For those who bought Civ 7, 'play your own way'?

[trev1972]

Hey guys,
I have held off on buying for a while myself- mostly as i prefer earth or giant maps and because i will admit i am unsure about the mix and match leaders and switching civs.
I think perhaps when there are more civs/maps out so i can do logical civ switches for multiple games i may end up buying the game however as i have never missed a civ iteration from civ I onwards.

One thing i have noticed in playthroughs is appears there are a lot of quests/missions etc and also there is the 'now you will explore' urgency at a set point.

I am just curious, those playing the game, do you feel it restricts the ability to 'play as you want'? I primarily play for a sandbox experience and i am unsure how much the quests etc interfere with that?.

From the play throughs- It looks a bit 'on rails' like a theme park, but does it still feel to you like a typical civ game where you can play as you like and use different priorities to win (such as focus on science or culture etc) ?
I am aware watching play throughs is not the best way to be sure, but don't want to buy it just yet so i would love to hear views from those who are already playing

Thanks.

 

[Zaarin]

I have not finished a full game, but I don't feel constrained. Even the Exploration Age feels much less scripted than I expected.

 

[trev1972]

I have not finished a full game, but I don't feel constrained. Even the Exploration Age feels much less scripted than I expected.

Thanks, that is interesting- to be fair quests are hardly new to civ, but in the past they haven't been 'essential' if they dont align with my victory goal. Its definitely a good sign that you dont feel they have steered you into a certain way of playing.

 

[Zaarin]

Some quests come with a negative penalty until you complete them, but you can always decline them for a small immediate reward. E.g., I was given a quest to settle three Distant Lands cities with -2 Happiness in all settlements until I did for 1 Diplomatic Point, or I could decline the quest for about a turn's worth of Science. I took the quest, but if it didn't align with my play goals I could easily have just taken the Science. It was something I planned to do anyway and I could handle the Happiness penalty at the time.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Yes, I feel the freedom. My first game is still in progress (Exploration Age), and I feel lots of autonomy. I have tried to balance units and buildings. I expanded up to my settlement limit. When an opponent forward--settled me, I declared war -- on my timing -- to take the town, then researched some civics to increase my limit.

A pleasant surprise -- when it came time to choose my Exploration civ, I had LOTS of choices. I may have miscounted, but it felt like nearly every Exploration age option was open to me. I remember speculating here about whether there would one, two, or three unlocks. I did not feel constrained. My crisis was manageable. I got the "hostile independent people / encampments", which I could hunker down and turtle through. My only uncertainty was: when will the age end? The icon in the upper left says X% through the age, but I couldn't tell if that meant 5, 10, 15 turns left. I built some short-duration items in my cities, again not certain how many units would survive the transition.

I'm still learning which decisions are good and which are less good. I see a TREMENDOUS amout of replayability, through options.

 

[CGPanama]

Finished my first game (Lafayette Greco-Spanish-Mexican) and just getting started on game 2. None of the area I worried about give the scripted feel. Ages, crises, events all enhance the moment and draw me in.

BUT. The one thing that has actually taken away from my pleasure is the map. Knowing I will be on one land mass and accessing another equally advanced land mass at Exploration really narrows the openness of the game. I would prefer nor knowing what is out there. Some alternatives I can think of…

1. The other continent is still in “antiquity”
2. Explorers come to my continent while I am still in antiquity
3. One large landmass with impassable features.
4. Limits on units in antiquity where they start to take damage like Open Seas when away from homeland too long.
5. There is no continent when you sail away from home you just each the other side of home continent.

And I could probably come up with more if I stopped to think about it. Hopefully modders will explore new options in the future, if Firaxis does not.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

This is the question I am most curious about too. The forced narrative vs sandbox debate has come up time and time again, but I never quite grasped what the concern was, it looks as free as any other Civ game to me. Looking forward to some more responses on it!

 

[Kulko]

I think that is a complicated question, and I definitely don't know the full answer, but here are some thoughts on the matter.

In the Antiquity the Legacy paths cover a very wide area of playstiyes and feel like they would reward all of them. Maybe not all of them equally good, but that was never the case in the sand box games either, there was always better strategies and worse.

The exploration age is a bit harder on free choice, but I believe the scientific and the cultural game can all be played without ever setting a foot on the other continent. But of you want to play a warmonger you have to set sails one way or the other. Or just not get any Legacy points, which is always an option. Up until now they are completely optional.

The modern age is again very freeform on the scientific LP is the same as it has always bee, so thats always available as a win condition for unorthodox playstyles. The militaridtic legacy path, probably probably also works no matter how you conquer people its just easier if you do it like the game wants you to.
The economic and cultural paths are a specific minigame, but so where some of the victories in the older games. And at least the economic path feels like playing an economic civ.

So all in all, if you can turn own the advisors and just play the game you should probably earn enough LP to stay in contention and then win however you like. It might even be better than the old times, where the only way to win was to expand en force and than just finish the game ifter you had eliminated all contention.

I think playing a civ at the settlement cap and just mind your own business is a much more viable strategy this time around.

 

[Albertan Civfanatic]

Hey guys,
I have held off on buying for a while myself- mostly as i prefer earth or giant maps and because i will admit i am unsure about the mix and match leaders and switching civs.
I think perhaps when there are more civs/maps out so i can do logical civ switches for multiple games i may end up buying the game however as i have never missed a civ iteration from civ I onwards.

One thing i have noticed in playthroughs is appears there are a lot of quests/missions etc and also there is the 'now you will explore' urgency at a set point.

I am just curious, those playing the game, do you feel it restricts the ability to 'play as you want'? I primarily play for a sandbox experience and i am unsure how much the quests etc interfere with that?.

From the play throughs- It looks a bit 'on rails' like a theme park, but does it still feel to you like a typical civ game where you can play as you like and use different priorities to win (such as focus on science or culture etc) ?
I am aware watching play throughs is not the best way to be sure, but don't want to buy it just yet so i would love to hear views from those who are already playing

Thanks.

You do feel a bit on rails, but not that on rails. It's sort of like the game wants you to play intelligently though it's not invasive. I'd say buy it.

 

[Josephias]

I’m playing on Viceroy for the first run, so this might help, but I feel not more pressed to do things than I would in other games.
Of course from time to time you look to the legacy paths to see if you can improve them, but I see this no different than looking for eurekas/inspirations in 6, being forced to settle first in a direction to ensure you get acces to enough land or resources or, in general, balancing the different systems on a previous game.
As some pointed out, this may be a bit more evident at exploration age’s focus on sea and distant lands, not reached there yet.

 

[Caprikel]

Hey guys,
I have held off on buying for a while myself- mostly as i prefer earth or giant maps and because i will admit i am unsure about the mix and match leaders and switching civs.
I think perhaps when there are more civs/maps out so i can do logical civ switches for multiple games i may end up buying the game however as i have never missed a civ iteration from civ I onwards.

One thing i have noticed in playthroughs is appears there are a lot of quests/missions etc and also there is the 'now you will explore' urgency at a set point.

I am just curious, those playing the game, do you feel it restricts the ability to 'play as you want'? I primarily play for a sandbox experience and i am unsure how much the quests etc interfere with that?.

From the play throughs- It looks a bit 'on rails' like a theme park, but does it still feel to you like a typical civ game where you can play as you like and use different priorities to win (such as focus on science or culture etc) ?
I am aware watching play throughs is not the best way to be sure, but don't want to buy it just yet so i would love to hear views from those who are already playing

Thanks.

One thing I've been really enjoying is that I don't feel particularly pressured into one specific victory type, unlike in Civ 6 where if you choose a religious civ you have to go for a cultural/religious victory, which is my favorite thing about Civ switching. I also like that at the end of an age you'll be rewarded for different styles of play, so that way there's even less pressure to play towards a specific victory condition early on.

 

[Chuy1530]

Think of the different paths as guideposts. They’re mostly things you’d want to be doing anyway. Building wonders, making trade routes, founding/capturing cities, increasing science output. If there were no paths you’d still want to do a lot of that.

You can ignore them and just play. You’ll probably tick a lot of them anyway. I’m going a warmonger game right now where I’m not really specifically trying for any paths really but I’ve almost completed the war path, and I’ve got one checkpoint on the commerce (or whatever it’s called) and science.

 

[bladex1200]

This is the question I am most curious about too. The forced narrative vs sandbox debate has come up time and time again, but I never quite grasped what the concern was, it looks as free as any other Civ game to me. Looking forward to some more responses on it!

I feel that we need to admit sandbox is truly in the past (in the sense of Civ 1/2/3/4 sandboxes where the game literally doesn't force you to play in any particular way except expand and develop as fast as you can, which is the basic 4x formula, to win) in order to have this conversation. If we're talking about whether Civ 7 lies more on the forced narrative vs sandbox sliding scale of Civ, with admission that all Civs from 5 onward are "forced narrative" games where victory requires tailoring to particular win conditions (at least if you play on higher difficulties, obviously on lower difficulties you can play as you like and dominate), I think it lies more on the "sandbox" side of the scale.

The game offers a mixture of pigeon-holed objectives (wonder race, relic/religious race, stacking bonuses to get 40 tile output, artifacts race, railroad + world bank race) and natural objectives (expand settlements, own/trade for enough resources, maximize science production for Space Race or Project Ivy), though from my feeling the pigeon-holed objectives are reasonable to accomplish via aggressive expansion and developing your settlements and therefore don't require much foresight provided you do intend to play the game wide (that is, settle as much as possible across tons of land). If you enjoyed tall play in 5 or 6, you're going to hate 7, but I would also argue you probably would have hated 3 and 4 as they required aggressive expansion as well.

 

[AriochIV]

You don't have to chase all the legacy paths, but if you don't achieve any progress in a particular one, you'll get tagged with some kind of dark age penalty. I think this is only a problem for the Exploration Age treasure fleet mechanic, as the rest you will get at least some progress just through normal play. But if you don't want to settle in Distant Lands and you're not playing Mongolia, you will get tagged for a dark age. Though I'm not sure exactly what that entails.

 

[bladex1200]

You don't have to chase all the legacy paths, but if you don't achieve any progress in a particular one, you'll get tagged with some kind of dark age penalty. I think this is only a problem for the Exploration Age treasure fleet mechanic, as the rest you will get just through normal play. But if you don't want to settle in Distant Lands and you're not playing Mongolia, you will get tagged for a dark age. Though I'm not sure exactly what that entails.

If you hover over the Dark Age portion of the legacy scale for a particular track, it will tell you what the Dark Age effect is. TBQH some of them seem like not-that-bad penalties for the positive you get.

For example, the Economic Dark Age for Modern if you don't accomplish at least one progress track in Economic for Exploration is as-follows:

+100% Production and Gold towards building or purchasing Rail Stations and Ports as well as +1 Resource Capacity in all settlements, but -25% Culture

To me that doesn't seem too bad at all, I haven't ever had an issue where Culture was holding me up for something crucial (but then again I was playing Rizal and played into Culture for Antiquity so I was swimming in it and had equivalent cultural output to my science output for the entire age), and if I'm not playing Culture and want to win an economic victory that actually seems to make it EASIER in the Modern Age (granted, if you're that behind on Economic in Exploration Age you probably need every advantage you can get as your New World settlements are likely pitiful if you aren't getting enough resources to pass even the first threshold of Economic)

 

[trev1972]

I just wanted to say thanks for the feedback guys, it is really interesting reading and i appreciate it. Some of it is reassuring that the game may well end up in a situation i want to play one day (such as when each antiquity civ has a logical progression path)

 

[vorlon_mi]

The game does highlight some choices for the Exploration age that make sense; "your leader was a neighbor to this civ". I remember two different popups, saying "you have unlocked this civ for the Exploration Age." My assessment is -- open your mind for what a "logical progression path" might be.
Some are ethnic (3 India civs, 3 China civs), some are geographical (all in Europe, NA or Africa), and some are related to the leader you chose.

I'm looking forward to the Modern Age in my first game. I plan to choose America, but I also see Harriet Tubman in my game. Will we have two Americas, with different pedigrees / histories? Is it possible to have two of the same? I seem to remember Firaxis saying that they saw that during one of the livestreams.

 

[Chuy1530]

The game does highlight some choices for the Exploration age that make sense; "your leader was a neighbor to this civ". I remember two different popups, saying "you have unlocked this civ for the Exploration Age." My assessment is -- open your mind for what a "logical progression path" might be.
Some are ethnic (3 India civs, 3 China civs), some are geographical (all in Europe, NA or Africa), and some are related to the leader you chose.

I'm looking forward to the Modern Age in my first game. I plan to choose America, but I also see Harriet Tubman in my game. Will we have two Americas, with different pedigrees / histories? Is it possible to have two of the same? I seem to remember Firaxis saying that they saw that during one of the livestreams.

It seems the player picks first, so if you are eligible for America and pick it she can’t. I don’t know how multiplayer games work.

Edit: what I’m not sure of is what happens if an AI gets boxed out of all of their eligible civs. It’s probably unlikely that happens, but if it does I don’t know if it just picks a random one or what.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

It seems the player picks first, so if you are eligible for America and pick it she can’t. I don’t know how multiplayer games work.

Pretty certain they confirmed multiplayer would be a free for all with duplicates allowed.

 

[rocksinmypath]

The quests you get from narrative events are much less constraining than eurekas and inspirations from 6. The legacy paths also feel less constraining than 6's victory conditions because it gives you some tangible bonuses along the way for partially completion.