Where I'm at after 400+ Hours in Civ 7: Thoughts

[Foulweather]

I've now put in more than 400 hours into Civ 7, mostly in Immortal. After my initial enthusiasm died away, I wanted to organize and write down my thoughts about the game, even if nobody reads this and much of what I say has probably been said before.

1. Civ Switching
I was excited about this feature. As the devs described their idea of a "history built in layers" and about how you can start as Rome, then play as the Normans, and then as France, it sounded novel and intriguing. I never played Humankind, and only heard negative reviews of its civ switching, but I trusted in the Civ team to get it right. I went in with an open mind, but at this point I feel fairly disappointed by how it's been done.

I just don't feel like my civ is built in layers. My game doesn't feel "Rome-Norman-French," and I see three main reasons why: the bonuses are too weak, there are too many of them, and the most powerful and memorable ones disappear.

The Roman traditions I carry forward into exploration give me +5% food, gold, and culture in specialized towns, and +5% production towards military units for every town. Every amount helps, but these are practically invisible. I usually don't even slot them in my exploration age government after I've unlocked better policies. Likewise, the Normans give me +2 culture for each tradition, which usually amounts to 4-8 culture, a drop in the bucket compared to what I'm making overall at that point. From Girru and Akhet in antiquity, to Farmland Assessment and Qilachas in modern, the game is full of traditions that aren't worth using and don't change the way I play.

Back to the Romans: they have some sort of bonus to culture, food, gold, happiness, influence, and production in their toolkit; all they're missing is science. The bonuses come from every direction and yet can't really be leveraged into changing the game. They're underpowered and overbalanced, and with bonuses to everything, it lacks focus. Surely, I'm cherry picking, but few abilities in my games have been decidedly memorable.

And lastly, when I become Norman, Twelve Tables is gone. The main ability that should make up the largest part of the civ's identity disappears. I wonder how this would feel modded and simplified. I'd love to see a mod that makes the civ abilities stronger and keeps those as the traditions you use in subsequent ages - so when I get to France, I can slot in a buffed Twelve Tables and a buffed Normannitas. I would get to keep playing with the same unique strategies I utilized in previous ages, but the interactions would grow between them as the ages build up. I wonder if keeping only these main abilities (the stars of the show) as traditions would satisfy the feeling of a civ being built in layers of previous kingdoms and cultures. I don't know.

I feel a lack of narrative cohesion in the switching of civs. I don't feel layers, it feels more like a soup: you throw in some Pet Kot and Quipu and La Reforma and come out with bonuses to science, gold, production, and culture all mixed together. And the soup tends to taste the same every game, because there's not much differentiation between the civs. My Rome-Norman-Prussia game didn't feel that different from my Carthage-Spain-France game.

I do miss being able to play one civ all the way through. I doubt there's a chance to play a Classic Mode in 7, but I now hope they return to it in 8. We know that empires rise and fall, but part of the power fantasy was in creating an empire that would "stand the test of time," to create something rich and eternal, and remain standing when everything else around you fell.

2. Ages
When the game released, I didn't understand just how much the new ages system would affect the feel of my games. Now it's become one of my main frustrations.

In the last third of an age, I feel an apathy regarding my city production, because how much does it matter what I build? There's a limit to the gold I can take into the next age (although I do appreciate that the limit recently went up). Focusing on science or culture can earn me attribute points by researching hard, but it's not very satisfying, and the trees reset at the next age. All my buildings will lose adjacencies in 20-30 turns and become obsolete drains on my growth. Wonders aren't usually worth the investment. Codices and relics completely disappear (as well as being disappointingly generic compared to Civ 6). And too much expansion (my favorite of the 4Xs) drags down my empire.

In Civ 6, I was invested in my empire even when I was winning, because every turn was fun. I happily built a market because I knew it would pump gold into my treasury for 200 more turns. In Civ 7, about a third of each age is meaningless to me. What's the point if I don't get to keep it? Maybe a bit harsh, but I often find myself building pointless walls in cities far from my borders simply because I had no desire to build anything else.

If the next DLC contains a fourth age, that doesn't interest me, and would only make my issues with ages and civ switching even worse.

3. Modern Age Problem
I'm certainly not a great player, but even I end my modern ages in 40-60 turns. My last modern age was over in 34 turns: I played as France, and yet I did not research a single French civic, I didn't build Eiffel or Notre Dame, I didn't build a Salon or a Jardin a la Francaise, or a single Garde Imperiale - because I didn't need to. I unlocked explorers, beelined hegemony, and built World's Fair.

I love to linger in antiquity. I enjoy the music, the art, the buildings, the tangibility of that ancient civilization brought to life. In comparison, I can barely even notice which civ I'm playing in the modern age. It's over too quickly, and I'm usually so uninterested in playing with my third civ that I really wouldn't want it to go on any longer anyway. I've built Rail Stations, Aerodromes, and Museums for victory conditions, but there's not much point to building a Grocer, a City Park, a Modern Bridge, or an Opera House. I have never built a single Tenement or Cannery in any of my games. And unless a civ has bonuses specifically towards a victory condition, it serves no point in modern (looking at you, Frontier Expansion).

It's disappointing to not enjoy lingering in France, or Siam, or Mexico, and to have everything over in 34 turns. One reason I play is for that taste of history and culture, and I'm not getting that for a full one-third of the civs they've released. In a way, I feel like I still haven't played France, or Siam, or Mexico, or any other modern civ.

4. City Growth
I dislike the straitjacket that city growth has become. Can't put a farm on hills. This tile has to be a quarry, this one a mine. Can't chop the forest. Can't settle on the cotton. Can't put a monastery there until there's an improvement there. Not going to grow for a while? Guess I'll build a random building on some tile so I can move a farm to get my monastery.

I did not play Civ 6 in an optimal way: I usually didn't chop. I kept my forests and lumber milled them. I planted forests and farmed my valleys and plateaus. I did so because it looked great (I thought mines were ugly, despite how useful they were). And that player flexibility is gone.

And I dislike the Civ 7 metropolitan sprawl. My cities merge with each other across my entire empire and become an endless sea of roofs, because even though old buildings are obsolete, they still provide science and culture, so it's often still rational to build on a rural tile instead of overbuilding a district. I think overbuilding is a good idea with potential in the future, but it hasn't been sufficient to combat the natural sprawl.

5. Wonders
I feel like they're all underpowered. It's probably not worth building more than a couple, mostly for adjacencies in your capital. I mostly build later wonders only when I have nothing else to do in my cities (not a good sign).

Also, there's no way to speed up production of a wonder. When I'm notified that Greece is also building the Colosseum, there's nothing for me to do but hope it works out. There's no governor to move in, no forests or resources to chop. Decisions, and the ability to change strategies, are gone; I can only keep building and hope.

Wonders should be expensive, powerful, and memorable. Building the Pyramids should be a really big deal (not just +1 prod and gold on rivers [not even per age!], which will take a long time simply to break even), and they should give me a sense of excitement, and right now it just doesn't feel that way to me. And when I see Firaxis say "When a wonder is a clear must-pick, it's time for a nerf" because that wonder is one of the few the AI left for me, I just don't understand.

6. Settling for a City
Tile yields are flatter and more balanced, and it takes away the fun of settling my cities. Now I send a settler out, not with a specific location in mind, but merely a loose direction, and when they get to a random point far enough away, I think "maybe here" and click.

In Civ 6, I could find a great holy site location surrounded by four mountains, or a campus spot next to two geothermals and a reef, and I'd trade anything not bolted down to buy a settler and race to grab that spot. I would forward settle the AI and rush its growth, knowing I'd be building a loyalty wall to protect my territory.

In Civ 7, I don't feel like any city location is too much different than any other. Even when I can find a spot with a good library-barracks district, I know those resources will soon move or disappear anyway. Settle in the desert, settle on the tundra, whatever. And I don't understand why we can't settle on resources, because it just further limits my flexibility. The thrill of racing for that +5 campus city is gone.

And forward settling is meaningless now. Put a city on my opponent's border, and they can just sneak a settler in and settle right next to my capital like it's nothing. I feel like they thought of ways to eliminate forward settling, without appreciating that forward settling was risky and loads of fun.

7. Scale
My empire feels small. Partially due to the small maps but also has something to do with the scale of the topography. The mountains feel appropriate to the scale of the cities, but not to the scale of my empire. In Civ 6, mountains formed ranges that stretched across my continent like the Andes or Alps, and changed the shape of my empire. Now, mountains look like individual cliffs and spires, but that scaling makes everything feel small. Figuring out how to include both empire-wide scales with the beautiful city-scale buildings is difficult, but I wonder if there's a way to integrate more zooming or multiple levels of scale.

8. UI
Um, yeah - I can't believe they intentionally made the UI look like this.

9. What I Like
For the most part, the game looks magnificent. The art of the game is amazing. I love the painterly civ screens, as well as the music, which mostly meets the high standards of the franchise. I'm even listening to the Songhai on YouTube as I write this.

I like the concept of war support and hope it can be fine-tuned in the future. The commander system works pretty well.

I look forward to the Power at the Center crisis because I know I'll usually be able to snag a city from the AI. The Rising Storm crisis is less fun but is still exciting, because it can be a real challenge to fight off the ever-increasing tides of barbs. However, both of the plague crises bore me; I still don't know what Physicians do, they don't seem to help at all, and the plague simply sweeps over my empire and disappears without me doing much of anything.

I love the narrative events. Even the ones that repeat frequently (+2 prod on the Colosseum please!) have grown on me. I would find the immersion even worse without those civ-specific narratives, thank God they included them.

Again, I like antiquity. The excitement of building up the shape of my empire never gets old. Unfortunately, I'll never have that excitement with my modern age civs.

10. Conclusion
I feel like I'm about to put the game down after my initial experimentation with all the civs (especially once Silla and Qajar come out). I probably won't buy any more DLC or expansions unless they get rave reviews and seem to address some of the problems that bug me the most. I have no interest in a Collapse Mode. I'll still check in with various streamers to see if there's anything new (but they're quickly fading from the scene as well).

I know games evolve, and 7 was never simply going to be a remaster of 6. However, this installment feels rushed, overbalanced, underpowered, overanalyzed, and the essential story of the game lacks cohesion. Many of the things that were removed from the game (in an understandable effort to fix what they saw as problems) were some of the things I most enjoyed about the franchise.

It's still a beautiful game.

 

[Civinator]

This was an interesting read, and I am curious what other civers, especially the notorious defenders of Civ 7, will reply to that post. As a CFC member who has not bought Civ 7 yet, I am wondering why one of the few Civ 7 features, that I thought to be interesting, was not mentioned here: Navigable rivers.

And I will add one feature that always disturbs me since Civ 4: The monumental oversized units over a city, wich let out the air they are pumped up, when they are moved. Civ 3 has a simple button to disable this in my eyes very ugly feature.

 

[Lebo44]

I can't get over how such a beautiful map, with charming locations and buildings (like the one OP attached), ended up paired with such an ugly, downright depressing UI
:-(

 

[Siptah]

Thanks for sharing @Foulweather. I can comprehend them all, but have a bit of a different perspective on some, while never disagreeing with the issues you raised.

Traditions could be more impactful, but they also need to work with most civs. Hence, some abilities can't be easily made into traditions. What would a second pantheon do going forward? Or how would turn Carthage's or the Mongols ability in something that works later on? Hopefully, these example show that we need two different sets for each civ: one for the present age (abilities, civics) and one that goes forward (traditions). It's fine that the most important ones are the ones for the present age imo, but you want to feel "most Rome" while playing Rome. Yet, I fully agree that traditions should be more impactful. I think traditions should generally be better than policies. It's the nature of the game that some feel boring, but (as a paradox game player) this is fine to me. The problem is that many aren't doing much – as the > 10 culture yields per turn in your example, when befriending a city state can give me 120 per turn, another policy 80, and an attribute point in the culture tree 100.

I'm torn on wonders. I see you with the lack of strategy, and think that Humankind had the perfect answer: if you start building a wonder, other cities can "help" with projects. I'm really missing this option. As for their wondrousness, it has some sense to it that they are weaker than in previous civ games. You build much more of them each game (and if the game is supported long enough, there will be 100 wonders in the game), and they have a bit of a different function – not just their ability, but adjacencies that can make a difference in the first and second age (through specialists then). I think more policies about wonders would be nice for example.

I'm actually very glad that chopping is gone. In civ 6, it was incredibly overpowered at launch, and at least in the first year got barely patched (I stopped playing then). The related snowball from chopping out a few things early was always a bit disgusting to me. I think it would be nice to get back the chance how you want to improve a tile. It might be a no-brainer in most cases, but maybe there are options. Additionally, there should be a project for relocating an improvement to another tile. I'm very happy builders are gone.

As a CFC member who has not bought Civ 7 yet, I am wondering why one of the few Civ 7 features, that I thought to be interesting, was not mentioned here: Navigable rivers.

They turned out to be a really minor feature. I mean, I wouldn't want to miss them for exploring the Distant Lands with ships, and their downsides are small. But they aren't that impactful for wars (except early game barbarian fleets) and city planning. Which is also more or less what I expected – a minor improvement of the map. I hope it sticks around for future games in this and other franchise though, but I hoped the same about canals... Civ 7 is full of such small improvements to the "formula" though. They get buried in the "big issues" in most reports and when thinking about the game.

And I will add one feature that always disturbs me since Civ 4: The monumental oversized units over a city, wich let out the air they are pumped up, when they are moved. Civ 3 has a simple button to disable this in my eyes very ugly feature.

Agreed. This wasn't so much a problem in 6, as scale didn't seem to matter to the people that designed the graphics. It was all about readability, so the giant units made sense. Units are (much?) smaller in 7, but still one of the most out-of-scale things, especially ships. Yet, as I love the detailed animations they've done, I fear having them reduced to 100 units on a tile in correct size would reduce my enjoyment.

 

[m_mus]

I've now put in more than 400 hours into Civ 7, mostly in Immortal. After my initial enthusiasm died away, I wanted to organize and write down my thoughts about the game, even if nobody reads this and much of what I say has probably been said before.

1. Civ Switching
I was excited about this feature. As the devs described their idea of a "history built in layers" and about how you can start as Rome, then play as the Normans, and then as France, it sounded novel and intriguing. I never played Humankind, and only heard negative reviews of its civ switching, but I trusted in the Civ team to get it right. I went in with an open mind, but at this point I feel fairly disappointed by how it's been done.

I just don't feel like my civ is built in layers. My game doesn't feel "Rome-Norman-French," and I see three main reasons why: the bonuses are too weak, there are too many of them, and the most powerful and memorable ones disappear.

The Roman traditions I carry forward into exploration give me +5% food, gold, and culture in specialized towns, and +5% production towards military units for every town. Every amount helps, but these are practically invisible. I usually don't even slot them in my exploration age government after I've unlocked better policies. Likewise, the Normans give me +2 culture for each tradition, which usually amounts to 4-8 culture, a drop in the bucket compared to what I'm making overall at that point. From Girru and Akhet in antiquity, to Farmland Assessment and Qilachas in modern, the game is full of traditions that aren't worth using and don't change the way I play.

Back to the Romans: they have some sort of bonus to culture, food, gold, happiness, influence, and production in their toolkit; all they're missing is science. The bonuses come from every direction and yet can't really be leveraged into changing the game. They're underpowered and overbalanced, and with bonuses to everything, it lacks focus. Surely, I'm cherry picking, but few abilities in my games have been decidedly memorable.

And lastly, when I become Norman, Twelve Tables is gone. The main ability that should make up the largest part of the civ's identity disappears. I wonder how this would feel modded and simplified. I'd love to see a mod that makes the civ abilities stronger and keeps those as the traditions you use in subsequent ages - so when I get to France, I can slot in a buffed Twelve Tables and a buffed Normannitas. I would get to keep playing with the same unique strategies I utilized in previous ages, but the interactions would grow between them as the ages build up. I wonder if keeping only these main abilities (the stars of the show) as traditions would satisfy the feeling of a civ being built in layers of previous kingdoms and cultures. I don't know.

I feel a lack of narrative cohesion in the switching of civs. I don't feel layers, it feels more like a soup: you throw in some Pet Kot and Quipu and La Reforma and come out with bonuses to science, gold, production, and culture all mixed together. And the soup tends to taste the same every game, because there's not much differentiation between the civs. My Rome-Norman-Prussia game didn't feel that different from my Carthage-Spain-France game.

I do miss being able to play one civ all the way through. I doubt there's a chance to play a Classic Mode in 7, but I now hope they return to it in 8. We know that empires rise and fall, but part of the power fantasy was in creating an empire that would "stand the test of time," to create something rich and eternal, and remain standing when everything else around you fell.

2. Ages
When the game released, I didn't understand just how much the new ages system would affect the feel of my games. Now it's become one of my main frustrations.

In the last third of an age, I feel an apathy regarding my city production, because how much does it matter what I build? There's a limit to the gold I can take into the next age (although I do appreciate that the limit recently went up). Focusing on science or culture can earn me attribute points by researching hard, but it's not very satisfying, and the trees reset at the next age. All my buildings will lose adjacencies in 20-30 turns and become obsolete drains on my growth. Wonders aren't usually worth the investment. Codices and relics completely disappear (as well as being disappointingly generic compared to Civ 6). And too much expansion (my favorite of the 4Xs) drags down my empire.

In Civ 6, I was invested in my empire even when I was winning, because every turn was fun. I happily built a market because I knew it would pump gold into my treasury for 200 more turns. In Civ 7, about a third of each age is meaningless to me. What's the point if I don't get to keep it? Maybe a bit harsh, but I often find myself building pointless walls in cities far from my borders simply because I had no desire to build anything else.

If the next DLC contains a fourth age, that doesn't interest me, and would only make my issues with ages and civ switching even worse.

3. Modern Age Problem
I'm certainly not a great player, but even I end my modern ages in 40-60 turns. My last modern age was over in 34 turns: I played as France, and yet I did not research a single French civic, I didn't build Eiffel or Notre Dame, I didn't build a Salon or a Jardin a la Francaise, or a single Garde Imperiale - because I didn't need to. I unlocked explorers, beelined hegemony, and built World's Fair.

I love to linger in antiquity. I enjoy the music, the art, the buildings, the tangibility of that ancient civilization brought to life. In comparison, I can barely even notice which civ I'm playing in the modern age. It's over too quickly, and I'm usually so uninterested in playing with my third civ that I really wouldn't want it to go on any longer anyway. I've built Rail Stations, Aerodromes, and Museums for victory conditions, but there's not much point to building a Grocer, a City Park, a Modern Bridge, or an Opera House. I have never built a single Tenement or Cannery in any of my games. And unless a civ has bonuses specifically towards a victory condition, it serves no point in modern (looking at you, Frontier Expansion).

It's disappointing to not enjoy lingering in France, or Siam, or Mexico, and to have everything over in 34 turns. One reason I play is for that taste of history and culture, and I'm not getting that for a full one-third of the civs they've released. In a way, I feel like I still haven't played France, or Siam, or Mexico, or any other modern civ.

4. City Growth
I dislike the straitjacket that city growth has become. Can't put a farm on hills. This tile has to be a quarry, this one a mine. Can't chop the forest. Can't settle on the cotton. Can't put a monastery there until there's an improvement there. Not going to grow for a while? Guess I'll build a random building on some tile so I can move a farm to get my monastery.

I did not play Civ 6 in an optimal way: I usually didn't chop. I kept my forests and lumber milled them. I planted forests and farmed my valleys and plateaus. I did so because it looked great (I thought mines were ugly, despite how useful they were). And that player flexibility is gone.

And I dislike the Civ 7 metropolitan sprawl. My cities merge with each other across my entire empire and become an endless sea of roofs, because even though old buildings are obsolete, they still provide science and culture, so it's often still rational to build on a rural tile instead of overbuilding a district. I think overbuilding is a good idea with potential in the future, but it hasn't been sufficient to combat the natural sprawl.

5. Wonders
I feel like they're all underpowered. It's probably not worth building more than a couple, mostly for adjacencies in your capital. I mostly build later wonders only when I have nothing else to do in my cities (not a good sign).

Also, there's no way to speed up production of a wonder. When I'm notified that Greece is also building the Colosseum, there's nothing for me to do but hope it works out. There's no governor to move in, no forests or resources to chop. Decisions, and the ability to change strategies, are gone; I can only keep building and hope.

Wonders should be expensive, powerful, and memorable. Building the Pyramids should be a really big deal (not just +1 prod and gold on rivers [not even per age!], which will take a long time simply to break even), and they should give me a sense of excitement, and right now it just doesn't feel that way to me. And when I see Firaxis say "When a wonder is a clear must-pick, it's time for a nerf" because that wonder is one of the few the AI left for me, I just don't understand.

6. Settling for a City
Tile yields are flatter and more balanced, and it takes away the fun of settling my cities. Now I send a settler out, not with a specific location in mind, but merely a loose direction, and when they get to a random point far enough away, I think "maybe here" and click.

In Civ 6, I could find a great holy site location surrounded by four mountains, or a campus spot next to two geothermals and a reef, and I'd trade anything not bolted down to buy a settler and race to grab that spot. I would forward settle the AI and rush its growth, knowing I'd be building a loyalty wall to protect my territory.

In Civ 7, I don't feel like any city location is too much different than any other. Even when I can find a spot with a good library-barracks district, I know those resources will soon move or disappear anyway. Settle in the desert, settle on the tundra, whatever. And I don't understand why we can't settle on resources, because it just further limits my flexibility. The thrill of racing for that +5 campus city is gone.

And forward settling is meaningless now. Put a city on my opponent's border, and they can just sneak a settler in and settle right next to my capital like it's nothing. I feel like they thought of ways to eliminate forward settling, without appreciating that forward settling was risky and loads of fun.

7. Scale
My empire feels small. Partially due to the small maps but also has something to do with the scale of the topography. The mountains feel appropriate to the scale of the cities, but not to the scale of my empire. In Civ 6, mountains formed ranges that stretched across my continent like the Andes or Alps, and changed the shape of my empire. Now, mountains look like individual cliffs and spires, but that scaling makes everything feel small. Figuring out how to include both empire-wide scales with the beautiful city-scale buildings is difficult, but I wonder if there's a way to integrate more zooming or multiple levels of scale.

8. UI
Um, yeah - I can't believe they intentionally made the UI look like this.

9. What I Like
For the most part, the game looks magnificent. The art of the game is amazing. I love the painterly civ screens, as well as the music, which mostly meets the high standards of the franchise. I'm even listening to the Songhai on YouTube as I write this.

I like the concept of war support and hope it can be fine-tuned in the future. The commander system works pretty well.

I look forward to the Power at the Center crisis because I know I'll usually be able to snag a city from the AI. The Rising Storm crisis is less fun but is still exciting, because it can be a real challenge to fight off the ever-increasing tides of barbs. However, both of the plague crises bore me; I still don't know what Physicians do, they don't seem to help at all, and the plague simply sweeps over my empire and disappears without me doing much of anything.

I love the narrative events. Even the ones that repeat frequently (+2 prod on the Colosseum please!) have grown on me. I would find the immersion even worse without those civ-specific narratives, thank God they included them.

Again, I like antiquity. The excitement of building up the shape of my empire never gets old. Unfortunately, I'll never have that excitement with my modern age civs.

10. Conclusion
I feel like I'm about to put the game down after my initial experimentation with all the civs (especially once Silla and Qajar come out). I probably won't buy any more DLC or expansions unless they get rave reviews and seem to address some of the problems that bug me the most. I have no interest in a Collapse Mode. I'll still check in with various streamers to see if there's anything new (but they're quickly fading from the scene as well).

I know games evolve, and 7 was never simply going to be a remaster of 6. However, this installment feels rushed, overbalanced, underpowered, overanalyzed, and the essential story of the game lacks cohesion. Many of the things that were removed from the game (in an understandable effort to fix what they saw as problems) were some of the things I most enjoyed about the franchise.

Thank you for this interesting read. I myself have only played roughly 200 hours, but I can agree on many of your points. As someone, who wanted to give Civ7 a chance and who finds the harshness and bitterness of many criticizing Civ7s core features excessive, I think your critique is all the more valuable since you actually cared to engage with the game on a deep level, so that your assessment seems fair to me.
I want to comment on some of your points:

1. Civ-Switching
I feel roughly the same. I likewise was thrilled by the prospect of bringing the credo "history is built in layers" to life by allowing us to switch civilizations 2 times per game. I found it actually immersive (in the sense of = historically plausible) and mechanically wished-for, since I mostly play MP on online speed. In the latter regard Civ6 suffered from very small windows of opportunity, wherein unique units usually came and went in the blink of an eye, where some building came way too late (filming studio of America for example). Offering three distinct civilizations to the player, whose abilities would be suited to the age they were designed for, seemed like a real improvement to me in that matter.
But you are absolutely right, that especially looking at traditions, many of them are absolutely pointless for the further of the game. This has to do both with some being inherently weak, but also with the very real and immense yield-inflation in exploration age but all the more in modernity. What does +2 gold in towns for Persia actually mean, when my gold income is reaching 2000 gold per turn? Right, nothing.
This point ain't dealbreaking for me, as I think this can and should be balanced out in the future.

2. Ages
I share the frustration, that buildings becoming obsolete (which I like for their anti-snowballing tendency) leads to me not building certain buildings toward the end of an age, as its more lucrative to stack gold for the transition / doing research projects for the wildcard points / preventing excessive maintenance costs at the start of the next age. Often I find myself sitting there with only building walls. This problem arises less often, if I play civilizations with unique improvements, as these becoming not
obsolete is actually worth the investment.

4. City Growth + 6. Settling for a City
Yes, again, I find myself nodding reading your argument.
Taking "settling for a city" first: Actually, I'd argue that Civ7 - although having a distinct "Exploration Age" - offers less intriguing exploration than Civ6. It's because the terrain that you explore won't cause the same thirst, as you won't stumble upon locations that are excessively good in comparison what you'd find elsewhere on the map. There won't be a run for that river delta perfect for the placement of an industrial zone triangle, there won't be the same competition for those sweet mountain ranges, as adjacency formerly dependent on terrain features can be compensated easily by placing wonders. There won't be those unlikely, but - if pulled of - legendary comeback storys, when someone is forced to settle meagre terrain, but actually pulls it of the compete with the rest of the players by thriving with an unthinkable niche-strategy (I am thinking of a tundra Georgia, which in one of said MP-games pulled of a RV, when all the other players had written them off already).
And if I have settled a city, I actually miss the freedom builders allowed me for building my empire into a certain direction.
Additionally, while building out the layout of my cities is fun in antiquity, that fun is gone for exploration age and further, as that layout is already fully established. Where will I build my science buildings in exploration age and modernity? Yeah, exactly on the spot where they have been in antiquity. Gone is the trade-off between the necessity to connect with prior urban tiles and the wish for placing down certain buildings already, although the connection doesn't reach yet that sweet spot bordering three ressources. Because all the connections of cities that have thrived in antiquity have already been established. True, I could found new cities. Right. But in an ideal world, already existing cities should offer me the player something to engage with in a fun way. Especially if "history is built in layers", then we as the players should be tackling mechanisms that do remind us of that heritage. I don't want to put already established cities on auto-pilot. I want them to challenge me. Civ6 held up the constant engagement, as certain districts and its buildings came in later and I had to think in advance where I'd like to put them (Industrial Zones, Preserves, Water-Parks), Civ7 offers much less in that perspective. What further detriments the "fun" of city-building is the ability to buy everything with gold. More often than not I found the 'fun' to evaporate quickly from city-building in Exploration Age or Modernity, as in practice I could buy almost every building and establish every district the instant I had founded that new city. What was left to do for the rest of that city's existence was placing down new improvements once the city had grown. That is unfortunately quite boring.

5. Wonders
Yes, I find it also astounding how irrelevant many of these wonders are. And the tendency of FXS to nerfthose standing out ... is hard to grasp. Well, I guess, if they have recognized yield-inflation as a problem, than you could make the argument for nerfing 'stuff'. But then I'd rather nerf generic buildings instead of wonders. It should feel special to build them. Right now it more often than not doesn't. Especially if the one legacy path, where you are rewarded for building even less impactful ones is only valid for one age. And yes, again, you are right that there should be mechanisms players can engage with to accelerate the process of building wonders. This was one of the many tools to "compete" in a meaningful manner with your opponents. And it was great fun watching in our MP-group the race for completion of certain key wonders between players who shuffled policy cards, bought builders to chop, replacing governors etc. That fun, that tension is mostly gone.

7. Scale
True on the points you mentioned, but I'd like to add: I find it weird, that improvements appear to be 'bigger' in scale, than buildings (wonders included) built on urban tiles. To immediately grasp this point, compare the size of sprawling residences within your city with the mine-improvement in antiquity. The house within that mine-improvement is almost as big as your city-hall and it dwarfs the residences beautifully arranged around your district's buildings. And if I am not mistaken this is the case for every type of improvement. In effect, the centers of towns and especially cities don't seem that ... 'heavy' (for lack of a better word), as I'd like them to be. I find it hard to make out the 'center' of a settlement, as the rural tiles often appear 'higher' and 'bigger' than the urban tiles which they enclose. It should be the other way around.

8. UI
"Um, yeah", I can only echo that sentiment. I find it critical that complex 4X games offer the player the necessary information to actually play the game in a conscious and strategic manner. It should not be made that difficult or outright impossible to get some critical data (e.g.: traderoute range?!), which is necessary to see if certain strategies are viable or not. 4X games cater to the power-fantasy of players. And to effect that power, players need the ability to gain control of the many buttons one could push in a given round of Civ7. Civ7 hides many of these buttons. And I find it hard to understand, why the QoL-updates of the UI have only been so small, so incremental. Yes, they have gone necessary steps into the right direction. But if the distance they need to cover is a mile, a few yards won't do.

9. What I Like
I mostly agree on your points.
But I'd also have to add, that many of the features which I like, are still features which I often feel underbaked, and which could benefit from deepening revamps. For example, while I welcome the introduction of a diplomatic currency effective outside world congress, I simply do not understand, why gold and ressoures are not tradeable via diplomacy and why the exchange of settlements is restricted to peace talks. Thinking again of MP: How about preventing war by changing certain settlements? How about extortioning tribute for now attacking? These are engaging mechanisms to ensure meaningful competition before the outbreak of actual wars. I find the suspense and the tension built up in times of 'cold war' often times more intriguing than the actual outbreak of hostilities. And while I am at it: One should be able to compete for city-states after their suzerainty has been secured for the first time. Remember Auckland? Becoming its suzerain ... or invalidating the possibility for others to become their suzerain by finally erasing said CS was vital in Civ6, if you played a naval civ or wanted to prevent a naval civ's ability to compete for victory. The back and forth of suzerainty. The race to invest more delegates, the positioning of spys to reduce the number of foreign delegates ... Again: meaningful mechanisms that allowed players to enact certain strategies.

10. Conclusion
I feel like I'm also nearing the point, when I will put Civ7 down for a while. I will wait for patches, expansions and mods to come out and tackle the areas I find problematic. I have hope for Civ7. Many of its core features could bring about a great and distinct entry into the series. But it's not just there already. I hope the devs are given enough ressources and time to steer the ship around. All the best to them.
Thank you all for reading.

 

[Kenshiro70]

I've now put in more than 400 hours into Civ 7, mostly in Immortal. After my initial enthusiasm died away, I wanted to organize and write down my thoughts about the game, even if nobody reads this and much of what I say has probably been said before.

You managed to summarize my post-mortem in about 10% of the words. Well done!

My suggestion is to try out Rocket's BetterWonder mod (link) - that single change made the game much more fun for me. It's not in the workshop; go to civmods.com and get the Civ 7 Mod Manager.

For reference, here are the mods I run:

	Steam Workshop	Civfanatics
UI	Detailed Map Tacks City Hall Flag Corps TCS Improved Mod Page TCS Improve Plot Tooltip Leonardfactory Policy Yield Previews Resource Re-sorts No Gradient	Search Natural Wonders and Wonders YnAMP - Larger Map, TSL, Continents++ Nasuellia-non-sticky-selection Nasuellia-no-popups Discovery Lens Enhanced Town Focus Info Zhekoff’s Enhanced Diplomacy Banners Border Toggles Auto repair: Restore Your City Instantly TBQ’s Resource Allocation Improvements Zhekoff’s Colorful Top Panel Claimed Wonders Notation Wonders Screen Detailed Wonder Cinematic And1210’s Missionary Lens Treasure Lens Moxi Map Search Resource Improvements Trade Lens Sukritact’s Simple UI Adjustments Automatically repeat a project Sticky Game Settings
Game play	Purchasable attribute points	Made the game more fun Rocket’s BetterWonder Extended Trade Routes Imago Mundi Original More Natural Wonders Unlock all Civs Installed but not heavily used Build Wonders of Previous Ages Better Mementos Mod Starts with Natural Wonder

 

[Lebo44]

6. Settling for a City
Tile yields are flatter and more balanced, and it takes away the fun of settling my cities.

This issue comes up frequently, and I share my concern.

Civ 7 appears to be built around fast-paced multiplayer skirmishes, much like Age of Empires, with distinct phases of base development followed by conquest. The new mechanics, such as civ switching, three separate ages and the enhanced warfare system (which I think is Civ 7’s strongest feature) all reinforce this design direction. Put simply, Civ 7 feels like a turn-based version of Age of Empires, spread across three distinct eras. To appease longtime Civilization fans, the developers stitched those eras together in a way that mimics a sense of continuity.

To ensure players start on relatively equal footing, the developers appear to have minimized terrain-based advantages, likely to prevent scenarios where one player begins in a harsh, mountainous tundra with limited farming potential, while another enjoys a fertible navigable river valley. So that no matter where you start you have similar chances to win. If this theory is true, then addressing the issue would mean Firaxis needs to shift its focus back toward longer, single-player campaign experiences (which is rather unlikely I would say).

 

[m_mus]

This issue comes up frequently, and I share my concern

Civ 7 appears to be built around fast-paced multiplayer skirmishes, much like Age of Empires, with distinct phases of base development followed by conquest. The new mechanics, such as civ switching, three separate ages and the enhanced warfare system (which I think is Civ 7’s strongest feature) all reinforce this design direction. To ensure players start on relatively equal footing, the developers appear to have minimized terrain-based advantages, likely to prevent scenarios where one player begins in a harsh, mountainous tundra with limited farming potential, while another enjoys a fertible navigable river valley. If this theory is true, then addressing the issue would mean Firaxis needs to shift its focus back toward longer, single-player campaign experiences.

As I argued above, I'd say: this issue actually prevents fun multiplayer-games, as there is little need to compete over specific lands (aside from the issue of sufficient space itself). This takes out much of the tension of early game settling and the later game as well, since 'strategic ressources' don't exist in the same matter as before. E.g. for the latter:
I remember a game in Civ6, where a military confrontation appeared inevitable, but after having beelined oil, I found that I did not have single copy of it within my realm nor in reach in unconsted lands. I knew that the all-deciding war had to be fought before oil became relevant. What happened was a silent arms race on my part, which I took many measures to hide (from traveling merchants, proselytizing missionaries, spies, and so forth), and which I took many measures to accelerate. I won the following war only by a hair, because oil became a relevant ressource after I had captured my opponent's capital and with the core of his realm. The oil-ressources lay beyond in his tundra. But by that point I could simply drown his superior units in numbers.
The tension of following through with my plan, calculating the necessary turns for producing a strong enough force to blitzkrieg my opponent, hiding that force, actually attacking and knowing a clock was ticking - this was an immense thrill. And it's a pity that scenarios like these can't happen in Civ7 as is.

 

[Lebo44]

Ok, got it.

I never really got into Civ 6 multiplayer, but I was a dedicated Age of Empires II player. Once I rewired my brain and began approaching Civ 7 with the same mindset and playstyle as AoE2, I started to notice the positive aspects of Civ7 (and I'm not defending it, this shouldn't be that way!

 

[stealth_nsk]

I have totally different experience regarding city placement. The important things shifted from tile yields to resources and it's interesting.

It would be great to see some more things like:

• City specialization depending on biomes/resources and not just adjacencies
• Additional things to emphasis on biomes, like Civ5 pantheons

But even as it, to me the settlement placement game is as fun as before.

 

[Siptah]

Yes, city specialization would shake things up in a very positive way. Maybe increase buildings per age to three tiers, and have the first (e.g, library, market, monument) available to everyone. The second and third requires a city specialization that you can set once per age (similar to towns), which allows to build the other two tiers once researched. Probably, it should be possible to somehow add a second and third specialisation in some way (looking at Carthage and Khmer for example). Whether that would best cost settlement limit points, gold, production, or whatever, I don‘t know yet. Potentially, it doesn‘t even need the additional building tier per age.

 

[Xur]

This is how a typical "positive" review on Steam looks like

 

[Crashdummy]

A lot of your issues are a result of the Age transitions and Civ switching decisions

Besides your points on them specifically, point 3, 5 and 6 come as a consequence of balancing the game with that in mind. I cant understand how this progressed forward an early design table

 

[stealth_nsk]

This is how a typical "positive" review on Steam looks like

Yes, that's normal for people who actually play the game to see its problems. I don't think it's specific to Civ7.

 

[shaglio]

You managed to summarize my post-mortem in about 10% of the words. Well done!

My suggestion is to try out Rocket's BetterWonder mod (link) - that single change made the game much more fun for me. It's not in the workshop; go to civmods.com and get the Civ 7 Mod Manager.

For reference, here are the mods I run:

	Steam Workshop	Civfanatics
UI	Detailed Map Tacks City Hall Flag Corps TCS Improved Mod Page TCS Improve Plot Tooltip Leonardfactory Policy Yield Previews Resource Re-sorts No Gradient	Search Natural Wonders and Wonders YnAMP - Larger Map, TSL, Continents++ Nasuellia-non-sticky-selection Nasuellia-no-popups Discovery Lens Enhanced Town Focus Info Zhekoff’s Enhanced Diplomacy Banners Border Toggles Auto repair: Restore Your City Instantly TBQ’s Resource Allocation Improvements Zhekoff’s Colorful Top Panel Claimed Wonders Notation Wonders Screen Detailed Wonder Cinematic And1210’s Missionary Lens Treasure Lens Moxi Map Search Resource Improvements Trade Lens Sukritact’s Simple UI Adjustments Automatically repeat a project Sticky Game Settings
Game play	Purchasable attribute points	Made the game more fun Rocket’s BetterWonder Extended Trade Routes Imago Mundi Original More Natural Wonders Unlock all Civs Installed but not heavily used Build Wonders of Previous Ages Better Mementos Mod Starts with Natural Wonder

Sadly, Zhekoff’s Enhanced Diplomacy Banners is no longer working after the 1.2.4 patch

 

[Xur]

Yes, that's normal for people who actually play the game to see its problems. I don't think it's specific to Civ7.

It's normal to write a negatively charged review and mark it as positive? I was making a joke about how bad civ7 is - even the positive reviews are negative. I have no idea why you are running defense for Firaxis so hard? You are not helping them.

 

[stealth_nsk]

It's normal to write a negatively charged review and mark it as positive? I was making a joke about how bad civ7 is - even the positive reviews are negative.

Its normal for positive reviews to include some criticism, because those people actually play the game. It's also normal for the people who actually like and play the game to talk about it's problems.

Joke or not, seeing this as negative for the game is weird. Nobody is wearing pink glasses, nobody thinks the game is perfect.

I have no idea why you are running defense for Firaxis so hard? You are not helping them.

1. How is this a defense?
2. It's better to stop judging people you're talking to and reply to the content, not person

 

[Leucarum]

This was a well thought out first post, maybe we can try and avoid descending this one into a debate on what goodness or badness is?

1. Civ Switching
I was excited about this feature. As the devs described their idea of a "history built in layers" and about how you can start as Rome, then play as the Normans, and then as France, it sounded novel and intriguing. I never played Humankind, and only heard negative reviews of its civ switching, but I trusted in the Civ team to get it right. I went in with an open mind, but at this point I feel fairly disappointed by how it's been done.

I just don't feel like my civ is built in layers. My game doesn't feel "Rome-Norman-French," and I see three main reasons why: the bonuses are too weak, there are too many of them, and the most powerful and memorable ones disappear.

The Roman traditions I carry forward into exploration give me +5% food, gold, and culture in specialized towns, and +5% production towards military units for every town. Every amount helps, but these are practically invisible. I usually don't even slot them in my exploration age government after I've unlocked better policies. Likewise, the Normans give me +2 culture for each tradition, which usually amounts to 4-8 culture, a drop in the bucket compared to what I'm making overall at that point. From Girru and Akhet in antiquity, to Farmland Assessment and Qilachas in modern, the game is full of traditions that aren't worth using and don't change the way I play.

Back to the Romans: they have some sort of bonus to culture, food, gold, happiness, influence, and production in their toolkit; all they're missing is science. The bonuses come from every direction and yet can't really be leveraged into changing the game. They're underpowered and overbalanced, and with bonuses to everything, it lacks focus. Surely, I'm cherry picking, but few abilities in my games have been decidedly memorable.

And lastly, when I become Norman, Twelve Tables is gone. The main ability that should make up the largest part of the civ's identity disappears. I wonder how this would feel modded and simplified. I'd love to see a mod that makes the civ abilities stronger and keeps those as the traditions you use in subsequent ages - so when I get to France, I can slot in a buffed Twelve Tables and a buffed Normannitas. I would get to keep playing with the same unique strategies I utilized in previous ages, but the interactions would grow between them as the ages build up. I wonder if keeping only these main abilities (the stars of the show) as traditions would satisfy the feeling of a civ being built in layers of previous kingdoms and cultures. I don't know.

I feel a lack of narrative cohesion in the switching of civs. I don't feel layers, it feels more like a soup: you throw in some Pet Kot and Quipu and La Reforma and come out with bonuses to science, gold, production, and culture all mixed together. And the soup tends to taste the same every game, because there's not much differentiation between the civs. My Rome-Norman-Prussia game didn't feel that different from my Carthage-Spain-France game.

I do miss being able to play one civ all the way through. I doubt there's a chance to play a Classic Mode in 7, but I now hope they return to it in 8. We know that empires rise and fall, but part of the power fantasy was in creating an empire that would "stand the test of time," to create something rich and eternal, and remain standing when everything else around you fell.

Within the context of civ switching, I don't think traditions are universally bad, but it is definitely very variable how useful they are. Some civs also retain their staying power from their UIs... So not all Civs are ageless in the same way, which is probably fine.

I'd also suggest Shawnee as a model for making civ-switching feel like your previous choices mattered as they get a bunch of nice events for whomever you pick in modern. Those sorts of events should be universal so that you always get narrative events calling back a previous culture. It would be a very cheap way for Firaxis to make a big improvement IMO.

Overall for me, I don't know if improving this mechanic much would win me over to it though. Civ switching really hurts my enjoyment of the game. I loathe the moment when I have to leave my Civ behind if I want to continue and it usually makes me stop playing. 90% of my games end with Antiquity. I really think they need to also add the ability to not switch, and have some interesting gameplay attached to that.

3. Modern Age Problem
I'm certainly not a great player, but even I end my modern ages in 40-60 turns. My last modern age was over in 34 turns: I played as France, and yet I did not research a single French civic, I didn't build Eiffel or Notre Dame, I didn't build a Salon or a Jardin a la Francaise, or a single Garde Imperiale - because I didn't need to. I unlocked explorers, beelined hegemony, and built World's Fair.

I love to linger in antiquity. I enjoy the music, the art, the buildings, the tangibility of that ancient civilization brought to life. In comparison, I can barely even notice which civ I'm playing in the modern age. It's over too quickly, and I'm usually so uninterested in playing with my third civ that I really wouldn't want it to go on any longer anyway. I've built Rail Stations, Aerodromes, and Museums for victory conditions, but there's not much point to building a Grocer, a City Park, a Modern Bridge, or an Opera House. I have never built a single Tenement or Cannery in any of my games. And unless a civ has bonuses specifically towards a victory condition, it serves no point in modern (looking at you, Frontier Expansion).

It's disappointing to not enjoy lingering in France, or Siam, or Mexico, and to have everything over in 34 turns. One reason I play is for that taste of history and culture, and I'm not getting that for a full one-third of the civs they've released. In a way, I feel like I still haven't played France, or Siam, or Mexico, or any other modern civ.

This is also an exploration age problem and I suspect it's really tied to the legacy paths. In exploration, everything but the economic path can easily and trivially be done within 30-40 turns, but unlike modern you have to play it out until there's enough accumulated era score from the AIs, so it does feel like you are playing an age. Antiquity basically got the lion's share of interesting legacy path mechanics, and Firaxis have had to tack-on very mini-game-esque legacy paths outside of that age. I think maybe Humankind had the better idea with consistent ways to accumulate era stars? This might be an area where Civ7 went backwards.

10. Conclusion
I feel like I'm about to put the game down after my initial experimentation with all the civs (especially once Silla and Qajar come out). I probably won't buy any more DLC or expansions unless they get rave reviews and seem to address some of the problems that bug me the most. I have no interest in a Collapse Mode. I'll still check in with various streamers to see if there's anything new (but they're quickly fading from the scene as well).

I know games evolve, and 7 was never simply going to be a remaster of 6. However, this installment feels rushed, overbalanced, underpowered, overanalyzed, and the essential story of the game lacks cohesion. Many of the things that were removed from the game (in an understandable effort to fix what they saw as problems) were some of the things I most enjoyed about the franchise.

It's still a beautiful game.

Hope and the Steam Deck is what's keeping me playing. Antiquity age is great to play over a moderately long journey. But with Europa Universalis 5 on the horizon, I think I might do what I did with Civ V and jump ship to Paradox until/unless things get better.

 

[Foulweather]

Traditions could be more impactful, but they also need to work with most civs. Hence, some abilities can't be easily made into traditions. What would a second pantheon do going forward? Or how would turn Carthage's or the Mongols ability in something that works later on? Hopefully, these example show that we need two different sets for each civ: one for the present age (abilities, civics) and one that goes forward (traditions). It's fine that the most important ones are the ones for the present age imo, but you want to feel "most Rome" while playing Rome.

If this was done, the abilities would have definitely have to be reworked, so that ones like Dhamma Lipi have some usefulness in future ages (maybe the ability is for your pantheon effects to continue in subsequent ages, not tied to altars).

As for "you want to feel the 'most Rome' while playing Rome," that is definitely a problem with my idea, yeah. You would always have an age where something felt "Roman", but never a time when something felt singularly "French" because it'd always be tied with two other abilities/layers. Which is why I miss single-civ mode, when I could break baguettes with my ancient barbarian friends in my salon.

The early game, be it antiquity or ancient/classical, has always been the most fun part of the game, so to not even be able to play that as France or America is... odd.

I'm actually very glad that chopping is gone. In civ 6, it was incredibly overpowered at launch, and at least in the first year got barely patched (I stopped playing then). The related snowball from chopping out a few things early was always a bit disgusting to me. I think it would be nice to get back the chance how you want to improve a tile. It might be a no-brainer in most cases, but maybe there are options. Additionally, there should be a project for relocating an improvement to another tile. I'm very happy builders are gone.

I wouldn't be in favor of the overpowered chopping from early 6, but that could be turned down easily enough. Looking back at my screenshot of Barcelona on the Great Barrier Reef, I desperately wanted to harvest that gypsum to build a Plaza or something else cool on that bluff overlooking the reef... but nope: Quarry. Forever.

1. Civ-Switching
I feel roughly the same. I likewise was thrilled by the prospect of bringing the credo "history is built in layers" to life by allowing us to switch civilizations 2 times per game. I found it actually immersive (in the sense of = historically plausible) and mechanically wished-for, since I mostly play MP on online speed. In the latter regard Civ6 suffered from very small windows of opportunity, wherein unique units usually came and went in the blink of an eye, where some building came way too late (filming studio of America for example). Offering three distinct civilizations to the player, whose abilities would be suited to the age they were designed for, seemed like a real improvement to me in that matter.

This is something I thought about while writing. I think I enjoyed the early peaking of Sumeria and the late peaking of America, because it fit the narrative: Can I take my early Sumerian lead and survive the rest of the game? Can I overcome my early weakness as America until I really get those film studios going? I have found that I miss that. This tripartite narrative where I peak in all three ages ends up not being my favorite way to play. But thinking of Antiquities and Parks, even America had early bonuses to compensate for their late film studio. It's possible with some creativity.

But I'd also have to add, that many of the features which I like, are still features which I often feel underbaked, and which could benefit from deepening revamps. For example, while I welcome the introduction of a diplomatic currency effective outside world congress, I simply do not understand, why gold and ressoures are not tradeable via diplomacy and why the exchange of settlements is restricted to peace talks. Thinking again of MP: How about preventing war by changing certain settlements? How about extortioning tribute for now attacking? These are engaging mechanisms to ensure meaningful competition before the outbreak of actual wars. I find the suspense and the tension built up in times of 'cold war' often times more intriguing than the actual outbreak of hostilities. And while I am at it: One should be able to compete for city-states after their suzerainty has been secured for the first time. Remember Auckland? Becoming its suzerain ... or invalidating the possibility for others to become their suzerain by finally erasing said CS was vital in Civ6, if you played a naval civ or wanted to prevent a naval civ's ability to compete for victory. The back and forth of suzerainty. The race to invest more delegates, the positioning of spys to reduce the number of foreign delegates ... Again: meaningful mechanisms that allowed players to enact certain strategies.

I completely agree with your frustrations about both diplomacy and city-states (the back-and-forth battle for Yerevan in a religious game!). Since they're not part of the fundamental nature of the game, hopefully they can be revamped in future patches or expansions.

You managed to summarize my post-mortem in about 10% of the words. Well done!

Thank you so much. I definitely read your post-mortem, and it (along with Boes' video) helped inspire me to put my own thoughts down.

A lot of your issues are a result of the Age transitions and Civ switching decisions

That's what I've come to realize, and unfortunately those two things aren't going away in this iteration. (?)

I'd also suggest Shawnee as a model for making civ-switching feel like your previous choices mattered as they get a bunch of nice events for whomever you pick in modern. Those sorts of events should be universal so that you always get narrative events calling back a previous culture. It would be a very cheap way for Firaxis to make a big improvement IMO.

Interesting. I don't think it'd be close to sufficient, but narrative call-backs to your previous civilizations might help me. However, for players who don't necessarily read the event and just hover over to find the bonus they prefer, this wouldn't help.

Overall for me, I don't know if improving this mechanic much would win me over to it though. Civ switching really hurts my enjoyment of the game. I loathe the moment when I have to leave my Civ behind if I want to continue and it usually makes me stop playing. 90% of my games end with Antiquity. I really think they need to also add the ability to not switch, and have some interesting gameplay attached to that.

I've wondered about maybe allowing you to switch civilizations if you're defeated, giving you a chance to get back into the game as a formerly independent power, or maybe giving you the option to switch if your civ doesn't hit some minimum level of health. I don't know. I just know that forcing me to change, when I'm just absolutely killing it as Rome, is extremely frustrating. Oops, a plague hit Rome, and *poof* now you're Mongolian!

This is also an exploration age problem and I suspect it's really tied to the legacy paths. In exploration, everything but the economic path can easily and trivially be done within 30-40 turns, but unlike modern you have to play it out until there's enough accumulated era score from the AIs, so it does feel like you are playing an age. Antiquity basically got the lion's share of interesting legacy path mechanics, and Firaxis have had to tack-on very mini-game-esque legacy paths outside of that age.

I didn't mention my issues with the victory conditions because they're so bad they're obviously legacy path conditions, not victory conditions, and we have to be getting a fourth age (or an elongated third). One of the reasons for writing this was to state clearly that I've no interest in a fourth age if the basic problems of gameplay and immersion haven't been fixed yet.

Thank you everyone for such good conversation.

 

[Kenshiro70]

Thank you so much. I definitely read your post-mortem, and it (along with Boes' video) helped inspire me to put my own thoughts down.

Honestly that was the real purpose of writing the post mortem. Not to convince people of my viewpoint, but instead equip them with better tools for expressing theirs - new mental models, more concrete concepts, and useful frameworks for analysis.

My hope was that they'd be inspired to add their own. Seeing you do so is exceptionally gratifying.