Overall impression (poll)

What is your overall impression of the game?

  • It looks great!

    Votes: 65 19.1%
  • It looks great mostly, but some things could've been done better

    Votes: 105 30.9%
  • 50/50 good/bad

    Votes: 56 16.5%
  • It looks bad mostly, but has some great elements

    Votes: 37 10.9%
  • It looks bad.

    Votes: 49 14.4%
  • I don't have an opinion yet and prefer to wait for more info

    Votes: 28 8.2%

  • Total voters
    340

Aquila SPQR

Prince
Joined
Jan 7, 2009
Messages
596
Location
Central Europe
Good things:

1. Graphics - that's a huge relief because it's exactly what I was hoping for. Looking more realistic while still being vibrant and pretty. Different looks for different cultures. Everything is beautiful - units, cities, buildings, leaders and the map. Lovely.
2. Cities have districts, good feature carried over. And they look more realistic/organic than in Civ VI which is a relief.
3. It seems units can be grouped into armies (possibly led by a commander?), but still fight as 1UPT. Possible clone of Humankind's system, which would be great.
4. Leaders speak in their native languages! Augustus' Latin sounds good. Fantastic thing when it comes to immersion and I always loved it in Civ V. I also like the leaders are interacting on the screen when conducting diplomacy.
5. Independent peoples that can be interacted with (another clone of Humankind's feature).
6. Navigable rivers and rivers flowing through the hexes instead of between them (a feature I was hoping for since they announced Civ V).
7. best Roman emperor (Augustus) as leader, good choice ;)

Bad things:

1. civs changing in time. That's the most disliked feature from Humankind to me. I disliked that idea since Humankind's devs announced it and all my fears were realized when they released it. When I play a Civ game - I like to guide my chosen civilization through the entire game - since ancient times to modern, no matter how ahistorical that is. I also like to compete with predetermined civs I chose (I never played against random AI civs in any Civ game I played in the last two decades). For example if I play as Romans, I like to compete against the Greeks and Egyptians, and when I play as America I like to compete against Russians and French. This new system seems to ruin it, because I won't be able to determine against which civ I will compete in every age.
At least it seems we'll have the ability to continue as the previous civ, but that's a choice for the player (possible with some penalty or lack of additional useful features, "punishing" those who did not transition to some other civ). The AI will probably be free to morph into any civ they please (unless there will be some option to prevent it in the game setup). All of this create the same problems that exist in Humankind and greatly reduce my satisfaction. Since there will be no way to play as "modern" civs early in the game - diversity of early age will be reduced. We will see the same ancient civs over and over again, just like we see it in Humankind (the same set of few cities as capitals for the entire game, no matter what civs appear later on). We will witness strange evolution - Romans becoming Japanese, Mauryans becoming Spanish (unless there will be an option to force AI to keep more historical transitions). It breaks the immersion to me. And what if I would like to play as Americans, but someone will pick it first? Will the city names change in time? Or will we see AI Americans in modern age with Egyptian city names and Waset as their capital?
I always liked the idea of giving players as many ways to customize their game as they want and disliked the idea of forcing me to use features I dislike. That's why I still hope for a custom setup option for an "old-style" gameplay, but since it looks the civs will be restricted to their own ages (like they are in Humankind) and overall excitement of devs when they were talking about it - it seems it'll be unlikely. If so - I hope the modders will step in and bring the old Civ style back somehow.

2. only three ages seems a bit disappointing, especially that the glimpse of the tech tree we saw looks rather small (it seems every tech will be able to reach "mastery" which essentially doubles the tech tree, but I would still prefer a larger tree than that.

3. wonders occupying the entire hex. I disliked this feature in Civ VI, but I noticed it's quite popular, so no suprise it's here. To me it creates problems with cities looking bad when they have few oversized wonders spread around the entire area and require unrealistic planning ahead (I have to keep this hex empty for a future wonder, especially if wonders will have placing requirements).

4. borders look as ugly as in Civ VI. They are too angled, too unrealistic, sticking to the straight hex lines too much. I prefer Civ IV/Civ V borders which are more soft, more reacting to the terrain, more realistic and more pleasing to look at. A minor complaint, but still a complaint.


Overall - it's a 50/50 so far. While I love some elements - that one feature (changing of civs, civs locked to eras) kills the excitement. I didn't like it in Humankind at all, it's unlikely I will like it in Civ VII.
 
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There are plenty of things I like, but what's the point if you no longer play as a Civ?
Civ switching will ruin this game.
Yeah, how to reflect in this poll that "Civ switching will ruin this game."? Because safe for this I think it is great, so I polled great...
 
Some good and some bad. I like the civ evolutions. Diplomacy looks more involved now. Visuals are solid.

My main concern is the bad aspects of Civ VI they didn't get rid of, such as policy cards. I can not believe they kept that horrible chore of a system that grinds the game to a halt every few turns as you have to pick the optimal set of half a dozen cards out of a deck of several dozen to use for... just the next few turns until you have to do it all over again.
 
If they don't have an option to lock ALL civs in a game into their historic paths, I'm not really interested at this point.
What's the point of PLAYING such a game in the first place, WTF???
It's like as if you people have never even tasted "Alt History" stuff like C2C or CK3 - or are so nationalist that you lose all rational approach to what HISTORY even IS.
Not even joking here.
 
The game looks beautiful. And a lot of the game mechanics sound great:
- No more builders. Improve tiles directly when city grows.
- Army commander units with promotions and you can "stack" units to move but unpack for combat. Also, you can add new units to an army automatically without manually moving units across the map through reinforcement mechanics.
- Towns mechanic.
- Governments with celebration bonuses.
- Unique civics for each civ.
- Diplomacy with minor powers. Giving war support to civs in other wars.
- Leaders with traits.
- Crises mechanic.
- Era score.

Things that I may not like:

- Selecting new civ each era. I did not like that in HK. Although in civ7, it sounds like you can select civs that make sense historically if you want so that might be ok.
- Also, I am not sure I will care for only 3 eras. I get that they are making each historical era more meaningful but 3 eras seems small. It feels like you will play 3 mini civ games instead of actually progressing through history. And the tech trees seem small.
- And it does feel like the game will throw a lot of micro bonuses at the player (leader traits, civ traits, government celebrations, cultural civics, legacy traits, army commander promotions etc) but that each era will feel shallow as you race through the tech tree.

I don't know if this is bad or not but civ7 looks like a hybrid of Millennia and Humankind. It seems to borrow mechanics from each game. Hopefully, civ7 does it better!

Overall, I like what I see.
 
Navigable rivers are promising but i really don't like how the cities spread out with no farms/mines/camps/pastures/etc., I just saw one or two plantations in the back. And I fear the multiple city center walls will make battle like Humankind, which I didn't play but don't want to. At least it seems there is no pre-defined regions. Also some screenshots hurt, I understand why it's listed on Switch too.
50/50 for the moment, but hopefully they didn't show us too much, I don't want to be spoiled.
 
If they don't have an option to lock ALL civs in a game into their historic paths, I'm not really interested at this point.
The showcase showed that it is possible.

What's the point of PLAYING such a game in the first place, WTF???
It's like as if you people have never even tasted "Alt History" stuff like C2C or CK3 - or are so nationalist that you lose all rational approach to what HISTORY even IS.
Not even joking here.
Are you really asking what is the point of playing any version of Civ without Civ-switching, aka, all of them?

What is the point of your question?

Edit: they also showed the Civs on the historical path are easier to unlock. E.g. Choosing Egypt automatically unlocks the Songhai for the following era, but if you want to switch to Mongolia there was some requirement related to horses.
 
Are you really asking what is the point of playing any version of Civ without Civ-switching, aka, all of them?

What is the point of your question?
Like I just wrote in the other thread:
It was totally fine back then in Civ 1 and 2, but it became a failure after the (much more conceptually historically correct) experience of C2C and RFC.
It's outright a shame that Civ has got a LAZY team who didn't even try to incorporate such great features into more modern iterations.
I can see and will call out LAZY work for what it is, mind you.
 
The more I look at it, the more it reminds of Humankind in ways that I don't like. I preordered Humankind, played it like twice, and then was done with it. It felt sort of flat and generic, if that make sense.

The myraid of bonuses for civs and leader unlocks feels very samey - ie this one is +3 science, this one is +3 culture, this one is +1 on rivers, this one is +1 from desert. Civ 6 obviously has a bit of that as well, but felt like it had more unique/standout abilities.

But it's still early, so maybe they'll standout a bit more as we learn more about the game.

To add some pros that haven't been stated: I do like the idea of significantly different eras with different mechanics, it's something I've advocated for before. They seem to have potentially put more thought into stopping steamrolling and keeping the game exciting until the end, which is a challenge all 4x games have (whether they've succeeded tbd).

Edit: Okay, seeing Napoleon's ability: reducing trade units in an opposing civ, getting bonuses for civs that hate him (and penalties for friendly civs), it looks like there will be some standout abilities. So many ability trees now though (civ abilities, leader abilities, etc), does mean a lot will be more generic.
 
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What's the point of PLAYING such a game in the first place, WTF???
It's like as if you people have never even tasted "Alt History" stuff like C2C or CK3 - or are so nationalist that you lose all rational approach to what HISTORY even IS.
Not even joking here.
I see your point, and yes, I love the variety of previous Civ games. But really, locking the development of civs into predetermined templates that take portions of history piecemeal, like Humankind, is not the win you think it is. If you're going to go for customization, go all out like previous versions of Civ. True customization is what I love about Civ. But historical Egyptians turning into historical Mongolians, for example, does not interest me. I fully understand what the Civ franchise has aspired to in the past, and I've enjoyed it. But it looks like they've lost sight of things.

But yeah, if they're going to go with full-fledged Civilization swapping with templates, don't ask me to apologize if I don't like it. I didn't like it with Humankind and unless there is some inhumanly spectacular implementation here that enraptures people out of the gate, it's going to be a long time before I drum up the enthusiasm to buy the new version. Invoking the bogeyman of "nationalism" is laughable--I don't like it because it's not at all what I expected of the Civilization franchise. There are plenty of other criticisms I have about what I saw, but it's a moot point. I whittled my reservations down to the one thing that might make me like this version of Civ, that was actually constructive criticism that should be easy to implement. This version is going to be what this version is going to be, and if I don't like it, I just won't buy it. I'm sure it will be thoroughly financially successful regardless of any complaints I might come up with.
 
What's the point of PLAYING such a game in the first place, WTF???
It's like as if you people have never even tasted "Alt History" stuff like C2C or CK3 - or are so nationalist that you lose all rational approach to what HISTORY even IS.
Not even joking here.

That's how all previous civ games looked like, so you're basically asking "what's the point of playing all civ games?"

Every civ game is "alt history stuff". It's just that many people like the idea of sticking to the same civ for the entire time or at least having more or less historical variations. And there's nothing wrong with that. Let each one of us enjoy the game as they want.

The showcase showed that it is possible.
From what I remember it showed it's possible, but didn't show it can be set as mandatory for the AI.
If the civ changing is unavoidable (and unfortunately it seems it is), I really hope it will be an option. I hated Olmecs changing into Venetians and so on in Humankind. It's... absurd. Or, even worse, the possibility of having two Japans in the game (one AI keeping the Edo Japan while the other adopting Japan in modern era).
 
True customization is what I love about Civ.
That's what I was talking about.
Note that I'm DISAPPOINTED about Civ 7, not HAPPY about it doing this stuff.
So, they both tried and also failed in it, and that's what my point is here - they had a chance to internalize a great feature, but they butchered it and resulted in something barely useful.
Yet it's not the feature's problem, but rather its botched implementation's.
And... that's that.
 
@bbbt My experience with Humankind was the same. I was initially very excited about the mechanic of changing Civs through the eras, but in practice it didn't feel great.

Maybe Firaxis can make it work.

In Firaxis' defense, there are two things that could make civ switching work better in civ7 than in HK:
1) civ7 will let you pick historically accurate leaders and civs. If the player picks historically accurate leaders and civs, that should lessen the break in immersion.
2) There are only 3 eras. So other than the selection at the start of the game which every civ game has, there are only 2 more times that you have to switch. So you will not switch as often as in HK. That too might lessen the break in immersion.
 
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