Just wrote worst review of the decade

[trev1972]

I mean to be fair, the premise of "Building a Civilization that passes the test of time" was always a fiction. Basically no ascendant civilization in its modern incarnation has passed the test of time (except maybe China? disputable depending on how much you think there's continuity between dynasties) and has morphed in such extreme ways as to be unrecognizeable to those who inhabited it a thousand years ago in borders, language, government system, etc.

I do wish leaders were tied to Civs per era and you got a new leader for each era you progressed in, but I feel that if one is talking about connections to history one is hopelessly deluding themselves with the idea that prior Civ games were historical without mods. Seeing Abraham Lincoln wearing a sheepskin hat and coat in Civ 3 was never historical, even if it was endearing and funny; neither was Joan of Arc persisting into the modern-day as a football hooligan. Civ 4 just straight up does away with era progression for leaders and just pretends the leader is existing in a historical vacuum from the civilization they're leading, which while less distracting is no less ahistorical.

I think those who played in a 'roleplay / pretend to be a civilisation leader way' or what ever you wish to call it we were aware that the historical veneer was thin and the link tenuous. It was enough however.
Certainly playing tsl maps, or specific scenarios helped a bit with that as well.

 

[Zaarin]

So switching an entire civilization is less jarring than switching a leader of the civ? I must be stupid, because that doesnt make any sense to me. Someone also said that they dont 'feel' the switch in civilizations as well. Having your armies removed, your cities converted to towns and your diplomacy influence reset is not an abrupt change? I dont get it.

It would be much a smoother transition if your leader switched. New leader means new diplomatic traits and influences. New leader can reset the effectiveness of your military without having to remove units willy-nilly. New leader can give civic changes without having to capriciously change cities into towns.

The civ switch is completely capricious in my opinion. Changes in ages could have been made much more smoothly and strategically by switching leaders between ages instead of civs.

As someone else said, different strokes. I don't even notice what civs my opponents are playing as because the game doesn't call attention to it, but I wouldn't touch a game where my opponents were suddenly entirely different people in the middle of a game. The leaders are the faces you play against; you can't change that mid game without hurting the player's connection to the game.

 

[Krajzen]

You know, OP, feel free to dislike huge playtime behemoths like this game after whopping 30 minutes spent on it, but that short "review" precludes anybody from taking anything useful out of it, not because there is something wrong with your feelings (I have also been sometimes instantly repulsed by some games, and sometimes it went away and sometimes it never did), but because with such tiny playtime there is simply nothing substantial you can refer to other than your primal subjective feelings.

Like sure, I have also instantly hated and was very quickly burned out by some massive games way before I could claim to know them, sometimes it just "doesn't feel right for my taste", but this kind of "criticism" is purely personal and non-transferable. I can be repulsed some book because it reminds my of my ex and her political views, but I have nothing to say to the person who loves first four chapters and has the problem with the story structure from the page 135 forward. You can't expect others to share such primal feelings (which we all sometimes have) and for them to feel differently. You don't have anything to say to anyone for whom those things that you hate simply "click" right (well the UI objectively sucks so it doesn't, here we all agree )

 

[bladex1200]

As someone else said, different strokes. I don't even notice what civs my opponents are playing as because the game doesn't call attention to it, but I wouldn't touch a game where my opponents were suddenly entirely different people in the middle of a game. The leaders are the faces you play against; you can't change that mid game without hurting the player's connection to the game.

I feel like it's 100% possible to have the leaders transition and have it not be weird. You just need some window-dressing of passing-the-torch to the next era's leaders for each Civ (maybe even your leader passing the torch as well) and set up that the transition is symbolic of a pretty huge chunk of time passing between eras. I mean, my Antiquity era ended in like 500 BC while my Exploration Era started in 500 AD; surely, in that amount of time, given my yields decayed and my armies scattered and my civilization clearly has been changing to some degree (especially with Civ transition), it wouldn't be absurd to see leaders changing.

 

[Acken]

A lot of words that don't say much.

 

[misesfan]

As someone else said, different strokes. I don't even notice what civs my opponents are playing as because the game doesn't call attention to it, but I wouldn't touch a game where my opponents were suddenly entirely different people in the middle of a game. The leaders are the faces you play against; you can't change that mid game without hurting the player's connection to the game.

So you dont even notice the civs you are playing against, but you do notice the leaders?

In other words, the civilization you play, in a game called Civilization, is simply a veneer that doesnt really matter in playing the game. The game should be called 'Leaders in History' or something like that....

In my opinion, this rationale is why the game is getting lambasted in the Steam reviews.

 

[Zaarin]

I feel like it's 100% possible to have the leaders transition and have it not be weird.

Sure. In a game that's not built on big leader personalities like Civ is. And I get that some people feel the same way about civ switching, and that's their prerogative. But if Civ8 announced leader switching, I'd have to be in awe of the other mechanics to even give it a chance. The leader is the avatar of the other players, a way to give your opponents a face you can connect with; leader switching seriously disrupts that. That was fundamentally Humankind's biggest problem in its array of problems: the leaders were so generic and forgettable they might as well have been faceless so there was nothing to anchor the civs to.

In other words, the civilization you play, in a game called Civilization, is simply a veneer that doesnt really matter in playing the game.

The civ I'm playing as matters; the leader I'm playing against matters. Kindly don't twist my words to suit your narrative. You're entitled to dislike the game; you're not entitled to skew what I said to build your argument.

In my opinion, this rationale is why the game is getting lambasted in the Steam reviews.

No, it's chiefly being lambasted because the UI sucks, which it does.

 

[TheGrayFox]

I mean to be fair, the premise of "Building a Civilization that passes the test of time" was always a fiction. Basically no ascendant civilization in its modern incarnation has passed the test of time (except maybe China? disputable depending on how much you think there's continuity between dynasties) and has morphed in such extreme ways as to be unrecognizeable to those who inhabited it a thousand years ago in borders, language, government system, etc.

Of course, it was fiction. Civilization has never been a strict history simulator and I'll spoil it, no ascendant civilization has ever had an immotal leader who levels up like a RPG character either. The tagline was "build an empire to pass the test of time" and that's what we've done in the Civ series, a series which is literally almost as old as I am, until now

I do wish leaders were tied to Civs per era and you got a new leader for each era you progressed in, but I feel that if one is talking about connections to history one is hopelessly deluding themselves with the idea that prior Civ games were historical without mods. Seeing Abraham Lincoln wearing a sheepskin hat and coat in Civ 3 was never historical, even if it was endearing and funny; neither was Joan of Arc persisting into the modern-day as a football hooligan. Civ 4 just straight up does away with era progression for leaders and just pretends the leader is existing in a historical vacuum from the civilization they're leading, which while less distracting is no less ahistorical.

We're not deluded, we just know what civilizations games were at their foundations and know that the changes made in VII are even more nonsensicle from a historical perspective than what we were already used to. Arabs don't morph into subsaharan Africans and Ben Franklin doesn't lead the mongols.

 

[misesfan]

The civ I'm playing as matters; the leader I'm playing against matters. Kindly don't twist my words to suit your narrative. You're entitled to dislike the game; you're not entitled to skew what I said to build your argument.

Didnt you say that

I don't even notice what civs my opponents are playing as because the game doesn't call attention to it

I am not twisting your words, I am quoting them back at you. Perhaps it would be better to say this - if a game called Civilization does not call attention to the civilization that you are playing then that is a problem.

 

[Zaarin]

I am not twisting your words, I am quoting them back at you. Perhaps it would be better to say this - if a game called Civilization does not call attention to the civilization that you are playing then that is a problem.

I never said the civilizations don't matter, least of all your own; I said the game doesn't emphasize the opponents' civilization. I also disagree that it's a problem. The leaders have always been at the center in Civ; that's the franchise's brand. Again, it's fine if that's not for you. There are other franchises that put less focus on the leader than Civ always has. But this isn't a sudden change in the game's formula.

 

[TheGrayFox]

As someone else said, different strokes. I don't even notice what civs my opponents are playing as because the game doesn't call attention to it, but I wouldn't touch a game where my opponents were suddenly entirely different people in the middle of a game. The leaders are the faces you play against; you can't change that mid game without hurting the player's connection to the game.

Thats exactly what is happening in VII. You know that Arabs and Subsaharan Africans are entirely different people right?

Again you repeat this idea that leader swapping is impossible to add because you don't like the idea and we've established before (through repeated polling at this point) that your conclusion here simply isn't true and there are several 4x titles that show how leader swapping could be implemented without harming immersion or hurting player's connection to the game. The same way Firaxis revolutionized how we view civs and leaders in VII is what they could've done to facilitate a game where leaders swap, not civilizations.

 

[bladex1200]

Of course, it was fiction. Civilization has never been a strict history simulator and I'll spoil it, no ascendant civilization has ever had an immotal leader who levels up like a RPG character either. The tagline was "build an empire to pass the test of time" and that's what we've done in the Civ series, a series which is literally almost as old as I am, until now

I fail to see how the new mechanics don't involve empire-building across several millennia. Just because the name and special mechanics are changing per era doesn't mean that the raw material - the actual cities, people, buildings, armies, etc - are being thrown away. I would argue that an empire spanning the test of time actually would change a lot in its ways throughout the millennia, it would tie back to its prior history but not be perpetually attached to it.

We're not deluded, we just know what civilizations games were at their foundations and know that the changes made in VII are even more nonsensicle from a historical perspective than what we were already used to. Arabs don't morph into subsaharan Africans and Ben Franklin doesn't lead the mongols.

My argument is that the idea these changes are "even more nonsensical" is perspective and not fact. Arabs don't morph into Subsaharan Africans, Ben Franklin doesn't lead the Mongols... And America wasn't founded in 4000 BC, the Romans didn't continue to possess the same cities and names and units into the Middle Ages, and empires didn't just have direct continuity for thousands upon thousands of years turn-by-turn. I again think the reason you and so many others feel the game is massively ahistorical compared to past entries is a combination of arbitrary standards for what is and isn't historical AND the game's DLC + content model resulting in not enough transitions existing for all civilizations to preserve verisimilitude

 

[Trengilly]

As someone else said, different strokes. I don't even notice what civs my opponents are playing as because the game doesn't call attention to it, but I wouldn't touch a game where my opponents were suddenly entirely different people in the middle of a game. The leaders are the faces you play against; you can't change that mid game without hurting the player's connection to the game.

This is one of the things Old World does so, so well. You get both. The stable civs so you have a long history of facing a single empire. And you get a great connection to the changing leaders. There is MORE connection to your own leader because events and gameplay change how they develop and their story unfolds. And even changing enemy leaders have more personality because you build up relationships and often get to know their upcoming heirs and work to influence them. Nothing quite so wonderful as helping the prince overthrow his father who has hated you for years to establish a new ally.

 

[Zaarin]

This is one of the things Old World does so, so well. You get both. The stable civs so you have a long history of facing a single empire. And you get a great connection to the changing leaders. There is MORE connection to your own leader because events and gameplay change how they develop and their story unfolds. And even changing enemy leaders have more personality because you build up relationships and often get to know their upcoming heirs and work to influence them.

Old World is a phenomenal game, but I don't want it's CK3-style dynasty mechanics in Civ, where you'd chance leaders five times a turn in Antiquity. It works very well for OW, though.

 

[bladex1200]

This is one of the things Old World does so, so well. You get both. The stable civs so you have a long history of facing a single empire. And you get a great connection to the changing leaders. There is MORE connection to your own leader because events and gameplay change how they develop and their story unfolds. And even changing enemy leaders have more personality because you build up relationships and often get to know their upcoming heirs and work to influence them.

I do love the Old World model but I feel it basically only applies to games that have a set, narrow period of history where turn-by-turn you're only advancing a few years and your tech advancement is very limited. There's a reason Paradox's simulators spread the entirety of human history across multiple games and that's that the simulation systems in place for antiquity or for the medieval period simply do not work once you get to the industrial revolution or WW2.

Civ was always going to have a disconnect between its scope of history and the set dressing (civilizations, leaders, technologies, simulations of economy and cities, etc) because of the nature of the scope of its vision. The only question was whether the disconnect would bother players a ton or whether it would be acceptable in their minds.

 

[bladex1200]

Sure. In a game that's not built on big leader personalities like Civ is. And I get that some people feel the same way about civ switching, and that's their prerogative. But if Civ8 announced leader switching, I'd have to be in awe of the other mechanics to even give it a chance. The leader is the avatar of the other players, a way to give your opponents a face you can connect with; leader switching seriously disrupts that. That was fundamentally Humankind's biggest problem in its array of problems: the leaders were so generic and forgettable they might as well have been faceless so there was nothing to anchor the civs to.

I disagree that was Humankind's biggest problem, I think the core problems of that game lay in its lack of restriction on culture switching (leading to races to see who could claim the OP cultures and some cultures just being objectively inferior for the same goals) and its terrible balance for district yields and city expansion. The leaders being bland was bad, yes, but I don't think your case is quite as strong as you think.

I agree Civ is built on big leader personalities but it was also built on continuity between ages and I feel if Civ 7 was capable of shaking that up, they could have shook up big leader personalities by having a big personality for each age, but perhaps you're right and that's too much of a change from the franchise norm to work.

 

[TheGrayFox]

I fail to see how the new mechanics don't involve empire-building across several millennia. Just because the name and special mechanics are changing per era doesn't mean that the raw material - the actual cities, people, buildings, armies, etc - are being thrown away. I would argue that an empire spanning the test of time actually would change a lot in its ways throughout the millennia, it would tie back to its prior history but not be perpetually attached to it.

You fail to see how having the game seperated into three distinct and short rounds where you empire is literally set back and at the end of each round and you are forced to change to a completely new civilization hampers the tagline of building a singular empire to stand the test of time? You quite literally have cities demoted to towns, armies disappear, and diplomatic relations/wars are thrown out the window in the transitions to a completely new civilization between rounds! You're not building a singular empire anymore, you're building three different ones stacked on each other like frankenstein's monster only tied together by an often completely ahistorical leader

My argument is that the idea these changes are "even more nonsensical" is perspective and not fact. Arabs don't morph into Subsaharan Africans, Ben Franklin doesn't lead the Mongols... And America wasn't founded in 4000 BC, the Romans didn't continue to possess the same cities and names and units into the Middle Ages, and empires didn't just have direct continuity for thousands upon thousands of years turn-by-turn. I again think the reason you and so many others feel the game is massively ahistorical compared to past entries is a combination of arbitrary standards for what is and isn't historical AND the game's DLC + content model resulting in not enough transitions existing for all civilizations to preserve verisimilitude

Sure it is perspective, in this case well reasoned one. You say America wasn't founded in 4000BC and thats true but then ignore than Ben Franklin can now lead the Greeks in 4000bc. It's not anymore more realistic, they just added more nonsense and poorly used "history" as a justification for changes intended to solve alleged issues with gameplay.

Again the tagline was build an empire that spans the test of time. The Romans continuing to posses the same cities and units into the middle ages and continuing was literally the tagline the series was built on. The reason why myself and so many feel the game is massively ahistorical is because it is. Firaxis failed to create a convincing abstration of human history.

 

[Civinator]

I mean to be fair, the premise of "Building a Civilization that passes the test of time" was always a fiction. Basically no ascendant civilization in its modern incarnation has passed the test of time.

No, in my eyes this argumentation is not fair. In all former versions of the civ series you start with a civilization and should try to finish the game with that civilization (best as the winner). This is no fiction, but a very concrete aim. In Civ 7 you should build something you believe in. Without that believe, even that wishy-washy aim can not be achieved.

 

[pmarc]

I don't think having a "direct descendant" progression for every Civ would have been a good option. I'd rather have them design a variety of Civs that players will find interesting, rather than force them to find a direct descendant and/or ancestor for every one of them.

Also, the ageless-leaders-as-board-game-opponents is just a core feature of the series; I disagree with the idea that Civ has ever been anything other than a history-inspired electronic board game.

The reason for Civ switching is very transparently stated, it's to keep the player interested through the endgame. If you look at the Civ4 forums for example, it's amazing how many people are still playing and discussing the game, but there is a lot more discussion of early to mid game, and almost none of the modern era, because things are more or less decided by then and there's no reason to click through the last 100 turns to see the outcome.

 

[bladex1200]

No, in my eyes this argumentation is not fair. In all former versions of the civ series you start with a civilization and should try to finish the game with that civilization (best as the winner). This is no fiction, but a very concrete aim. In Civ 7 you should build something you believe in. Without that believe, even that wishy-washy aim can not be achieved.

My point is that the aim of the games was always a fiction, and that the idea that this fiction is any more absurd than the fiction of all of human history being a race to see who can launch a spaceship or achieve the most culture is a little ridiculous and based in the idea of "it worked therefore it shouldn't ever change".

I agree the slogan of building something you believe in is absurd especially for a game that forces colonialism on you as a core game mechanic, but I disagree that this somehow is some skewering indictment of the game as compared to its predecessors. Just shows the idiocy of whomever was coming up with marketing, that's all.