Sorry for the negativity, but the game is currently unplayable and boring.

[DocRock]

Playing tall for me means 3 settlements, not 3 cities and 16 towns. And that's not something the game is offering. Otherwise you'd screw up the military legacy. You are supposed to fill the map and the AI is so passive that it's pretty easy. Also basically every city position is great, you can even settle in Tundra conditions and get the perfect fishing town. There is no need to choose anything here, just hop on the wagon and get off on the next train station. The game has a fixed stream of ideas:

- explore wide and keep your settlements at the cap
- spread culture/science/settlements evenly to get the most points easily
- settlements give you not only military but economic points due to resources
- act 2: build ships. Even if you want to play a landlocked game. Because the next railway station is the distant land.

Etc pp. It's railroaded. There are no real alternative options for further playthroughs.

And don't get me started that they dropped any unit variety. Killed a bunch of Spearmen with my Cav, what a joke. In every Civ game before, it was a hard counter. Now they tuned it down to "whatever man, just take the unit with the highest attack power".

 

[Mezmorizor]

So what you're saying is that you could still do a culture or science victory in the Exploration Era just fine if you don't want to go to distant lands?

Also a 3 city culture victory sounds like a perfectly possible thing in this game. Several leader attributes even provide bigger bonuses if you're at 3 or fewer cities. And a sea-focused game sounds to me like you're emphasizing distant lands conquest/settling. Early game rush? Did that in my current game. Strong mid game? Also my current game - I picked Mongolia for a reason. Diplo with Greece? Turns out city states provide a lot of benefits in all kinds of areas at the same time! I got to experience all those benefits in my previous game. And domination? Yup, no issues. I've had a game with 30 cities and even higher settlement cap.

I think you're wrongly interpreting the legacy paths as a necessary thing to pursue. View them like you view culture in a previous game. Sure, you can pursue a culture victory, but you can also ignore it entirely! Just pick whatever you want and focus on that.

That's not at all true. The whole point of the game outside of the modern era is to build your empire for an industrial base and to acquire as many legacy points as you can to help in the modern age where you actually win the game. Half of that never changes, and the other half doesn't change much game to game. Sure, you can just ignore the legacy aspect, but that's like invading a civ with no ranged units. Nothing stops you from doing that, but the game wants you to and you're clearly supposed to. Half of the legacy points are attached to distant lands, culture is incredibly easy to lock yourself out of forever, and science requires that you planned for it in the era before or know the narrative choices by heart because you absolutely need extra specialist yields to hit 40 on more than one or two tiles.

 

[ThichN]

Playing tall for me means 3 settlements, not 3 cities and 16 towns. And that's not something the game is offering. Otherwise you'd screw up the military legacy. You are supposed to fill the map and the AI is so passive that it's pretty easy. Also basically every city position is great, you can even settle in Tundra conditions and get the perfect fishing town. There is no need to choose anything here, just hop on the wagon and get off on the next train station. The game has a fixed stream of ideas:

- explore wide and keep your settlements at the cap
- spread culture/science/settlements evenly to get the most points easily
- settlements give you not only military but economic points due to resources
- act 2: build ships. Even if you want to play a landlocked game. Because the next railway station is the distant land.

Etc pp. It's railroaded. There are no real alternative options for further playthroughs.

And don't get me started that they dropped any unit variety. Killed a bunch of Spearmen with my Cav, what a joke. In every Civ game before, it was a hard counter. Now they tuned it down to "whatever man, just take the unit with the highest attack power".

A few questions:

Why do you need to fulfill the military legacy / achieve military victory every age?
In half of my games thus far I have not done any military legacy paths. In other games I do the one in antiquity, ignore the next one. Etc.

Why is every city position great?
I've run into many that are sub-optimal.

Why do you need to keep your settlements at the cap?
I won a game with Himiko with 6 total settlements (w/17 possible). Some policies or game situations even favor fewer settlements. Specialists are extremely useful in Civ7 and you can build ultra-tall with them. There are also policies that favor this playstyle.

Why do you need to fulfill the economic legacy / achieve economic victory?
Again, in half of my games, I have not touched this, or I did the economic victory in modern age, or just antiquity. Only in 1 game thus far have I gone for the treasure fleet exploration-age victory / legacy path.

Why do you need to go to the distant land (esp if not aiming for military/economic victory in the age)?
I have perfectly enjoyed not doing so in my games. In fact, there are some interesting choices later in that same age: you can get a huge homeland boost if/when a revolution comes up, by completely ignoring the distant lands. You can also select policies that are specifically geared towards your original continent.

That's not at all true. The whole point of the game outside of the modern era is to build your empire for an industrial base and to acquire as many legacy points as you can to help in the modern age where you actually win the game. Half of that never changes, and the other half doesn't change much game to game. Sure, you can just ignore the legacy aspect, but that's like invading a civ with no ranged units. Nothing stops you from doing that, but the game wants you to and you're clearly supposed to. Half of the legacy points are attached to distant lands, culture is incredibly easy to lock yourself out of forever, and science requires that you planned for it in the era before or know the narrative choices by heart because you absolutely need extra specialist yields to hit 40 on more than one or two tiles.

Why is that the whole point of the game? You can focus on a single victory type, as in any Civ. The game doesn't want you to do anything and you're not supposed to do anything, any more than any other Civ iteration. In my most recent game in the modern era I completely ignored explorers and cultural victory, for example.

Why is culture easy to lock yourself out of forever? Why does science need you to plan for it in the era before?

 

[Askia Muhammad]

I wouldn't say unplayable either, but I'm terribly disappointed. The game was obviously released too soon, there are too many things that don't work, don't make sense, are pointless, haven't been tested.

Religion is just bare bones, it might as well not be here. You're supposed to unlock several beliefs... well actually you don't. Missionaries come and go, you can't stop them, city size doesn't matter. Does religion spread on its own ? And in the modern age it suddenly becomes irrelevant, or at least it looks like, you can't even know for sure.
City connections are a thing, because without them you can't use ressources. But they don't make any sense. Railroads sometimes appear, sometimes they don't.
Cities specializations could be interesting, if you could guess in game what they actually do. Apparently, an unconnected city is kinda useless ? How can I know what a specialization will change, where does it send food ? One detail shows that it's far from ready : the city chart doesn't use the word town.
As for the AI, what does it do with its production ? Does it pursue victory, is it focused on something ? Why do the other leaders attack you seemingly at random ?

The list of questions is endless, half of them come from a terrible UI, the other half from unfinished features.
We'll have answers, in six months, maybe a year... when the game should have been released (and sold at this very high price).

Half the player base agrees with you per reviews

 

[sonicmyst]

In my last playthrough I did not actively keep track the legacy paths and I only got 2 legacy points in exploration. Game is still fine despite that because my towns and cities are still good in modern age I can still push to any victory condition.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

What would that even mean?

Ironman is when you never load a save from a previous turn to recover from any mistake you made and make a different play. I always play civ games that way, they are very playable like that. I don't know how easy Deity really is but I'm having a great time so far, first game on Sovereign I won quite easily but now on Immortal it feels pretty challenging. In both games lots of good strategic decision making I think it's the best Civ games I played yet (played all since civ1 lul). Unlike Civ6 I don't feel like I have to play ultra aggression ultra early to win on higher difficulty I get a lot more choice of strategy.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

That's not at all true. The whole point of the game outside of the modern era is to build your empire for an industrial base and to acquire as many legacy points as you can to help in the modern age where you actually win the game. Half of that never changes, and the other half doesn't change much game to game. Sure, you can just ignore the legacy aspect, but that's like invading a civ with no ranged units. Nothing stops you from doing that, but the game wants you to and you're clearly supposed to. Half of the legacy points are attached to distant lands, culture is incredibly easy to lock yourself out of forever, and science requires that you planned for it in the era before or know the narrative choices by heart because you absolutely need extra specialist yields to hit 40 on more than one or two tiles.

I won the economic victory in my last game without a single point in econ for age ii (i qualified for a dark age but didn't take it).

 

[ProMeTheus112]

Half the player base agrees with you per reviews

I think it's hard to interpret what reviews really mean. The game I play the most is PUBG, it also has "mixed reviews" on steam. Yet, it sits comfortably, over years, in the top 3 of steams most played games, every day -even recently rising in player numbers significantly- which probably means it is one of the very most enjoyed game overall. And for playing it myself, I can tell how high the quality of the game is overall. I think the mixed reviews it gets is probably from frustation by players who find it too hard or something like that. (complaining about cheaters when there's actually quite few for example). Sometimes they sit on something they want from the dev while their demand isn't really feasible (being able to pick the map you play every time while managing the player queues is complicated). They'll say they hate having a store to buy cosmetics in the game but they still want anticheating, which takes constant effort from the admins.

Maybe sometimes, a lot of players take the time to go write a negative review for their own reasons, and a lot of other players just play the game a lot and don't write a review (?). I don't think I wrote a positive review on steam for PUBG I played it for 3000hours lul.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

It definitely isn't unplayable, but I do also find it strangely dull. Part of that is the settlement limit, and the fact that you have very few actual cities. Towns aren't very interactive. Trading and meaningful diplomacy is also gone in exchange for a small selection of standardized endeavors, so that's another whole minigame removed from Civ (not that trading in VI was super fun, but it was certainly interactive and varied wildly from one game to the next).

Worst of all, war feels pointless. I cannot see the benefits of warmongering. Maybe in the modern era, I haven't really delved too deep into that yet--but it's pretty much impossible to sustain a campaign of conquest in antiquity, and only slightly better in the exploration era (though you still basically have to choose between conquering cities or settling colonies). The AI's cities are always completely awful, so it isn't really advantageous to take theirs instead of settling your own. Unless you got a very weird map layout, it's trivial to fill up your settlement cap with good settlements that you planned for yourself, so conquering isn't particularly attractive. And while you can survive going a bit above the cap, it really is just 'a bit.' You can't really conquer an empire. You certainly can't take over your continent, that's just completely out of the question, there's no way you'll sustain like 20/7 settlements. Raze them instead? Huge stacking penalties that will eventually cripple you in all future wars. It feels like a fundamentally broken system that punishes you for engaging with it.

I disagree. I had a blast expanding up to settlement capacity in Antiquity building a core with 3 or 4 commanders. With a hyper focus on science and attendant Attributes you can tech up fast in ear;y Exploration to navigate deep ocean, then sail off and attack the AI. I warred in Exploration from T70 or so in one long continuous 100+ turn war and went from from 8 settlements to 20+ by the end. In the modern I used the 20+ settlement ultra-science to tech up and attack the AI again. I ended up triggering 3 others but as my science was so high, I was able to defeat them all with a military victory T88 on Epic speed. This is Sovereign mind you (I was kicking the tires to see how the mechanics worked).

I say this game is a marked improvement on Civ6's base mechanics. I love the age resets!

 

[Disgustipated]

Speaking of all out war mentioned above, in my new game as Xerxes of Persia I did conquer my entire continent. Although I did it fairly early, so it wasn't that many cities. 3 Isabella cities (I seem to get her every single game for some reason), 3 Tubman cities, and 1 Amina city. It's certainly viable. I own my entire continent (land mass is the better term to use here). I did not go over the city cap once, except at the end for a city I built myself to try to connect settlements that were too far apart to make a city connection.

There are drawbacks of course. The lack of influence. I only had one suzerain. I took out most independent peoples. I thought they were supposed to respawn in the exploration age in the empty spaces, but so far that hasn't happened (I'm early in exploration right now). So I'll only have 1 for exploration age as well. Another drawback is I have this huge army in exploration I can't do anything with. I chose Mongols, but now I regret that decision. There is no one to attack, and so long before I get to shipbuilding. My science and culture rate is pretty bad. And the last drawback is pushing the antiquity age so quickly towards conclusion. Actually one more drawback is the huge gaps and spaces in my empire makes city connections difficult.

edit: this was the small map I should add.

 

[TheGrayFox]

I think it's hard to interpret what reviews really mean. The game I play the most is PUBG, it also has "mixed reviews" on steam. Yet, it sits comfortably, over years, in the top 3 of steams most played games, every day -even recently rising in player numbers significantly- which probably means it is one of the very most enjoyed game overall. And for playing it myself, I can tell how high the quality of the game is overall. I think the mixed reviews it gets is probably from frustation by players who find it too hard or something like that. (complaining about cheaters when there's actually quite few for example). Sometimes they sit on something they want from the dev while their demand isn't really feasible (being able to pick the map you play every time while managing the player queues is complicated). They'll say they hate having a store to buy cosmetics in the game but they still want anticheating, which takes constant effort from the admins.

Maybe sometimes, a lot of players take the time to go write a negative review for their own reasons, and a lot of other players just play the game a lot and don't write a review (?). I don't think I wrote a positive review on steam for PUBG I played it for 3000hours lul.

What..? I'm pretty sure PUBG playerbase is largely fueled by China at this point and if you go and read negative reviews most seem to be about the cheating which is rampant in the game. Sure some of the people crying just have a skill issue but PUBG had to ban millions of accounts because of cheating every year.

It's really not that hard to interpret what the reviews for Civilization VII.... most of them very clearly lay out the problems they have with the game and even factoring in for the people not leaving reviews (some of whom by your own logic would be negative as well), there should be more people playing/buying.

 

[Yzman]

ive pretty much found the opposite, I feel lost playing Civ vii. im also not a mathmatical player, I make my decisions from intuition and what sounds or looks nice. but ive enjoyed and succeeded at every game since Civ 1, remembering how to get exponential scores by taking every civ's last city on the same correct turn (was it 100bc?), and loved civ vi as much as any.

but this. ive restarted about 4 times. im used to choosing a country I identify with, with a famous leader, and generally an earth based map. now im choosing someone not well known (unless its Napoleon) and a non country. and then Im clicking on things randomly without knowing what and why. pop ups ask me how to deal with mundane issues almost like id imagine a freemium civ clone on my phone to do. I cant get invested in it so far.

This game really isn't that hard to understand. I am really not sure how you aren't sure. I mean the UI is a little bit if a mess right now but it's still not that hard to understand. What specifically are you just clicking with stuff not making sense? H9w did you understand gold or culture and science in previous games but suddenly they are too tough to figure out?

And you don't know the civs and leaders? Really? Sure some are unknown but that should be good to learn new things. But you can't tell me you don't know the majority of these people... so you know Napolean but not Ben Franklin, Xerves, Augustus, Machiavelli etc? Come now.

 

[Leyrann]

Playing tall for me means 3 settlements, not 3 cities and 16 towns. And that's not something the game is offering. Otherwise you'd screw up the military legacy. You are supposed to fill the map and the AI is so passive that it's pretty easy.

Sounds to me like you just don't like the 4X recipe of eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. Or maybe you only like the first X, in which case Civ V would serve you just fine.

Ironman is when you never load a save from a previous turn to recover from any mistake you made and make a different play.

...well that wouldn't make Deity more difficult for me. I already play like that.

 

[joeycitation]

Yeah I just did a Xerxes + Persia -> Mongols playthrough and it was the first time I just decided to stop before modern age. It was fun, plenty playeble, that wasnt the problem. Problem was I tried to clear the AI closest to me (Lafayette) and did it very quickly, but halfway through Antiquity 2 other powers declared on me. Not a problem. I was wiping them, fine. Was starting to clear off the whole continent, then switch to exploration.

First time I didnt follow the objectives to expand to the new world, because I needed to clean up the old. Entire age was tedium, because Xerxes + Mongols is crazy if you get all the Persia traditions. But it was the first time I felt like I was basically playing the tedious parts of Civ5 or 6 again (only others I've played with about 500hrs in each, so not much, and playing on Viceroy) because it was clear I was going to win. Don't get me wrong, enjoyed it plenty, and the AI didn't play that bad for mid difficulty and minimal AI cheats.

But I have ~30 hours right now and did not expect to hit that kind of stride to the extent it went from fun to boringly easy win in one game.

 

[Melkus]

a Xerxes + Persia -> Mongols playthrough

I've wondered if this might suck the fun out of the game a bit at this stage. Saw some screenshots where this combination gave insanely high settlement limits in Explo. And the AI is currently not equipped to keep up with that, I think.
(Also, horse units are pretty powerful even without special bonuses.)

I think the enjoyment I feel in Civ7 comes from juggling different objectives. I always want to do several things at once, then war gets declared (the AI attacks are often toothless, but they do a good job coming at you from different sides and spring surprises like alliances) and I have to pivot to that etc.
Your setup specifically may be one that would almost require a one-dimensional game and take the life out of the game world. (There might well be some twists, haven't played it)


[Edit: This may be a general conceptual problem with raised settlement limits for aggressive civs? There's plenty of rubberbanding in the ages, but you mostly seem to keep your high limits. There's no real mechanic yet that can give a huge empire like this any kind of trouble later.)

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm doing Xerxes Persia Mongols and now into Prussia. My goal this game is to conquer the world, to see if it can be done. It's tedious as hell. Even more tedious than Civ 6, mainly because the AI builds a LOT more units, which means I need more units. I think I'll only do this once. This is a small map btw, but it's still a lot of area to cover.

Right now I'm at 26/29 settlements fairly early in the modern era. Epic speed and longer ages (though they still go by pretty quick). It's basically whack-a-mole at this point to take out any new cities that spring up. As I mentioned above, I took out my original continent/land mass in antiquity. Mongol Keshiks and knights took out most of Napolean in exploration. And now in Modern I'm going after Charlemaine Russia. After that I'll have to finish off Napolean.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Due to the nature of the victory conditions, there is really only one way to play.

I know what you mean but not sure that's right, finished my 2nd full game yesterday and ignored the pathways until the modern era. I just expanded and took out two neighbours in the Antiquity Age, consolidated and took out the remaining civ on my continent (ignored religion and had 1 island city for treasure fleets) in the Exploration Age. With 22 settlements on a continent my own I then went for the economic victory.

I do miss the various paths you could take to Culture (and Military to a certain extent) like in Civ VI but Diplomacy and Science were pretty rote. I would like to see alternative paths to victory but you can ignore them in the first two ages.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

...well that wouldn't make Deity more difficult for me. I already play like that.

Good.^^
Valid remark about difficulty btw, if one doesn't play Ironman they can have it probably much much easier than if they do. Then, is Civ7 too easy on high difficulties on Ironman? I don't know yet, my immortal 2nd game right now feels good, not finished yet.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

What..? I'm pretty sure PUBG playerbase is largely fueled by China at this point and if you go and read negative reviews most seem to be about the cheating which is rampant in the game. Sure some of the people crying just have a skill issue but PUBG had to ban millions of accounts because of cheating every year.

It's really not that hard to interpret what the reviews for Civilization VII.... most of them very clearly lay out the problems they have with the game and even factoring in for the people not leaving reviews (some of whom by your own logic would be negative as well), there should be more people playing/buying.

Well there is just alot of players in EU server as well and it's simply one of the most popular games ever, yet it has mixed reviews. Cheating exists there but the cheaters are few and far between, or even rare and always banned immediately. Last years I was encountering 1 cheater every 6 months or so, and every time banned immediately. Though last few days I think I've seen a few in a row.

 

[joeycitation]

Saw some screenshots where this combination gave insanely high settlement limits in Explo.

Yeah, being able to snowball without even thinking about settlement limit. I understand what they were going for with giving the Mongols so many civics that increase settlement limit, due to just how expansive the Mongol empire was historically, but I honestly think they'd be better off giving significant one time bonuses for razing cities, or just allow you to raze cities much faster. New settlements are already powerful enough in the game as is, and the Mongols cavalry focus already allows them to expand very quickly. And the historical angle doesnt really work that well, because even as expansive as the Mongol empire was, it was only substantially unified in a central way for ~100-200 years afaik? And fractured fairly quickly in terms of historical timescale, compared to other civilizations in game?

Regardless I don't think the settlements limit bonuses are necessary to simulate Mongolian civilization. It would probably be more interesting if that was swapped out anyway, the Mongols are known for things besides cavalry + rapid expansion, and cavalry is already very good and rapid expansion is already the "meta."