Aquila SPQR
King
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Time for a rating. Initially, I was thinking about 5/10: overall, I was a bit bored, but the game has its moments and a few interesting solutions that balance the boredom, which is why it came out as "meh", i.e. average at 5/10. However, during my last game on the highest difficulty level, which I played before I started writing this text, I noticed that in this game I was not accompanied by the one more turn syndrome, which was so strong in Five and Six, but rather the "I don't want another turn" syndrome. That I was clicking through the turns in frustration so that the game would end as quickly as possible and so that I wouldn't have to start it again. Combined with the aforementioned feeling that we are getting an Early Access game for PLN 550, this led me to the conclusion that for me, Civilization 7 in its current state deserves a maximum of 4/10. I'll probably take a look at what's changed and whether the modders have managed to fix it (by the way, modding tools will be released with a delay). For now, I don't feel like having anything to do with this game.
P.S. Lest I forget: Civilization 7 has the Denuvo security system.My rating: 4/10
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Recenzja Cywilizacji 7, najnowszej odsłony popularnej serii strategii 4X
Cywilizacja to zdecydowanie jedna z najpopularniejszych serii turowych gier strategicznych i każda kolejna jej odsłona jest wyczekiwana przez miliony graczy – z jednej strony przepełnionych nadzieją, że nowe mechaniki odświeżą rozgrywkę, a z drugiej przepełnionych obawami, że twórcy...
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Civilization 7 Attempts to Fix Civilization 6's Biggest Flaws
Civilization 7 upends the gameplay we know from previous installments in the series. According to its creators, the drastic changes are intended to address certain age-old issues:
the snowball effect, which often makes the endgame boring;
the fact that civilizations with bonuses focused primarily on the endgame are inherently weaker, less popular, and difficult to balance;
the enormous amount of micromanagement that comes with ruling a larger empire.
The first two points on this list are to be addressed through two fundamental changes. First, the game is now divided into three parts, or eras. When moving from one to the next, you reselect a civilization from a pool dedicated to that era; each era has its own separate science and culture tree; each era has a completely different set of goals and a slightly different gameplay loop; and when changing eras, the game state is reset to some extent. Since the choice of civilization is not fixed, the element that unites all eras is the leader, who is chosen at the beginning of the game, with more general features and bonuses that work throughout the game. In theory, it is possible to start the game as Benjamin Franklin, first managing Rome, then Mongolia and finally Russia. It sounds a bit absurd, but of course there is no problem in taking a more historical path, and planning synergies between the leader and subsequent civilizations is one of the most important and interesting strategic elements of the new Civilization.
On the other hand, the fight against a lot of micromanagement is to be won by getting rid of builders and the fact that settlements are now divided into two categories: cities and towns. Each new settlement (new, i.e. not a capital) first has the status of a town. A town cannot build anything: neither buildings nor units. You can only buy some things in it for gold. Only by spending a large sum of money can you transform a town into a city, and then it gains a building queue and the ability to create districts in it. So you can decide whether you want to have full control over what a given settlement does, or simply create it and almost forget about it, because it is supposed to be a settlement created only for access to certain key resources, generating gold and producing food for the rest of the empire.
As a result, we get a game in which decisions do not matter and there is nothing to do
How does this theory translate into practice? Dividing the game into parts and separating the civilization from the leader has great potential and over time can become something that actually diversifies the game. The game has four main victory conditions: economic, scientific, cult and military. Depending on which one you are heading for, in each era the player is given a different goal, which makes it easier and faster to achieve the final victory condition. And for example, in the case of economic victory, in the first era it is important to settle new cities on the continent and send merchants to other civilizations to obtain as many luxury and additional resources as possible. In the second era, everything revolves around building ships and establishing colonies on newly discovered islands, which forces a significant change in the style of play. In the third era, you have to strive for industrialization, building train stations and factories. On the other hand, changing civilizations every era gives you, in theory, a lot of flexibility in terms of adapting to changing conditions and to what has been generated on the map. On paper, it looks interesting.
However, there is a huge catch to all this, namely the previously mentioned soft reset of the game state. It is true that achieving goals in earlier eras gives bonuses and speeds up achieving the final goal in the third era, but the fact that when changing eras:
alliances and wars are interrupted;
built units are reset, improved and scattered across the cities and towns of the empire (for all civilizations, even those that were very far behind in terms of science in the previous era);
city-states disappear from the map and new ones appear;
a large part of buildings built in cities stop giving their bonuses;
towns transformed into cities become towns again
and other things make me feel like when playing Civilization 7, I often felt like a huge part of the things I do in the earlier eras simply don't matter. In addition, some of the mechanics created around the goals are also very half-baked. Especially the cultural path in the second era, which revolves around very weak mechanics of religion and relics.
On the other hand, getting rid of a large part of micromanagement (which was tiring for some, but for me was one of the more interesting aspects of Civilization 6) means that there are much fewer things to do in the game. In the early stages of the game, when you can't afford to transform a town into a city, some more expensive building in the capital will queue up for a dozen or so turns (oh, horror, if the spawn is not rich in production), often there is simply nothing to do. The only form of (often questionable quality) gameplay is fighting city-states, which also act as barbarian camps (some of which are aggressive and mass produce units) and can really get under your skin. So we have fewer things to do, and the things we do often seem insignificant. A beautiful combination.
Civilization 7 is a slower game
This is connected to the fact that the gameplay in Civilization 7 has become slower as a result of many changes. Splitting the game into three eras effectively increased the minimum number of turns necessary to end the game. In practice, the lack of builders also means no cutting down trees and other map elements, which significantly increases the time it takes to build larger buildings, such as wonders. There is also no boost mechanic in the cultural and scientific trees, which means that you can't speed up their development. So you have to wait longer for everything.
However, in military matters, everything is also much slower due to a number of seemingly small changes. For example, cavalry units have less movement (3 or 4 for cavalry and 4 for tanks). Commanders, who replaced generals, can speed up the movement of armies from one place to another, but they need to gain several levels of experience to be able to do this (in Civilization 7, it's the commanders, not the units, who gain experience). There's also a lack of engineers who can build roads and railways, and all of this means that getting anywhere with an army takes ages (literally!).
And once you get there, you have to deal with the fact that each district in a city can now have its own independent walls, which you have to destroy first, before you can start attacking the unit standing on the district, so you have to destroy tiles twice to be able to stand on them. Combined with the change that units now don't gain experience and the immediate healing associated with it when they level up, this makes it very difficult to conquer anything. Some people will like these changes, because they like playing long maps, for example, but compared to Civilization 6 (especially with the mods used by the multiplayer community), there is a huge difference in pace. Depending on your preferences, this change will be considered positive or negative.
Civilization 7 is less interactive and more forgiving of mistakes
Similarly, other theoretically very minor changes are ambiguous: scout units cannot attack, and settler units cannot be captured, but only destroyed (they have their own life bar, which is enough to survive two warrior attacks) and they have 3 moves, so they can run away from warriors. If you have ever played Civilization online, you surely know how much this changes and how much potential frustration it allows to avoid. On the other hand, this is one of many steps taken by the developers to reduce interaction between players and make mistakes more likely to go unpunished.
The significantly reduced interaction is especially visible after the completely changed system of great people and city-states. Great people still exist in theory, because the great generals and admirals have been replaced by new commanders who gain levels and have varied skill trees, and different civilizations have special civilian units that give unique effects (for example, Greece has access to something like great philosophers). But you don't compete with other players for these new great people, you just produce them. So you'll never lose a game again just because you miss out on one of the great generals or admirals, and there's no fighting over the key great scientists, merchants, or engineers. In fact, there's almost no competition for city-states either, because once you become the suzerain of one, no one else can take it.
The Third Age and Victory Conditions Suck (AI too)
The overall reduction in player interaction and fewer things to do is, in my opinion, the biggest problem with the new Civilization: Victory conditions and therefore the entire Third Age are boring. Very boring, because they are non-interactive (and unfinished, which I will come back to later). For example, economic victory means that in the Third Age you have to research certain key technologies, build/buy as many factories and train stations in cities as possible, wait for the progress bar to reach 500, then a big banker appears, who you have to click through all the players' capitals and that's it. Once you build factories, in practice there is not much you can do to speed things up. And from the perspective of someone's opponent who is going for this type of victory, there is not much way to stop or slow them down (apart from attacking them).
On the other hand, cultural victory is fundamentally broken. It consists of building archaeologists in the third era and collecting artifacts scattered around the map in order to gain access to a special wonder of the world. The problem is that the AI tends to rush and spam these archaeologists, which makes it simply impossible to collect the required number of artifacts before the turn limit expires on higher difficulty levels.
The scientific victory was never particularly exciting, but in the sixth there were at least ways to speed it up and there were a few things that could be done. In the seventh, you simply queue up projects and wait.
And you can afford to wait, because even on the highest difficulty level, the AI simply cannot end the game in any other way than by scoring points after the time limit expires. This also shows even more the state of the victory conditions.
It's pretty, but completely unreadable
The plus side of Civilization 7 is that it can be really pretty. Cities, because districts and buildings have to be connected, are very compact and generally look like... cities up close. Many people will probably also like the more subdued colors and less cartoonish style than in part six. Maps are also more vertical now, because the land has levels, and you can sail on larger rivers and they occupy their own tile, which makes the terrain look more natural and a bit less "board game-like".
On the downside, the Civilization 7 map is much less legible for me. I regularly had trouble figuring out whether crossing a tile would cost one or two movement points and which way a unit would go, which was troublesome during all kinds of larger battles. In the cities, however, I had no idea what was actually built on which tile, which was on the one hand troublesome when planning development and choosing a place for subsequent buildings, and on the other hand slowed down the fight again, because I had no idea what I was actually plundering and what I would get in return. The situation is made worse by the complete lack of a strategic view. Sure, Civilization 6 is not the prettiest game, but at least it is very legible. Civilization 7 is the complete opposite.
The problem with the lack of legibility and probably not entirely well-chosen priorities is also visible in the game's interface. Civilization 7 has a very console-mobile interface. That is, it has large elements that are easy to operate and read from, for example, a TV screen connected to a console, Steam Deck or Switch. This solution is not bad in itself, but it means much lower information density for someone who has cut their teeth on PC Civilizations. Something for something (although it would be nice if there were two versions of the interface). However, firstly, this interface goes strongly towards flat graphics popular in modern games, which simply look uninteresting (one of my co-workers, after seeing a screenshot from Seven, thought that some interface elements looked like placeholders).
Secondly, a lot of very useful buttons and screens have been cut out of the interface – probably to make it faster to go through the interface using a controller, for example. I mentioned the lack of a strategic view, but Civilization 7 also lacks a search engine and pins. The screen with the list of city-states is practically useless, and it lacks such basic things as the ability to quickly see where a given city-state is on the map and what you get when you become its suzerain. There is no screen at all for tracking the status of merchants, so to find out who and how many trade routes you can lead to, you have to produce a merchant. If it turns out that you don't have any available trade routes – well, sorry, but you just wasted a few rounds of production. Apart from that, there is no way to find out what trade routes actually give you. And then there is the issue of the new encyclopedia, where you can't click on items to quickly jump to subpages discussing different parts of the game. In short, the interface – apart from the issue of its "console-like" nature, which some players may consider a positive change – gives the impression of being unfinished.
Early Access pretending to be a full game
Unfinished, like a large part of the game. Of course, we have to take into account that in Civilizations, it is a tradition that these games take on their full shape only after one or two major expansions. This was the case with Five, it was the case with Six, and to some extent it will be the case with Seven. This is one of the reasons why I am not mentioning the issue of balance and many other minor and major flaws and deficiencies in this (already quite long) text, because you cannot expect a new part of the series to be as polished and rich in content on the day of its release as, for example, Six, which has been in development for several years. However, this time, in my opinion, there are simply too many missing things, which is why I had the impression that I was dealing with an Early Access game pretending to be a finished product.
Two more things cool my willingness to give Firaxis the benefit of the doubt. Firstly, reading the so-called developer diaries, it is clear that certain simplifications and cuts in Seven are not a matter of lack of time and the fact that Civilizations are very extensive games that are refined over the years, but a matter of conscious choice. Removing a large part of micromanagement is deliberate, because micromanagement was considered a problem. The simplification of the district mechanics and neighborhood bonuses was introduced because the system from Six was considered too complicated. It is probably similar with many other mechanics that have lost their depth and have been reworked into "click and forget for a dozen or so turns" mechanics. And note: I am not saying that such a simplification of the game is bad in itself. There will certainly be people who, seeing certain changes - unlike me - will breathe a sigh of relief. Not everyone is a fan of shifting builders and hyper-optimization, which are abundant in Civilization 6. However, it seems that Civilization 7 is being created with slightly different players in mind than the previous parts. The second thing that raises huge doubts in me and makes me not intend to push the shortcomings of Seven under the carpet with the assumption "that's just how Civki are", is its business model. The basic version of the game on Steam costs PLN 299, but its creators are doing everything to "encourage" the player to buy the version for PLN 550. Firaxis has already presented a plan for updates and some of them will go to all players, and some only to those who bought the most expensive version of the game. Who will get the "real" ending of the game? We'll see. In addition, some Wonders of the World (the built ones, not the natural ones) have been closed behind a paywall, which has potentially significant gameplay implications. When you follow the path of cultural victory, in the first era you have to build a set number of Wonders of the World. In practice, with a larger map and a higher difficulty level, this is difficult to do, because the pool of Wonders is quite narrow and the AI builds them quickly. To make things more interesting, Wonders now give adjacency bonuses to every district, not just the cultural district like in Six, so Wonders are an integral part of every city's development. It remains to be seen how exactly this will work out in practice, but this strategy has huge potential for abuse and money-sucking.
Before I get to my rating, one more thing. I strongly encourage all Civilization fans reading this text to do two things: read a few different reviews and wait to see how things develop. Civilization is an extensive series with a diverse fan base that plays it in different ways. That's why I'm convinced that the assessment of the changes introduced in Civilization 7 will vary greatly from person to person, and it's worth seeking out an opinion from someone who plays Civilization similarly to you. I like Civilization 6 (I have over 1000 hours on it), and I especially appreciate it for its extensive "sim" part and for how fast the game can be (for a turn-based game), which is why the slowing down of the game and simplifying many of its elements simply doesn't suit me. I also strongly encourage you to wait: Civilization 7 is a very expensive game (the basic version of the game is actually a paid demo), very unfinished, and with potentially anti-consumer monetization. Regardless of your opinion on the changes made, at the moment it is not worth its full price, which is in practice PLN 550.
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