I am amazed to find my interest is basically … zero.
I’ve been following along, and there is obviously lots of great stuff in Civ 7. Production value is of course amazing. Lots of fantastic quality of life improvements. Yes, some really big changes to the core gameplay, but at a really high level they seem like really clever ways to recast key parts of the game.
I also think that essentially ‘resetting’ the game via Eras is probably a good way to ensure the gameplay stays interesting all the way through. I don’t think it’s the only solution - eg Civ could have used something like the catch up mechanics in board games like 7Wonders that let trailing players sort of make high risk gambles to get back into the game - but the Era or chapter approach works too.
So, all really good, right?
Yeah. Really good. But there are three things that, the more I look at it, just leave me uninterested.
First, there just seems to be too much scripted content. The thing I like about Civ is how all this complexity emerges from the game playing out this somewhat simple rules and economies turn by turn against a random map. All the scripted content under cuts that.
Second, while I don’t mind the idea of Civ swapping and Eras in general, they at its being implemented seems to lose the feeling of playing a people through time. I honestly think it just comes down to not having the entire tech tree visible at once, and instead only ever seeing chunks of it, and not having some option to keep a previous Civs name or something like that. No issue with the mechanics, just the presentation, but it I’m surprised to find that really matters for me.
Third, and this is the biggest issue, the mechanics seem to have doubled down on the whole ‘no trade-offs, play as you wish’ approach that Civ 6 adopted at the end. I really loved the way in Civ 6 that various options gave you ‘spikey’ trade-offs, and economies were so counter-intuitive. eg if you wanted to be good at war, you didn’t need science and hammers, you needed faith; if you wanted scientific superiority then you needed culture; you could have a science alliance with another Civ, so you got some extra science while you focused on a different victory, and could then still war with them via spies and religion; if you had oceans but not mountains, you pushed harbours not campuses, and had to manage a weaker production queue, and so on and so on. But then, over time, all the choices were tweaked to be the same, and everything was streamlined. Build campuses everywhere. Pick a victory type, and just pick the governments designed for that victory build everything that that has the same blue or purple or white or red colour.
It feels like choices in Civ 7 are much the same. Governments don’t have differences; policies are always two bad +one good (and you just optimise to avoid the bass); everything just does more of x with no trade-offs or situational changes. The only trade offs are opportunity costs, ie if I do this, I don’t do this other thing, and so the game play won’t be a constantly changing puzzle, it will just demand that you focus on your win condition as much as possible - except, you can probably win without doing that, so you have room to muck around with other mechanics etc but none of that will actually change any outcomes in the game.
I’m not too worried. Still hoping the game feels better when played and is more nuanced that it appears so far, or if not it gets better via expansions. Or if not, I can still play Civ 6 (or 5 or 4) or something from paradox, or just play some cool board games with mates.
Surprised I’m not pumped about Civ 7. Probably won’t buy it. But still love Civ, and really hope other people love Civ 7 and it’s a big hit!