I'm clicking the "retire" button on Civ VII

[Gorbles]

Just checked, and found that the last time I played Civ 7 was on 3rd June. That's an indication of the apathy I have with this version. I used to love the Civ games. I played every one on Amiga and PC. I consider Civ 2, 3, 4 and 5 to be the best. I think the devs started to lose their way with Civ 6. I have tried multiple times to get into Civ 6 without much success. I just couldn't get used to it, and have never finished a play through of Civ 6. Currently Civ 5 is my most played Civ game on Steam. Now, if they had just replicated the majority of Civ 5 with better graphics, I would have been happy. But, no, they just had to change the whole direction of the game with Civ 7.

I bought into the early access period with the Deluxe version. I paid over £62 for it. Now, I feel that I have wasted my money. I just cannot stand the new age system. I cannot stand what happens to you at each age transition. I cannot stand being forced to change my Civ at each transition. I cannot stand the stupid idea of a leader being able to play with ANY Civ. In my mind Napoleon should only be allowed to play as France etc etc. I cannot stand the fact that they locked a British leader behind a pay wall. No doubt many other leaders will be locked behind future paid for DLC. Where is Ramesses, Elizabeth 1 or 2, Churchill and many others?

I suppose I will fire up the game and start again, to see if the changes in this latest patch are enough to make me want to start playing.
But, I ain't getting my hopes up.

I noticed that the game on Steam has now gone into "mostly negative" with the user reviews. Frankly, I am not surprised.

I don't think Firaxis have ever made the exact / close-to-exact version of a previous game with fancier graphics. They're not the developer to follow if you want that from a sequel. The fact that you haven't been able to get into VI seems like a sign, too.

 

[Smegger213]

I don't think Firaxis have ever made the exact / close-to-exact version of a previous game with fancier graphics. They're not the developer to follow if you want that from a sequel. The fact that you haven't been able to get into VI seems like a sign, too.

Well, yes, I don't expect developers to just reproduce a previous version with new graphics. But, on the other hand, look at all the remastered versions of games that keep coming out. Oblivion Remastered being the latest one. People buy them, so they continue to make remastered versions of old games.

 

[Rambo919]

There's a thing, particularly in RTS games, where the actions per minute (APM) is measured as a threshold of skill cap / complexity.

However, in past decade or so, the phrase "meaningful APM" has appeared (vs. "raw APM"). This is because there are actions that increase APM, but don't actually meaningfully impact on the game in any way. This has lead to design and balance changes as developers have tried various ways of improving "meaningful" actions over "raw" actions.

This can be seen as "dumbing down", similar to your view of CiV (and on). But that doesn't mean that it is. Complexity has to be justified.

Hardly a useful comparison, busywork vs activity. Civ4 is not an example of busywork. You managed garrisons and organized sophisticated militaries.... now you shuffle a handful of blockers and ranged units. What used to be strategy became tactics..... and there are FAR better tactics games. [edit: and you had to work to build up a proper economy]

The dumbing down on later versions is directly tied to the deficiencies of touch interaction with marketing excuses such as "meaningful". Ironically a lot of the clones are an example of "meaningful busywork" where you click things and read useless notifications (which started with Civ5) just to give the appearance of something important happening. The self-imposed limitations demand less sophistication. I am not saying it should be Europa Universalis level complex.... there already is a series for that, but at least don't insult the player by trying to feed him like a toddler while telling him what a genius he is.

You thought you were disproving my point and ended up proving it.

Even though the VP team fixed much of Civ5's problem areas... they are fundamentally blocked by it's form in many area's. And it is impossible to even attempt the same kind of effort for either CIv6 or 7 because the publisher likes to pretend that they are moddable at most they are tweakable.... and the tweaks just cannot do what must be done. That said though... VP is what CIv5 always should have been and I will die on that hill. With Civ5 complexity literally had to be added after the fact by a third party while CIv4 already had it and it was refined properly with RI. With Civ6 they just straight up broke the AI.... it's useless and never recovered. Now whether this is because of company incompetence or because they targeted less intellegent gamers.... I don't even care to bother to speculate on anymore but I guess a bit of both.

 

[Duncan9999]

What used to be strategy became tactics..... and there are FAR better tactics games. [edit: and you had to work to build up a proper economy]

Huh? You need both. Strategy is your overall plan, tactics are what you use to achieve it. They come hand in hand.

Also regarding you saying "Civ4 is still part of the current software tech era", thats complete nonsense simply from a technical Direct X standpoint its 3 generations old. Its nowhere near being current tech.

 

[Rambo919]

Huh? You need both. Strategy is your overall plan, tactics are what you use to achieve it. They come hand in hand.

Sure.... but in this case one was compromised for the other. It's like if you took Arma and made it resemble CoD.

Also regarding you saying "Civ4 is still part of the current software tech era", thats complete nonsense simply from a technical Direct X standpoint its 3 generations old. Its nowhere near being current tech.

Directx 7-9 and 10-12 can almost be called separate era's sure but it's more accurate to call them two halves of the same one. There was no fundamental shift obsoleting the first half yet.... many games still come out targeting 9.

Even 32-bit on the software side is still very much with us even though some want to kill it.

EDIT: see what trips you up is failing to recognize that the lengths of PC era's have expanded as time went on, first you had the DOS era then the win9X era, and then the current era with XP being the weird puzzle in the middle between them because it kinda has a foot in both.

 

[Gorbles]

Hardly a useful comparison, busywork vs activity. Civ4 is not an example of busywork. You managed garrisons and organized sophisticated militaries.... now you shuffle a handful of blockers and ranged units. What used to be strategy became tactics..... and there are FAR better tactics games. [edit: and you had to work to build up a proper economy]

50 vs. 500 units is an example of a level of abstraction.

Where do you stop? 5 units? 5,000 units? When does it start and / or stop being numbers for the sake of numbers?

Yes, 1UPT made the game more tactical. That isn't to say there isn’t room for strategy. It just means combat isn't predecided by macro output alone.

This is preference / choice. Not dumbing down.

Even 32-bit on the software side is still very much with us even though some want to kill it.

x86 for Windows is not a modern arch target, nor should it be. Way too many limits (address space alone is one).

 

[Rambo919]

50 vs. 500 units is an example of a level of abstraction.

Where do you stop? 5 units? 5,000 units? When does it start and / or stop being numbers for the sake of numbers?

It was pretty much fine where it was, it had taken decades to get there but of course more tweaking is always possible assuming you can get the game engine to play along. Stellaris is actually a good example of how such things can evolve in something that kinda is and kinda is not the same game over multiple versions. Stellaris is weirdly more a Civ game than Civ7 in some ways and it keeps bugging me.... that might just be my opinion though.

Yes, 1UPT made the game more tactical. That isn't to say there isn’t room for strategy. It just means combat isn't predecided by macro output alone.

This is preference / choice. Not dumbing down.

The result was dumbed down in comparison.... and the VP team is still trying to fix it (and I admit I am still kinda in shock at how well they have done because I did not think this level of improvement already achieved was possible). It's not just 1UPT that's the problem but the attempt to remove as many buttons from interacting with the game as possible and as much as possible more to single click systems.

It became most blatant in Civ6 where at one point the AI actually was more competent and the competence was patched out somehow. Now if people prefer to dumb down the competition that's on on them.

I have no problem with improving the tactical aspects... but it's different when this comes at the expense of the strategic aspects.

x86 for Windows is not a modern arch target, nor should it be. Way too many limits (address space alone is one).

Saying this as an ideal and it actually being true in practice are two different things. I will say though the inability of Civ4 to run in x86_64 is a major headache because of the address space problems.

But a lot of programs never reach high enough to be limited to begin with.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

It's a matter of proper developmental comparison. 1 was the foundation and 2 was the refinement, 3 was the experiment and 4 was the final refinement, 5 was the next experiment and 6 was the collapse into decadence, 7 is the crisis. You can divide into three era's of Civ: 1-2, 3-4 and 5-7 with 7 being the death or cause for rebirth.

Civ is fundamentally a PC game because you need a PC for the required complexity.... Civ7 is fundamentally a mobile game with a PC port. This is not a matter of subjective opinion.

Civ 1 was also released on the SNES. It wasn't just the PC from the beginning either.

 

[Rambo919]

Civ 1 was also released on the SNES. It wasn't just the PC from the beginning either.

Oi, lets go forwards instead of backwards ok

Jokes aside though it's interesting how high the quality of some of the console game ports from PC was in the DOS era. Civ2 had a PS1 port but it must have been very frustrating to actually properly play it with a controller. After that even attempting ports were abandoned till CIv5.

Having briefly played WinCiv1 (got the chronicles box set last year) I can see how its simple enough to work on a console.... but it picked up more and more complexity with each later numbered iteration up till 4.

 

[StargazingDog]

Do you think that the devs' vision is compromised by changing the food required to grow a town? The game is never going to have perfect balance on release, it would actively be worse for the game never to change when obvious metas are found that lock you into easy decision making in a game that is supposed to have choices being made. What is wrong with balancing the game to make investing in food more worthwhile? The exact parameters in the formula for food growth was almost certainly not written up in any of the initial design meetings outlining the vision for the new game.

The issue is that they make these changes seemingly without considering the consequences. Their piecemeal approach indicates that they did only the most basic of testing, if any.

For most of its life, Civ 7 had a soft cap of 7-9 citizens per town. Everything was balanced around this. Then, Firaxis suddenly said, “we heard you wanted larger towns” and made it possible. That is a fundamental change to the game that was made haphazardly, and every update since then has had to address the ramifications in some fashion.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Thing is said to be bad, thing turns out to be popular, people rationalise it by saying "they're appealing to a different audience". Thing is said to be bad, turns out to be unpopular, is seen as vindication. There are a bunch of other positions; but each time a game in this franchise comes out, this kind of split happens. It just so happens this is the first time the launch was received so negatively.

There are many posters who have said IV was the peak of Civ and it was all downhill from there. Many posters active in this subforum, in fact!

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I guess it's the pure and simple fact that experimentation is necessary for evolution. Not all experimentation will be a success, but it has to be done.

This is different from, say, management trying to cash in on a freemium model (as Fallout 76 was mentioned).

Civ7 is very much a Fallout 76 situation. They changed the core mechanics and identity of the game, and predatory monetization was very very evident with Britain being a paid DLC

It seems to be getting a similar reception from the fanbase, funny that.

Hardly a useful comparison, busywork vs activity. Civ4 is not an example of busywork. You managed garrisons and organized sophisticated militaries.... now you shuffle a handful of blockers and ranged units. What used to be strategy became tactics..... and there are FAR better tactics games. [edit: and you had to work to build up a proper economy]

The dumbing down on later versions is directly tied to the deficiencies of touch interaction with marketing excuses such as "meaningful". Ironically a lot of the clones are an example of "meaningful busywork" where you click things and read useless notifications (which started with Civ5) just to give the appearance of something important happening. The self-imposed limitations demand less sophistication. I am not saying it should be Europa Universalis level complex.... there already is a series for that, but at least don't insult the player by trying to feed him like a toddler while telling him what a genius he is.

You thought you were disproving my point and ended up proving it.

Even though the VP team fixed much of Civ5's problem areas... they are fundamentally blocked by it's form in many area's. And it is impossible to even attempt the same kind of effort for either CIv6 or 7 because the publisher likes to pretend that they are moddable at most they are tweakable.... and the tweaks just cannot do what must be done. That said though... VP is what CIv5 always should have been and I will die on that hill. With Civ5 complexity literally had to be added after the fact by a third party while CIv4 already had it and it was refined properly with RI. With Civ6 they just straight up broke the AI.... it's useless and never recovered. Now whether this is because of company incompetence or because they targeted less intellegent gamers.... I don't even care to bother to speculate on anymore but I guess a bit of both.

The one good thing I have to say about Civ7 is that workers are finally gone. God that was an annoying amount of micromanagement

 

[Smegger213]

The one good thing I have to say about Civ7 is that workers are finally gone. God that was an annoying amount of micromanagement

I disagree. I loved connecting my cities with roads and rail using workers. Building farms etc. If you wanted to build a road to a far off land, to aid movement of your units. You could do that.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I disagree. I loved connecting my cities with roads and rail using workers. Building farms etc. If you wanted to build a road to a far off land, to aid movement of your units. You could do that.

I found that made rapidly moving forces around the globe unrealistically fast. Civ5 at least had road maintenance to counter the good old Civ2 Soiderweb Of Roads problem

 

[Gorbles]

Civ7 is very much a Fallout 76 situation. They changed the core mechanics and identity of the game, and predatory monetization was very very evident with Britain being a paid DLC

It seems to be getting a similar reception from the fanbase, funny that.

"they changed the core mechanics" is something Civ frequently does. "identity" is up for debate.

I get it, you have a negative view of the changes. So much so that the Fallout 76 comparison to you makes sense. But at the top-level, one is a publisher chasing industry trends, and the other is the development team explicitly iterating on design concepts they themselves built in the first place.

 

[user746383]

Which one is which?

 

[MutilationWave]

Again... it's not the amount of years that matter, it's the age in which it released that does.

Classic does not mean good.... it's a matter of an influential bygone era. Civ4 is still part of the current software tech era.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree here.

 

[aieeegrunt]

"they changed the core mechanics" is something Civ frequently does. "identity" is up for debate.

I get it, you have a negative view of the changes. So much so that the Fallout 76 comparison to you makes sense. But at the top-level, one is a publisher chasing industry trends, and the other is the development team explicitly iterating on design concepts they themselves built in the first place.

Build An Empire To Stand The Test Of Time has been the tagline since Civ1. It might even have been that for the board game that inspired it.

Now we have Build An Empire That Will Get Deleted Twice By Developer Fiat And Replaced Off Screen.

Are you seriously going to try and pretend that doen’t conpletely change the core identity and mechanics of the game? Or that isn’t the source of thr majority of the fan backlash that is so plainly evident both in sales, reviews and player count.

 

[Gorbles]

Build An Empire To Stand The Test Of Time has been the tagline since Civ1. It might even have been that for the board game that inspired it.

Now we have Build An Empire That Will Get Deleted Twice By Developer Fiat And Replaced Off Screen.

Are you seriously going to try and pretend that doen’t conpletely change the core identity and mechanics of the game? Or that isn’t the source of thr majority of the fan backlash that is so plainly evident both in sales, reviews and player count.

It's still a turn-based empire builder based around civilisations and the semi-realistic avatars that lead them, so yes, I can argue, if it was at all relevant to this tangent for me. However, I completely respect that people have different opinions on a) how important specific mechanics are and b) how this translates into a game's identity.

We're not going to change each others' minds. That's fine - agree to disagree.

I'm saying that your Falllout 76 example is an example of a publisher chasing a trend. That isn't what happened with Civ VII. That's all I'm saying, and all I'm interested in saying at this point.

 

[Wrenched]

I disagree. I loved connecting my cities with roads and rail using workers. Building farms etc. If you wanted to build a road to a far off land, to aid movement of your units. You could do that.

I really enjoyed workers myself. I understand many view workers as introducing a lot of micromanagement and frequently there were very obvious decisions to make with them, but in my own odd way I enjoyed that level of detail. It was enjoyable shuffling them around the map and watching them labor away on projects.

 

[McSpank01]

Civ switching is really just a matter of perspective. Every Civ game you have gotten access to different units and buildings as you progress through the game. You always need to use your imagination to get your head around how someone like Rome now has machine guns.

I have no problem with using the identity of different civs to build upon your current civ, and you might even take that as far as using a new civ to replace your old one, in terms of it's cultural identity.

I think most people accept however that the implementation of civ switching is too harsh, there is too hard a line between ages and your current and previous civ. I would be very much up for something that feels smoother and more organic. For instance absorbing qualities of nearby civilisations to build something unique, eventually creating your own customised culture based on your actions and choices. The way Firaxis have opted to implement this is, like everything else I describe in this game: CRUDE.