The Truly Unfinished Features of Civ7

[gbw]

I have more hours than I would like to admit in Civ7, and thought about some core game features that are unfinished, even 6 months after launch:

1. Religion - This one really is baffling because it's so obviously incomplete, I'm surprised they left in what they did. There's clearly room for two more beliefs (that cannot currently be unlocked), and religion is completely obsolete (and cities cannot be converted) in the modern age. As Exploration-focused feature that loses all relevance during the age transition.
   
   
2. Espionage - They've similarly built in some forms of espionage here with about 8 different actions in the modern age, but it feels like a placeholder for a more developed system. We don't need spies as units as we've had in previous franchises, but to have the sole option of counter-spying at a 30% success rate to stop adversaries from stealing techs or executing operations is a very half-implemented feature set. It's a very one-sided way to spend influence right now that has no counter.
   
   
3. Trade / Negotiations - I'm going to bucket these two together because it's essentially the same system with the same issues. Can we create trade routes to obtain resources? Yes. Can we trade those resources for others, or gold / influence / etc.? No. Similarly in negotiations (e.g. Peace) the sole option is let's make peace and I can give or take a city. Again, no gold, resources, or anything else can be bartered here, just city / towns.

An honorable mention to Great Works here. I'm not sure what the long term strategy is for these, but completely losing relics and whatnot as you switch ages (while keeping the buildings) makes no sense to me at least. They can reduce the bonuses, but IMO they should be saved off in another tab or something as items that are still bound to the cities.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Those features need improvements, like most part of the game, but I strongly disagree with the word "unfinished":

Religion from gameplay perspective is an exploration age culture mechanics. And from historical perspective it's totally ok too, because realistically the role of religion spread fallen in modern and we generally deal with religion setups established in exploration age. Post effects of religion on the next age are actually nice and with some beliefs are totally worth chasing.

Making religion more impactful in later ages (whether 1 or 2 later) is potentially possible, but without religion spread it doesn't make more sense and religion spread doesn't make much sense without bigger functions like cultural legacy path. And again, it won't fit the theme of modern age. So, the current state of religion totally fits the concepts of Civ7 and while it will probably have some small adjustments, I don't see any meaningful significant changes before an expansion affecting different areas of gameplay.

Espionage in Civ7 is the best in series. It's deeply tied to other systems through influence, it doesn't allow any game breaking actions, has strong effects, clear defense and no micromanagement. Again, there could be some small improvements, but the foundation is fantastic.

I'll separate the last one, because trade is more like trade routes in Civ 5 and 6, but much more powerful. Resource system itself is great. On top of this, trade is deeply rooted into diplomacy, with influence cost to increase trade route number, affected by relations with the civilization, plus risks of war threatening trade. Again, I should say Civ7 has the best trade system in series.

Negotiations are lacking options and I totally agree with you here, but it's not unfinished, it's a deliberate choice from developers. They wanted to avoid micromanagement and exploits so they limited the number of options on purpose, leaving only strong decisions. At the beginning AI was unable to handle well even those negotiations, though, but now it works fine. I'd definitely want to see more options during peace talk for more nuanced deals, but I totally understand developer concerns, so that's again in the area of "improvements", not "finishing".

 

[Siptah]

I actually like trade as is. I considered it horrible in V and VI, on top of incredibly annoying.

More options in peace deals (gold per turn / lump sum of influence / techs & civics, to be precise) would be great, but I think that is not tied to trade at all – and shouldn't be.

 

[gbw]

Those features need improvements, like most part of the game, but I strongly disagree with the word "unfinished":

Religion from gameplay perspective is an exploration age culture mechanics. And from historical perspective it's totally ok too, because realistically the role of religion spread fallen in modern and we generally deal with religion setups established in exploration age. Post effects of religion on the next age are actually nice and with some beliefs are totally worth chasing.

Making religion more impactful in later ages (whether 1 or 2 later) is potentially possible, but without religion spread it doesn't make more sense and religion spread doesn't make much sense without bigger functions like cultural legacy path. And again, it won't fit the theme of modern age. So, the current state of religion totally fits the concepts of Civ7 and while it will probably have some small adjustments, I don't see any meaningful significant changes before an expansion affecting different areas of gameplay.

Espionage in Civ7 is the best in series. It's deeply tied to other systems through influence, it doesn't allow any game breaking actions, has strong effects, clear defense and no micromanagement. Again, there could be some small improvements, but the foundation is fantastic.

I'll separate the last one, because trade is more like trade routes in Civ 5 and 6, but much more powerful. Resource system itself is great. On top of this, trade is deeply rooted into diplomacy, with influence cost to increase trade route number, affected by relations with the civilization, plus risks of war threatening trade. Again, I should say Civ7 has the best trade system in series.

Negotiations are lacking options and I totally agree with you here, but it's not unfinished, it's a deliberate choice from developers. They wanted to avoid micromanagement and exploits so they limited the number of options on purpose, leaving only strong decisions. At the beginning AI was unable to handle well even those negotiations, though, but now it works fine. I'd definitely want to see more options during peace talk for more nuanced deals, but I totally understand developer concerns, so that's again in the area of "improvements", not "finishing".

• The modern age starts in 1750, I disagree that it's accurate from a historical perspective that religion had no impact from that point forward. To what post effects of religion are you referring? Clearly there's two more belief systems to be unlocked though, so more must be coming.
  
  
• Perhaps best Espionage support is subjective, I suppose there is a spectrum of desired input from micromanagement to single click Ronco food dehydrator set it and forget it. What is the "clear defense" to espionage? The 30% RNG?
  
  
• Trade must be an opinion on micromanagement as well, for me less options makes it worse, but I understand it's simplified.

 

[MrRadar]

1. Religion - This one really is baffling because it's so obviously incomplete, I'm surprised they left in what they did. There's clearly room for two more beliefs (that cannot currently be unlocked), and religion is completely obsolete (and cities cannot be converted) in the modern age. As Exploration-focused feature that loses all relevance during the age transition.

Apparently, you can unlock those two beliefs, "through gameplay", as the UI says

Third belief is unlocked when you reach 80% of global conversion or so, and I did that. The 4th belief still escapes me, although I think there was a post on Reddit, where one poster claimed unlocking all 4 beliefs after reaching 100 % global conversion. I can say that this is some effort and, of course, raw and brute busywork. The system is just awfully tedious in this respect.

However, religion does not lose all relevance in Modern, it can be quite a kicker for your selected VC. Toshakana GA allows you to keep the effects of one belief after transition, and things like Shamanism or Reincarnation can supply you with quite an amount of culture or science right from the start of Modern, if you worked hard enough with missionaries in Exploration. There's one for influence also, I just forget the name now, and when you get +150 influence per turn, give or take, as of turn 1 in Modern, you can scoop up the majority of those IP quite quickly. So there is a reward of religion in Modern, it is just you might lose the will to live while working for it during Exploration.

 

[UWHabs]

Religion I am ok calling it unfinished, since it's not a good system right now. If you're going to give it its own culture tree, at least give me like 4-5 items on there.

I don't hate that it's exploration-era only. I do think modern society being much more ideology-based makes a lot more sense than having religion still relevant. But the current system is pretty rudimentary otherwise, and needs some big TLC. It's almost to the point where I'd rather not have it in at all, if not for half the legacies in that era needing it.

Espionage and Trade just need a little bit more work to balance out, but they're hardly "unfinished". The trade system honestly is one of the better ones of the series, being truly influenced by player relations more than any other iteration of the series to date. Yeah, again, I wouldn't mind a few tweaks (still not a massive fan of permanent copies of resources).

And I don't mind the espionage, other than it being more or less hidden from view and I just constantly forget about it until I get notified that someone stole something. I don't want to go back to spies.

I don't hate the current limitations in peace deals - past games it was too easy to fleece civs for everything, although the current one it's still too easy to get cities back in a deal. The parts that I want more than anything is more negotiation after the fact. Like let me return a city to someone 10 turns after we signed the peace deal because I don't want to worry about it anymore in my empire. And please, for the love of all things holy, don't let civs trade away cities in a peace deal that are being sieged by someone else. I just had another case where I had a city surrounded and was attacking it, but then Tubman gave it away to Napoleon in the peace deal, so all my units were shoved away. Frankly, I wouldn't hate it if they just gave up the ability to give away settlements in peace deals that weren't conquered.

 

[gbw]

Apparently, you can unlock those two beliefs, "through gameplay", as the UI says

Third belief is unlocked when you reach 80% of global conversion or so, and I did that. The 4th belief still escapes me, although I think there was a post on Reddit, where one poster claimed unlocking all 4 beliefs after reaching 100 % global conversion. I can say that this is some effort and, of course, raw and brute busywork. The system is just awfully tedious in this respect.

However, religion does not lose all relevance in Modern, it can be quite a kicker for your selected VC. Toshakana GA allows you to keep the effects of one belief after transition, and things like Shamanism or Reincarnation can supply you with quite an amount of culture or science right from the start of Modern, if you worked hard enough with missionaries in Exploration. There's one for influence also, I just forget the name now, and when you get +150 influence per turn, give or take, as of turn 1 in Modern, you can scoop up the majority of those IP quite quickly. So there is a reward of religion in Modern, it is just you might lose the will to live while working for it during Exploration.

I learned something new today! Even on the lower levels, the AI seems to pump out missionaries, 80% even on a tiny map is gonna be a pretty tough grind considering distant land cities factor in to this I'm guessing as well. I doubt the juice is worth the squeeze on that 3rd belief with no formal Religion victory path at this point in the game.

 

[stealth_nsk]

• The modern age starts in 1750, I disagree that it's accurate from a historical perspective that religion had no impact from that point forward. To what post effects of religion are you referring? Clearly there's two more belief systems to be unlocked though, so more must be coming.

Nobody said anything about "no impact". Religion does have impact in modern age. It's just that the religion spread is not that important theme of history anymore.

• Perhaps best Espionage support is subjective, I suppose there is a spectrum of desired input from micromanagement to single click Ronco food dehydrator set it and forget it.

Yes, it's subjective, but it's not my point whether it's best or not. My point is that calling it unfinished is wrong.

• What is the "clear defense" to espionage? The 30% RNG?

The counterspy action.

• Trade must be an opinion on micromanagement as well, for me less options makes it worse, but I understand it's simplified.

Options are good when they lead to meaningful decisions. Options, which don't lead to meaningful decisions are micromanagement. Milking trade deals for a couple of additional gold in Civ6 is not a meaningful decision. Selling your resources isn't a meaningful decision either.

 

[gbw]

The counterspy action.

The other stuff can be subjective, but in your opinion a tactic with a 70% failure rate for each action is a clear defense?

 

[Krikkit1]

I'll separate the last one, because trade is more like trade routes in Civ 5 and 6, but much more powerful. Resource system itself is great. On top of this, trade is deeply rooted into diplomacy, with influence cost to increase trade route number, affected by relations with the civilization, plus risks of war threatening trade. Again, I should say Civ7 has the best trade system in series.

Negotiations are lacking options and I totally agree with you here, but it's not unfinished, it's a deliberate choice from developers. They wanted to avoid micromanagement and exploits so they limited the number of options on purpose, leaving only strong decisions. At the beginning AI was unable to handle well even those negotiations, though, but now it works fine. I'd definitely want to see more options during peace talk for more nuanced deals, but I totally understand developer concerns, so that's again in the area of "improvements", not "finishing".

I prefer the Influence based Propose->Accept/Support/Reject style of diplomacy as opposed to the Horse trading style.

That is a MUCH better model for Trade and Diplomacy in terms of making a functional game.

They definitely could improve it (like getting trade income from trade units that pass through your territory not just the one's going to it)... or letting someone else use your settlements as trade links to get somewhere farther. But those are probably the best of the Basic systems.

 

[phoenixician]

Apparently, you can unlock those two beliefs, "through gameplay", as the UI says

Third belief is unlocked when you reach 80% of global conversion or so, and I did that. The 4th belief still escapes me, although I think there was a post on Reddit, where one poster claimed unlocking all 4 beliefs after reaching 100 % global conversion. I can say that this is some effort and, of course, raw and brute busywork. The system is just awfully tedious in this respect.
...

It is completely random. I was able to unlock the fourth belief yesterday at 86%.

 

[Leucarum]

I like trade and esionage in 7. The new resource system is fun and espionage tied into influence is a good call. There's room for more in both but they're fun as is.

Religion is very underbaked but has it ever actually been baked in a civ game? Feels like this would have been a much better choice of system for a dramatic shakeup than what they did pick in 7.

Negotiations definitely need more options of things to trade.

 

[Krikkit1]

It is completely random. I was able to unlock the fourth belief yesterday at 86%.

Apparently in the files it is
Extra Founder1: Convert Majority(or all?) of a DL civ and a majority of your civ
Extra Founder2: Convert a Majority of All civs (possibly including CS)

Which means you would never unlock the "2nd Founder" if playing on Pangea or with a low number of civs
... and if it is 100% of the DL civ then that can be hard to reach.

 

[GeoGeo]

We have Soren Johnson on record regretting the negotiating table in Civ. It's a matter of taste, but it's a valid design choice to remove it. Trade as a whole could be deeper, but I'm willing to call it streamlined rather than outright incomplete.

Espionage ought to be deep enough to at least justify its own panel. I like the framework, just needs more options. Too easy to forget about it.

My big sticking points are religion and city-states. Basically "What if the Civ 6 versions, but stripped for parts?" Those are the two core features that feel outright amateurish rather than a contentious design choice.

 

[phoenixician]

Apparently in the files it is
Extra Founder1: Convert Majority(or all?) of a DL civ and a majority of your civ
Extra Founder2: Convert a Majority of All civs (possibly including CS)

Which means you would never unlock the "2nd Founder" if playing on Pangea or with a low number of civs
... and if it is 100% of the DL civ then that can be hard to reach.

Where is this file? I.e what is the exact code line? Also, what exactly is "majority"?

 

[King Flevance]

Religion - Mechanically, religion has always been absurd. Religion and state government sometimes would coincide but often were at odds. Religion, to be "historically accurate" needs to be both a nuisance to the player and a boon based on your government style and gameplay objectives. Religion should almost be a mechanic that spreads itself and influences the map itself and you may try to help, at the risk of upsetting another autonomous religion.

As stated, religion is a cultural device for a victory mechanic, a cheap bland one IMO especially due to everyone getting one for themselves. It is a bare bones model for sure but I would rather either see it treated as its own entity (not player controlled) or be bare bones. I would however, like to see it pulled away from the primary tool used in cultural victories. Great Artists with Great Works should make a return. Now, with narrative events, I feel like cultural victory could get interesting by having mechanics that have players able to build their civ to be a cultural powerhouse and fighting for Great Works through a strategy, not like codices in masteries. For example, it could be interesting if you could divert culture (or science) away from civic (or tech) research and instead into "artistic encouragement" to race for great works (Codices) or Great Artists. Once all of the Great works are "founded" you get half of any invested culture back. You could even have access to investing in different ones locked behind a tech or a civic. I have always preferred the idea of tourism as a mechanic for cultural victory just not how it has been implemented. You could have military victories offer Artifacts along with archeologists that grant a small bit of culture. But in modern, all of this would have tourism ratings. You would then have to spend influence to run endeavors that would basically be a global propaganda campaign gaining boosts to your tourism. At like 3 different thresholds, you would unlock the ability to build 3 different resorts in cities X tourism rating. Then you could build the "World Fair" or "World Resort" or whatever.

Espionage - I will even go a bit further here and say influence as a whole. I initially thought that influence was going to be a better upgraded version of "diplomatic favor" but instead it is a different but very basic system. Diplomacy, as a whole, needs invested in with the influence idea. Espionage specifically might be nice to see "spy networks" return so you could do "establish spy" endeavor on Confucius and say 15 turns from now, you now have a 'spy network' established with Confucius and he does not know you have a network, it only shows up for you in diplomacy. This network raises your odds of success on espionage endeavors against him. Now, running "Canary Trap" on someone would destroy any spy network they have and maybe also takes 15 turns. In 15 turns you will be notified if a network was destroyed or that you found nothing. If there is a network, it will always be destroyed and both leaders will be notified. It would be a game of cat and mouse while not really knowing who is spying on you. Then have a "Counter espionage" endeavor would lower the success rate of anyone without an already established spy by 30% for 30 turns as well as immediately double any espionage endeavors currently against you and drop their chances of success down by 15%.


Trade/Negotiations - I agree that this mostly needs a new model. For wartime, I think that influence needs to be offered during peace deals but only in set amounts not as a currency. One amount being the same price as an endeavor. Another equal to the cost of befriending an independent. The AI should favor giving influence over cities unless it is desperate.
- I also think that Independant's should be able to be "bought out" from underneath you at double the influence cost. The free tech/civic reward for befriending an independent needs removed from the game. I have tried it modded and it greatly evens out the power dynamic between city states. Commerce and Military independents suddenly feel a lot more valuable to your agenda.
- Trade routes should not be a free grab bag of resources. There are so many ways they could reimplement trade that defining one in this post would be futile because it would be like pulling a chip from a whole bag and using it as a prime example. But I will say that as charming as this system was initially, I don't care for it. I feel like trade routes should generate mostly gold and influence and maybe 1 or 2 resources per route. Maybe 1 or 2 resources per age - per route.
Diplomacy is a big topic and this game is very unique in its approach to it compared to the games before it. I like the influence concept and feel it has a lot of potential, but I haven't had many good ideas, I think, as to how to plug more into it yet. I would very much like to see trade and diplomacy detailed out but it could go in a few bad directions (for my tastes) too.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Religion is my "top choice" here, but for a different, mechanical reason: The current system is just not fun. It's the same MM hell as in Civ6, but stripped down by removing everything that did give this minigame in the past some depth (like different units, religious combat, faith ecomony, passive pressure having impact, more granular belief systems for the population by keeping track of each citizen). I still question how that missionary-whack-a-mole fits in Civ7 supposed picture "of less, but bigger and more meaningful clicks/decisions"...and that leads me to the impression that this is just a prime example of an "unfinished feature" (missing time/resources to get it right, but the felt need to "have it" to be able to mark it on the feature checklist)

 

[Foulweather]

I learned something new today! Even on the lower levels, the AI seems to pump out missionaries, 80% even on a tiny map is gonna be a pretty tough grind considering distant land cities factor in to this I'm guessing as well. I doubt the juice is worth the squeeze on that 3rd belief with no formal Religion victory path at this point in the game.

In a recent game I tried to convert the world, and I made it to ~95% -- But it's hard to keep track of the AI missionaries and they can convert a city quickly, and so I kept losing random cities in different parts of the world (sometimes my cap!) and only ever unlocked the 3rd belief. So tedious, not worth it.

 

[UWHabs]

We have Soren Johnson on record regretting the negotiating table in Civ. It's a matter of taste, but it's a valid design choice to remove it. Trade as a whole could be deeper, but I'm willing to call it streamlined rather than outright incomplete.

Espionage ought to be deep enough to at least justify its own panel. I like the framework, just needs more options. Too easy to forget about it.

My big sticking points are religion and city-states. Basically "What if the Civ 6 versions, but stripped for parts?" Those are the two core features that feel outright amateurish rather than a contentious design choice.

Some parts of the city-states I like - it's a competition with other diplomatic actions, you have a fun little race to win. But I do wish it was a little deeper, there were ways to flip them. And please, please, please, give me an option when I recapture an IP, to liberate it back to an IP.

But yeah, the negotiation side, I think in the past it was too easy to trade things, the whole "hey, give me 500 gold for this resource" only for you to turn around and declare war on them, etc.. Sure, you could not do it, but when they give you the option, there's always that chance.

 

[uppi]

Some parts of the city-states I like - it's a competition with other diplomatic actions, you have a fun little race to win. But I do wish it was a little deeper, there were ways to flip them. And please, please, please, give me an option when I recapture an IP, to liberate it back to an IP.

I actually like that when the race is over, it is over. In Civ VI, I hated having to check whether I need to drop in another envoy every few turns. in Civ VII, you just need to check those which you competing for right now. And with ages, it is not like you keep them forever, anyway.

But I completely agree that I would really like to have an option to liberate a city state.