LOW number of civilizations at launch

Lord Yanaek

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In the recent Modern Age live-stream, FXS_Sar proudly announced that Civ7 will have the highest amount of civilizations at launch for the series (31 Civs and 26 Leaders). Is anybody else worried that those numbers are actually quite low?

Civilizations are now age-exclusive. Those 31 civs have to be divided among 3 ages. Assuming an equal spread, that means we'll have a choice of 10-11 civilizations to start the game. By comparison, Vanilla Civ6 with only 20 civilizations had twice as many options to choose from!

Then we have the question of leaders. Those 26 leaders include "personnas" (alternate takes on the same leader). IIRC there are 5 of those which leaves 21 "real" leaders. Again assuming roughly equal spread (leader's don't have to be equally spread unlike civilizations, but it's probably safe to assume they will be roughly spread over the 3 ages) that's 7-8 antiquity leaders. From what we've seen in the dev streams, the AIs seem to pick up as historically accurate leaders as possible for their civilization (avoiding Napoleon Bonaparte, Pharaoh of Egypt). All of the games featured in the dev streams have a bunch of Antiquity leaders and (for Exploration and Modern streams), occasionally an Exploration Age leader but no Modern age leaders outside the 2 American they showcased in the 2 games of the modern stream. That's nice for immersion but would reduces the amount of available leaders. The very limited pool becomes obvious when you realize Xerxes was present in 3 out of 4 games shwon in the streams. Now there is a possibility they cherry-picked Antiquity leaders for those streams because they had them revealed already, but if really the game picks Antiquity leaders to fit their antiquity civs, with only 7-8 to choose from we'll continually face the same leaders over and over in SP games.

Obviously, this will all become better as new civs are added in DLCs / XPacks but claiming that Civ7 will have more civilizations than any previous title at launch is a bit weird when we'll only have 10-11 to choose from 🤔

I know, marketting and all that .. but while it's not really false advertizing, it's misleading at best.
 
The leaders aren‘t picked per age. All are available from the start and you and the AI keep the leaders for the whole game. In my opinion, personas are almost full leaders in civ VII - completely different abilities and agendas. They are only similar in name and appearance (and thus in players eyes and thinking, obviously). Hence, I think 26 leaders is closer to the truth than 21, but I can see your point. I do think that both numbers are high enough though. There are more than in civ V and VI at launch, and maps are generally smaller. So, it should be less repetitive than these games.

Now, civs are harder to assess. I think we need to play the game in order to see how important the civs the AI chooses are for the feel of the game. It might as well be that most players focus on the leaders, and it‘s not that important whether Ben is playing Normans or Spain. For me at least, this is what happened in Humankind to some extent - I played against the leaders and not the civs (except if they snatched the civ I wanted or played „dangerous“ civs such as the Huns). It could be similar for civ VII, could also be different due to longer and fewer ages and the very distinct civs. I don‘t think we can tell before we have played 4-5 games.

I‘d also like to point to games like StarCraft or Age of Mythology - there, you have a smaller pool of opponents, and it doesn‘t get repetitive at all. And games like EU4, in which you always have the same opponents (towards the end of the game, not at the beginning with its very different starts). This also doesn‘t become boring or repetitive to me. Maybe I’m just an exception, but to me it‘s more important what I‘m playing, and what my opponent actually does in that very game compared to what they are.
 
I think to only have 10-11 civs in each era is not a lot. You will end up seeing the same civilizations. That's my biggest problem. Now, you might see Persia - Mongols or Persia - Abbasids thereby making 2 playthroughs different but the fact that you see Persia in antiquity is the same.

Ideally, I'd like to see at least 20 civs in each era. That's 60 civs at least. I think that's doable?
 
The number of leaders shouldn't necessarily be an issue. Other civ games have had in the 18-21 range often at launch. For the streams, they're cherry-picking a lot of the options to not "spoil" potential new leaders or civs they haven't revealed (other than a few missed logos here). When you play, you're not going to play against Xerxes 3/4 of your games.

The number of civs is low. If you take a standard game where you have 4-5 opponents, a standard game means you'll face each specific civ in 50% of your games. It won't always be Augustus of Rome, you'll rotate Augustus, Charlemagne, Franklin, Tubman, Isabella, Machiavelli, plus others who are yet to be revealed.

Now, is Machiavelli/Rome going to play very different than Isabella/Rome? I don't know. If they do, then I don't think it will be an issue, and with the unrestricted options, it might actually feel like more variations than we even have at the end of the civ 6 cycle. Because if Augustus/Rome-Spain plays different as an opponent than Isabella/Rome-Spain, suddenly you have like an exponential choice. But if they don't really play that different from each other in the end, or it's not that noticeable of a difference, then yeah, the game might end up feeling repetitive until a few expansions are released. We'll be up to about 13 per era by next fall once the Deluxe/Founders DLC packs are complete. The question is where they go after that, if they have more civ/leader packs, or a larger expansion, or what their schedule for all of that will be.
 
You're not alone, this has been raised before, and I think it's fair to say that the number of civs that you can choose for each Age is low.

That being said, I think we have to recognise that civs are different now. The number of combinations is vast, the number of different paths through the game is far larger than any other Civ game. I think this is the way to approach it, imo.
 
The number feels low per era, but I think I'm gonna feel that each civ will feel way more different from others. Each civ is designed against each other per era and will have their power spikes at similar places. Not to mention each Civ upgraded from a unique ability, unique unit, and unique infrastructure, to a unique ability, unique civics tree, unique civilian unit, unique military unit, and unique infrastructure.

And we won't have civs that are outside their power spike (early era civs in late game, or late game civs in early game) play mechanically very similar.
 
Technically CIVII will have the biggest amount of civs on launch, which is 31 counting Shawnee - this statement is true.
However, because of the gameplay loop there will be only 10 choices at any given time. More in DLC's and I'm sure those numbers can go even to a hundred.
 
It's not that small. You only get to see five antiquity civs per game, and probably only seven or even six exploration and modern if you have a few successful warlike civs eliminating one or two others. On top of this the combinations of civs and leaders will produce a lot of variety for the player so it'll be a long time before you get bored of the starting roster (and by that point, Firaxis will have a few more to sell you). The civs are individually more complex than ever so it's not like you'll get bored of them as quickly either.

Also, you can't work out how the game picks leaders from these streams, everything we see in them is very carefully controlled. In earlier streams to ensure certain civs weren't revealed, they showed us a screenshot of civs like the Normans with things covered well ahead of time instead of trying to hide it in the game. I think it's quite notable that Firaxis used this livestream to "show off" Qing and Siam, because we here had found good evidence they were already in the game, but have avoided answering the BGR question until the very end.
 
To be fair, the ability to mix and match civs and leaders introduces essentially infinite possibilities for human player's replayability (if you have more relaxed attitude than mine stubborn insistence on historical connections or at least proper vibe)

Far bigger problem for me is the fact that you are going to play always against the same set of civs. Here again matters would be greatly improved by my preference for age switching system sometimes allowing for old civs to be retained in the later eras, it would introduce an element of unpredictability rather than a priori knowledge that you always gonna encounter Axum->Songhai->Buganda.

Still, it's just the matter of DLCs and mods to expand the roster...
 
To me, the issue isn't that there are only 10 Civs per Age. Its the entire Civ swapping and progression that puts me totally off. Worse is the seemingly random assignment of leaders to Civs. Benjamin Franklin leading Songhai? Just stupid
 
In one way of thinking about it, there are 260 civs in the first age, and then 80 in each of the other two.

If the game always makes "historical" connections between leader and civ, that initial 260 is considerably diminished among the opponents you will meet.

That actually raises a point I'd never thought about. If your opponents include leaders who aren't Antiquity Era figures, is that because the game is shooting for some particular later era civ? If one of the leaders you face from the start is Ben Franklin, is the game already gunning for some way for him to eventually lead America? Will they always pick an opening civ that has a natural path to America?
 
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The number of leaders is good, in my opinion, but the number of civs is barely adequate. It's a good thing that Crossroads of the World will add 4 civs by the end of March and Right to Rule will add 4 more by the end of September.
 
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