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.

 

[Nic@Melbourne]

Get ride of the attribute trees and limit the snow ball.
Adjust religion to be more like Civ 5 and 6 (but keep it in exploration)

 

[tman2000]

Get ride of the attribute trees and limit the snow ball.

Great point!!

I have wanted the commander skill upgrade to be global and integrated into the attribute tree, and then for the attribute tree to be simplified. That would indeed be a simple but impactful change.

I like this a lot.

We have two relatively simple changes:

1) Simplify the attribute tree to reduce snowballing.
2) Replace specialists with city infrastructure that incurs a food cost and builds like a wonder/project.

Both limit snowballing and also streamline features that ironically are repetitive and frustrating in a game entirely designed to limit repetition through streamlining.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I'd say getting rid of distant lands is definitely a simple but impactful change.

+1

 

[Porry]

I like the treasure resource mechanic. At most, to get rid of the distant lands issue and allow for better map generation, they could introduce a treasure resource category, without distinguishing between distant lands and homelands. Treasure resources always generate convoys that must be accompanied to the capital. This would also give weight to the choice of the capital's location.

 

[Lebo44]

Unpopular opinion probably:

The simplest starting point is revamping the UI so it no longer feels like you're testing a Beta build. Refresh the Civilopedia to make it more informative and engaging. Bring back classic features like Demographics, charts, and Top Cities, all of which date back to Civ I (super easy to implement I think). Implement strategic view to give a better overview of your empire and make district placement more pleasant. Give leaderheads more flavour, personality or depth. And improve map generation, which I believe is already underway.

 

[Siptah]

I don‘t think that’s an unpopular opinion.

Mods helped to improve the UI by a lot. A whole lot - whether additional lenses of different kinds, or the revamped city screen, policy card previous, tech tree icons, etc. But as you say, there are still things missing. Some are nice to have, while other are really important for playing the game well. For me, for example, a unit ledger.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

I don't think it can be 'fixed'.

The separate ages just breaks the whole concept of Civ.

I tried the patch where they brought in the continuity... one game.
Haven't touched it since. Probably won't unless I'm really bored.

It's just that bad, and it's too bad, as there are some good things in it.

 

[King Flevance]

I think specialists are fine, but they offer too much in return. +2 science and culture regardless of the tile is oddly too bland and too powerful to ignore. Putting a specialist on a granary and a brickyard offers 2 science and 2 culture? I would say that these tiles either not be allowed specialists (Only certain buildings like libraries, markets, amphitheaters, etc. would offer specialists) OR have unique aspects to specialists based on what building is on the tile. Placing a specialist on a garden should not offer science and culture. It should offer a noticeable food boost. The specialist yield would have a base yield based on the building (EX: Library +2 science) and the adjustment based on adjacencies. (So granary/brickyard specialist could either offer low food/production on that tile -OR- warehouse specialists offer a +1 boost to the yield on rural.) Additionally, what if the specialist went to a specific building and not just the tile. So +1 specialist limit might be what allows you to put a specialist in the 'other' building on a district and each building has a set amount of specialist slots. Specialists are dull because they are mostly just a way to boost science and culture pretty much. They do not "specialize" the city. I would keep the food and happiness cost but make sure that food and happiness specialists would need either a bonus +2 to offset their bonus or just make sure it is factored in, obviously.

Don't have things go obsolete at age transition. Just balance your game around it. We have seen it doesn't really do anything anways other than piss everyone off. It will help the game feel more "Continuous" or whole as well. Exploration and Modern techs/civics should simply cost much more. It also would help if you changed adjacency bonuses up on age transition. Perhaps science buildings and happiness buildings get a bonus to mountains in exploration and production and gold buildings now gain a bonus on resources. Leaving culture and food buildings to gain bonuses on water. This would change the dynamic each Age in regards to who has the best adjacencies for specialization.

I would also like to see some form of actual trade routes brought into the game. Not merchants copy/pasting resources - I actually kind of hate this system. First, why can't I copy my own resources and double down? It would be better to have a trade route between 2 cities and you can select a resource or 2 to pull. I would also ditch the merchant on the map and just represent the route by a "path" viewable through a lens. Having a unit step on any tile in this "path" and pillage destroys the route and takes a couple hundred gold from the owner.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Yeah, those are some other big options. Once your city starts sprawling, trying to figure out where there's hidden cliffs, which tiles units can or cannot fire between, which tiles end movement, etc... is such a pain. I'm in an urban area, should it still matter for movement whether a tile is vegetated or not? Given that I can't even tell what buildings are where, a little bit more gamey graphics where I can quickly at a glance tell which tiles are proper quarters, which have an overbuildable building, where my science buildings are, etc... would be nice changes too for me.

This is one era where 6 excelled.

So of course they changed it

 

[Siptah]

This is one era where 6 excelled.

So of course they changed it

To be fair, while 6 excelled at that, it is tied to the main critique point of civ 6: it’s cartoony graphics. The very stylized buildings with their specific colorings made it very readable, but at the same time cartoony. The more realistic looks of 7 would be ruined by color-coding with blue roofs to signal „science“ and similar things imho. 7 is very readable when you zoom in though. So the fitting solution is probably to make some of the buildings that don‘t look super unique yet (brickyards, smith, inn) look more unique and add a strategic mode. If you‘ve played 20 hours and can‘t spot the unique looking buildings like libraries, academies, lighthouses, markets, or amphitheaters at a glance, I’m not sure what you did in these 20 hours.

 

[McSpank01]

If you‘ve played 20 hours and can‘t spot the unique looking buildings like libraries, academies, lighthouses, markets, or amphitheaters at a glance, I’m not sure what you did in these 20 hours.

To be honest, no I can't spot that, but then I mainly work at a high zoom level, which I think most people do. I think the issue is that each 'district' is taken up with decorative housing. I think us humans are pretty good at pattern and shape recognition and colour recognition, but buildings in Civ 7 don't help you with either. Ok so maybe if some building types are circular and some are square and I could remember that, some are a bit blue or purple. Having loads of little houses scattered around them might make it all look like it fits together nicely, but it also makes it much harder to identify at a glance what the special building is. They break up the ability to see things quickly, to spot patterns.

I used to really dislike the cartoony style of Civ 6, but wow do I appreciate it now. That I could see if a district had a bank and a market on, without even looking directly at it, that is good design. Sure it doesn't feel very realistic, but it worked.

You don't know what you had till it's gone unfortunately.

 

[tman2000]

To be honest, no I can't spot that, but then I mainly work at a high zoom level, which I think most people do. I think the issue is that each 'district' is taken up with decorative housing.

Big flaw in the basic design for 7.

The sprawl of it demands a zoomed out view. However, the visuals are designed to be viewed zoomed in. It's a diorama, but it plays like a board game. The two concepts don't match.

It's as if the visuals decisions and design decisions were made separately, each team did their work, their results came back independently and looked good to corporate, but the final thing is a mess.

What still boggles my mind is with all the investment in a diorama style visuals, that they have no camera mode to take screenshots. A marketing no brainer in the social media age.

There's just something very wrong with 7, just incoherent at the core.

 

[Leucarum]

Some small tweaks I think would go a long way.

Cities (except your capital) take 2 settlement limit. Town/City split isn't a big enough deal. Micromanagement gets too much mid-exploration. Less buildings = less yeilds = slower snowballing. We really should be playing with more towns and less citiies IMO.

Reduce cavalry defence to lower than infantry. There needs to be a downside to cavalry. Or whatever you prefer here. It really doesn't matter too much what Firaxis choose as much as that they choose something meaningful.

Narrative events added to all civs in subsequent eras after you switch for them to "keep their influence alive."

Change all "per city state" bonuses to a flat value. The relative value of city states over endeavours is really out of whack. This would help a lot and help reduce yeild explosion somewhat.

Make AIs less willing to accept cities which are far away in peace deals.

 

[Giskler]

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!

I can't play the game without the aging warehouses mod. It's a change I hope they make to the base game as I detest the ageless warehouse buildings.

 

[Atlas627]

I think specialists are fine, but they offer too much in return. +2 science and culture regardless of the tile is oddly too bland and too powerful to ignore. Putting a specialist on a granary and a brickyard offers 2 science and 2 culture? I would say that these tiles either not be allowed specialists (Only certain buildings like libraries, markets, amphitheaters, etc. would offer specialists) OR have unique aspects to specialists based on what building is on the tile. Placing a specialist on a garden should not offer science and culture. It should offer a noticeable food boost. The specialist yield would have a base yield based on the building (EX: Library +2 science) and the adjustment based on adjacencies. (So granary/brickyard specialist could either offer low food/production on that tile -OR- warehouse specialists offer a +1 boost to the yield on rural.) Additionally, what if the specialist went to a specific building and not just the tile. So +1 specialist limit might be what allows you to put a specialist in the 'other' building on a district and each building has a set amount of specialist slots. Specialists are dull because they are mostly just a way to boost science and culture pretty much. They do not "specialize" the city. I would keep the food and happiness cost but make sure that food and happiness specialists would need either a bonus +2 to offset their bonus or just make sure it is factored in, obviously.

I completely agree with this. Get rid of the base yields and go back to fully doubling the adjacency yields like they suggested in preview interviews. If the AI sucks at that then you can let them keep some of the base yields.

Some small tweaks I think would go a long way.

Cities (except your capital) take 2 settlement limit. Town/City split isn't a big enough deal. Micromanagement gets too much mid-exploration. Less buildings = less yeilds = slower snowballing. We really should be playing with more towns and less citiies IMO.

Reduce cavalry defence to lower than infantry. There needs to be a downside to cavalry. Or whatever you prefer here. It really doesn't matter too much what Firaxis choose as much as that they choose something meaningful.

Narrative events added to all civs in subsequent eras after you switch for them to "keep their influence alive."

Change all "per city state" bonuses to a flat value. The relative value of city states over endeavours is really out of whack. This would help a lot and help reduce yeild explosion somewhat.

Make AIs less willing to accept cities which are far away in peace deals.

I agree with all of these ideas, though I feel like there must be a more elegant way to make Cities/Towns be more different without making the Settlement Limit hard to calculate, and I like the "per city-state" boni but they are horribly balanced (so just add a maximum and balance them around that).

I think a small change that would help a ton is to give more color to the building models. The shapes are consistent but bold color is more distinctive at a glance.

@tman2000 Btw, you can quote multiple people by using the +Quote button instead of the Reply button, then Adding the Quotes to your post with the button under your typing box.