I quit for now

[Zaarin]

I still find the argument "players identified AI more by leader than by civ" to be a cop out answer conveniently provided by Firaxis to minimize costs for leader animations and voice actors.

Just because people have a different opinion from yours doesn't mean they're a corporate shill. People have always enjoyed Civ's leaders; that's why their production values have been increasing since Civ4. I wouldn't have touched a Civ game with leader switching, whereas civ switching was a tough sell but one I was willing to consider. And yes, I've always identified my opponents by their leader.

 

[AD1730]

I've always identified my opponents by their leader.

And in thousands of hours in Civ across its titles, I never have.

 

[Zaarin]

And in thousands of hours in Civ across its titles, I never have.

That doesn't disprove the point that other people do.

 

[Dreadnought]

Just because people have a different opinion from yours doesn't mean they're a corporate shill. People have always enjoyed Civ's leaders; that's why their production values have been increasing since Civ4. I wouldn't have touched a Civ game with leader switching, whereas civ switching was a tough sell but one I was willing to consider. And yes, I've always identified my opponents by their leader.

No one was accused of being a corporate shill. In fact, my comment was showing more disdain to Firaxis and their design choices than to anyone else in particular.

 

[itix]

In the classic Civ game, you were not playing as a leader but a nation. The leader portrait was used only for AI opponents. I don't know when that changed, but in Civ 6 I feel they are quite soulless.

 

[Sagax]

Just because people have a different opinion from yours doesn't mean they're a corporate shill. People have always enjoyed Civ's leaders; that's why their production values have been increasing since Civ4. I wouldn't have touched a Civ game with leader switching, whereas civ switching was a tough sell but one I was willing to consider. And yes, I've always identified my opponents by their leader.

For what my own experience is worth, I feel like the presentation of leaders got so watered down in Civ 7 that I don't really see them as enjoyable diplomatic opponents anymore. Turns out that the connection between the leader and the civ actually played a role for my immersion. The reason I liked leaders so much in Civ 5 is because they were part of one thematic civ package: when you meet Monty in Civ 5, you know immediately what kind of an opponent you're gonna get, and may also get a bit of an idea about their gameplay. In contrast, in Civ 7 if you encounter a Corsican artillery officer representing a culture of seafaring islanders rooted in nature-themed traditions - what are you supposed to get out of that?

 

[Zaarin]

For what my own experience is worth, I feel like the presentation of leaders got so watered down in Civ 7 that I don't really see them as enjoyable diplomatic opponents anymore.

I agree, but for different reasons. The lower quality models and the fact that they don't address the player directly make them less interesting to me. (I do also agree that conceptually they made more sense before. I always saw myself as playing the zeitgeist of the civ, and I saw my opponent leaders as manifestations of the same. Now they're just...avatars? That still would have worked for me if they were presented better.)

 

[queenpea]

For what my own experience is worth, I feel like the presentation of leaders got so watered down in Civ 7 that I don't really see them as enjoyable diplomatic opponents anymore. Turns out that the connection between the leader and the civ actually played a role for my immersion. The reason I liked leaders so much in Civ 5 is because they were part of one thematic civ package: when you meet Monty in Civ 5, you know immediately what kind of an opponent you're gonna get, and may also get a bit of an idea about their gameplay. In contrast, in Civ 7 if you encounter a Corsican artillery officer representing a culture of seafaring islanders rooted in nature-themed traditions - what are you supposed to get out of that?

Yes, for me, too. For all of the “build something you believe in”, there are too many unbelievable moments for me.

Embracing the wacky worked for me tor a little bit, but 100 Revolutionary Napoleons of Aksum, or Himiko Queen of Wa of Mississippi later, it’s getting tiresome for me.

 

[reddishrecue]

I guess I quit being aggressive because I usually lose when I go aggressive. Like for example, earlier today I tried Carthage and attacked thinking I had the advantage at first and eventually lost to Persia. Before that, like awhile back ago I tried Persia aggressively too and attacked and lost to Mayan hulkans. I quit being aggressive for now because I usually lose when I'm aggressive. I was just trying out the Carthage civilization to see how it works but hey there's diplomacy. Even when I go solo and focus on trade, there's people that like to double team on you. For example, I was Mississippi, and I got double teamed by Carthage and Maurya which makes me wonder how they got their alliance going. I still lose even when I go on peace mode and its usually because of diplomacy. I get tired of it, it makes me want to quit for now at least.

 

[queenpea]

I guess I quit being aggressive because I usually lose when I go aggressive. Like for example, earlier today I tried Carthage and attacked thinking I had the advantage at first and eventually lost to Persia. Before that, like awhile back ago I tried Persia aggressively too and attacked and lost to Mayan hulkans. I quit being aggressive for now because I usually lose when I'm aggressive. I was just trying out the Carthage civilization to see how it works but hey there's diplomacy. Even when I go solo and focus on trade, there's people that like to double team on you. For example, I was Mississippi, and I got double teamed by Carthage and Maurya which makes me wonder how they got their alliance going. I still lose even when I go on peace mode and its usually because of diplomacy. I get tired of it, it makes me want to quit for now at least.

What difficulty are you playing?

 

[99-percent-sure]

In the classic Civ game, you were not playing as a leader but a nation. The leader portrait was used only for AI opponents. I don't know when that changed, but in Civ 6 I feel they are quite soulless.

I definitely think of my AI opponents more in terms of the leader, at least since Civ IV. It's not the Mongols or Celts I want to avoid as a belligerent neighbor, it's Genghis Khan or Boudica. I'm not competing against Korea for scientific advancement so much as I'm competing with Seondeok. The U.S. as an opponent is less salient than Teddy Roosevelt, its Civ VI leader. And if I get annoyed at my AI opponent, I curse out the leader, not the civ.

But I also think of my own civ in terms of the leader. I think part of it is because I played Civ IV the most, and was able to decouple leaders from civs. I looked for leaders with certain traits (e.g. spiritual, creative, industrious), and then picked civs with an interesting unit or custom building I wanted to try. (I used Catherine a lot, but didn't want to play as Russia, so I shopped her around. Same with Hatshepsut.) So I've gotten used to thinking of the game that way. When I picked up Civ VI and VII, I remained aware of the leader I was using, and usually picked leaders whom I found interesting, moreso than civs.

 

[Leucarum]

I definitely think of my AI opponents more in terms of the leader, at least since Civ IV. It's not the Mongols or Celts I want to avoid as a belligerent neighbor, it's Genghis Khan or Boudica. I'm not competing against Korea for scientific advancement so much as I'm competing with Seondeok. The U.S. as an opponent is less salient than Teddy Roosevelt, its Civ VI leader. And if I get annoyed at my AI opponent, I curse out the leader, not the civ.

But I also think of my own civ in terms of the leader. I think part of it is because I played Civ IV the most, and was able to decouple leaders from civs. I looked for leaders with certain traits (e.g. spiritual, creative, industrious), and then picked civs with an interesting unit or custom building I wanted to try. (I used Catherine a lot, but didn't want to play as Russia, so I shopped her around. Same with Hatshepsut.) So I've gotten used to thinking of the game that way. When I picked up Civ VI and VII, I remained aware of the leader I was using, and usually picked leaders whom I found interesting, moreso than civs.

I don't think I do either consistently.

Case in point in Civ7 if I see Augustus it doesn't matter what Civ he actually is playing, I will refer to him as Rome - which gets very confusing in multiplayer. Meanwhile in Civ6 I'd never call Macedon by that name, it was Alexander...

Some leaders are so strongly associated with a Civ for me (Augustus, Franklin, Confucius as examples in Civ7) that I can't seem to disassociate them. While some civs in previous iteration feel so defined by their leader (Macedon and Gran Colombia as examples in Civ6) that I never could seem to associate them...

I quite like the non-ruler leaders in Civ7 for this reason. My brain makes fewer automatic assumptions about Lovelace, Rizal or Machiavelli - even though the three clearly have nationalities, their associations are more fluid in my mind.

 

[Marla_Singer]

I definitely think of my AI opponents more in terms of the leader, at least since Civ IV. It's not the Mongols or Celts I want to avoid as a belligerent neighbor, it's Genghis Khan or Boudica. I'm not competing against Korea for scientific advancement so much as I'm competing with Seondeok. The U.S. as an opponent is less salient than Teddy Roosevelt, its Civ VI leader. And if I get annoyed at my AI opponent, I curse out the leader, not the civ.

But I also think of my own civ in terms of the leader. I think part of it is because I played Civ IV the most, and was able to decouple leaders from civs. I looked for leaders with certain traits (e.g. spiritual, creative, industrious), and then picked civs with an interesting unit or custom building I wanted to try. So I've gotten used to thinking of the game that way. When I picked up Civ VI and VII, I remained aware of the leader I was using, and usually picked leaders whom I found interesting, moreso than civs.

I'm also a big player of Civ IV, yet I always play as a nation rather than a leader. The whole concept of moving multiple units makes better sense to me in considering that I'm all units, therefore the whole nation. And all the information that I have access to is information known by components of the nation which all acts together for the same purpose.

Anyway to each his own.

 

[Steinernein]

In contrast, in Civ 7 if you encounter a Corsican artillery officer representing a culture of seafaring islanders rooted in nature-themed traditions - what are you supposed to get out of that?

You get an ******* who is going to forward settle you, sanction you, and attack you at some point -- so an ******* just like Monty.

 

[Fluffball]

In the classic Civ game, you were not playing as a leader but a nation. The leader portrait was used only for AI opponents. I don't know when that changed, but in Civ 6 I feel they are quite soulless.

I see some feel a stronger affinity to the leader and some to the civilisation, personally it was a bit of both that made up a whole feeling of playing what is essentially an idea or representation that I could identify with and recognise. And felt like playing out alternate history.

With civ 7 it feels more a game where you design your game from a random pick of cards and make up your story from there but instead the cards all have stories and you have to push those stories together to make sense of it, then just as you do it all changes again.

As I think about it I feel the idea is not bad but doesn't fit the game well. It works well in games like stellaris or endless legend where your playing a fantasy any anything can make sense but not when your using historical stories representing the real world and known history then just mish mashing them together.

 

[reddishrecue]

What difficulty are you playing?

No difficulty, this was on multiplayer. But when I do play single player I play viceroy or the one above it.

 

[ThichN]

I'm really not enjoying the civ switching.

The Khmer get bonuses from rivers and protection from flooding. But none of the civs you can switch to get protection from flooding. So am I supposed to exploit the Khmer to their maximum, and get punished by excess flooding later in the game? Or am I supposed to not fully exploit Khmer's bonuses to avoid flooding later in the game?

I know some might say that flooding is a minor annoyance, but it doesn't change that it's not fun to set up infrastructure for one play style and then have it conflict with potential optimal setups for the next ages.

It also makes infrastructure for later civs pointless. Russia has a unique tile improvement that gets adjacency bonuses for farms. If I want to exploit this, am I to pick city locations that may be sub-optimal for my first two civs just to get the most out of this bonus tile in modern? Or am I going to play as optimally as possible for my first two civs and then just plop the unique tile improvement down if there happens to be a good place for it in the modern age? In the later case, I'm not strategizing around the unique at all, which I thought was the point of uniques.

This is precisely why I like civ-switching. The optimization of a civ is what always caused snowballing and predictability in Civ6. I like that the game challenges you in these ways and forces you to make decisions regarding what stays and what gets replaced. There is no clear "optimal" or "sub-optimal," and exploiting a Civ's abilities includes a synergy of traditions and ageless improvements with what comes next. There is delightful replayability therein.

 

[Gedemon]

This doesn't exactly fit with the social culture around civ games, in which players typically identify their AI opponents very much with their leaders and very little with their civilisations. Leader switching would have been a harder sell and much more confusing. Some people are certainly put-off by the cutting of ties between leaders and civs, but I think in a year or two, much less by the end of the game's active development, very few people will bat an eye at it.

It has always been about the civs for me, not the leaders, and, at least on CFC, the majority play against civs

 

[ThunderLizard2]

Recent Steam reviews are at 54% negative - that's terrible for a new release. And they had once of longest interrvals to work on this one.

 

[chrisgatt7]

It has always been about the civs for me, not the leaders, and, at least on CFC, the majority play against civs

I 100% agree with you Gedemon, I have never been a huge leader guy, I personally wish we could get rid of the leaders in a mod or something and keep it Civ focused. I especially hate how in C7 all the leaders faces are on the city and town banners. I just want the Civilization owner on the banner like in previous titles.