Own And Played Every Civ From 3 To 6

[number51]

I loved and played the hell out of Civilizations 3, 4, and 5. I tried to play 6 and gave it hundreds maybe even a thousand hours over 6 months. I never really liked Civ 6 and went back to Civ 5 and have been playing that ever since. Of course I am going to have Civ 7 on release day and I will give it a fair chance. Based on the previews I have very little hope for this version of my favorite game. The developers have obviously worked very hard on the look of the game, animations for unit movement and interaction. What a waste of time. To me that equates to a finely crafted Chess set with ornate hand crafted crystal playing pieces, a complete and total waste of time and money.

I hope Civilization VII is a great game, but the attempt to appeal to children with the silly animations is not promising.

 

[Deer]

I don't know if this will make you feel any better, but as a non-child, I can state that cool graphics and animations appeal to me too. They enhance my enjoyment of the game. I think Civ5 should be adequate proof that developers can focus on making a gorgeous looking game whilst also making it an enjoyable experience to actually play.

 

[pokiehl]

I have a nice 4k OLED monitor and a top end graphics card and CPU. I bought in these things because good graphics are important to me and I’m not a child.

I’m thrilled they took so much care in making Civ 7 look so great. Making the game look good does not preclude good gameplay and I don’t know where this false dilemma comes from.

The best games of all time are also often the most technically impressive for their eras. Games are art, and presentation is important.

No one was saying “Pfftt, Nintendo screwed up by focusing too much on the graphics” when Super Mario World came out.

 

[Zaarin]

I don't know if this will make you feel any better, but as a non-child, I can state that cool graphics and animations appeal to me too.

Indeed. The gamer elitism that "what the game looks like doesn't matter" is bizarre. It's like bragging about being illiterate.

 

[ConquestCola]

The aethetics of Civ 7 seem great to me. I have some doubts about what seems to be the urban sprawl, but for all I know they could have been using a small map in the game reveal. I really don't like how it looks, but if it works well in-game, I doubt it'll be an issue.

I myself got involved with the franchise with Civ 3. I really enjoyed it, though I didn't like the AI's tendency to default to fascism for every government when the final expansion came out. Just a nitpick, though. Gave me an extra excuse for conquest victories. I really didn't like Civ 4 at first, mostly because of the vanilla concept of using religion to spy other people's cities. But when they fixed that in the BTS expansion, I was hooked. It's still the version I play the most. I skipped Civ 5 until very recently, when I bought it cheap on Steam. I still haven't played it much at all, but that's an issue of priorities rather than any particular fault with the game. I bought Civ 6 fairly early on and bought all of the major expansions, but it really never clicked for me the way Civ 3 and 4 did. But if I'm honest, the biggest factor keeping me from really getting into 6 was that it was so freakin' slow on my old computer when I bought the game.

I really wish modding of the core DLL's were allowed in Civ 6. I think it would have made for a fantastic fan experience. I doubt they will allow access to such core files in Civ 7, either. But maybe that's due in part to cross-compatibility issues on different game systems. (Was Civ 5 ever released on consoles? I don't even know.) But I also suspect it has a great deal to do with the profitability of continuing expansions and DLC, but I don't want to sound too cynical.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I'm not going to say it doesn't matter, but it's not the most important thing. Does that make sense? Though I value the map graphics over the leaders, etc., because that's what you're looking at like 90% of the time.

 

[Zaarin]

I'm not going to say it doesn't matter, but it's not the most important thing. Does that make sense?

I think it's perfectly acceptable that everyone has different priorities. What baffles me are the people who are aggressive or mocking towards other people for wanting the game to look beautiful. I can only assume the walls in their houses are unpainted and their floors are unfinished. After all, an unpainted wall will prop up a roof...

Though I value the map graphics over the leaders, etc., because that's what you're looking at like 90% of the time.

Even though the leaders do matter a great deal to me, this is why I'm willing to overlook how bad they look: the Civ7 map is breathtaking.

 

[Disgustipated]

A game can be beautiful and still have meaningful gameplay.

Yes some things have been simplified, and I'm wary of those things. Things like tile improvements, builders and all that. But some other things were added like better diplomacy, crisis, and slightly more interesting combat.

I am still worried about the lack of builders, however. I have this fear that most turns will just be pressing end turn without much to do. Yes diplomacy is more interesting, but you aren't doing that every turn. And now the game is forced to run longer, not that that matters since I stretched my Civ 6 games out anyways so I can play around with late game stuff.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

I have a nice 4k OLED monitor and a top end graphics card and CPU. I bought in these things because good graphics are important to me and I’m not a child.

I’m thrilled they took so much care in making Civ 7 look so great. Making the game look good does not preclude good gameplay and I don’t know where this false dilemma comes from.

The best games of all time are also often the most technically impressive for their eras. Games are art, and presentation is important.

No one was saying “Pfftt, Nintendo screwed up by focusing too much on the graphics” when Super Mario World came out.

You obviously have forgotten the outcry at how wonderful the graphics were, obscuring the awful gameplay in Ocarina of Time.

 

[Kjimmet]

Is it now a good time to mention that back in elementary school, ALL my classmates preferred realistic graphics in their games? So, based on my experience, children would find more appeal with CivV than from CivVI, and they would likely find appeal with CivVII.

 

[Lord Lakely]

I hope Civilization VII is a great game, but the attempt to appeal to children with the silly animations is not promising.

This is such a weird argument to me. Literally every Civ game, other than 5, had silly, zany animations. EVERY ONE OF THEM, including Civ Rev.

Civ6's stand out more because (1) they're more elaborate due to technological advancement (2) it directly followed Civ 5 and its sterile, hyperealistic art style.

 

[planetfall]

Same as OP, played from 3 thru 6. The point is the cool looky feelie stuff is just that, icing on the cake, or whipped cream on a cone. The key is what is the cake or the ice cream like. Once you blow away the flashy stuff that may have lead you to buy the game, will you continue playing or is it just a waste of time. It's kind of saying we have a new pretty game of RISK but once you figure out the game, it's boring and the graphics don't matter if the game mechanics aren't improved.

 

[Zaarin]

Same as OP, played from 3 thru 6. The point is the cool looky feelie stuff is just that, icing on the cake, or whipped cream on a cone. The key is what is the cake or the ice cream like. Once you blow away the flashy stuff that may have lead you to buy the game, will you continue playing or is it just a waste of time. It's kind of saying we have a new pretty game of RISK but once you figure out the game, it's boring and the graphics don't matter if the game mechanics aren't improved.

Bad analogy. Better analogy: a book with clunky prose, choppy sentences, obtuse metaphors, and wooden characters but good ideas is nevertheless a bad book; a book with beautiful, scintillating prose but nothing to say is also a bad book. Both are important.

 

[Ashbery76]

Civ3? Noob.

 

[pokiehl]

Same as OP, played from 3 thru 6. The point is the cool looky feelie stuff is just that, icing on the cake, or whipped cream on a cone. The key is what is the cake or the ice cream like. Once you blow away the flashy stuff that may have lead you to buy the game, will you continue playing or is it just a waste of time. It's kind of saying we have a new pretty game of RISK but once you figure out the game, it's boring and the graphics don't matter if the game mechanics aren't improved.

I don’t understand. If a game is bad, the game is bad. What do good graphics have to do with it? What's the purpose of even pointing out that "If the game is bad, it's bad regardless of the graphics." Yeah, and?

Why is the immediate reaction from certain old-school Civ fans upon seeing good graphics immediately turn to "They screwed up! This game is gonna be bad. They focused too much on the graphics!" It's a complete non-sequitur. Are you suggesting that good graphics and good gameplay are for some reason mutually exclusive? Do you just want everything to look like Civ 3 forever?

Graphics matter and presentation matter. Full stop. Bad graphics have turned me off from every potential Civ competitor. Humankind is weird and jaundiced looking. Old World and Millenia both look like generic, low-budget Civ 5 graphic ripoffs with bland, sparse maps. Ara looks extremely low budget and has a strange mishmash of art styles across the game's components. Let me enjoy how beautiful Civ 7 is.

 

[Professor Phobo]

Also the art team is not the game design team, it's not like those skill sets are fully fungible.

 

[Solver]

Civ3:

Civ4:

Civ6:

Bonus Civ3:

Of the four mainline Civ games with 3D leaders, three games had leaders that look anything but serious. You can call the style exaggerated, cartoonish, funny, kitschy or whatever, but it was definitely not serious. Civ5 was the exception with its leaders looking realistic and mostly having subdued animations. From what we've seen so far of Civ7, I definitely don't think it's less serious looking than previous games, it's probably a bit more realistic/serious than Civ6.

And Civ2, which didn't have 3D art yet, embraced the silliness so much it probably outsillies any later game.

 

[Ashbery76]

Civ6 went full Disney dude.A massive change in direction.

 

[Zaarin]

Also the art team is not the game design team, it's not like those skill sets are fully fungible.

Gotta get those artists programming the game! That'll improve the AI!

 

[Zaarin]

Civ6 went full Disney dude.A massive change in direction.

From Civ5 with its animatronic leaders, yes, but it was a return to Civ4 and earlier.