Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Gori the Grey]

Man, if I saw a cat with a laser pointer, I'd get jittery!

 

[ombak]

Was there an old thread for suggestions, particularly on how to tackle a classic mode?

 

[Siptah]

Was there an old thread for suggestions, particularly on how to tackle a classic mode?

I asked this a few times when it came up. A detailed, thought-out reply didn't really happen. It always came with other issues or basically a completely different game from scratch.

I personally think that the most realistic approaches are the ones that the Enduring Empires and Classic Civ mods followed. These basically make civ switching optional, but keep ages in. But for some people, these don't resemble the classic mode they want.

For clarity: Enduring Empires allows to keep your civ, and even to gain new bonuses based on your original civic tree. It doesn't allow to start with a modern or exploration civ in antiquity though, and the developer has clarified that they don't intend to ever do this (partially because inventing precursor civic trees is much more difficult than developing a civic tree further in a new age). To me, it's a Humankind+ approach of civ switching while keeping ages untouched. Classic civ, on the other hand, allows you to start with any civ in any age and keep it. But outside of the original age, some of the bonuses make no sense. So, it's basically civ VI with three distinct ages that render some of your uniques and abilities useless for 2/3 of the game.

 

[GeneralZift]

Do you guys think I have what it takes to become a YouTuber? I think I got my first set of titles for a video:
"You won't BELIEVE what's in this latest Patch!?"
"9/10 Civ Critics don't want you to know what's in this Civ Patch "
"Wait, is Sid Meier cooking???"

 

[MutilationWave]

Do you guys think I have what it takes to become a YouTuber? I think I got my first set of titles for a video:
"You won't BELIEVE what's in this latest Patch!?"
"9/10 Civ Critics don't want you to know what's in this Civ Patch "
"Wait, is Sid Meier cooking???"

Free Ben Franklin nudes, capture the lucrative French straight noblewoman audience.

 

[GeneralZift]

Free Ben Franklin nudes, capture the lucrative French straight noblewoman audience.

Now last I checked, Ben Franklin was a woman

 

[Kev1916]

One fluctuation does not make a trend yet. Give it a few weeks and we'll see how it looks. We need to try not to over-react to every jitter like a cat with a laser pointer.

"Kids" are on holiday soon that may help keep the small increase or even go up a couple o points

 

[MutilationWave]

"Kids" are on holiday soon that may help the small increase flat line, or even go up a couple o points

Do "kids" play civilization? I showed it to my teenage nephew and niece, who have no filter, and was told it was stupid and boring. So we played Mortal Kombat.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Do "kids" play civilization? I showed it to my teenage nephew and niece, who have no filter, and was told it was stupid and boring. So we played Mortal Kombat.

Well, they would have said the same thing when I was a "kid" coming home from school. Luckily for me I am stupid and boring too.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Was there an old thread for suggestions, particularly on how to tackle a classic mode?

T

Thread 'How Would You Implement A Classic Mode?'

Aug 28, 2025

There's a strong push for the classic mode for Civ 7, and whatever your thoughts on the game or this subject, it seems that at least half of the former playerbase won't ever play this game without a classic mode, so whatever improvements could be made to 7, it seems that only a classic mode will repair the audience.

The question is, how in the world do you do it? This thread is for any discussion on this topic, including your own ideas. So, I have an idea, but I'll post it as a reply.

• tman2000
• Replies: 147
• Forum: Civ7 - General Discussions

• 

 

[Krikkit1]

I asked this a few times when it came up. A detailed, thought-out reply didn't really happen. It always came with other issues or basically a completely different game from scratch.

I personally think that the most realistic approaches are the ones that the Enduring Empires and Classic Civ mods followed. These basically make civ switching optional, but keep ages in. But for some people, these don't resemble the classic mode they want.

For clarity: Enduring Empires allows to keep your civ, and even to gain new bonuses based on your original civic tree. It doesn't allow to start with a modern or exploration civ in antiquity though, and the developer has clarified that they don't intend to ever do this (partially because inventing precursor civic trees is much more difficult than developing a civic tree further in a new age). To me, it's a Humankind+ approach of civ switching while keeping ages untouched. Classic civ, on the other hand, allows you to start with any civ in any age and keep it. But outside of the original age, some of the bonuses make no sense. So, it's basically civ VI with three distinct ages that render some of your uniques and abilities useless for 2/3 of the game.

I think the nature of Civ7 (with partially distinct gameplay in different ages) means that at least some uniques would be useless in the other ages.

I think that in designing a possibility of a "not switching" function, they should lean into it.

Your civ only gets ANY of its uniques in it's "Native" Age... ie its "Golden Age".. outside of that age it gets generic bonuses (ie base ability+civic tree with traditions) based on its attributes (but keeps its graphics, name, music, city list, etc.)

 

[MutilationWave]

I think the nature of Civ7 (with partially distinct gameplay in different ages) means that at least some uniques would be useless in the other ages.

I think that in designing a possibility of a "not switching" function, they should lean into it.

Your civ only gets ANY of its uniques in it's "Native" Age... ie its "Golden Age".. outside of that age it gets generic bonuses (ie base ability+civic tree with traditions) based on its attributes (but keeps its graphics, name, music, city list, etc.)

Does anyone think that doing a single civ game but with cultural influences could make some people happy? Like you're still Hatshepsut of the Egyptians but your culture was influenced to have a new civic tree and new bonuses. But you're still Egypt. This is a half baked idea for sure.

 

[Chiyo]

Sadly i do not see a trend. Right jow Civ7 is down to number 172 in the games and the average number of players only looks good in comparison to September (5.700). But it is only a little over 6.000 now while August still was close to 7.000.

 

[Krikkit1]

Does anyone think that doing a single civ game but with cultural influences could make some people happy? Like you're still Hatshepsut of the Egyptians but your culture was influenced to have a new civic tree and new bonuses. But you're still Egypt. This is a half baked idea for sure.

I would like that.. Egypt, but with Mongolian "influences" ie uniques in Exploration and Qajar ones in modern... but "Egypt" the whole way through
However, some people would not like that and I think

Egypt (which has the standard Culture and Economic bonuses for Modern Age)
and
Egypt (which has the standard Culture and Economic bonuses for Modern Age)

Would ALSO be good things to add, because that way they can still feel "Egypt" is getting updated as opposed to just taking on someone else's culture.

Ideally I'd like to be able to play
Spain in Antiquity with (Roman/Maya/ etc.) uniques
OR
Spain in Antiquity with (Antiquity Militaristic and Antiquity Militaristic) uniques

 

[Crashdummy]

Monthly snapshots as per the table actually include various statistics, including an average (of however many times Steam Charts polls the player number). If we only take the monthly peak as the data point in question, sure, you could argue semantics there.

So let's dig into it more. Why discount September, when other months had both patches and player attrition?

June (which gave us 1.2.2) to July stabilising the average while not affecting the peak much, if at all, is also useful data.

Sure, the average is another data point for sure. But the average isnt showing a significant growth either. Both Peak numbers in months with patches and average players shows that the game isnt shrinnking or growing significantly, at least so far

 

[Crashdummy]

Does anyone think that doing a single civ game but with cultural influences could make some people happy? Like you're still Hatshepsut of the Egyptians but your culture was influenced to have a new civic tree and new bonuses. But you're still Egypt. This is a half baked idea for sure.

No, thats not enough. That is just a name change, but keepign the game intact as it is

Classic Mode is more than just the Civ name

 

[Gorbles]

Sure, the average is another data point for sure. But the average isnt showing a significant growth either. Both Peak numbers in months with patches and average players shows that the game isnt shrinnking or growing significantly, at least so far

5% growth - if retained - is actually very significant growth. If Firaxis can start a concurrent user climb over time, that's exactly what they're looking for (slash all 2K care about, which gives us a better outlook for the entry in the longer term).

It's especially significant given that this is the first time such growth has been recorded (and the second time any growth has been recorded, on either peak or average users).

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think growth here is as uninformative as decline before. There are 2 important numbers to track internally - number of owners, who already purchased the game, and number of active players (who played the game during last period i.e. 30 days) who are likely to purchase future DLC. Now, if we look at simultaneous player number metric, it naturally falls in time as people spend less time in the game even without changing in any of those 2 metrics and it naturally grows when big patch like 1.2.5 drops, because people spend more time in game. None of the processes actually shows changes in both number of owners and number of active players.

 

[Siddorm]

I think growth here is as uninformative as decline before. There are 2 important numbers to track internally - number of owners, who already purchased the game, and number of active players (who played the game during last period i.e. 30 days) who are likely to purchase future DLC. Now, if we look at simultaneous player number metric, it naturally falls in time as people spend less time in the game even without changing in any of those 2 metrics and it naturally grows when big patch like 1.2.5 drops, because people spend more time in game. None of the processes actually shows changes in both number of owners and number of active players.

I think that the simultaneous players numbers are the most interesting because they give an in-real-time indication of the popularity of a game. If someone plays a game for 30 hours over the past 30 days they probably like it more than someone that plays for 30 minutes. If someone buys a game or writes a review then that is something they do once, whereas people can play a game for various proportions of their time over various time periods. The number of owners and the number of active players are less interesting to me.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think that the simultaneous players numbers are the most interesting because they give an in-real-time indication of the popularity of a game. If someone plays a game for 30 hours over the past 30 days they probably like it more than someone that plays for 30 minutes. If someone buys a game or writes a review then that is something they do once, whereas people can play a game for various proportions of their time over various time periods. The number of owners and the number of active players are less interesting to me.

"Interesting" is a pretty abstract way. The metric was designed to measure health of MP games and as such it's useful, but for the rest it doesn't lead to any reasonable conclusions. Abstract popularity is something we sure could speak about, but extrapolating it in any way to past of future sales doesn't work.

It's funny to watch, sure.