What Are The Simplest Big (Impact), But Minor (Few) Changes That Might Fix Civ 7?

[tman2000]

That also ties into one of my other major criticisms of the game, the grey / brown sludge that the map turns into when you get urban sprawl. It is very difficult to make out building types at a glance, so at the very least, some sort of coloured roof or flags or borders to signify which type of building is where would help.

While later age buildings are taller, they don't quite pop enough to show that clearly.

I think they need to just add a dim/brightness effect to clearly distinguish new buildings from older ones, and as many have said: some color coding to match function and other visual distinctions.

The BIGGEST problem visually, and this is so endemic of Civ 7, is that the design language requires close up views of the cities, but the game design wants you zoomed out a lot. Talk about inadequate forethought. They came up with a look but didn't design it around how the game is handled and played.

At a MINIMUM there should at least be a camera mode with full freedom of movement to do screenshots and enjoy the visual assets and your unique cities. But the game is very intent on forcing you to see the big brown blob.

 

[tman2000]

I do think sprawl is something they also need to fix before too long. I haven't tried it out, but I remember seeing one of the mods which basically converted the warehouse buildings to not count in urban districts, and I think that makes 100% sense. Give each tile room for 2 normal buildings plus 1 warehouse building (like we add walls to an urban tile), and you eliminate a decent amount of sprawl. In a more perfect world, I'd consider raising the building limit per era (2 in antiquity, 3 exploration, and 4 in modern), but that might be too hard on the UI. Just hiding the warehouse buildings IMO is ok.

I think they could do a business model where you buy a rehaul of an age for $30. One age at a time. Modern age just needs a complete rehaul, including visually.

 

[tman2000]

Warehouse buildings are actually a quite annoying concept. They are ageless and end up just taking up space and feel annoying in subsequent ages. I like the idea of making them invisible, or maybe the ability to build them in your city centre. Honestly the more I think about it the more I like city centres and districts!

When the look of Civ 7 was first revealed and all we could see was some urban buildings in a faded periphery of an info screen, some of us were wondering if the game would feature almost some city building elements. We were all for it.

The idea would be to have robust districts where multiple buildings (3-6 or something like that) would complement each other and based on the arrangement create unique districts. Like an academy and military fort would create a "military academy" district which would then have effects on further buildings placed there, and add unique adjacency effects. Something like that. Oh well.