I bought Civ7 immediately at launch and gave it a few tries. I am genuinely sorry that sales are not going well. We all wish to have the best Civ ever, strong, engaging, moddable and eternal.
However, this was my impression:
+ Graphics are gorgeous. It's like Civ5, but better. No more cartoonish.
+ There is an obvious effort in reducing micromanagement and the runaway complexity of late game. In some cases, such as the army commander, and the towns, it's well implemented.
- The game should have been called "Leader" instead of "Civilization". There is so much emphasis on leaders, picked before picking the civilizations, which instead are left as a background flag with little more. The biggest problem for me is allowing any leader with any civ. Some players who play to win and find the best combinations may find it fun, but for me, it's disturbing to see B. Franklyn of Rome, and Augustus of Spain. More than the human player's choice, it's the AI civs the problem. For me, playing against random civs with random leaders completely breaks the immersion and the suspension of disbelief. Not even mentioning that it's confusing: whom am I playing against? Was it Spain? It's Isabella. Ah wait no, it's Japan. Immersion and storytelling within the game are totally ruined.
- Leaders and civ roster. When I first saw the news before the release I thought "Seriously?!". No England...but there are Normans? I mean, if you really want to implement a civ switch, Normans could have sense, and make them evolve either to England or France. A wasted potential. There are also many... odd choices.
Buganda? Nepal??? Majapawhat? FFS I want to play against Nazi Germany, not against Jennifer Bungaspasit of the Ubuhahual Empire.
I feel like Firaxis folks just added what they liked, maybe there was a Nepalese programmer who threw in Nepal, a Bulgarian guy who wanted Bulgaria in, and so on.
And no comment on calling a civ "French Imperial"...
- Leaders. I think we reach the bottom here. First thing to notice is... two Napoleons? Is that done to add content recycling the 3D model?
Then let's see... some interesting choices here and there. I actually liked that a character can fit into more than one civ, like LaFayette. Not a real historical leader though. Machiavelli neither, but I love him anyway. But then you can see that this is going too far. Who's that Filipino? A writer? Again, probably some Firaxis employee is from the Philippines and wanted to put him in? Besides, there is no Philippine civ, so it makes little sense. Other civs have no leaders, apparently. English leader missing. Fortunately added later via DLC... Oh, it's Ada Lovelace. Nothing against her if we are in a computer science class, but was it too difficult to add Victoria?
More. Who is Amina? Of Zazzau? Harry what? Who is she?
At this point I can't help but thinking that they took these choices just to be woke. It's a process that already started with Civ6 actually. A few years ago I remember commenting on Facebook the news of the release of some additional leader. I found disappointing adding a woman of obscure historical impact over more important emperors, for the sake of being politically correct. I recall getting a storm of toxic comments attacking me, calling me white male suprematist. Oh well, if this is the world we live nowaways, maybe Firaxis has an audience and is right to accommodate their expectations. But not my cup of tea. For a history game, I want to play against Stalin! Against Louis XIV, FFS!
- Era transition: everyone's talking about it, everyone hates it. I think it's just a good idea (some kind of partial reset to refresh the game board) badly implemented.
I feel that civ switch should be tied to geography. Like, you pick Rome, then you decide to switch to Byzantium, or HRE, or France, or keep on as Rome. You choose one, and some other fragment of the empire are picked by AI civs.
- You know what will happen when you cross 30 civs with 30 leaders? 900 combinations of bonuses. Good luck balancing them. I can foresee patches for the next few years.
- To make things worse, both for the developers and for the players, the bonuses are made of tiny modifiers, many of them. 5% increased production bonus here, 20% discount there, and as a player you have to read pages of explanations. I already got tired of this in the first few minutes of civ7, and overwhelmed by these information, I picked randomly.
I miss the good old Fundamentalism of Civ2. Zero unhappiness, science is halved. Take it or leave it. I also appreciate the strategic choices of Civ4 civics compared to the endless trees of Civ5. From these considerations, you can clearly see the direction I'm trying to take with Rhye's and Fall.
- It feels like the developers of Civ7 are totally new to the series, or either have forgotten the lessons from the past. Basic features are not present, like the auto explore function, and the map generator is awful. They could have reused old code, why not? Some nasty mechanics are also back, like letting galleys travel on oceans and accidentally discover new continents in antiquity, like in Civ3. Very low number of opponents allowed. Only standard size maps. Oh, and no Earth map of course.
- It inherits one core feature of Civ6: the districts. Many people like it, but I don't because 1. it feels like SimCity rather than Civ (with additional micromanagement), and 2. they take space, and you end up having only very few cities on one continent. A global mod like Rhye's and Fall becomes impossible to implement.
- Little modding support yet, but given the situation, even with modding, it seems hard to fix the game.
Given these considerations, I renew my commitment to carry on modding Civ5 Rhye's and Fall. This is because we need a "gold standard": a version of Civ that has the basics properly done. Civ4 was possibly the best in this sense, but it's too old for nowadays computers: I wish they made a remake of Civ4 with only updated graphics. Then Civ5 becomes the best candidate. I want to fulfill my whole vision of revising it, simplifying some parts and refining others. After Rhye's and Fall is complete, I want to give a try to make the random map version, and that will be (my) gold standard, the one I want to play. At that point I will retire, and see you again in another 10 years!
I'm looking forward to hear your comments.
However, this was my impression:
+ Graphics are gorgeous. It's like Civ5, but better. No more cartoonish.
+ There is an obvious effort in reducing micromanagement and the runaway complexity of late game. In some cases, such as the army commander, and the towns, it's well implemented.
- The game should have been called "Leader" instead of "Civilization". There is so much emphasis on leaders, picked before picking the civilizations, which instead are left as a background flag with little more. The biggest problem for me is allowing any leader with any civ. Some players who play to win and find the best combinations may find it fun, but for me, it's disturbing to see B. Franklyn of Rome, and Augustus of Spain. More than the human player's choice, it's the AI civs the problem. For me, playing against random civs with random leaders completely breaks the immersion and the suspension of disbelief. Not even mentioning that it's confusing: whom am I playing against? Was it Spain? It's Isabella. Ah wait no, it's Japan. Immersion and storytelling within the game are totally ruined.
- Leaders and civ roster. When I first saw the news before the release I thought "Seriously?!". No England...but there are Normans? I mean, if you really want to implement a civ switch, Normans could have sense, and make them evolve either to England or France. A wasted potential. There are also many... odd choices.
Buganda? Nepal??? Majapawhat? FFS I want to play against Nazi Germany, not against Jennifer Bungaspasit of the Ubuhahual Empire.
I feel like Firaxis folks just added what they liked, maybe there was a Nepalese programmer who threw in Nepal, a Bulgarian guy who wanted Bulgaria in, and so on.
And no comment on calling a civ "French Imperial"...
- Leaders. I think we reach the bottom here. First thing to notice is... two Napoleons? Is that done to add content recycling the 3D model?
Then let's see... some interesting choices here and there. I actually liked that a character can fit into more than one civ, like LaFayette. Not a real historical leader though. Machiavelli neither, but I love him anyway. But then you can see that this is going too far. Who's that Filipino? A writer? Again, probably some Firaxis employee is from the Philippines and wanted to put him in? Besides, there is no Philippine civ, so it makes little sense. Other civs have no leaders, apparently. English leader missing. Fortunately added later via DLC... Oh, it's Ada Lovelace. Nothing against her if we are in a computer science class, but was it too difficult to add Victoria?
More. Who is Amina? Of Zazzau? Harry what? Who is she?
At this point I can't help but thinking that they took these choices just to be woke. It's a process that already started with Civ6 actually. A few years ago I remember commenting on Facebook the news of the release of some additional leader. I found disappointing adding a woman of obscure historical impact over more important emperors, for the sake of being politically correct. I recall getting a storm of toxic comments attacking me, calling me white male suprematist. Oh well, if this is the world we live nowaways, maybe Firaxis has an audience and is right to accommodate their expectations. But not my cup of tea. For a history game, I want to play against Stalin! Against Louis XIV, FFS!
- Era transition: everyone's talking about it, everyone hates it. I think it's just a good idea (some kind of partial reset to refresh the game board) badly implemented.
I feel that civ switch should be tied to geography. Like, you pick Rome, then you decide to switch to Byzantium, or HRE, or France, or keep on as Rome. You choose one, and some other fragment of the empire are picked by AI civs.
- You know what will happen when you cross 30 civs with 30 leaders? 900 combinations of bonuses. Good luck balancing them. I can foresee patches for the next few years.
- To make things worse, both for the developers and for the players, the bonuses are made of tiny modifiers, many of them. 5% increased production bonus here, 20% discount there, and as a player you have to read pages of explanations. I already got tired of this in the first few minutes of civ7, and overwhelmed by these information, I picked randomly.
I miss the good old Fundamentalism of Civ2. Zero unhappiness, science is halved. Take it or leave it. I also appreciate the strategic choices of Civ4 civics compared to the endless trees of Civ5. From these considerations, you can clearly see the direction I'm trying to take with Rhye's and Fall.
- It feels like the developers of Civ7 are totally new to the series, or either have forgotten the lessons from the past. Basic features are not present, like the auto explore function, and the map generator is awful. They could have reused old code, why not? Some nasty mechanics are also back, like letting galleys travel on oceans and accidentally discover new continents in antiquity, like in Civ3. Very low number of opponents allowed. Only standard size maps. Oh, and no Earth map of course.
- It inherits one core feature of Civ6: the districts. Many people like it, but I don't because 1. it feels like SimCity rather than Civ (with additional micromanagement), and 2. they take space, and you end up having only very few cities on one continent. A global mod like Rhye's and Fall becomes impossible to implement.
- Little modding support yet, but given the situation, even with modding, it seems hard to fix the game.
Given these considerations, I renew my commitment to carry on modding Civ5 Rhye's and Fall. This is because we need a "gold standard": a version of Civ that has the basics properly done. Civ4 was possibly the best in this sense, but it's too old for nowadays computers: I wish they made a remake of Civ4 with only updated graphics. Then Civ5 becomes the best candidate. I want to fulfill my whole vision of revising it, simplifying some parts and refining others. After Rhye's and Fall is complete, I want to give a try to make the random map version, and that will be (my) gold standard, the one I want to play. At that point I will retire, and see you again in another 10 years!
I'm looking forward to hear your comments.
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