You'll be disappointed to find out that the elements that turned you away the first time are still more or less there. Assuming these are no longer dealbreakers for you, here are some major improvements since launch I think you and others in a similar position might care about.
Viable Exploration age
I'd argue the Exploration age was unplayable at launch and remained so for a long time. Until the recent naval updates, I basically had spent probably under 10 hours (compared to ~500? for Antiquity) in Exploration. I attribute my reluctance to play Exploration to the following factors:
- Terrible map generation
- Poor balancing
- Boring religion mechanism
- Bad performance
Regarding map generation, the original default script (I can't remember if we even had other options) generated pathetically small Distant Lands island chains, predictably spawning in between the two big continents. You'd think that the Exploration age should be all about finding exciting previously uncharted land to colonize, but that wasn't the case until recently. Now, I'm happy to report that map generation is no longer a concern for me for Civ 7. They've added many more scripts, including the new default Continents and Islands, which tends to generate much more interesting land masses.
The devs have made many balancing tweaks since launch, and I think the re-balancing around gold in particular has been effective in making it more difficult to snowball so quickly that the Exploration age is over in a flash. It can still happen especially if you had a good Antiquity with an overpowered setup (e.g. Hatshepsut with Egypt), and in general, I'd say the Exploration age is still rushed compared to Antiquity, but it's not nearly as egregious as before.
Religion is still terrible. I think it's received a couple retouches since launch, but fundamentally, it's a lazy adaptation of an extremely unpopular mechanism from the previous game. I'm seeing a decent amount of evidence that sweeping changes to improve religion are around the corner, but that's obviously just copium that I trust savvy consumers to stay clear of.
This is based solely on anecdotal evidence, but the game has been feeling a lot snappier for me lately. I used to experience almost intolerable amounts of lag in the latter half of the Exploration age, but not so much lately.
More civs
For me, the most disappointing pre-launch news about Civ 7 was that it would feature just 10 civs in Antiquity. Early on, I couldn't help but feel that every single game felt the same largely because each game featured more or less the same set of civs as the previous one. It was exacerbated by the observation that there appeared to be a very predictable leader-civ pairing algorithm in play, meaning that, for instance, Augustus would almost always lead Rome, Himiko Khmer, etc. Things are better now with 14 civs in Antiquity, and I've also lately noticed more unexpected pairings, although I have no concrete evidence that there's more at play than just the fact that there are more civs now to map each leader to. Transitioning into Exploration is more exciting now, too, largely because of factors I discussed above, but also because there are just more options to choose from. In the past, I would often feel like none of the available options was interesting enough for me to choose.
Better balancing and stronger civ identities
I know I already talked about balancing improvements already, but I wanted to point out some that don't concern the Exploration age exclusively. Early on, there were some glaring balancing problems that made the game boring. Food was extremely underpowered, making the decision not to build food buildings trivial and leaders and civs with food bonuses very unattractive. Certain city state bonuses were so overpowered that one felt obliged to ally as many of them as possible, rather than playing into the strengths of the civ and leader they're playing as. I don't think either of these problems exist any more, and the game overall feels quite tightly balanced, although as I'll discuss later, I still see some room for improvement.
With the recent strategic balance passes, there has been a clear focus on re-designing many of the civs so that they play like you'd expect them to play. Egypt is a good example. At launch, you could see what the devs were trying to do, but it just didn't make sense to play Egypt the way it was intended to be played, which is to build many wonders, utilizing production bonuses from navigable rivers. This was partly because of general balancing issues that made navigable rivers underpowered, but also Egypt's bonuses didn't feel significant enough. Egypt is now fun to play. It might be a tad overpowered, but it definitely feels like Egypt.
Tides of Power collection is free for now
Not really an improvement to the game itself per se, but I wanted to point out that, when the special offer ends in January, this collection will be given a price tag of around $30, judging by the pricing of the other two collections.
Finally, some critical problems that remain:
Modern age is still terrible
The Modern age was never fun to play and it still remains that way. The effects of the balancing improvements that made Exploration viable haven't really reached Modern in a meaningful way. Similar to Exploration's religion mechanism, Modern-exclusive features of manufacturing and archaeology are just boring.
User experience is better but still unacceptable
With the help of UI mods, I'd say the UX is now tolerable were it not for the game's price tag. Basic UI features like hot keys for commonly used lenses are missing. The decision to implement a mobile-friendly UI on a PC game continues to baffle me. Things are still hard to see.
Balancing
This is a fairly minor point because I'm overall fairly content with how the game is balanced, but I do still see at least one significant issue, relating to how overpowered warehouse buildings are. I wouldn't mention this bit if I thought the devs were heading in the right direction, but the recent changes actually made warehouses more overpowered than before, and I can't help but feel that the devs are doing that in an ill-advised attempt to compensate for some other problems the game has.
Repetitive gameplay
This is a point I've made multiple times on this site. I think Civ 7's biggest problem is that the three ages feel like one single game being played out three times. In terms of gameplay, not enough changes from one age to the next. The age-exclusive features we do see include Exploration's treasure convoys and religion and Modern's manufacturing and archaeology. All of these are terrible. With the addition of piracy, we've seen a small improvement to the treasure convoy gameplay, but honestly, it's not enough.
End of age anti-climax
I'm really not a fan of how the game expects you to attempt at every single legacy path in every single age in every single playthrough. Not only does that make the game feel repetitive, it also means that you find yourself doing "chores" in the latter stages of each age when really the game should celebrate your win already and move on to the next age.
This point is particularly concerning to me because I remember, fairly early on, the devs mentioned that they were working on victory conditions for the earlier ages, but I've not seen any update on that since. When they added the Great Library wonder, they mentioned that the reason for its delayed introduction is that it had to be re-purposed multiple times. I think the devs' earlier intention might've been to make the Great Library play a key role in the Antiquity science victory (dare I say similar to what I proposed
here), and if that's indeed the case, I'm not hopeful that the much needed victory conditions are not arriving any time soon.
Having said all that, I've been enjoying the game since launch and now approaching 900 hours. In March, my recommendation would have basically been: "If you're looking for other people's review, you'll probably be disappointed with the purchase". Now, with the 35% discount and the free collection, I think a lot more people will find it to be a reasonable purchase.
