GameRant.com: Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 is Long Overdue

The article is terribly written. It says utterly nothing and repeats itself. Admittedly they had nothing to write about, but stretching nothing over multiple paragraphs really stood out as a desperate attempt to reach a certain word count.
 
I think that actually designing Civ 7 is a real challenge, if it going to be more than Civ 6.5. Let's just consider the depiction of leaders. Civ 5 - static art. Civ 6 - Poser-style animations. What do you do for Civ 7 that looks different? Actors dressed up? You may think this is a trivial issue compared to gameplay, but Civ 7 has to look different to be truly Civ 7, and just having a retread of previous styles won't cut it.
 
I think that actually designing Civ 7 is a real challenge, if it going to be more than Civ 6.5. Let's just consider the depiction of leaders. Civ 5 - static art. Civ 6 - Poser-style animations. What do you do for Civ 7 that looks different? Actors dressed up? You may think this is a trivial issue compared to gameplay, but Civ 7 has to look different to be truly Civ 7, and just having a retread of previous styles won't cut it.

I really wish people stopped seeing this "difference" as "progress" (not meant as a personal slight to you Abaxial, I just quoted you because you brought it up, and I'm going to use it to give an opinion on a larger point). For all I care, Civ 7 can look the same but better, and have the same style of interface, leader screens, etc, but better. Hell, I don't even mind if they reused animations but polished them and made them look and feel much better.

What I want is that they don't need to reinvent the wheel over and over, and by that save us from not getting a world builder, not having a production queue, not having map tacks, not having proper balance.

Take what you have, take what works, and see how you can build from that and what needs to change. Give me Civ 7 with the basic features of Civ 6, but don't leave out important things because so much time was spent thinking on how to be "different" for "difference's"-sake
 
Civ 7 will be finished when it is finished. If that means I have to wait a little bit longer, well, I have other things to do, and I hope waiting that much longer means it's a better game.

I'm also waiting for The Winds of Winter, but I will be dead when A Dream of Spring is released. At this rate, anyway.
 
Lets face it - Civ 7 could come out tomorrow and I'd still try and make myself to 'forget about it' for at least 6 months given what happened with Civ 6 - yeah I got suckered in too but barely played it for the first year or so.
 
I think that actually designing Civ 7 is a real challenge, if it going to be more than Civ 6.5. Let's just consider the depiction of leaders. Civ 5 - static art. Civ 6 - Poser-style animations. What do you do for Civ 7 that looks different? Actors dressed up? You may think this is a trivial issue compared to gameplay, but Civ 7 has to look different to be truly Civ 7, and just having a retread of previous styles won't cut it.
Looking back a bit further ... Civ3 had static art for leaders, that changed with each era (4 times). Civ4 included animations that changed with the leader's mood, including different animations when declaring war. Civ5 went back to nearly static art again.

I agree that the design decisions for Civ7 are a big challenge. Given that they want to maintain the journey through all of history, animal husbandry to space flight and future tech, which aspects worked well? Which need to be updated? Which aspects have they been re-thinking or considering a reboot for? How should diplomacy work? How should a player (human or AI) improve its empire? Given that Civ7 has probably been undergoing internal testing for 12 months or more, those core design decisions have been made.
 
Historically, yes, 6 years is tied for the longest between releases. But I agree that games have been getting longer support periods in the past decade, likely due to digital distribution making it easier and less risky to ship revenue-producing updates post-launch. If an expansion doesn't sell quickly? You don't have 250,000 boxes sitting on shelves at CompUSA waiting for a buyer. Not to mention that even the 30% Steam cut is less than the physical retailer cut, so the number of copies required to sell to break even on the same amount of work is lower. All that leads to the ability of Firaxis to do something like the New Frontier Pass that wouldn't have been possible, or would have been a much bigger risk, for Civ3 or Civ4.

The other trends that may be relevant are: 1. With Civ3 to Civ6, Firaxis released in September or October. They like to release in that in-time-for-the-holidays window. Civ is a big enough franchise that it can stand out in that crowded field and draw a lot of sales. And 2. Firaxis tends to announce games, IIRC, 3-6 months before their release. I know someone has documented this somewhere on the forum, but can't remember which thread.

They could always change things up and release in the spring or take Taylor Swift's idea and announce the game 24 hours before its release. Wouldn't that cause pandemonium among the fan sites? But my take is that most likely, they're either going to announce Civ7 in the very near future for an autumn release, or perhaps more likely announce it next spring or early summer for an autumn 2023 release.

Either way I kind of appreciate that there was enough time between releases for Humankind and Old World to not be releasing against Civ7. It's been nice having some new blood in the genre, and I'm glad that both of those seem to have been at least moderate successes.

I also appreciate that they aren't announcing way early or promising a release date way early a la Cyberpunk. If we're still asking, "when are they going to announce Civ7?" in 2024, and there aren't any more Civ6 expansions or spin-offs, it might behoove them to say something, but at this point a polished product that isn't promised too early is the better option.
 
For any game in a franchise, when one has released version N and is contemplating version N+1, for any aspect of the game, one has to consider will it be:
A) Same as version N
B) Same as version N-1
C) New.
In general, a game company is likely to prefer C as much as possible. Look at the history of, say, Microsoft Office. A new version was never released with "Look, we fixed all the broken bits", but always, "We added new features!". Hence the animated paperclip.

For Civ, one needs to take Civ 6 as N, since Civ 1-4 were designed around different technical specs, whereas 5 and 6 are comparable. So let us take something basic like overall palette. In Civ 5 this was relatively subdued, in Civ 6 much brighter. So what for Civ 7? Same palette as 6 or tone it down a bit? Is it possible to make something new that looks better?

Now, looking at posts on this forum, it is clear that many or most of us want Civ 7 to have things like less powerful walls, but Firaxis are not going to sell more units on issues like that. Palette is far more important, though we don't discuss it here. People are going to see screenshots and trailers on Rock Paper Shotgun or similar sites, and say "That looks nice! I will get that as soon as it releases".

That A-B-C problem applies to every aspect of the game, and C becomes increasingly harder if you have to avoid A and B. And remember that what looks good in trailers is more important than what you and me think about gameplay after some years of experience.
 
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You know that civ devs literally openly stated what is their approach to the topic? ;)
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/10/the-road-to-civilization-a-conversation-with-sid-meier/

"Firaxis has adopted a 'rule of thirds' for new Civilization entries: "one-third traditional gameplay, one-third is improved from the last version, and one-third is brand new." But the team also has to be careful with everything they add. 'We're now at the point where for every new feature we put in we have to take something out, because it's very easy to overwhelm the player with complexity or detail or things like that.'

When transitioning from civ5 they were not afraid to cut major gameplay mechanics (tb while some of those cuts I approve removing Ideologies was imho horrible idea which crippled endgame) as well as major cosmetic - selling - points (elaborate loading screens with fancy introduction text and background map graphics; but most importantly removing detailed 3d diplomatic backgrounds in favour of minimalistic 2d ones). So I'm not afraid of them not being capable of removing 'marketable' stuff, as they clearly did that before. Although animated 3d leaders are definitely here to stay, especially after Humankind's procedurally generated misery made people realise just how important is for those kinds of games to have characters, emotions, 'faces' behind factions.
 
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Here's another tricky question. What Civs will be included in Civ 7? How many? If they include all the civs currently in the game, it will be far more than any previous version on release. On the other hand, if they release with a much more limited selection, it will be a disincentive for people to adopt 7 over 6. Plus, if further civs come in as DLCs there will be cries of "Hey! I paid for this already!".

I'm not making any suggestion, just pointing out that this is another headache for the devs to resolve.

OK, so "one-third is improved from the last version, and one-third is brand new" - my argument is that finding things that are either improved or brand new is particularly hard in the case of Civ 7 and may take time.
 
Here's another tricky question. What Civs will be included in Civ 7? How many? If they include all the civs currently in the game, it will be far more than any previous version on release. On the other hand, if they release with a much more limited selection, it will be a disincentive for people to adopt 7 over 6. Plus, if further civs come in as DLCs there will be cries of "Hey! I paid for this already!".
There were 43 civs at the end of Civ 5 (54 with Civ 6), and we only had 18 at the beginning of Civ 6. I don't think they'll have any issues pruning back the number of civs. We'll have like 20 at the beginning and probably end up with around 60.
 
"Firaxis has adopted a 'rule of thirds' for new Civilization entries: "one-third traditional gameplay, one-third is improved from the last version, and one-third is brand new." But the team also has to be careful with everything they add. 'We're now at the point where for every new feature we put in we have to take something out, because it's very easy to overwhelm the player with complexity or detail or things like that.'
I will make a prediction.

Things that are brand new: Anything that shows up in trailers, e.g. art style.
Traditional gameplay: Things that only show when you play the game, e.g. stacking limits.
Improved from the last version: Things in betweeen , e.g. the tech tree which is in serious need of improvement.
 
I would love if they kept districts, though with major overhauls.
It annoys the historic part of me that just shakes in disbelief when we are allowed to create a Campus in the year 2500 BC, and place it essentially "half the country away" (3 tiles) in some god for saken mountain region just for high adjacency, at population 2, when that hardly makes sense at all on its own.

Instead, I would love if districts were working more as addons to the city centre, essentially expanding the city centre with new hexes (albeit with some sort of planning).
Thereby allowing for cities to grow not only population-wise, but also in physical size.
Possibly also allowing for infrastructure projects, like connecting your districts (that are all clustered around the city centre) with sewage systems, electricity grids, running water, even walls in some cases, making it a "mini sim city" of its own.
Could be fun!
 
I don't want the game released until it's polished. There's a chance I don't buy Civ 7 even when it's released unless the reviews say the vanilla of the game is complete. Otherwise it's probably more satisfying to play old civ games with much more content.

Good luck with that. There is zero chance they release a polished game. The up front budget will not cover everything they want to put into the game at launch. There will be a gap between what they try to put into the game, and what they can afford to put into the game, and between what they want to put into the game and what they have time to put into the game.

Add to that the new model of releasing without sufficient quality control and letting players do it for you to save some cash, and a polished product being released becomes an impossibility.

VI *still* isn't polished. They brazenly left us with this heap. No way VII is polished on release or at any other time, unless there is a revolution within the company.
 
Good luck with that. There is zero chance they release a polished game. The up front budget will not cover everything they want to put into the game at launch. There will be a gap between what they try to put into the game, and what they can afford to put into the game, and between what they want to put into the game and what they have time to put into the game.

Add to that the new model of releasing without sufficient quality control and letting players do it for you to save some cash, and a polished product being released becomes an impossibility.

VI *still* isn't polished. They brazenly left us with this heap. No way VII is polished on release or at any other time, unless there is a revolution within the company.
I will probably wait until at least the first expansion pack comes out for the game, unless the important things to me on my wishlist for the next civ game (posted on another thread) make the cut for the next civ game. Honestly, I'm kind of disappointed that some of the things I've asked for haven't been included in the game, but they've added silly things like zombies instead. Most likely I buy the next civ game at some point, whether or not it ever gets polished. But from what I remember from most previous civ games, launch was a fine mess.
 
Good luck with that. There is zero chance they release a polished game. The up front budget will not cover everything they want to put into the game at launch. There will be a gap between what they try to put into the game, and what they can afford to put into the game, and between what they want to put into the game and what they have time to put into the game.

Add to that the new model of releasing without sufficient quality control and letting players do it for you to save some cash, and a polished product being released becomes an impossibility.

VI *still* isn't polished. They brazenly left us with this heap. No way VII is polished on release or at any other time, unless there is a revolution within the company.
I agree.

... but I will still pre-order the game, the very day the button becomes active. Call me stupid. :blush:
 
Whilst I like the idea of the various addons like Zombies and Vampires etc, I will never actually use them. And some of them sound broken in any case with the AI unable to use them properly which puts me off them even more. Perhaps Firaxis should concentrate on making the AI do the basics properly and forget all the 'fluff'.

I will say though that having returned to Civ 6 after a long break that its just as addictive as ever. Upping the difficulty level certainly helped. And taken what I was given rather than trying to get the perfect start makes it more interesting too. Just loving my current game as Khmer!
 
The article is terribly written. It says utterly nothing and repeats itself. Admittedly they had nothing to write about, but stretching nothing over multiple paragraphs really stood out as a desperate attempt to reach a certain word count.
Pretty sure it's about making the reader scroll past as many ads as possible
 
Raining on wet here...I am more interested in a final patch for CIV VI, at least fix the AI science obsession. I don't mind losing a game now and then for the AI but losing because the freakin mongols got to alpha centauri first is very little immersive. I don't think the game is unplayable or unfun but come on... mongols should run you over not soar into the heavens!

It’s absolutly ridiculous that this hasn’t been fixed. It’s literally a typo, and it so badly hobbles the AI

As someone who went into the office every day during the shutdowns, I'm not accepting the excuse that Firaxis' choice to let their programmers sit at home in their underwear and pretend to work has delayed the game. I know that my frustration with Firaxis won't actually make the game come out any faster. But they have lost much of the goodwill I had towards them.

Have they used Covid as an excuse? I don’t recall if there was ever an official announcement

That being said, develoment is 110% an industry that should be least affected by work from home by it’s bery nature, so either eay it’s nonsense

Yes, clearly your impatient desire for games is more important than limiting the spread of a deadly disease.

How much more entitled can you get?

Working from home should not be a significant problem for development tasks. My gf runs HR for a dev company, and it’s clearly not an impediment unless the worker is exploiting it, and if so…

Well…

Her work nickname is The Reaper for a reason
 
Working from home should not be a significant problem for development tasks.
It depends on the tasks and also whether or not you and your employees were set up for it. I can WFH easily now the kids are away and there are spare rooms I can convert, my daughter in a smaller house with 2 under 7s? Not so much!

Also creative, collaborative tasks are much harder remotely.

Some things are easier of course - if you are trying to track down and fix a tricky bug and have peace and quiet, as well as a comfortable spot to work from then you're likely to be more efficient than in a cubicle farm.
 
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