What is the "newbie" civilization for VII

[dagriggstar]

I think VII is looking like the hardest new civilization game to learn since .... maybe civ II because I don't remember there being a tutorial and just running around with a settler not knowing what to do ? Feels like there is just so many bonuses to know about this time around. Anyway there's no civ VI Rome "just build new cities" option anymore, since all factions have unique culture trees to be unlocked.

Based on my experiences with introducing new players to civ I find adjacency planning a difficult concept for them to understand. New players are likely to avoid war for fear of making a mistake and getting wiped out or whatever. Wonder building again requires a level of planning (knowing what's good, what goes where etc) that a new player doesn't have. Interactions with independent peoples are likely to be wildly different game to game, so that's probably not a good starting point either. Finally the new trade system will probably require knowledge on what resources are "good" and some amount of micro so bonuses there are kinda out too.
That list above kind of leaves Rome and Han as the two best civilizations to start with.

I can still kind of see two buildings with different adjacencies to create a unique quarter as being a strange concept for a new player to get their head around. Would a new player just place buildings to max out the initial adjacency with no future planning ? I mean probably ? Outside of that Rome seems relatively straight forward ?
The Han have the Shi Dafu but they are random so I don't see a real strategy there. The most difficult thing will probably be using influence, but maybe for a new player just having influence banked isn't a bad thing.

 

[gdr_willter]

Not clear for peace, but Persia for war seems the obvious choice.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

maybe civ II because I don't remember there being a tutorial and just running around with a settler not knowing what to do ?

Civ 2 had a big, beautiful manual that explained how to play. I think it might have been part of the copy protection, but I may be misremembering.

I expect you are right, that Civ 7 will be tougher to learn than past versions, simply because there's more and more things to learn. That's been a continual theme since Civ 1, I think (although there may be an argument that Civ 5 was less complex than Civ 4).

 

[Sephi]

I think Civ7 will be the easiest civ game to learn because as a new player you do not need to mess with campaign mode. Just play the first age and pick low difficulty setting. Also you can always watch a streamer and learn the game that way, an option that did not exist for earlier civ games where you had to figure out a lot by yourself.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Old World has some tutorials to work through. I remember playing the tutorial for Civ IV, but I don't remember if I did for Civ V. Having already played Civ V and BERT, I didn't even bother looking for a tutorial for Civ VI. Is there one?

 

[gdr_willter]

Old World has some tutorials to work through. I remember playing the tutorial for Civ IV, but I don't remember if I did for Civ V. Having already played Civ V and BERT, I didn't even bother looking for a tutorial for Civ VI. Is there one?

Well, of course there is. But I also didn't played it.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Other games have simple Campaigns to introduce the game, like Anno 1800's campaign (which I admit, I've never played - dodging Game Tutorials must be a CivFanatics thing). One of these can 'walk' a new gamer through most of the game's concepts in a relatively few turns, and I suspect such a Tutorial Campaign would be a Very Good Thing for Civ VII.

The problem with just starting in with a Newbie Civ is that you can't: you also have to pick a Newbie Leader, and the leader may be completely unrelated to the Civ: I suspect the biggest disconnect for a starting player will be the idea of playing Augustus of Egypt or Hatshepsut of Han China. Once you can get their minds wrapped around that, you've got 150+ turns to get them used to the basic game concepts before springing Crisis and Swapping Civs on them.

Compressing all that into a Campaign that covers, say, initial choosing of a Civ and Leader through building the first City and developing it, exploring the map, building Towns and upgrading them, Combat, and Crisis. After that, they can be turned loose on the full game to sink or swim on their own.

 

[Nic@Melbourne]

The point system is more newbie friendly, deemphasizes min-maxing

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

I think Khmer is the most newbie friendly option. Pretty straightforward bonuses to growth and specialists from which everything else naturally follows.

 

[Siptah]

I think Khmer is the most newbie friendly option. Pretty straightforward bonuses to growth and specialists from which everything else naturally follows.

Yes. Civs with UI and without great people seem easier. And Khmer‘s bonuses are newbie friendly, including the no harm from floods and keeping yields from under districts.

 

[Fummy]

Not clear for peace, but Persia for war seems the obvious choice.

That's what I thought when I saw Persia's flat combat bonus to "infantry units" and Xerxes' leader bonus to increased combat for all units in enemy/neutral territory. Kind of noobie bonuses since you don't really have to think or plan anything to use them, which is fine but not very interesting right? Most fighting with be outside of your territory and assuming infantry units are as good as they are in Civ 6 these are kind of automatic. I can see fighting against Persia being kind of annoying for this reason, especially if the AI still gets a +4 from difficulty as well and they may be a unit ahead of you in the tech tree.

Something more interesting would be a unit strength malus but production bonus, so you can make a massive army thats weaker but makes up for it with size. Maybe not how most historians see the Persian empire but thats how they are portrayed in popular culture.

 

[_hero_]

That list above kind of leaves Rome and Han as the two best civilizations to start with.

Rome definitely has a lot of newbie potential. The one concern is most of their bonuses rely on not converting towns to cities so it is possible to mess yourself up, but it is more likely newbies will forget to upgrade their towns to cities anyway which might make Rome their best choice.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Egypt. +1 production on Navigable Rivers is about as simple as bonuses get, and that extra little bit of prod will allow you to learn the game more easily.

 

[Leucarum]

I feel like the trade oriented civs have felt the simplest just based on civ abilities, so I'm tempted to say Aksum... I guess we don't know if resource management could get particularly complex though.

 

[CivKirk64]

Civ 2 had a big, beautiful manual that explained how to play. I think it might have been part of the copy protection, but I may be misremembering.

I expect you are right, that Civ 7 will be tougher to learn than past versions, simply because there's more and more things to learn. That's been a continual theme since Civ 1, I think (although there may be an argument that Civ 5 was less complex than Civ 4).

Looking forward to the Civlopedia. I usually get lost for an hour in it at least my first game. Civ is also a journey anyway, I don't need to know the right way to play it off the bat, I love just discovering something four matches in that just seemed dumb not to realize sooner.
Maybe I'm misremembering but Civ 3 also had a jumbo manual too and a giant map with the tech and unit trees on it. I wish I still had it. Please correct me if I"m remembering 4. At this point I have a bunch all squished in my brain and it takes a while to unknot what was with each.

 

[Evolena]

The problem with physical manuals is that nowadays, they are just one balance update short of being out of date.

 

[Xandinho]

Honestly, from everything I’ve seen so far, Civ7 seems much easier than Civ6, which had complex adjacency bonuses and urban planning - not to mention the exhausting logistics of moving units around the map.

Answering the question, I think Khmer and Persia are the most simplistic civs revealed so far.

 

[Nikolai II]

For peaceful play, a Han campaign seems like a good option?