Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[GeneralZift]

I agree. This is part of what the devs were trying to tackle.

I have no doubt there's more than one potential solution. What's yours?

Its... In the same post... I wrote it in that post.

 

[itix]

I. . . don't agree, with civ specifically. The goal should be that you're playing through history, not pushing through for an optimal, fast, artificial VC . An opinion, I know, but it's kind of the point of the franchise.To get that, you need to have some reason to want to do those late game activities.

There has to be a reason and it has to be fun. And enemy turns must pass quickly to prevent boredom between turns.

For that to happen, though, they’d need to deepen the current ideology mechanics quite a bit, and I’m not sure they’re willing to do that. The late game in Civ6 was also pretty bad, and there were many requests for the devs to improve it. Thinking it was a good idea, they added an utterly unbalanced global warming system that made the late game even worse. I’m afraid that, in trying to fix it, they might make the same mistake again, adding yet another dull, unbalanced mechanic.

Uh oh, this reminds me of why I never complete my games. When global warming occurs, I have protected my cities with flood barriers, but AI coastal cities get drowned. It always destroys my playthrough because there is no fun anymore. Not a single bit.

 

[aieeegrunt]

There has to be a reason and it has to be fun. And enemy turns must pass quickly to prevent boredom between turns.


Uh oh, this reminds me of why I never complete my games. When global warming occurs, I have protected my cities with flood barriers, but AI coastal cities get drowned. It always destroys my playthrough because there is no fun anymore. Not a single bit.

If you are on Steam, the mod customization VI allows you to turn that (and a lot of other crap) off

 

[Psychotronics]

I think a little too much focus gets placed on trying something new. Most accept that execution was poor. Not enough emphasis on (1) poorly choosing from the beta testing of features in Civ 6 (dramatic ages were terrible and yet thats what defines 7? whereas the secret societies were great but don't seem to have been implemented) and (2) not learning lessons from 6. I am watching Sullla play thru 7 and by the middle of exploration he is forced to make a million inconsequential building decisions while the deity AI is pathetically behind him. This is exactly the point in 6 I reached so many times where the game utterly falls apart and is not worth playing.

Personally, I don't like secret societies. It leans too much into fantasy for my taste. I'm glad they didn't make it into Civ 7, it'd be one more thing I'd dislike about it.

 

[Gorbles]

Its... In the same post... I wrote it in that post.

So your suggestion is to strictly improve the later stages of the game (let's say starting from Civ VI, given that VII's design is tied pretty strongly to the Age Transition model).

But your suggestions are very vague. Global warming, a global pandemic, modifying the Crisis system . . . these are very high-level ideas that aren't guaranteed to bear fruit. On top of that, how do we define the late stage of the game? Surely we want to anticipate tedium, before it sets in? Depending on player skill, the AI level, and even the map type (and other game settings), this can set in in the mid-game, nevermind the lategame.

The same goes for "better AI", or the very loosely-defined "wildcard system". These are not actionable solutions. They're off-the-cuff ideas. Which one is your favourite? Which do you think has the greatest ability to actually address the problem, and resonate with the greatest amount of players? Or does a theoretical solution require several of these suggestions?

I'm sorry if you feel I'm being too critical, but I like engaging on design arguments (and let's be fair, criticising Firaxis' design is a widespread opinion here and across the subforum. Our own ideas should be able to pass the same level of scrutiny - at the very least). Maybe this isn't the right thread for it, though.

 

[GeneralZift]

So your suggestion is to strictly improve the later stages of the game (let's say starting from Civ VI, given that VII's design is tied pretty strongly to the Age Transition model).

But your suggestions are very vague. Global warming, a global pandemic, modifying the Crisis system . . . these are very high-level ideas that aren't guaranteed to bear fruit. On top of that, how do we define the late stage of the game? Surely we want to anticipate tedium, before it sets in? Depending on player skill, the AI level, and even the map type (and other game settings), this can set in in the mid-game, nevermind the lategame.

The same goes for "better AI", or the very loosely-defined "wildcard system". These are not actionable solutions. They're off-the-cuff ideas. Which one is your favourite? Which do you think has the greatest ability to actually address the problem, and resonate with the greatest amount of players? Or does a theoretical solution require several of these suggestions?

I'm sorry if you feel I'm being too critical, but I like engaging on design arguments (and let's be fair, criticising Firaxis' design is a widespread opinion here and across the subforum. Our own ideas should be able to pass the same level of scrutiny - at the very least). Maybe this isn't the right thread for it, though.

Actually no, our ideas should not be able to pass the same level of scrutiny.
Where they have a fully staffed team of paid professionals, we are random players with no experience, or time most of all to create a fully fledged plan to combat a design issue.
So do you expect me to write 10 paragraphs? I think unfortunately very little people will read it, if I even had the time to write it.
I'm saying this because a game is designed as a whole and so expecting a coherent singular concept is impossible, because it depends on many other concepts to be complete.
But if you give a brief summary, I think most people can fill in the blanks and it works like a brainstorm.

Since you asked I will briefly expand on some of the ideas.

One is an Civ5-Ideology-style mechanic. It doesn't have to strictly be Ideology, but the concept is that it splits players via their own personal choice and allows them to pivot their gameplay.
In other words, there's a large shift in your gameplay pre-Ideology and post-picking your Ideology.
It also heavily affects the Culture game, because suddenly high Culture Civilizations can begin to influence your Ideology - this can cause conflict.

​

A mechanic that produces conflict between players nearing the end of the game can combat a situation where players might sit idle at the top of the game.​

This is well-tested in Civ5 and many players enjoy the endgame of that Civilization game.​

Compare to Civ6, where there is no conflict at the end of the game, particularly because the AI is not incentivized, and because you can make alliances with the entire world.​

Another idea is riffing off Civ7 Crisis - so we can have one singular crisis that pops up when the Modern Era begins - this is where we mark the 'endgame' because most players begin to pull away by Industrialisation.
Simply put, it's a major narrative event, exactly like Civ7 Crisis, but tailored specifically for the end of the game, and acts like a random wildcard for each game, perhaps even tailored for the game depending on the circumstances.

This concept is malleable, and simply refers to a sudden shake-up of the status quo.​

This attempts to reduce the monotony of the gameplay, in conjunction with other design elements, should attempt to prevent players from leaving before the end.​

​

Obviously I cannot go into detail about the Crises because it depends on the other mechanics. ​

If there is a health mechanic, a global pandemic can be a Crisis. If there is a robust diplomatic system, then a rogue city state can be a crisis. ​

​

About the AI, it's one of those things. There is a par, and we simply don't meet that par for difficulty or complexity.
Our AI is boring, he's flat, he's unresponsive, he just feels like a machine. If the player isn't engrossed then he's not going to stick around for long, right?
He cheats too much sometimes and even when the game is simplified in some respects, he still fails to be competitive.

So let's talk about actionables; let's make the AI slightly less predictable, to keep players involved.​

For example, instead of set values for relationship modifiers, the AI is affected by events to different degrees depending on the existing relationship, a random modifier, and the Leader themselves.​

Montezuma might take great offence to negative moodlets and grow slower with positive moodlets. Churchill might move slowly with both. Cleopatra might not take offence if you're her Ally.​

This slowly makes them feel like actual characters which people want to play against and with.​

​

Many people have already suggested that the AI has 'growing bonuses', which increase with each age to keep the AI competitive.​

This is an easy solution, and maybe it works very well. However, I have no idea of knowing because it's impossible for me to check this. (we have to sort of imagine it working.)​

This is my least popular opinion almost definitely, but we need to simply curtail the number of bonuses and... I want to say mindless complexity.
It's quite hard to make a good AI for a game where there's an obscene number of things going on. Generally speaking, it also affects the balance negatively.

​

There's a Swiss cheese metaphor here - the player is like a mouse who can find their way from A to B via the holes to win the game.​

The AI is more like a dumb machine. It can only find its way from A to B through the Cheese via dumb luck and some basic intuition we teach it as designers/programmers.​

As such, by trying to keep the layers of Swiss cheese down, we actually make it easier for AI and Players to compete.​

​

We reduce the chance of there being stupid gaping holes in our cheese which let our mouse (the Player) gain a crazy advantage of over our dumb robot (the AI).​

​

The AI needs to be able to recognise the best move for the situation, and not just pick our preordained paths for their gameplay.
They need to be able act independently and counteract player moves with their own. On many occasions the designers would have to spend countless tiring hours coding specific counters.
Writing AI necessarily comes at the end of the design process. But because Civilization games have been rushed for the last decade at least, the AI is even more half baked.


I realise at the end of writing this I did actually end up with 10 paragraphs, how incredibly ironic . But look, that's just brief explanations on each topic.
Real designers could have paragraphs on just one element, and they use real statistics and numbers to assign to all things that they are suggesting, and tons of work on how each elements combine with every other element.

That being said, I know how much stupendous work goes into making a game. So I always write critique with a heavy heart for the people behind it.
Unfortunately, their design process is addressing the things they see as problems, with solutions that create more problems, and don't necessarily fix the problem.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Actually no, our ideas should not be able to pass the same level of scrutiny.
Where they have a fully staffed team of paid professionals, we are random players with no experience, or time most of all to create a fully fledged plan to combat a design issue.
So do you expect me to write 10 paragraphs? I think unfortunately very little people will read it, if I even had the time to write it.
I'm saying this because a game is designed as a whole and so expecting a coherent singular concept is impossible, because it depends on many other concepts to be complete.
But if you give a brief summary, I think most people can fill in the blanks and it works like a brainstorm.

It's not the size of the text, which makes ideas work. And it's not about planning. It's about ideas having theory behind, which are later tested on players.

So "passing the same amount of scrutiny" means checking whether there's theory behind the idea or it's just idle speculation? In this terms yes, community ideas should pass the same level of scrutiny, because if they can't, they are bad ideas.

 

[GeneralZift]

It's not the size of the text, which makes ideas work. And it's not about planning. It's about ideas having theory behind, which are later tested on players.

So "passing the same amount of scrutiny" means checking whether there's theory behind the idea or it's just idle speculation? In this terms yes, community ideas should pass the same level of scrutiny, because if they can't, they are bad ideas.

Mate, it's not the same level of scrutiny is it? When you play the game you play the entire game as a whole, you scrutinise it as a whole, you scrutinise a concept that's been through several layers of professional development and rewrites.
When I open CivFanatics and write "Yo this might be fun" there is no way shape or form that the same level of effort was put into both, that could warrant the same amount of scrutiny.

The "Size of the Text" as you call it is not just literal size. There's actual theory in that text, which would be summarised into one sentence on a forum. How can you scrutinise both the same way?
And not just text, as I obviously mentioned, statistics, research, design assets (like actual values for effects, bonuses and so on) and integration with other mechanics.

Please tell me, how will you scrutinise the single sentence barebones brainstorm ideas on a forum in the same way you could scrutinise a fully developed professional game with overlapping design?

 

[stealth_nsk]

Mate, it's not the same level of scrutiny is it? When you play the game you play the entire game as a whole, you scrutinise it as a whole, you scrutinise a concept that's been through several layers of professional development and rewrites.
When I open CivFanatics and write "Yo this might be fun" there is no way shape or form that the same level of effort was put into both, that could warrant the same amount of scrutiny.

The "Size of the Text" as you call it is not just literal size. There's actual theory in that text, which would be summarised into one sentence on a forum. How can you scrutinise both the same way?
And not just text, as I obviously mentioned, statistics, research, design assets (like actual values for effects, bonuses and so on) and integration with other mechanics.

Please tell me, how will you scrutinise the single sentence barebones brainstorm ideas on a forum in the same way you could scrutinise a fully developed professional game with overlapping design?

Community ideas thrown for fun are great. But we're talking about community ideas as opposed to developer ideas put to scrutiny. You know, something like "developers must be dumb to do X instead of Y" and that's there community ideation needs to be put under the same critique as the ones by professional developers.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I read all 10 of your paragraphs, GeneralZift.

I agree that Civ 5's ideology mechanic can make the late game there very interesting.

I like this idea

Simply put, it's a major narrative event, exactly like Civ7 Crisis, but tailored specifically for the end of the game, and acts like a random wildcard for each game,

and I'll tell you why. Let's say that each of the crises could be designed to expose underdevelopment on some front: if you never bothered much with your culture, one will really zap you; if you maintained a barebones military, another will bite you, etc. That would give the player a motivation with bothering to play better than he or she needs to to just hit some single victory condition. I liken it to my experience pursuing a science victory. To do that I often have to have an underdeveloped military, so I'm technically at risk of all of my efforts being for naught if a strong military civ decides to go against me. It provides a pleasant tension in those games. So the player here would have a motivation for pursuing all four victories (let us say), lest the one wildcard for which that player hadn't prepared turned up and everything crumbles.

This is my least popular opinion almost definitely, but we need to simply curtail the number of bonuses and... I want to say mindless complexity.
It's quite hard to make a good AI for a game where there's an obscene number of things going on.

It may be unpopular, but I'm on board for it. The two I've played are 3 and 5 and 3 is just a cleaner game. You don't have to fuss with theming bonuses for your cultural artefacts, e.g. Chess is a simple game, but (almost) endlessly absorbing. A game can be simple and good, streamlined maybe let me say. And a simpler game is one the AI can be programmed to play better.

 

[Gorbles]

Actually no, our ideas should not be able to pass the same level of scrutiny.
Where they have a fully staffed team of paid professionals, we are random players with no experience, or time most of all to create a fully fledged plan to combat a design issue.
So do you expect me to write 10 paragraphs? I think unfortunately very little people will read it, if I even had the time to write it.
I'm saying this because a game is designed as a whole and so expecting a coherent singular concept is impossible, because it depends on many other concepts to be complete.

The same level of scrutiny applied by the players? By us, in these threads? I'm sorry, but it absolutely should.

Are we games developers? No (well, I'm not, and presumably you're not). Do we have time? We have oodles of time, I've seen enough of your posts and you of mine

My point is that it's easy to decree that something is bad, or flawed. It's harder to prove it, or come up with a workable alternative. And when we do, then hey, it's a win-win all round. Maybe the developers stumble on a good community idea, maybe it helps us think deeper about the game's systems? Is that not useful? Even when we recognise the limitations of what we can write in a post compared to a game with a living design document and a team of developers behind it.

I make mods. I've worked on some pretty big mod teams, on some pretty big mods (for other games). It's not the same thing as being a professional developer (which I am, in software), but we can absolutely have a crack at design ourselves. It's a time and practise thing.

And yes, I will always read everything I participate in, and no, you're under no obligation at all to do anything that I ask.

One is an Civ5-Ideology-style mechanic. It doesn't have to strictly be Ideology, but the concept is that it splits players via their own personal choice and allows them to pivot their gameplay.
In other words, there's a large shift in your gameplay pre-Ideology and post-picking your Ideology.
It also heavily affects the Culture game, because suddenly high Culture Civilizations can begin to influence your Ideology - this can cause conflict.

A mechanic that produces conflict between players nearing the end of the game can combat a situation where players might sit idle at the top of the game.This is well-tested in Civ5 and many players enjoy the endgame of that Civilization game.Compare to Civ6, where there is no conflict at the end of the game, particularly because the AI is not incentivized, and because you can make alliances with the entire world.

Another idea is riffing off Civ7 Crisis - so we can have one singular crisis that pops up when the Modern Era begins - this is where we mark the 'endgame' because most players begin to pull away by Industrialisation.
Simply put, it's a major narrative event, exactly like Civ7 Crisis, but tailored specifically for the end of the game, and acts like a random wildcard for each game, perhaps even tailored for the game depending on the circumstances.

This concept is malleable, and simply refers to a sudden shake-up of the status quo.This attempts to reduce the monotony of the gameplay, in conjunction with other design elements, should attempt to prevent players from leaving before the end.

Obviously I cannot go into detail about the Crises because it depends on the other mechanics. If there is a health mechanic, a global pandemic can be a Crisis. If there is a robust diplomatic system, then a rogue city state can be a crisis.

About the AI, it's one of those things. There is a par, and we simply don't meet that par for difficulty or complexity.
Our AI is boring, he's flat, he's unresponsive, he just feels like a machine. If the player isn't engrossed then he's not going to stick around for long, right?
He cheats too much sometimes and even when the game is simplified in some respects, he still fails to be competitive.

So let's talk about actionables; let's make the AI slightly less predictable, to keep players involved.For example, instead of set values for relationship modifiers, the AI is affected by events to different degrees depending on the existing relationship, a random modifier, and the Leader themselves.

Montezuma might take great offence to negative moodlets and grow slower with positive moodlets. Churchill might move slowly with both. Cleopatra might not take offence if you're her Ally.This slowly makes them feel like actual characters which people want to play against and with.Many people have already suggested that the AI has 'growing bonuses', which increase with each age to keep the AI competitive.This is an easy solution, and maybe it works very well. However, I have no idea of knowing because it's impossible for me to check this. (we have to sort of imagine it working.)

This is my least popular opinion almost definitely, but we need to simply curtail the number of bonuses and... I want to say mindless complexity.
It's quite hard to make a good AI for a game where there's an obscene number of things going on. Generally speaking, it also affects the balance negatively.

There's a Swiss cheese metaphor here - the player is like a mouse who can find their way from A to B via the holes to win the game.The AI is more like a dumb machine. It can only find its way from A to B through the Cheese via dumb luck and some basic intuition we teach it as designers/programmers.As such, by trying to keep the layers of Swiss cheese down, we actually make it easier for AI and Players to compete.We reduce the chance of there being stupid gaping holes in our cheese which let our mouse (the Player) gain a crazy advantage of over our dumb robot (the AI).

The AI needs to be able to recognise the best move for the situation, and not just pick our preordained paths for their gameplay.
They need to be able act independently and counteract player moves with their own. On many occasions the designers would have to spend countless tiring hours coding specific counters.
Writing AI necessarily comes at the end of the design process. But because Civilization games have been rushed for the last decade at least, the AI is even more half baked.

I'm pretty sure Ideology is going to make a comeback in some form. Maybe when / after religion is reworked? Going from ancient religion (with less structured government and / or an ideological bent to speak of) to modern ideologies (with religion falling back to a more supporting role) seems like a natural push-and-pull throughout a game (and especially across Ages, where the balance and impact of each can be tailored to suit the time period).

But I don't think this by itself would solve lategame tedium. It didn't in CiV. I could guarantee AI behaviour quite comfortably based on which one I picked, and which one they'd picked. As you note, the more predictable (and less competent) the AI is, the less of a challenge things are, which also causes tedium.

I also think linking ideologies purely to culture is limiting. I do see the link, but it also affects things like science, production, growth, you name it. There's a lot of flexibility in terms of yields and their application to that kind of thing.

-------------------

r.e. a dedicated Crisis, I'm not sure the Modern Age is going to be the final Age. So that's a problem area. If it is, then that also inherently limits the dynamics where everything in that Age is going to need to (re)balanced around the Crisis. Not impossible, it just feels like it limits the design growth of that part of the game. But I don't think that makes it bad, just not my cup of tea personally. And heck, maybe we never get another Age.

-------------------

I find the AI personally better than in VI or V, though admittedly I'm not a high-level player (I pushed as high as I could go in Beyond Earth, didn't do too badly, and yet that was noted for having easier AI than CiV proper). It's hard to evaluate the AI because the developers should always be seeking to make it better. Which means the quality of Modern (or any Age past Antiquity) should improve over the lifetime of a game.

It's also why I don't rate it much as a suggestion. It's a general thing, it should always be happening, and we have repeated patch notes to suggest that it is happening.

Changing how events apply to the AI is an interesting one, but one I feel creates too much (opaque) RNG. AI works when it feels human. Increasing the arbitrary nature of how it responds to a game's progression is one of those things that feels human, but in practise will just make it seem overly quirky / irrational.

A lot of what people generally suggest when it comes to AI is just sinking more and more resources into it. And that in of itself is a problem. It's not actionable if something costs too much resource to justify. And AI is generally a difficult field. It's not trivial to improve. It's not trivial to make substantial advances in. It's why most, if not all, games use smoke-and-mirrors to achieve the illusion of an effect. So long as the player finds it believable, the illusion holds. The trick is finding the balance between maintaining the illusion and ramping the difficulty. There's a reason "bullet sponge" became a known phrase in other genres of game. It's a boring way of inflating the technical difficulty. But at the same time, creating something that rivals its impact while being more believable takes more resources than most teams have at their disposal.

I once worked with a developer who estimated a project at either 30 or 60 weeks of effort, depending on the approach taken. They were good estimates, they came with a multi-page design doc and implementation outlines. This was close to a decade ago. Neither approach has, to date, been implemented. Or even made the roadmap for implementation. Because there's always something more to be done with those 30 or 60 weeks that has a greater and / or more immediate impact.

This is a big problem for AI in games specifically, because it's one of the most theoretical / effectively compsci parts of games development. And most developers tend to be more engineers than scientists. Proper compsci folk working on AI are working on it as a part of a PhD, or some other postgrad research team. Getting that kind of cross-sector mingling is logistically difficult! I'm not trying to run defense here, I'm trying to explain the difficulty in AI in games in general, and why so many games struggle with it at the high level, especially for longstanding franchises with dedicated communities that have figured out (for the most part) how the game tries to emulate human behaviour.

Unfortunately, their design process is addressing the things they see as problems, with solutions that create more problems, and don't necessarily fix the problem.

That's a weakness everybody shares. Because people view different things as problems, and each have different solutions at times to each and every problem.

 

[Xur]

I was recently made aware of steam scout and their breakdown of reviews per language and it indicates a problem I wasn't aware of with civ7. Apparantly China is portrayed offensively and has poor translation in civ7. I cant say for sure - I do not speak mandarin. I just saw 34% steam score for simplified chinese and then asked chatgpt what the chinese reception of civ7 was. The main problems were not civ switching or eras. The problem was the portrayal of China. Qing is apparantly exceptionally bad for a "modern" civ. People mentioned an empire in decline, insensitive, subjugation and colonial embarrasment. It seems a bit funny considering how much content that area got, but I guess it was handled wrong. Good thing they had a historian working on this.

For comparison:
German 55% positive - 2878 reviews
English 50% positive - 29855 reviews
French 46% positive - 2049 reviews
Simplified Chinese 34% - 7209 reviews
There are a lot of other languages there too, but I just listed those with a count of over 1000.

While I hate civ switching and eras, I would understand if Firaxis ignored that criticism and "fixed" certain civs instead. That would be easier than changing the game and there's a big pool of negative reviews from China. While 50-55% isn't exactly great either, at least it's better than 34%.

This specific problem with China is, I think, about not fulfilling the power fantasy trope because Firaxis is scared to offend the american/european public. Funny that they end up offending China. I would prefer that they dropped playing "safe" and fulfilled every possible good and evil power fantasy. The "safe" crowd is tiny, but loud. Ultimately the only solution is for people to shape the portrayal of civs themselves (ingame) instead of coming pre-cooked.

 

[Leucarum]

I actually think Qing is one of the better modern era civs in terms of power level ironically... As much as any of them can be called good...

 

[Krikkit1]

I actually think Qing is one of the better modern era civs in terms of power level ironically... As much as any of them can be called good...

I think one problem is both Qing (and Ming) have a design that indicates decline.

Ming get a science penalty for any social change from their Traditions (-15 Science for Social Policies)
Qing get a - science for dealing with the outside world (-1 per imported resources)

So they tend to mechanically indicate an empire that is destined for eventually being eclipsed.

This is on top of the history (real and perceived) of the actual Qing.

 

[Leucarum]

I think one problem is both Qing (and Ming) have a design that indicates decline.

Ming get a science penalty for any social change from their Traditions (-15 Science for Social Policies)
Qing get a - science for dealing with the outside world (-1 per imported resources)

So they tend to mechanically indicate an empire that is destined for eventually being eclipsed.

This is on top of the history (real and perceived) of the actual Qing.

I get it. A malus will always feel like a malus.

It also feels kinda sucky that Han and Ming have basically the same UI.

 

[Xandinho]

I was recently made aware of steam scout and their breakdown of reviews per language and it indicates a problem I wasn't aware of with civ7. Apparantly China is portrayed offensively and has poor translation in civ7. I cant say for sure - I do not speak mandarin. I just saw 34% steam score for simplified chinese and then asked chatgpt what the chinese reception of civ7 was. The main problems were not civ switching or eras. The problem was the portrayal of China. Qing is apparantly exceptionally bad for a "modern" civ. People mentioned an empire in decline, insensitive, subjugation and colonial embarrasment. It seems a bit funny considering how much content that area got, but I guess it was handled wrong. Good thing they had a historian working on this.

For comparison:
German 55% positive - 2878 reviews
English 50% positive - 29855 reviews
French 46% positive - 2049 reviews
Simplified Chinese 34% - 7209 reviews
There are a lot of other languages there too, but I just listed those with a count of over 1000.

While I hate civ switching and eras, I would understand if Firaxis ignored that criticism and "fixed" certain civs instead. That would be easier than changing the game and there's a big pool of negative reviews from China. While 50-55% isn't exactly great either, at least it's better than 34%.

This specific problem with China is, I think, about not fulfilling the power fantasy trope because Firaxis is scared to offend the american/european public. Funny that they end up offending China. I would prefer that they dropped playing "safe" and fulfilled every possible good and evil power fantasy. The "safe" crowd is tiny, but loud. Ultimately the only solution is for people to shape the portrayal of civs themselves (ingame) instead of coming pre-cooked.

I checked Steam Scout and also looked up review data for Civ7 by language, and indeed, Simplified Chinese has the lowest positive rating among all languages with over 100 reviews—noticeably lower than the other languages. Another thing I noticed is that when I compared this to Civ 6, the percentage of reviews in Simplified Chinese relative to the total (15.04% for Civ7) is less than half that of Civ6 (35.95%).

This suggests that Chinese players not only rejected Civ7 far more strongly but also bought the game much less compared to Civ6 (apparently even shrank quite a lot proportionally). Well, it seems they have a serious problem with Chinese audience, and that’s something they’ll need to address.

 

[Core Imposter]

This thread makes Civilization sound like a disgrace. Distasteful. Shameful.

If they ever try again, I think they should understand that a civilization game has to be a wargame first and focus on gameplay and making gameplay fun. It is hard to overcome a fun deficit.

A whole lot of what people are complaining about would become less relevant if there were genuine entertainment value built into the game.

 

[Evolena]

Uhm, sorry but this makes no sense.

With snowballing, you can win at turn 75. Without snowballing, you can win at turn 175. Why would it be any better to win late than early? Is it important to play long games by winning very late?

The goal should not be to prolong games. The goal should be to make victories easier and quicker to achieve.

For some the goal of the game must be to win quick. For others fun is only had with prolonged games even past victory.

For some a Civilization game must be a wargame. For others it is not a Civilization game if is has not more than that.

Players' wishes are irreconciliable.

 

[queenpea]

For some the goal of the game must be to win quick. For others fun is only had with prolonged games even past victory.

For some a Civilization game must be a wargame. For others it is not a Civilization game if is has not more than that.

Players' wishes are irreconciliable.

I don’t think they are irreconcilable. Sure, there are some players who may never be content.

I think for most players, the game just has to have sufficient depth to support multiple play styles.

Speaking for myself, I know I will enjoy VII once the culture game is more interesting or engaging to play in all ages.

 

[Crashdummy]

For some the goal of the game must be to win quick. For others fun is only had with prolonged games even past victory.

For some a Civilization game must be a wargame. For others it is not a Civilization game if is has not more than that.

Players' wishes are irreconciliable.

They are not irreconcillable. They pleased both groups for DECADES

Civilization VII is just not a Civilization game, they tried to turn it into a board game and when you do that, of course you will piss a lot of people

I would love if they present us with the results of the poll they are making, but i suspect they wont