What I think the designers ought to aim for (not least for economic reasons, since there are the two kinds of players) is a game that sets victory conditions and that offers meaningful challenge to those who want to work for victory (i.e. the possibility of the AI beating the player), but that can also be played as a sandbox game by players who prefer that.
Admittedly that is a significant design challenge.
I think it's best faced by designing the game backwards from the victory conditions, with the thought being "how could a computer achieve these victories effectively?" And then by making the game so rich in detail that players could set their own alternate goals. I once played Morrowind without playing the main questline at all. My character was a daedra hunter (but couldn't kill any other kind of creature). He followed guild and house quests that gave him the opportunity to kill daedra. He had his own goal. It was possible for him to set it for himself given all of the "stuff" that is in the world of Morrrowind, even though it utterly ignored the game's own "victory condition."
I'm more and more convinced that the core structure of 7 is totally broken. I'm committed to the idea that in the first expansion, the game has to be split in two. An even more streamlined online mode (say, where all commander upgrades are universal to all commanders with fewer upgrade options, integrated into the attribute tree; where any wonder only gives you settlement cap upgrade, attribute points or something going directly to victory). And a completely redone singleplayer mode (which of course should be playable in multiplayer as a shared world).
The problem right now is that everything is calibrated to this 100 turn cadence, so everything is broken down at all times into a tier one phase, tier two wasting your time, and a tier three that barely happens before the age abruptly ends. Most of the unique features that make civs distinct are piddling little bonuses so as not to throw the balance out of whack. This is kind of insane if you think about how many different ways you can provide little bonuses that also don't mean enough on their own to give a decisive advantage.
It's really cool that each civ is unique, and some of the bonuses are really neat, but then you end up jamming one or two bonuses into a very restricted 100 turn cadence, and one of three things happens:
- You employ the bonus and snowball the age.
- The bonus is particularly oblique, either an underpowered civ, or a poor start location, so you never really use it.
- You build the unique civ buildings and are getting their benefit, but it never seems to matter. You don't feel anything. Sure you're getting +8% more culture than otherwise thanks to your neat little Acropolis, but everything else you're doing affects your game more than that 8%.
The problem with the design is that each of the above three outcomes is sub-par. They're all disappointing in their own way, with the power fantasy snowball outcome being the only one that feels fun, but it also breaks the game and makes it less fun to keep playing.
An example of a system that would solve this is if you collected these civ unique bonuses over time, like a roleplay, and built up your empire into a quilt of unique abilities. You might end up picking up buildings or abilities that end up not becoming useful, but then you'd know to not build those buildings and the opportunity cost of picking up that ability is just part of the game, because you'd still have other bonuses and abilities to try and use and optimize. Civ 7 is just really weird about its on-rails approach and ironically given they wanted to avoid this, your starting location matters more than ever. Production is king and that really constrains gameplay as well.
Right now I feel that Antiquity is too sensitive to starting location and there are overpowered and underpowered civs/leaders, and there's basically a solved if not totally refined meta. Then Exploration happens and rough seas is tedious until you find all the good distant lands spots are taken by distant lands powers, and then the religion is the most god-awful, tedious thing that I'll dread engaging with when I play exploration. Modern I like actually, but balance-wise it's very messed up and the AI's performance and what happens or not with war is completely inconsistent. AI doesn't try very hard to race for victory, and I'm sure if it did it would just frustratingly win abruptly all the time. The game is just broken. It's like a beautiful, but inferior civ clone with a few neat ideas, but they don't come together well.
I think the only fix for the game is to stretch out each age. To make Antiquity a 250 turn ordeal with expanded and diversified tech tree and religious system. To role play your empire so you can pick up units, civic, techs, ideas from many different historic civs based on context, maybe trade. Then Exploration is specifically a crusades and colonization scenario with a much more in depth colonization system similar to Civ IV Colonization. And Modern should be a World War scenario with a kind of ongoing narrative driven crisis that starts very early in the age.
Again, each age would need many added features, added units, more flow, less adherence to tight balance within a gamified cadence. Modern should have a more involved resource management and production/logistics mini-game. It doesn't have to be crazy, not even as involved as a Railroad Tycoon, but much more than what it is. Then, during the world war phases, that production mini-game should convert into war production, so it's not Antiquity-style hammers and corn yields, but specifically the factory network that's spawning your troops.
I can't see this age-based system working without the kind of depth I mentioned. Right now it's too repetitive, tedious, with either oblique or overpowered bonuses, to rigidly adherent to a repeated cadence and solved meta.
As to your point about sandbox, what I think you're really getting at is how Civ 7's abrupt age ends and tight balance designed to get you there means you never really feel like you can sit comfortably in your empire. It's like you're always running behind, trying to catch up to get just one or two more great works or resources, and then it's all torn down right as you're nearing a peak and you have to start over the stressful, painful, tedious process of building up again. It therefore loses that key civ sensation of zooming out and looking at your massive empire as former uninhabited valleys which you marched troops and scouts passed many times are now full of farms and districts you built. That sense of history
