My final expectations before launch: Good game (potential to be great) with aweful UI and awkward pacing...

[remconius]

Looking at the reviews of Civ fanboys Boesthius and PotatoMcWhiskey, here is my takeaways. Eventhough they are critical, they both agree it's a fun and good game. However, there are some big improvement areas. Especially around the UI and pacing of the ages.

Positives:
Boes already played 200 hours and Potato mentioned replayability; he played the same leader many times and looks forward to try again.
Negatives:
They are both were very critical especially of the UI, Potato was fuming and Boes disappointed on missing features from prior versions. In terms of pacing, Boes only plays long ages to avoid running out of time.

The underlying comment that stuck with me, It's the best Civ vanilla game on release. Better than Civ 5 and 6 that both turned out to be amazing games. Of course the bar was set pretty low, but still it's a solid base to make another great game.

I have faith and look forward to playtesting this new iteration in less than 24 hours.

Curious what your expectations are

 

[stealth_nsk]

And providing UI is the easiest thing to fix, I'm also really positive

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

This is from the viewpoint of someone who has already preordered and is currently counting down to playing the game. I have watched both reviews, and this is my main takeaway:
- The UI is truly, truly in need of fixing. Although I have a feeling that you can alter the color of the UI from unlocking aesthetic elements on the Foundation Path/Legend Path? I remember watching a Civ7 video from a major news outlet and the UI looks bright blue instead of grey.
- I also agree with Potato and Boes that while the game looks good aesthetically, it can get increasingly hard down the road to find that one building. In Civ6, buildings are built inside districts and are color coded, in Civ7, everything is grey-ish, and from Boes' review, there is no search function, and let's say you need to activate a great person on building X, X won't be highlighted when the great person is chosen. That can be super frustrating, and probably the only thing I know I will dislike without even needing to try out the game first.
- I don't think you are given the countdown towards the end of an age (like 10 more turns before age is over), you are only given a notification that the age is 80% done, which is quite useless. It can interrupt when you are doing something important.
- I also echo Boes' sentiment that I'm not sure if I 100% like the fact that we will (almost) start everything over at the beginning of each age, even though I am looking forward to civ switching. I only get to keep a few units, and having to rebuild my entire army seems tiring.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

My expectations are similar. The game looks like a lot of fun and very replayable. It definitely has the same civ feel to me. Most of the new mechanics look like big improvements. Diplomacy looks fantastic. The removal of builders and how you place tile improvements or quarters as the city pop grows looks great. Independent peoples look great, much better that vanilla barbarians. The way resources work look great. I love that you can build all units now and resources just buff them. I hated not being able to build certain units because you lacked the right resource on the map. I love being able to slot resources into cities. I like the differences between towns and cities. I love the new combat with commanders and being able to stack for moving and unpacking for combat. And I love all the choices from narrative events, to attribute points, to all the civ uniques. Overall, the game feels like civ but more streamlined, with less micro and with lots of interesting tactical and strategic choices.

The only big change that I might be a little iffy on is age transitions and civ switching. I need to play it to see it. I think in the context of what it is trying to do in the game, it will work ok. But I worry about how abrupt it is. For example, how you can be in a war and then the war just ends and your units are teleported back to your cities because the age ended. I don't like that. I personally would have done age transitions differently.

I am not worried about the bad UI or bugs. That will get fixed. The game will get many patches and expansions that will fix and flesh out the game. I am very confident that in a couple years, civ7 will be at the top as a great game.

 

[Architect]

My expectations are through the roof. My biggest concern is my PC. I'm hoping it will be good enough.

Some things that I've seen in streams/videos to help with pacing and transitions:

6 units + 4 per Army Commander sounds like plenty of army can transfer. Siege units do not transfer and upgrade though.
Set the age pacing to long instead of standard. This extends the age enough to get more value towards the end of an age from your progress.
Each Legacy path controls 10% of the age progress (2.5% for the first two and 5% for the golden age). This only is triggered once per age no matter who gets it. So once you see the checkmark in the bottom of the UI on a path page it is safe to get that legacy point if you are trying to manage age progression.

 

[Mudkip1001]

I'm hyper-biased, but all that I've seen is highly correctable and this game looks to be even more moddable than past iterations if the Chinese have already found a way to mod the game's font... The AI being able to take cities is a huge thing for me, as they finally will be able to mount a challenge. The Victory conditions need work at the end, but honestly, everything in the world is pointing towards a fourth age (hyperbole). So I think the game is on a better footing than 6.