Is Civ 7 as a strategy game less deep than previous Civs?

[Olleus]

is there any official sources ?

Do you count bholed's spider sense as an official source?

I'm also still perplexed by the fixation that fewer copies of the same things (units, cities, etc...) is equivalent to a lack of strategic depth.

 

[Krikkit1]

Do you count bholed's spider sense as an official source?

I'm also still perplexed by the fixation that fewer copies of the same things (units, cities, etc...) is equivalent to a lack of strategic depth.

Fewer copies probably better equates to more strategic depth. Each one is more important, etc. That said I'm changing my vote. Civ in general doesn't have That much Strategic depth, and I doubt they could make Civ 7 less deep than 1-6 (there is strategy there but again not That much)

 

[Cywil]

It's more and more about pride and prejudice

1. Casual players
2. Builders

1. That wasn't about console players. Read my post again, please. That was about casual players, especially casual console players. I understand console players. I'm one of them. I play some games on my PC, some my games on my Nintendo, I'm waiting still for my all games to be on Steam Deck available. I play Civ on my PC because of spreadsheets, for my convenience. I'm a casual player in some genres, e.g. in PUBG and I care there more about my outfit than about my weapons stats and I can't yet to win my first solo chicken dinner because of lack of skills, but I don't even think to call for an egalitaritism

I should be more precise however. By casual players I mean non-strategy-fan players. Anyway, if anyone felt offended by me, I apologize (my English is rather bad, I know).

There is not enough established strategy fan players for Civ 7 to surpass Civ 6 in terms of sales numbers. FXS have to aim for non-strategy-fan players. Some of them may then (sooner or later) find a taste for strategy games. Imagine a teenager who get a Civ 7 as a gift from relatives who choose the very game as an educative one - even if he/she prefers now car races or horror adventures there is a chance for him/her to play Civ 7 and find it cool and even recommend it to his/her friends. And Civ 7 at launch as a base game should be as easy to play as possible and even easy enough to win on lowest difficulty level which is not the case with Civ 5 or Civ 6. Later with expansions and DLCs and pass there will be perfect moments to increase the game's strategy depth by adding more layers to it. Now a visual things are more important. There are 3 no brainers: fix some leaders suboptimal models, change cameras angle when interacting with leaders ("Talk to me!"), rework too gray-ish and too microscopic UI.

About strategy depth - I think that has to be decreased in bas Civ 7 game at its launch = Civ 7 at its launch should be less deep strategically than Civ 6 at its launch. And micromanagement decreasing would be just a part of strategy depth decreasing.

To Quote " Civ 7 will be the most beginner- friendly Civ yet " from the man himself , again nothing wrong with that .

This.

2. I didn't post builders were good. I didn't post builders were bad. I'm neutral towards builders itself as a feature. I think removing builders from base Civ 7 game works well for decreasing both: strategy depth and micromanagement.

I disagree with looking at builders problem only as a micromanagement problem (the case with a lumbermill). It's not just about using builders. It's about producing/training builders and using them. And using them itself could be seen as micromanagement, right. But to have a builder you have to produce/train the unit, wait several turns for it to be produced/trained, delaying production of other important things (a monument, a scout, a slinger etc.) - and that's just strategy, an impactful one. You have to prioritize and at the beginning of the game that's a difficult decision. Later (mid and late game) builders are mostly just a burden, right. Anyway, micromanagement =/= strategy depth. Micromanagement is often part of strategy depth. You can't remove only just micromanagement by removing builders - by removing builders you remove micromanagement and some strategy depth as well. I hope I'm making myself clear here now?

That said I'm changing my vote.

It's good we have this discussion. Changing votes means it's fruitful.

 

[Arent11]

In my opinion Civ 7 is designed to be (for casual players) easier to play than previous Civs at the cost of its strategy depth.

Less micromanagement, less options, less choices, less decisions made by players, less long-term investments, less long-term strategies (e.g. hard tech reset with every Age) etc.

More instant rewards, more instant/automated actions, more decisions made by devs instead of players during playthrough, more goals set by devs instead of players (e.g. victory conditions beeing too specified - not just "be the best/first in this field" but "have exact number of items") etc.

No builders/workers, no chopping, no even initial settler (is it true?), no citizens management, no unit promotions etc.

Some of changes are good anyway but my overall impression is that playing Civ 7 will be more railroaded than in previous iterations.

What do you think?

There has been a certain movement to boardgame mechanics in the past few civs. It feels like a lot of puzzle elements are being added while the typical armchair general feeling of civ was dialed back. For example, theming bonuses, adjacency bonuses, always fulfilling the exactly same Eurekas etc. was all really annoying.

I want to land on beaches playing an invasion, play a civ with elite warriors conquering the world, with cool scholars building a rocket or finding the secret of longevity, build impressive wonders that change the game (hunter seeker algorithm style), sail around the world trading tech with remote civs.

I don't want to place some great works in a museum.

So, I'm less concerned about civ being less challenging, but that it might become more and more annoying.

 

[Olleus]

[...]

It's good we have this discussion. Changing votes means it's fruitful.

Agreed!

But I think you're focussing too much on what they're removing, not what they're adding. Yes, removing builders will reduce micromanagement by a fair amount, and strategy by a small-but-real amount. But lots of things are being added too, already discussed, which all seem to add more strategy than they do micromanagement (I hope anyway). But, clearly, by focusing only on what's getting removed, both strategy and MM and everything else will seem to be getting reduced. But that's only looking at half a picture. It's a very natural half to be biased towards, because we know more details about what's getting removed than what's getting added, because we've played for years decades with those things!

However, a first (superficial) analysis at what's being added does look like those will be more strategy oriented and less management oriented than what's getting removed. That would result in a total effect of Civ7 being more strategic and deep than Civ6. For example, builders are being removed, but rural districts are being added. We know too little about them now, but they look like beefed up terrain improvements that come with a huge opportunity cost (if not a production cost), and so surely will provide strategic choices too.

I'm going to fan the flames here and say that Civ7 might even be deeper than Civ4, which I consider the deepest in the series by a country mile. Not because it had the most systems or the most complicated rules (it didn't) but because those systems interacted in a genuinely complex (=/= complicated) way to create emergent behaviour. The economy of Civ4 is made up of the relatively simple bricks of cottages, specialists, civics, trade routes, tax slider, and wonders combined to a whole that could be approached in a myriad different ways: that makes it far deeper than tall vs wide and similar other dichotomies.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I disagree with looking at builders problem only as a micromanagement problem (the case with a lumbermill). It's not just about using builders. It's about producing/training builders and using them. And using them itself could be seen as micromanagement, right. But to have a builder you have to produce/train the unit, wait several turns for it to be produced/trained, delaying production of other important things (a monument, a scout, a slinger etc.) - and that's just strategy, an impactful one.

It will be interesting to see when and where that kind of strategy is in Civ 7. There's also the strategy (in civ 6 at least) of finding out how to work around some choices. Getting Monumentality and being able to use faith to buy settlers for example.

 

[aieeegrunt]

There has been a certain movement to boardgame mechanics in the past few civs. It feels like a lot of puzzle elements are being added while the typical armchair general feeling of civ was dialed back. For example, theming bonuses, adjacency bonuses, always fulfilling the exactly same Eurekas etc. was all really annoying.

I want to land on beaches playing an invasion, play a civ with elite warriors conquering the world, with cool scholars building a rocket or finding the secret of longevity, build impressive wonders that change the game (hunter seeker algorithm style), sail around the world trading tech with remote civs.

I don't want to place some great works in a museum.

So, I'm less concerned about civ being less challenging, but that it might become more and more annoying.

This is exactly why Civs 1-4 will always be superior experiences to me.

The sheer boardgame minimaxing munchkiness of 5 and 6 constantly takes you out of the experience.

I better tell Magellan to drop anchor and NOT circumnavigate just yet, because this era is about to end and I don’t want to waste era score.

All these freethinking science boosting policy cards slotted right next to fracking SERFDOM. Ya, that’s definitly a possible society.

Better get a flowchart out and spend an hour scheduling when and where that Chop Boosting Govenor moves from city to city

 

[SammyKhalifa]

This is exactly why Civs 1-4 will always be superior experiences to me.

The sheer boardgame minimaxing munchkiness of 5 and 6 constantly takes you out of the experience.

I better tell Magellan to drop anchor and NOT circumnavigate just yet, because this era is about to end and I don’t want to waste era score.

All these freethinking science boosting policy cards slotted right next to fracking SERFDOM. Ya, that’s definitly a possible society.

Better get a flowchart out and spend an hour scheduling when and where that Chop Boosting Govenor moves from city to city

Eh, the prevous games had hammer overflow shenanigans. There's always going to be some kind of minmaxing for people looking for it.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Eh, the prevous games had hammer overflow shenanigans. There's always going to be some kind of minmaxing for people looking for it.

It didn’t complete dominate the game design thougj

 

[Zaarin]

All these freethinking science boosting policy cards slotted right next to fracking SERFDOM. Ya, that’s definitly a possible society.

I mean, that's a legitimate description of late Imperial Russia.

 

[Thormodr]

It's more and more about pride and prejudice

1. Casual players
2. Builders

1. That wasn't about console players. Read my post again, please. That was about casual players, especially casual console players. I understand console players. I'm one of them. I play some games on my PC, some my games on my Nintendo, I'm waiting still for my all games to be on Steam Deck available. I play Civ on my PC because of spreadsheets, for my convenience. I'm a casual player in some genres, e.g. in PUBG and I care there more about my outfit than about my weapons stats and I can't yet to win my first solo chicken dinner because of lack of skills, but I don't even think to call for an egalitaritism

I should be more precise however. By casual players I mean non-strategy-fan players. Anyway, if anyone felt offended by me, I apologize (my English is rather bad, I know).

There is not enough established strategy fan players for Civ 7 to surpass Civ 6 in terms of sales numbers. FXS have to aim for non-strategy-fan players. Some of them may then (sooner or later) find a taste for strategy games. Imagine a teenager who get a Civ 7 as a gift from relatives who choose the very game as an educative one - even if he/she prefers now car races or horror adventures there is a chance for him/her to play Civ 7 and find it cool and even recommend it to his/her friends. And Civ 7 at launch as a base game should be as easy to play as possible and even easy enough to win on lowest difficulty level which is not the case with Civ 5 or Civ 6. Later with expansions and DLCs and pass there will be perfect moments to increase the game's strategy depth by adding more layers to it. Now a visual things are more important. There are 3 no brainers: fix some leaders suboptimal models, change cameras angle when interacting with leaders ("Talk to me!"), rework too gray-ish and too microscopic UI.

About strategy depth - I think that has to be decreased in bas Civ 7 game at its launch = Civ 7 at its launch should be less deep strategically than Civ 6 at its launch. And micromanagement decreasing would be just a part of strategy depth decreasing.


This.

2. I didn't post builders were good. I didn't post builders were bad. I'm neutral towards builders itself as a feature. I think removing builders from base Civ 7 game works well for decreasing both: strategy depth and micromanagement.

I disagree with looking at builders problem only as a micromanagement problem (the case with a lumbermill). It's not just about using builders. It's about producing/training builders and using them. And using them itself could be seen as micromanagement, right. But to have a builder you have to produce/train the unit, wait several turns for it to be produced/trained, delaying production of other important things (a monument, a scout, a slinger etc.) - and that's just strategy, an impactful one. You have to prioritize and at the beginning of the game that's a difficult decision. Later (mid and late game) builders are mostly just a burden, right. Anyway, micromanagement =/= strategy depth. Micromanagement is often part of strategy depth. You can't remove only just micromanagement by removing builders - by removing builders you remove micromanagement and some strategy depth as well. I hope I'm making myself clear here now?



It's good we have this discussion. Changing votes means it's fruitful.

Actually, your English is quite good. You should be proud.

Civilization is a game about making a series of interesting choices and meaningful decisions.

I believe there will be a gameplay video on the 31st of August. Hopefully they will highlight what new interesting choices and meaningful decisions they are offering.

 

[bbbt]

In my opinion Civ 7 is designed to be (for casual players) easier to play than previous Civs at the cost of its strategy depth.

Less micromanagement, less options, less choices, less decisions made by players, less long-term investments, less long-term strategies (e.g. hard tech reset with every Age) etc.

Uh, what's your actual definition of 'strategic depth'? Strategic depth to me means having a lot of multiple strategies and options for winning, that are all essentially equal and require consideration. Civ 6 doesn't actually have a lot of strategic depth imho. It has one optimum strategy: more is better, expansion overall. It has a lot of things to do, but of a lot of it doesn't matter. Civ 7 appears to me that it will have possible more "strategic depth" than 6, because of those things like the tech reset, where you have to make difficult choices on how on how to spend the bonuses that do carry over. Getting ahead in tech and staying ahead is not "strategic depth".

Go and Chess (as two examples, both of which are available on the Seitch), have less rules, less decisions, and are much easier to learn the rules of than Civ 6. Are you going to tell me they have less "strategic depth" than Civ?

 

[Arent11]

This is exactly why Civs 1-4 will always be superior experiences to me.

The sheer boardgame minimaxing munchkiness of 5 and 6 constantly takes you out of the experience.

I better tell Magellan to drop anchor and NOT circumnavigate just yet, because this era is about to end and I don’t want to waste era score.

All these freethinking science boosting policy cards slotted right next to fracking SERFDOM. Ya, that’s definitly a possible society.

Better get a flowchart out and spend an hour scheduling when and where that Chop Boosting Govenor moves from city to city

Well, it's simply a different target audience. Some people maybe want to puzzle & "play tetris" instead of imagining that they lead an empire.

And that's fine. The game is just not directed at me.

Simple example: I hated reassigning trade routes every xx turns. And I found the world congress annoying & unimportant. So my solution was to simply never build traders & ignore these game elements completely.

However, civ 6 makes sure to punish & force you whenever you ignore an annoying game element. You have to build traders, otherwise you magically can't build roads. You can't "opt out" of the world congress, you have to choose some stupid resolution.

And the simplest solution for me, in the end, was just to play Alpha Centauri & Beyond Earth.

 

[_hero_]

I think it depends on what you mean by depth. Having leaders with a customizable trait tree you build throughout the game is a layer of depth that none of the previous games had. It means that the choices you make will change every game regardless of what leader you start with. Civ switching is in a similar vein. In Civ 6, if you start as a certain civ/leader, you can already know exactly what your focus will be for the entire game. If you took a religious nation, you know you're going religion, for example. Civ 7 seems far more likely to allow you to adjust your strategy throughout the game and not feel like you're gimping yourself the way Civ 6 feels.

They have eliminated much of the micromanagement, but micromanagement is frequently not an example of depth. Micromanagement in Civ has usually not been meaningful decisions (depth) it has usually just been busywork. Something like chopping isn't depth when the design makes it always the correct decision. That's the opposite of depth. In my mind, having a ton of stuff to do is not depth. The stuff you do mattering and being impactful is depth.

What has been revealed about Civ 7 to me sounds far more deep than Civ 5 or 6 ever did.

 

[fantsu]

I think this seems to continue the same trend civ:rev and civ V started yes.

 

[dagriggstar]

I feel like I'm going to have a much harder time explaining how to play this than previous versions

Civilizations - Even more bonuses that need to be understood in order to play well
Leaders - Leader bonus plus leader bonus trees
Independent powers/city states - Seems like barb clans but more complex
Building rural districts is (I'd argue) is more complex than builders were because of culture bombing and the lack of population micromanagement (making it a more important and meaningful decision)
Ages in 7 being much more complex than in 6. Just feeling like you got the hang of your current civilization bang here's another like 10 new things to learn and a bunch of stuff you learnt is now irrelevant. Not to mention your opponents potentially drastically changing too.
Diplomacy with all the sanctions war support etc

Feels like more a lot varied moving parts to me....

 

[rrreese]

My observation is that there is a type of player who associates "more stuff" with more greater depth. Its easy to ignore that amount of strategic depth simple clean systems can give. We simply don't have enough information about Civ 7 yet. The systems shown off could have immense strategic depth, but we wont know that until we understand them fully.

 

[Professor Phobo]

Yeah, there's more to depth than just a bullet list of features. It's about whether or not there are meaningful decisions to make within those systems.

 

[Olleus]

There's also a difference between more features and more content.

More features can, if done badly, fall foul of the Covert Action Rule, but it can be done well and add depth too. Pilling in more content into the same features rarely does that, it just fills it up with bloat.

Adding a civic tree to mirror the tech tree is adding another feature. Doubling the number of techs on the tree is merely adding more content to an existing feature. Similarly with the number of civs available, the number of buildings, the number of units, etc... And yet it's precisely this kind of "content counting" which dominates the advertising of games! Civ games aren't too bad at it, but crafting games that advertise themselves as having 1321785 different resources is a bug bear of mine. Why would that be a good thing?!? Give me a moderate number of them that combine in a myriad of interesting ways, not an endless labyrinth of one-use gimmicks.

An example from the steam page from the (pretty decent) 4X strategy-cum-crafting game Spellforce: Conquest of Eo

• over 60 spells
• more than 100 different troops
• three archetypes and six spell lists
• over 600 adventures

and it's far from the worse offender. I'm not sure who in game marketing decided "Bigger numbers means better games" and if gamers go along with it, put it'd be nice if there wasn't so much emphasis on something so close to irrelevant.

 

[Arent11]

My observation is that there is a type of player who associates "more stuff" with more greater depth. Its easy to ignore that amount of strategic depth simple clean systems can give. We simply don't have enough information about Civ 7 yet. The systems shown off could have immense strategic depth, but we wont know that until we understand them fully.

Yeah, few rules that create a complex interplay.

However, that clashes with the aim to introduce more and more content via DLC. In that case, you usually introduce more civs, game mechanics etc. that become increasingly more powerful, so you're getting an incentive to buy.