Unplayable is certainly a reach. I’m having a great time with it so far.
That said, I can see where you’re coming from on a few points, particularly the lack of penalties and the ease with which towns grow, even on three land tiles.
I only call a game unplayable if there are mechanics advertised but not working, or if the game does not work or launch properly even though I meet the system requirements.
Are you part of some PS5 players who got game crashes?
"Unplayable" is excellent clickbait, but 99% of time it's as devoid of substance as it is sensationalistic. Games sustaining an average of 60,000 players at any given time are by objective definition playable.
But going past that, the thrust of what I'm reading is that the game is unbalanced. That's fully to be expected.
As for the AI... it's always an uphill battle for it, in an ever-changing battlefield, to boot. In the 1UPT era, no matter how well the computer opponents are doing (and being helped) as far as numerical, statistical progress is concerned, a savvy human player focused on conquest will always come crashing down on them. Especially if wars begin on the human's terms, when the AI hasn't even been able to prepare the house of cards that normally forms its fighting force.
Anyway, Civ7 is young and needs to mature. No surprises there.
As for the AI... it's always an uphill battle for it, in an ever-changing battlefield, to boot. In the 1UPT era, no matter how well the computer opponents are doing (and being helped) as far as numerical, statistical progress is concerned, a savvy human player focused on conquest will always come crashing down on them. Especially if wars begin on the human's terms, when the AI hasn't even been able to prepare the house of cards that normally forms its fighting force.
I'm not going to touch anything else about your post because I agree calling the game unplayable is a complete hyperbole but can we stop with this? Vox Populi and Old World clearly dispel this notion that you cannot build an AI capable of competently playing the game and providing humans with a tactical challenge in a 4x game.
I'm not going to touch anything else about your post because I agree calling the game unplayable is a complete hyperbole but can we stop with this? Vox Populi and Old World clearly dispel this notion that you cannot build an AI capable of competently playing the game and providing humans with a tactical challenge in a 4x game.
I have 61 hours play time at current time. I would hardly call it unplayable. The game has a lot of issues, particularly with the UI, but the bones of the game are quite fun. My main quibble is that the design seems to want to funnel you into win conditions thrice per game, which ruins the sandbox aspect the series is known for. And conforming to those win conditions every game is slowly eroding the replayability for me.
Ah yes, which is so very different from planning out your empire in Civ VI with map tacks on turn 30, based on which victory type you're pursuing, with the good ol' trade route district + victory district + regional utility district + free choice setup. Planning out National Parks by the Classical Era, deciding on turn 5 whether you want to rush a religion before the AI take them all away to keep open the road to a religious victory, lovely sandbox that game was. Oh yeah and if you do pursue a religion don't forget to run prayers after you finish your Shrine. Or possibly even before it. Can't make it too easy for the player to get a religion after all.
Ah yes, which is so very different from planning out your empire in Civ VI with map tacks on turn 30, based on which victory type you're pursuing, with the good ol' trade route district + victory district + regional utility district + free choice setup. Planning out National Parks by the Classical Era, deciding on turn 5 whether you want to rush a religion before the AI take them all away to keep open the road to a religious victory, lovely sandbox that game was. Oh yeah and if you do pursue a religion don't forget to run prayers after you finish your Shrine. Or possibly even before it. Can't make it too easy for the player to get a religion after all.
Civilization is technically not a sandbox game like EU4 but the fact that victory conditions can be achieved to end a campaign which can stretch 10-20 hours at your own pace and that there are multiple paths to victory, many of which you don't even have to focus on until the end of the game with most of the conditions simply stemming from playing the game well help make it feel quite a bit more "sandboxy" and free than same thing but three times but now with even more arbitrary and restrictive mission based victory paths during much shorter rounds that than soft reset.
Ah yes, which is so very different from planning out your empire in Civ VI with map tacks on turn 30, based on which victory type you're pursuing, with the good ol' trade route district + victory district + regional utility district + free choice setup. Planning out National Parks by the Classical Era, deciding on turn 5 whether you want to rush a religion before the AI take them all away to keep open the road to a religious victory, lovely sandbox that game was. Oh yeah and if you do pursue a religion don't forget to run prayers after you finish your Shrine. Or possibly even before it. Can't make it too easy for the player to get a religion after all.
Yeah, I don't engage in that level of min maxing. I put cities in places I like, work the districts around them as I go, and worry about win conditions in the late Renaissance
If you've finished two full games and are well into a third, then the game is hardly "unplayable." I don't disagree with your criticisms, but the hyperbole is not helpful.
The whole point of towns is to convert yields to gold as a streamlining mechanic. Therefore, gold purchasing has to be a useful way to progress.
The concept balances wide vs tall design. "Going tall" becomes a deliberate strategic choice by creating a city, and you have to do this to progress in science and culture. However, you're not penalized for going wide either, as they support the cities.
It is perfectly legit to call a game unplayable if there is no challenge. If some people like to play and win no matter what they do that is their prerogatives to like that. I guess the OP equates no challenge to the game being broken and not worth investing time into. I agree that if there are no real mental stimulus there are no reason to play.
I have not finished a single civ game since maybe civ 2 which is the last time I actually finished a game. I always get to a state when I know I won and that is when I always stop playing as I lose interest. Civ 7 will be no different and I don't think the Ages will really have much impact on that. To be honest the extremely strong focus on "winning" in the game mechanic and the ages probably will make me tire of this version way quicker than previous versions of the game... I always turned of all the win conditions normally and just played until I got bored anyway.
I have only played cvi 7 for half a day or so and so far it seem to be like playing against someone who are both death and blind at the same time... the AI are so stupid and inept at putting up some form of effort it so far have not made me very engaged. I will keep trying but I'm afraid I will tire on the game very fast from my experience so far. I also don't min max in any way, I just try to play sort of intuitively and be more narrative than optimise things, but ut still is way too easy and you get way too much resources and money that it seems you can just do whatever you want all the time. I don't even try to win but still outpace the AI without any effort.
The game is fun for me. I had trouble putting it down last night so I can raid with my guild in my other game. But as I feared, the map is cluttered and a bit ugly because of it. Hard to make out what happens in wars, it forces me to try to remember where potential battles are taking place. So many little things are wrong with this game. Like when you build a wonder, it doesn't say what it does (I often forget in the time it takes to build it), or when a city finishes production it doesn't tell you what finished.
I started on two levels from Diety and quickly restarted in Diety as it was too easy and I don't even min max my game. You just build as many settlements and cities as you can, happiness simply tells you how man cities you can have as you don't get as much from generate happiness as you get from just more settlement. Since the AI don't seem to understand this you win very easily every time... does not really matter what you do after this... that is my experience so far. You will just drown in cash and can buy whatever you like.
Civilization is technically not a sandbox game like EU4 but the fact that victory conditions can be achieved to end a campaign which can stretch 10-20 hours at your own pace and that there are multiple paths to victory, many of which you don't even have to focus on until the end of the game with most of the conditions simply stemming from playing the game well help make it feel quite a bit more "sandboxy" and free than same thing but three times but now with even more arbitrary and restrictive mission based victory paths during much shorter rounds that than soft reset.
Yeah, I don't engage in that level of min maxing. I put cities in places I like, work the districts around them as I go, and worry about win conditions in the late Renaissance
I don't see how this isn't possible with Civ VII? Building wonders is something you do naturally. Settling and possibly fighting wars is something you do naturally. Assigning resources to cities is something you do naturally. Earning codices is something you do by accident.
I've put some extra focus on wonders for the milestones, sure. But in my three Antiquity Eras so far, I've gotten the economic and scientific golden ages every time without even devoting one second of thought to them, and I'm too lazy to fight wars just to get the militaristic golden age (plus it'd probably make me snowball away with the game even earlier), but I might put some effort into getting to 9 points so I can get Fealty with +2 settlement limit. That's the extent of focusing on victory conditions that I've been doing in the Antiquity Era.
As for the Exploration Era? The cultural legacy path, again, may need a bit of attention to complete mostly because I don't otherwise bother building Temples, but I'll complete the other three within 100 turns (in fact I completed all four by turn 77 just tonight, I think) without any actual effort towards them. Just regular gameplay is more than enough. This is on Deity, for the record.
And the Modern Era... well, no differences with previous games there anyway.
I was talking about production costs. Although gold income scales too hard as well. In my previous game I was sitting on 100k in my treasury at some point because I just had nothing to spend it on that wasn't more tedious than it was worth. Like sure I could've bought an entire city worth of buildings but I was already miles ahead anyway.
Honestly, I'm not finding Deity very difficult so far, but I'm also not convinced it's easier than Civ VI. I do feel like the AI is less threatening in the (very) early game though, courtesy of the AI not starting with 3 settlers and a genuine army of warriors. I'll have to see whether it can pose any threat in the Modern Age. The Immortal AI from last game tried to dogpile me 4 on 1 but I had snowballed too far ahead by then and total air superiority is kind of unfair in warfare.
This game's AI might have a bit of a better chance. I'm at like five or six fewer settlements compared to my previous game, and I've got two settlements that are pretty isolated from everything else and can't be properly connected. It might be able to snag one or both of those if I'm busy elsewhere. Maybe.
I was talking about production costs. Although gold income scales too hard as well. In my previous game I was sitting on 100k in my treasury at some point because I just had nothing to spend it on that wasn't more tedious than it was worth. Like sure I could've bought an entire city worth of buildings but I was already miles ahead anyway.
I wonder how this is shaking out in the multiplayer meta.
Otherwise, this game will probably thrive not in vanilla campaigns (which will exist for learning the game and experimenting when new factions come out), but in scenarios. Specific adverse conditions that the community won't be able to beat on deity for a little while until some absurd cheese is invented.
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