Just wrote worst review of the decade

[AD1730]

You don't get a completely clean slate but your relations are adjusted back towards neutral and wars and alliances are terminated and relations with city states disappear. That's a rather hard reset for this series no matter how you slice it. I wouldn't consider that Diplomatic options being opened, I'd consider that a reset brought about by being a new civ in a new era. Which is exactly what is happening thematically.

Again not building a singular empire to span the test of time.

Even Marzobir said it was like playing three separate scenarios.

 

[Civinator]

Ah my bad on mis-attributing, I play both CCM and Civ3Worldwide so they blend together in my mind sometimes, I know you're active in the Civ3 forum (hello, by the way!) so figures you'd know better than me.

Hello to you, too . At least in that case I knew it better, because I am the creator of the CCM mods.

 

[TheGrayFox]

I think you're being a little hyperbolic with the bolded text. Empires go through periods of growth and stagnation, that's a staple in actual history and in many grand strategy games. Actually I would argue that it's less a new group of people building on the ruins of your old empire and more a renewal of national spirit occurring through a new national direction (a new culture with new bonuses and civics) that builds on the stagnation of the earlier period after its crisis. To me it's actually very thematic in principle (after a severe crisis, a civilization would be left weakened and recovering, represented by the interim period where your army shrinks and yields decay), it just doesn't work as well because of the lack of immersive transitions for all the available civs.

I'm not being hyperbolic at all. You are quite literally a new civilization building ontop of the ruins of an old one, only tied together by some nebulous and often ahistorical eternal leader. Arabs do not become subsaharan Africans, every nation doesn't undergo crisis and change all at the same time, and nations are not lead by eternal RPG characters

Again I don't know why you keep pointing towards the example of real history, we're talking about a series about building an empire to span all of time. I agree with you that civ swapping itself isn't fundamentally bad, it's just the way the devs decided to design everything. It's a complete a mess, even thematically.

Vox Populi's AI mod doesn't actually eliminate snowballing as a problem, it just makes it harder for the player to actually snowball. If an AI begins snowballing the chance of recovery from the player's side is just as hopeless due to a lack of rubber-banding or soft reset allowing whomever is snowballing to run away with science yields and leapfrog past the military competition.

This isn't true, Vox Populi gives the players and the AI several chances in catching up to runaways (spying, diplomacy/sanctions, tech trade, military expansion) but the reality is, this is a 4x game sometimes one player expands and wins. That's kind of the genre....

The Revolutions mod from IV is actually well-designed, agreed, and IMO if they weren't going to have age-specific objectives then that would have been the correct way to limit snowballing. But IMO age-specific objectives are actually great for focusing gameplay and inciting conflict, so in my view either design would have been appropriate.

IMO they shouldn't have had age specific objectives and should've given us well designed and dynamic revolutions/internal management instead

 

[Kev1916]

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.

You best in not already avoid Old World and CK

 

[Zaarin]

You best in not already avoid Old World and CK

I enjoy both, but they're different games.

 

[Skojardu]

It feels weird that you cannot win this game outright before the third age. From the perspective of a time period person, I'd say Alexander won (domination), the Romans won (domination/cultural), Arabia won (cultural, scientific, domination), Genghis won (domination), Spain won (domination, religious), France won (cultural, domination), England won (economic/domination), etc. In a game where everyone is in the game at 4000 BC(E), and has equal ability, why shouldn't the game stop at the first player to win (Alexander)?

 

[bladex1200]

I'm not being hyperbolic at all. You are quite literally a new civilization building ontop of the ruins of an old one, only tied together by some nebulous and often ahistorical eternal leader.

This is by definition hyperbolic since your previous civilization isn't in ruins, in fact if you were strong going out of the previous era and got a lot of legacy points you'll start strong in this era, often with your cities or prior cultural or scientific infrastructure intact rather than decayed. And again, the decay isn't full destruction, you start with an income base for gold, science, culture, and influence based on your prior empire-building. Your borders are intact; if you fail to achieve enough to keep your cities intact you can always upgrade your towns back to cities over a few turns. It's recovering from stagnation, not from having your civilization carpet-bombed into oblivion.

Arabs do not become subsaharan Africans, every nation doesn't undergo crisis and change all at the same time, and nations are not lead by eternal RPG characters

Again I fail to see how this is an indictment against this game given that prior civ games had the latter and didn't even have crises at all until 6, so literally snowballing was just not penalized at all!

This isn't true, Vox Populi gives the players and the AI several chances in catching up to runaways (spying, diplomacy/sanctions, tech trade, military expansion) but the reality is, this is a 4x game sometimes one player expands and wins. That's kind of the genre....

Spying, diplomacy sanctions, and military expansion were all options in Civ 6 and failed to prevent runaway games. Vox Populi benefitted Civ 5 by adding them in as catchup mechanics but ultimately they were not sufficient to prevent the issue of "game is over, late-game is pointless I'm going to quit because my defeat / victory is already-assured", which is something Civ 7's designers wanted to address for the majority of the player base.

IMO they shouldn't have had age specific objectives and should've given us well designed and dynamic revolutions/internal management instead

I agree, but ultimately I don't think age-specific objectives detract from empire-building that much when well-implemented, and I feel they are well-implemented at least for the Antiquity age. I do feel some of the objectives for Exploration are kind of forceful of a colonialism narrative rather than being emergent (e.g. bonus points for conquering new world settlements + requiring new world settlements for economic points via treasure fleets), but ultimately they still do drive empire-building behavior of expansion + growth of cities.

 

[bladex1200]

It feels weird that you cannot win this game outright before the third age. From the perspective of a time period person, I'd say Alexander won (domination), the Romans won (domination/cultural), Arabia won (cultural, scientific, domination), Genghis won (domination), Spain won (domination, religious), France won (cultural, domination), England won (economic/domination), etc. In a game where everyone is in the game at 4000 BC(E), and has equal ability, why shouldn't the game stop at the first player to win (Alexander)?

The devs have stated they're going to add in an option to limit the game-end to a specific time period, so you will in the future be able to have Antiquity-only or Exploration-only or Modern-only games as well as every combination in-between.

 

[theadder]

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



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.

George Washington does live continuously from 4000 BC, though.

 

[TheGrayFox]

This is by definition hyperbolic since your previous civilization isn't in ruins, in fact if you were strong going out of the previous era and got a lot of legacy points you'll start strong in this era, often with your cities or prior cultural or scientific infrastructure intact rather than decayed.

You lose cities, you lose units, your wars are stopped, your relations with city states are reset, your relations with other civs go back towards neutral and legacy points are simply a glue used to tie this swap to a new civilization in a new era together as your new civ has built ontop of the legacy of your old one.

And again, the decay isn't full destruction, you start with an income base for gold, science, culture, and influence based on your prior empire-building. Your borders are intact; if you fail to achieve enough to keep your cities intact you can always upgrade your towns back to cities over a few turns. It's recovering from stagnation, not from having your civilization carpet-bombed into oblivion.

I disagree, the model and examples the devs used to justify this change are clearly built on destruction. Thats how London got its layers. Whether it is full destruction or not is simply semantics. Why do I have to upgrade towns back to cities? the answer is because my old civ collapsed and a new civ settled over their remains. I never argued that your civilization is being carpet bombed into oblivion thats a strawman and hyperbole. What I've argued is that a new civilization is building ontop of your old one and this is clearly what the devs meant to respresent. Which again brings us back to the loss of building an empire that spans all time.

Again I fail to see how this is an indictment against this game given that prior civ games had the latter and didn't even have crises at all until 6, so literally snowballing was just not penalized at all!

the prior civ games had eternal leaders, they never had leaders that leveled up like RPGs, which I really don't care about. That wasn't me indicting the game.

Also I do not think snowballing was a bad enough issue to warrant gutting the game into largely seperated acts. I'm sorry

Spying, diplomacy sanctions, and military expansion were all options in Civ 6 and failed to prevent runaway games. Vox Populi benefitted Civ 5 by adding them in as catchup mechanics but ultimately they were not sufficient to prevent the issue of "game is over, late-game is pointless I'm going to quit because my defeat / victory is already-assured", which is something Civ 7's designers wanted to address for the majority of the player base.

I wouldn't look at Civ 6 for how to prevent runaways . Remember i also think VI is an inferior product to its predessecors especially w/ mods. We'll have to agree to disagree about VP. I will reiterate again that I don't care if I lose games and I had no problem playing games to completion. The designers sought to address a gameplay concern in the most heavy handed manner imaginable and look they've lost a long time fan because of it

I agree, but ultimately I don't think age-specific objectives detract from empire-building that much when well-implemented, and I feel they are well-implemented at least for the Antiquity age. I do feel some of the objectives for Exploration are kind of forceful of a colonialism narrative rather than being emergent (e.g. bonus points for conquering new world settlements + requiring new world settlements for economic points via treasure fleets), but ultimately they still do drive empire-building behavior of expansion + growth of cities.

Well if you agree then you atleast see half my perspective. I don't think the game needed to be split into three seperated acts to adress the specific gameplay concern it was designed to address and civ swapping as it is designed feels and looks terrible.

 

[TheGrayFox]

George Washington does live continuously from 4000 BC, though.

This point has already been addressed ad nauseam*. VII didn't change immoral leaders. It just piled more nonsense for us to accept and many of us have no desire to.

 

[Skojardu]

The devs have stated they're going to add in an option to limit the game-end to a specific time period, so you will in the future be able to have Antiquity-only or Exploration-only or Modern-only games as well as every combination in-between.

Yes, but Alexander's contemporaries in their time weren't only playing a "single age game", conquests just happened. I dislike the idea that victory is impossible until after 1750 AD/CE

 

[bladex1200]

Yes, but Alexander's contemporaries in their time weren't only playing a "single age game", conquests just happened. I dislike the idea that victory is impossible until after 1750 AD/CE

But you could argue Alexander didn't actually achieve victory since his "conquering of the known world" necessarily excluded Chinese and Japanese and Indian civilizations at the time, Alexander dying before he could conquer any lands past Bactria. So you can't have it both ways. If you want to declare victory before the era in which you go across the seas, then you want victory in the age of Antiquity.

I see where you're going with this in that the game doesn't offer a Pangaea script yet (not sure if it ever will, I hope it does!) where there's no civilizations across the ocean that you're precluded from meeting until the Exploration era. But in prior civ games, Civ 4 as an example, if you played a continents map that was large enough to have deep ocean separating continents (smaller maps connected continents via shallow water, so this doesn't apply) then conquering everyone would be impossible until you unlocked Optics and were able to go over ocean tiles. So necessarily you couldn't end the game in the Classical era if you were doing so via conquest.

 

[Skojardu]

You're right, my gripe is more that it is impossible to win by some criteria in the Exploration age, where everything on the map is somewhat accessible. If they can clean it up, there could be a nice religious victory then.

 

[bladex1200]

You lose cities, you lose units, your wars are stopped, your relations with city states are reset, your relations with other civs go back towards neutral and legacy points are simply a glue used to tie this swap to a new civilization in a new era together as your new civ has built ontop of the legacy of your old one.

1. Your cities minus your capital revert to towns, they can become cities again with a gold cost. It's not like they get destroyed.
   
   
2. You only lose an excess of units if they aren't in armies, which you should be using anyways as they provide maximum benefit for your units as there's no more single-unit promotion. I had 4 full armies in antiquity (16 units) + 4 units that were unpacked and I didn't lose any of them, they just upgraded.
   
   
3. City states resetting is 100% true, no defense there.
   
   
4. Relations with other civs do not reset to neutral, the extremities are shaved off slightly but if you had strong relationships with other civs they remain through the era transition. Again, I was despised by Pachacuti in my game in Antiquity and he hated me immediately on transition to Exploration.

 

[bladex1200]

I disagree, the model and examples the devs used to justify this change are clearly built on destruction. Thats how London got its layers. Whether it is full destruction or not is simply semantics. Why do I have to upgrade towns back to cities? the answer is because my old civ collapsed and a new civ settled over their remains. I never argued that your civilization is being carpet bombed into oblivion thats a strawman and hyperbole. What I've argued is that a new civilization is building ontop of your old one and this is clearly what the devs meant to respresent. Which again brings us back to the loss of building an empire that spans all time.

the prior civ games had eternal leaders, they never had leaders that leveled up like RPGs, which I really don't care about. That wasn't me indicting the game.

Also I do not think snowballing was a bad enough issue to warrant gutting the game into largely seperated acts. I'm sorry

I wouldn't look at Civ 6 for how to prevent runaways . Remember i also think VI is an inferior product to its predessecors especially w/ mods. We'll have to agree to disagree about VP. I will reiterate again that I don't care if I lose games and I had no problem playing games to completion. The designers sought to address a gameplay concern in the most heavy handed manner imaginable and look they've lost a long time fan because of it

Well if you agree then you atleast see half my perspective. I don't think the game needed to be split into three seperated acts to adress the specific gameplay concern it was designed to address and civ swapping as it is designed feels and looks terrible.

I don't disagree with the rest of your post and your feelings on the matter that this is a radical departure from what you and many others want from the franchise, I just feel that what you want was already satisfied by existing Civ entries. I mean, I basically didn't play Civ 5 (hated 1UPT implementation there) and played Civ 6 only a moderate amount (never liked the victory condition gameiness) as I felt Civ 4 basically did everything I wanted both vanilla and mod-wise with a 4x game. I only picked up Civ 7 because of the transitioning mechanics and new leader options.

That's not to say it's unfair for you to be angry that the latest entry is moving the franchise away from wha you love about it, but I already made my peace with that in Civ 5 and I feel that Civ 7 is being unfairly maligned just because it's not a rehash of Civ 4 or 5 or 6 (depending on who you ask). There's plenty of valid things to malign about it, like it's horrific UI, the unflavorful culture and science legacy paths right now, and the lack of available larger maps and game customization (removing victory conditions, setting your own end date, etc)

 

[TheGrayFox]

Your cities minus your capital revert to towns, they can become cities again with a gold cost. It's not like they get destroyed.

Yes with very little input from you. You always collapse after crisis. your cities revert to towns and you can even lose cities because this is Firaxis modeling the collapse of one civilization/empire into another. I never said everything gets completely destroyed, that's a strawman but what's being modeled is very clear and obvious.

You only lose an excess of units if they aren't in armies, which you should be using anyways as they provide maximum benefit for your units as there's no more single-unit promotion. I had 4 full armies in antiquity (16 units) + 4 units that were unpacked and I didn't lose any of them, they just upgraded.

I know how the mechanics work. Again its about whats being modelled. Why are my wars being stopped without my consent or input and why do you lose units not with commanders?

1. City states resetting is 100% true, no defense there.

the defense rests its case

1. Relations with other civs do not reset to neutral, the extremities are shaved off slightly but if you had strong relationships with other civs they remain through the era transition. Again, I was despised by Pachacuti in my game in Antiquity and he hated me immediately on transition to Exploration.

I didn't say they go back to neutral, I said they go towards neutral again which is simply true and again wars are literally stopped and city state reset. Sure it doesn't completely reset everything but again what is being modelled is clear. You are no longer building an empire that spans the test of time.

 

[TheGrayFox]

I don't disagree with the rest of your post and your feelings on the matter that this is a radical departure from what you and many others want from the franchise, I just feel that what you want was already satisfied by existing Civ entries. I mean, I basically didn't play Civ 5 (hated 1UPT implementation there) and played Civ 6 only a moderate amount (never liked the victory condition gameiness) as I felt Civ 4 basically did everything I wanted both vanilla and mod-wise with a 4x game. I only picked up Civ 7 because of the transitioning mechanics and new leader options.

That's not to say it's unfair for you to be angry that the latest entry is moving the franchise away from wha you love about it, but I already made my peace with that in Civ 5 and I feel that Civ 7 is being unfairly maligned just because it's not a rehash of Civ 4 or 5 or 6 (depending on who you ask). There's plenty of valid things to malign about it, like it's horrific UI, the unflavorful culture and science legacy paths right now, and the lack of available larger maps and game customization (removing victory conditions, setting your own end date, etc)

Maligning VII for its direction and gameplay changes is also completely valid. I don't care that its not a exact rehash of iv, v, or iv (which again the latter I don't really like) I care that the direction they've taken the series is nothing i'm interested in and believe that the changes designed mediocrely and weren't nessecary to address the gameplay concerns they're intended to fix imo. If I wanted disjointed and nonsensicle leaders and civ swapping I'd go play Humankind.

 

[theadder]

This point has already been addressed ad naseum. VII didn't change immoral leaders. It just piled more nonsense for us to accept and many of us have no desire to.

"Ad nauseam"

 

[Bobolove]

I wanna see how many of you fanatics are still gonna be playing this couple weeks down the road ...

Moderator Action: fan boys is trolling, please stop. leif