. Everyone was hostile with me by the end of the game.

Anyway, time for some food, then to start anew. Now that I know the flow, I can focus on the details. I definitely need more balance of gold/science/culture. I was severaly hampered in exploration age due to only having a single library for science. Then, I was slowed in modern age due to no culture or influence. I didn't know we need influence for the world bank. I spent like 20000 gold buying Opera Houses everywhere over the span of a few turns just to go from 2 influence per to 100 per turn.

 

[wesplaysciv]

Almost done with my first game. Playing on Scribe with Tecumseh and the Shawnee then going American. After playing Civ 6 for the past 7 years with quick movement and online game play speed the next update seriously needs to address this mechanic / options. The game is great yet takes 3-4 times longer than it should.

Who else is having a problem with the units moving in slow motion? I do love the game and look forward to another 9,000 hours of gameplay which I have with Civ 6.

Brew God

They do seem to move in slow mo for me. But I noticed that they actually update immediately as in you can move to a hex, then immediately click that hex and the unit dialog appears (eg if doing a ranged attack), no need to wait for the animation

 

[StargazingDog]

Disasters are absolutely awful and unfun. It's set on the lowest level yet I'm still having to repair something every other turn. At least as annoying are the notifications that pop up every time a disaster happens anywhere on the planet.

I have no idea why we can't just turn them off completely.

They seem to always give a benefit in yields. I'm glad they are in the game. It's far more interesting. Also makes it more risky to settle on rivers.