After playing Civ VII for 100+ hours I find it extremely boring. It is not nearly addictive as previous versions of Civilization.
Each era has 4 same goals that you must acomplish and after playing few times this becomes very boring.
I played Civ VI for 3,500+ hours, Civ 5 for 1500+ hours and I still find them interesting, each game can be unique and different. But with Civ VI there is nothing unique, it is all very strictly defined with eras and points that you are trying to collect for science, culture, military etc.
Civ VII very much dictates how you will play and what your goals will be in each era. In most cases you can easily acomplish 3 out of 4 goals, giving you big advantage over other AI players as you progress to another era.
Are you finding Civ VII interesting? Is each game unique and different compared to your last game?
To your last 2 questions: yes, very interesting, and yes, each game is unique and different. My main play style is fractal map, long ages, epic speed, for whatever that is worth. The leaders and Civs all play out differently as I end up in the modern era with a collection of traditions that I can mix and match.
The "4 same goals" argument comes up a lot, but I see no reason why this is not the exact same thing as every other Civ game. To get any kind of victory in any Civ game you need to accomplish goals -- there is an end goal you "go for," but you need to hit milestones to get to that goal. If you want to get a culture victory in Civ6, you need to perform a series of steps that gets you there. You need X amount of tourism over the other civs. To get science victory you need to build a series of projects. It all felt so... safe. And sterile. Domination in Civ6 is far more tedious than Civ7, too.
The difference in Civ7 is an ability to pivot and evolve with the world around you. I think there are still some kinks to iron out here, but the bones of what we have is already better than peak Civ6 imho. Civ6 to me is a game about optimization, and that optimization begins the moment your settler founds that first city. Talk about "destination" vs "journey" -- Civ6 is all about destination imho. There is an illusion of choice from there, dressed in rock bands and giant death robots, but the game was monotonous for me. Something about it really bummed me out every time I played. In Civ7, I can be a cultural ancient Civ, then pivot to invading my neighbors, then pivot to science -- but not without rhyme or reason, since remnants of your decisions remain marked on your empire, your surroundings/lands, and your abilities/traditions. You
can arrange these progressions, or dream them up. I spend time dreaming of combos I want to try, or new approaches, or layers. That is what keeps me coming back. It's a sense of "What kind of story will I tell next time?" as opposed to, "What civ can I pick to optimize my culture yields so that I get a science victory?"
I do agree that the presentation is misleading. I have gone multiple games now without even looking at my legacy paths, and ending up with fun and engaging experiences (and hitting some of them "organically"). I'd say that Civ6 was mostly window dressing: it did the same things, but with a lot of fluff surrounding those things. Civ7 is a bit more streamlined, but that does not necessarily mean less complex. They'll definitely add a bunch of stuff through expansions, but again, what we have here to me is already a more interesting approach than that of the previous iteration.
Btw, 100+ hours in less than 2 months is not how I would define boring. I'm not negating your opinion, which is rightfully yours, but by my metric that isn't exactly a damnation of the game or how exciting it is. It must be doing (or have done) something right! Comparing with games w/multiple expansions multiple years old and the 100s of hours you have there is kinda a non-starter.
It isn't just about the presentation. Legacy paths dictate how the AI plays as well. Players can just ignore them, fine. The AI will always pursue at least 1 of the 4 paths in every game. This creates repetitive gameplay. The exploration age is probably the biggest offender. Its very design is why we didn't get any Pangea style maps at launch, because they wouldn't work with the current legacy paths as they are implemented. That's just 1 example of less possible variety in the game as a direct result of the legacy path system that has nothing to do with players thinking legacy paths are more important than they are.
Hmm, I don't know about this. I've had several games where the AI is perplexing and unpredictable. But regardless, another improvement (not perfection, but improvement) is AI imho. Since launch it has been better than Civ6, but the recent patch made it even better. Civ6's AI was such a pushover and seemingly had no goals or ambitions. Talk about repetition! At least with Civ7 the game gets down to the wire (for me, anyway).
This might just be a "different strokes" situation, too, which I can appreciate!
