Civilization VII

[Wool]

They had a big gameplay reveal a few days ago. This was brought up in the interesting upcoming games thread but they showed enough, and the game is locally popular enough, that I figured it deserved it's own thread. I'll post the presentation, the two trailers, and a summary for anyone who doesn't want to watch the whole thing.


Entire Presentation: 25 minutes long

Youtube: Sid MeierÂ’s Civilization VII - Official Gameplay Showcase

^This was posted as part of Youtube's "Live" feature, and so doesn't seem to embed properly.


Narrator: Gwendoline Christie. Probably best known as Brienne on Game of Thrones.

Ages: Their biggest new feature is that you no longer play as a single civilization for the entire game. Instead the game is broken up into three "ages" that represent different periods in history (Antiquity, Exploration, Modern) and you pick a civilization for each of these different ages. When an Age changes the map expands. Civilization choices are determined by your previous civ and the choices you made. The example given is playing as Egypt unlocks Songhai, while acquiring three horse resources unlocks Mongolia.

In addition to picking a new civilization, you are given the opportunity to pick bonuses at the beginning of the age. Some of the examples were to gain 3 population in your capitol, get free tech, get free units, etc. A currency was being used to buy these perks, which I presume can be earned in gameplay, though they don't show specifically how.

Crisis: The end of every age is marked with a Crisis event. These resemble the Dark Age mechanic in Civ 6 Rise and Fall, where you will be given negative policy cards. While they don't specify what the crisis is, the example cards shown on the screen mentioned "infected" settlements. I presume there will be specific challenges to overcome, in this case a disease.

Leaders: Another new change is the ability to pick a leader and civilization independently. Unlike your civilization, your chosen leader is maintained throughout the entire game. They are also including prominent social, scientific, or religious leaders and not just heads of state like in past games. Leaders get their own skill/tech trees and can be customized as you play through the game with points you earn from technologies and civics or choices made during narrative events.

City Planning: Districts that take up space on the playing board return from 6 and based on the video it looks like your entire city grows this way now, rather than just a few specialized areas. New settlements start out as "towns" rather than cities, with the possibility of becoming a city later.

Combat: It's not clear exactly how it works from watching the trailer. They do make special mention of commander units to organize your army with and units are shown attacking continually and simultaneously.

Visuals: A lot of fans didn't like the stylized "cartoony" aesthetic of 6, and so they toned it down to be a little more realistic in this one. The level of detail is kind of crazy for something you are probably going to play zoomed out.

Other: Rivers can be traversed like sea tiles now. Natural disasters are not specifically mentioned but are visible in the trailer.

There is a settlement limit now that can be increased with technologies/civics. Civilization unique buildings are classified as "ageless", and probably act like permanent buffs that you retain after switching civilizations later.


Release Date: February 11, 2025
Price: $70


Narrator Reveal Trailer:



Gameplay Reveal Trailer:

[Wool]

While seemingly controversial, that all seems simple enough, right? Well they invited people to come play a preview build, and apparently it gets a bit wilder. I'll again post a summary of some of the key points as well as the videos I learned this stuff from.

This basically constitutes a deep dive, so read or ignore at your own discretion. I will say that most of these are fairly dramatic and largely seem to be efforts to streamline the game while maintaining complexity.



City Building: No more builder units. All city improving is done with districts now. You also do not select which tiles citizens work anymore. At least, not in the same way as previous games.

There are two district types: urban and rural. Urban districts are where you place your buildings. They initially can hold two and can be customized with further bonuses based on building synergy. So rather than build a "science district", it becomes a science district if you put the right buildings in it. Rural districts are the old tile improvements that builders used to make and are how you acquire resources.

Districts must always be placed next to an already existing district. You will no longer be able to build in the "outer rings" of a city until you build naturally to that point. Additionally, walls can be built across multiple districts. Such fortified districts must be captured before a city itself can be captured.

City Growth: Your city's borders are now determined by population rather than culture. Whenever your population increases you are given the option to expand or hire a specialist. When you expand you are given the choice of which adjacent tile to improve with a rural district. The specific improvement you get is determined by the tile and not chosen by you. Doing this also expands your borders directly around that district so that your next choice has another few adjacent tiles to choose from.

Towns: Towns are essentially outposts that boost nearby cities. They do not have their own production queue and instead turn all their production into gold. You can still buy buildings/districts in a town, and doing so reduces the cost to later turn it into a city. Presumably roads are automatically built between cities and towns.

Resources: Much like there are settlement limits, cities have resource limits. Rather than simply give you tile bonuses, resources (like sheep) act sort of like goods that you can transport or trade to different settlements who then get whatever bonus that resource gives. I saw one person compare it to great works (art) in previous games. So maybe a city can have four resources and you might choose to place four +2 production +2 sheep in it. If you get a fifth sheep you will either have to increase that limit or give it to another settlement.

Independent Peoples: A new feature that replaces both barbarians and city states and sort of acts as a cross between both depending on how you choose to deal with them.

Influence: This is a new (capped) resource. It is used for all diplomatic actions, espionage, and trade. It is also used in war by increasing or decreasing war weariness through a new mechanic called "war support". You can also add war support to a side in a foreign war without directly entering the war yourself.

Golden Ages: These are now called celebrations and the bonus you receive changes based on what government you have chosen. Like in Civ 5, these build up when you have sufficient happiness. Happiness itself seems to be a resource now, rather than a static bonus, possibly replacing faith.

Combat Units Army commanders are a new feature meant to streamline combat. You can assign troops to them, with the number you can have increasing with different techs or upgrades. I believe it starts at 3 and will probably end at 6 (so basically every hex around the commander).

Commanders have an aura effect similar to generals in Civ 6, but they can also pack up their army and move as a single unit to make map traversal easier. Unpacking them uses a turn and returns them to tiles around the commander. Commanders also get a reinforcement ability that will (after a number of turns) summon newly created units in your city to the position of the army.

Units no longer level up and gain new traits. Army commanders however get quite a few. Like leaders, they basically get their own (smaller) tech trees. You can choose to increase an army's mobility, defense, or give the commander district production bonuses during peacetime. Some units do get unique abilities now, however. The example I saw was for scouts. They can either "search" and highlight unique tiles in the fog of war (tribal huts, for example) or they can become a watch tower to increase field of vision within an area.

Legacy: Each age plays out like its own smaller game independent of the larger playthrough. As such they each have their own goals and "victory" conditions. As an age plays out there is a meter that gradually fills up. The example I saw was a value of 100 ticking up by 1 per turn, though this itself was never expressed in the UI as far as I can tell.

Now where most Civ games have end game goals for each victory condition (science, military, culture, etc), 7 will also have early and mid game goals for each age. Culture wants you to build a certain number of wonders, science wants you to gain a certain number of codices (which I believe are gained through new "mastery" research for techs), etc. Accomplishing these goals ticks up the age counter by a larger amount (listed as 5 in the UI) and earns special unique bonuses, as well as currency which may be the currency used for legacy perks in the next age.

Religion: Very prominently not featured in any capacity at this time beyond pantheons. I've seen people suggest it might be an exploration age thing, but the legacy/victory screen UI doesn't even list it as an option. I'm willing to bet this is expansion #1 material.


Previews:





A playlist Youtube recommended to me. It's 5 videos totaling a little over an hour. Channel: quill18

A Youtube conversation that's over two hours long. I skimmed this one but it's where I learned stuff like the resource system. Channel: PotatoMcWhiskey

[Wool]

Finally, my own personal thoughts:

If you read/hear/watch information about this game anywhere else, you are probably going to see a lot of comparisons to a game called Humankind. This is with good reason. The "playing as different civilizations" thing is the most obvious similarity and jumped out to me as soon as they said it, but there are a lot of smaller systems that are similar as well. Settlement limits, outposts that can later become cities, army sizes that increase over time, etc etc. And of course Humankind isn't the only other 4X game that does stuff like this, but it is the one that stands out the most, especially with the sheer number of similar systems.

If you have never played Humankind, it has a lot of really cool ideas that unfortunately feels a little disjointed and metagame-y to actually play. I'm hopeful that while similar, Civ 7 will be different enough to overcome these drawbacks. For while the ideas are similar, they are still influenced by established mechanics from previous Civ games.

I'm not completely sold on the idea of playing as multiple civilizations but the way they describe it as building on the bones of the past is similar enough to something else I've wanted them to do that I'm willing to give it a shot. I'm pretty excited about the rest of the changes though, even if they fix things I didn't necessarily think were problems (builders).

I appreciate that each new Civ game isn't a carbon copy of the one that came before it, and still will play either Civ 5 or 6 depending on my mood. I expect 7 to be the same way.

[Delores Mulva]

I enjoyed Civ VI until they did the expansion that killed huge maps. That killed the map I enjoyed playing over and over, and the new mechanics in the expansion were more drudgery than interesting.

There's a lot of features that you listed that sound really good to me. No religion subgame? Everything about commanders? Influence and the golden age changes? Expanded leader options? Great stuff! But there's also a lot of stuff that sounds too much like drudgework. Almost everything you've listed about cities (districts that require additional planning beyond "plop X here", towns, settlement limits, resource trading) sounds bad compared to the current game, and cities are the heart and soul of Civ. I'm also not a fan of the idea of your civ changing with age, and I'm REALLY against the expanding map. Going back to Civ 6, my favourite map was a whole world map, where I'd have civs starting on every part of it. While an expanding map could work for something like an age of exploration scenario, it is a feature I'd otherwise never want to have active in any game.

You can see where the developers are taking old complaints about the game and reworking those features to make it better. An example would be the builder change. Builders feel mandatory to create and delay producing more interesting things, so why not have tiles get whatever improvement the average builder would have done anyways and free up the player to make more impactful choices with their production queue? Why not have armies move in tandem, rather than having the player waste time moving every unit individually towards a target? So I appreciate the effort of trying to improve the game by refining existing mechanics. But the "new" mechanics that aren't just old mechanics reworked, like the expanding map, really sound bad. I've purchased every Civ, 1 through 6. I don't see myself buying Civ 7 with things working the way they apparently do now.

Note: the online reaction to the previews has been pretty harsh. I think a lot of it is negativity coming from the "2K account required" thing bleeding into every other first impression. There's a lot of good features, features that could be great depending on specifics (all the bonuses and penalties related to age), and things that don't mean much to me but which should be regarded highly by the average gamer (the improved graphics, including visible elevation, being able to navigate along rivers). There shouldn't be anyone who liked Civ 6 who despises this game. Not willing to play, sure, but there's a lot of good stuff in there and the online folks are disparaging all of it.

[Wool]

You have an interesting perspective regarding expansions in Civ games; it's the opposite of what I normally see being said. Most of the time I see people saying it's not worth getting the vanilla version of a Civ game because the game won't get "good" until a few expansions in. There is this perception that more=better, and knowing that more is coming naturally means that what exists now isn't good enough. It's kind of a weird way of looking at things but it seems to be common.

I personally like the new mechanics but am glad they are not returning. They added interesting new things to think about but they also make the game feel bloated and overcomplicated at times. It's practically impossible to not forget to do something.

I'm also not a fan of the idea of your civ changing with age, and I'm REALLY against the expanding map.

Changing civs can potentially feel really weird or very natural depending on how they approach it. The way it currently exists in other games, where you magically just become something else, is weird. But if each age is actually it's own game, and you win or lose at the end of that game, then it can make a lot of sense for another civ to pick up where you left off. I sort of doubt they have the guts to take it that far but it's the best way I can imagine it working.

I'm not sure how I feel about expanding maps. I think it could be good. But I also wonder if it even matters. Is it that much different from how it works now? As you play through the game the amount of world you have discovered grows and grows. Your minimap in the corner expands until what you originally thought of as the whole world is just a tiny corner.

So far in practice this isn't much different. The main drawbacks that I can think of are: 1) You won't be able to spam scouts to explore everything early on. 2) It potentially limits the AI civs that you are interacting with. So in my point above, there would be winners and losers in the previous age. But the way they have described it makes it sound like the leaders you interacted with before will still remain a part in later ages. On top of that, what about any new civs you discover? If they weren't on the map this entire time, then they weren't also growing and expanding and warring during the previous age. How do they determine the states of their empires?

Note: the online reaction to the previews has been pretty harsh. I think a lot of it is negativity coming from the "2K account required" thing bleeding into every other first impression. There's a lot of good features, features that could be great depending on specifics (all the bonuses and penalties related to age), and things that don't mean much to me but which should be regarded highly by the average gamer (the improved graphics, including visible elevation, being able to navigate along rivers). There shouldn't be anyone who liked Civ 6 who despises this game. Not willing to play, sure, but there's a lot of good stuff in there and the online folks are disparaging all of it.

Something worth pointing out, beyond the obvious fact that online gaming discourse largely trends towards the negative, is that a lot of Civ fans hated 6 and swear by 5. It's a vague memory, but I'm fairly certain there were a lot of Civ 4 fans that hated 5 as well. Each new Civ game tries something different and yet there are always still people who refuse to accept change.

[Delores Mulva]

They added interesting new things to think about but they also make the game feel bloated and overcomplicated at times. It's practically impossible to not forget to do something.

I found some of the mechanics to be the opposite of thoughtful. Example: floods on rivers. The benefits of building on a river vastly outweigh the average damage from flooding, so "should I build along a river" is only a consideration if any setback to a city's development would be catastrophic. There's no thought to it, just a random penalty to kick people in the teeth from time to time.

So far in practice this isn't much different. The main drawbacks that I can think of are: 1) You won't be able to spam scouts to explore everything early on. 2) It potentially limits the AI civs that you are interacting with.

Number two is the big problem for me. The way I prefer to play (civs covering the real-world globe, spaced well apart from one another) isn't really possible with an ever-expanding map. Maybe this is only for random maps? That wouldn't bother me since I don't bother with random maps (the baseline seed puts civs much too close together for my liking).

Something worth pointing out, beyond the obvious fact that online gaming discourse largely trends towards the negative, is that a lot of Civ fans hated 6 and swear by 5.

I have been trying to stay in VI-positive places, but there certainly could be people dropping in to tell everyone how wrong they are about what they like. I personally don't get why people cling tenaciously to a property that has long since left them behind, but it's their life to live in constant negativity.

[Wool]

Another drawback discovered: apparently multiplayer games are limited to 5 people. The devs make the case that in order for the world to expand they need to leave room to grow in each next age. Incidentally the website says 5 players for the first two ages and 8 for the last.

There's a strong implication that each age is it's own game, but it still seems weird for 3 people to sit out for half the game before finally joining. I think it would be cool (though unlikely) if they could create a system in which concurrent games sync at age expansions. Like what if multiple groups of four players had separate games on the same map seed that then linked up during each new age?

But even with such a system, people who just want to play with 8 people from the beginning are probably out of luck.

I found some of the mechanics to be the opposite of thoughtful. Example: floods on rivers. The benefits of building on a river vastly outweigh the average damage from flooding, so "should I build along a river" is only a consideration if any setback to a city's development would be catastrophic. There's no thought to it, just a random penalty to kick people in the teeth from time to time.

I don't exactly agree with this, but I'm not sure it's worth arguing about.

[Wool]

About a week ago some of the developers had a talk with Greg Miller at PAX. The tag line was "History is built in layers".

To illustrate this they talk about London's past specifically and how different the same area is across different periods of history. From the Romans, to the Normans, to industrial London. They also talk about how oftentimes our cultures are built on what came before, something you can literally see in the strata of the ground we stand on. Infrastructure, walls, or roads that were important to a civilization at one time being built over. The buildings often get completely replaced, but sometimes you have a district that remains to tell the story of what came before.

This is something they say will be evident in gameplay. When you change an Age your city will look different, except for a few of the unique buildings and districts that define the Civ you previously played as.


They talk a lot about how Civ progression works. They don't want it to feel jarring, you magically just becoming a different civilization. They emphasize that in addition to the historic path being unlocked by default, every Civ you can pick is a result of the choices you made during the game. The hope is that it doesn't feel weird because whether or not this is the way history played out, it's a history that could have played out given the right environment.

They state that one of the reasons why they decided to do this new Age system was to make all stages of a game be equally engaging. When you begin a game you tend to have a lot of interesting decisions to make but by the end you are just going through the motions. The number of things you are doing becomes large and unwieldy. By splitting the game into chapters they can renew interest halfway through with new challenges and decisions to make while simultaneously focusing on what it is that made each period of time unique.


Splitting playable civilizations across different Ages also allows them to let players pick smaller civilizations that they couldn't previously justify putting into the game. The first example they give is, again, the Normans. This is one of the examples they keep giving in their "layers" argument and it is now officially a playable Civ. They also later talk about how India in the series is a monolith when historically it is actually several different cultures over time. In much the same way that London went from Rome, to Normans, to Modern, India went from Muarya, to Chola, to Mughal India.

I've also seen it suggested (through rumors or leaks, I don't remember) that China will be getting the same treatment. This has caused a mini-controversy in that one of the Chinese dynasties potentially being represented is not looked on kindly by people today. This is getting off topic though, as I heard about that in a completely different video.


This was another live stream, so embedding doesn't work. It's about an hour long.

Youtube: Civilization VII Developer Livestream PAX West

[Delores Mulva]

They state that one of the reasons why they decided to do this new Age system was to make all stages of a game be equally engaging. When you begin a game you tend to have a lot of interesting decisions to make but by the end you are just going through the motions. The number of things you are doing becomes large and unwieldy. By splitting the game into chapters they can renew interest halfway through with new challenges and decisions to make while simultaneously focusing on what it is that made each period of time unique.

Yeah, as someone who loves nurture mechanics that sounds terrible. I'm also not a fan of them trying to tie civs so strongly to historical eras. I'm one of those players that loves to have their death robots flattening the musketeers of the opposing civs. I don't want to see my medieval civ versus every other medieval civ, and then Victorian vs. Victorian, and so on. I liked out-researching the other guys, and it sounds like that gameplay style is mostly out the window.

The one thing that doesn't bother me is the appearance of the cities changing. It does that now when you change ages.

[Dramadon]

The playing as different civilizations in Humankind is the feature I think I liked the least about that game. I guess it just didn't work the way I had imagined it would and I couldn't get past my disappointment of it. It was probably a me thing more than anything else. I do kind of like the idea of starting as an ancient civilization and then changing to a civilization that existed later in History, like start as Egyptian and then switch to Roman and then switch to Italian or something like that. Each new Civ gives you access to era appropriate units and buildings for that Civ. I guess a lot of it depends on the implementation of this mechanic. A lot of these features they have announced are eyebrow raising for me and I'm not sure how I will like them but it wouldn't be the first time Civ did something I wasn't sure about but then after playing it I liked the feature a lot. I like the idea of streamlining things but I'll miss having individual units leveling up. The Commander mechanic might make up for it though. We'll have to see how that works.

Well, I've had every version of civilization since CivII, although I played CivI enough to essentially say I owned it so I'm sure I'll have to get this one too. One thing I've noticed, Civ5 and Civ6 are almost completely different games. I actually have both still on my computer because sometimes I'm more in the mood for one than the other. It feels like they are trying to make Civ7 feel like a completely different game from 6 or anything before it as well. That's a good thing, imo.

[Dramadon]

The playing as different civilizations in Humankind is the feature I think I liked the least about that game. I guess it just didn't work the way I had imagined it would and I couldn't get past my disappointment of it. It was probably a me thing more than anything else. I do kind of like the idea of starting as an ancient civilization and then changing to a civilization that existed later in History, like start as Egyptian and then switch to Roman and then switch to Italian or something like that. Each new Civ gives you access to era appropriate units and buildings for that Civ. I guess a lot of it depends on the implementation of this mechanic. A lot of these features they have announced are eyebrow raising for me and I'm not sure how I will like them but it wouldn't be the first time Civ did something I wasn't sure about but then after playing it I liked the feature a lot. I like the idea of streamlining things but I'll miss having individual units leveling up. The Commander mechanic might make up for it though. We'll have to see how that works.

Well, I've had every version of civilization since CivII, although I played CivI enough to essentially say I owned it so I'm sure I'll have to get this one too. One thing I've noticed, Civ5 and Civ6 are almost completely different games. I actually have both still on my computer because sometimes I'm more in the mood for one than the other. It feels like they are trying to make Civ7 feel like a completely different game from 6 or anything before it as well. That's a good thing, imo.

[Wool]

To be fair, as you point out, Civ 6 was seen as radically different from what came before it too. It's still worth giving a shot. Just maybe not for $70.

One thing I've noticed, Civ5 and Civ6 are almost completely different games. I actually have both still on my computer because sometimes I'm more in the mood for one than the other.

I'm sort of the same way, except Civ 5's overall file size is so low that I have no problem uninstalling it when it makes me mad and then reinstalling it when I get the urge to play it again.

[Delores Mulva]

The Romans will get the Legatus, a military unit that, once promoted, can found a settlement. That seems neat. (History reference: veteran soldiers were rewarded by the Empire with land in the colonies.)

[Wool]

Over the past few months they have shown gameplay for each of the three ages on their Youtube page and I thought I would summarize the core gameplay concept for each age. Rather than each full game being one long marathon of relatively similar gameplay, each era in Civ 7 has its own unique gameplay focus depending on what your priorities are.

Each age has its own goal, accomplishing milestones on that goal tick down the counter to the next age, but more importantly gives bonuses to redeem in the next. So for example: Era progression acts as a soft reset for your civ; you get to choose which city becomes your new capital and the rest become towns again. If you progress down the economic legacy path you can spend earned points to ensure every city stays a city in the next age.

Additionally, completing a legacy path gives you the option for Golden Age bonuses, while completely ignoring a path gives the option for Dark Age penalty/bonus combos. Dark Age bonuses are powerful but come at the cost of the legacy points you actually acquired in the previous age. The idea is that the bonuses are good but you can always pivot during the next age.



Below is a brief summary of each age's gameplay, as well as the goals for each legacy path.


Antiquity

This plays like any other Civ game. Explore the lands around you and establish your cities while meeting and dealing with neighbors. As a reminder: resources act differently now. They are unique objects that are slotted into cities (like equipment) to gain their bonuses. A few particularly unique resources give empire wide bonuses.

Science: Gather 10 codices*.
Culture: Build 7 wonders.
Economic: Acquire 20 resources.
Military: Have 12 settlements. Conquered settlements count twice.

*I am still not quite sure what these are or how you get them.


Exploration

This age is all about exploring distant lands, although some civs get bonuses that let them stay home. During this age you get techs that let you cross oceans but vessels will still initially take damage while in deep water. No more building a caravel and hitting auto-explore. Resources from distant lands are treated differently than resources on the home continent. They are deemed exotic, and acquiring them will spawn treasure fleets that must be protected as you guide them back to your home continent.

This age is also when religion comes into play. Rather than being a victory condition, it is now a mechanic during the exploration age for the culture legacy. They mostly focused on the treasure fleets in the livestream and only showed a little bit of this. A lot of it seems similar but one notable change is that you can no longer completely lose your religion from outside pressure.

Science: Have 5 districts that are not your city center with 40 yield each. This is achieved with specialists.
Culture: Display 12 relics in your empire. Relics are gained through spreading religion.
Economic: Gain 30 treasure fleet points from distant land resources.
Military: Have 12 settlements in distant lands. Conquered settlements count twice.


Modern

Resources have another unique mechanic in this age. Treasure fleets are no longer a thing. They instead want to play into the Industrial Revolution by having you slot resources into factories, which then provide a bonus to your entire empire, rather than that single city. Many of the other mechanics of this age seem similar to past games, though they do seem to emphasize ideologies as a spark to international conflict more this time around.

It's also worth pointing out that this age spans the time period between the American/French Revolution and the World Wars. The Information/Future Era is not included in Civ 7 at launch. They have hinted that they might have something to announce later but have given no details.


Science: Complete all three space race projects.
Culture: Have 15 artifacts in your empire. This is similar to previous games, you build explorers (archeologists) to dig up artifacts across the world.
Economic: Gain 500 railroad tycoon points. You get these by having resources slotted into factories attached to your rail network. Roads are upgraded automatically when you build rail stations in settlements.
Military: Gain 20 ideology points from capturing settlements. Increased points from opponents with different ideologies than your own.


Victory conditions: While the legacy paths unlocked bonuses in previous ages, in the modern age they are required to unlock that legacy's victory condition. All victory conditions are one last project that must be completed. More details are expected later.

Science: First-Staffed Space Flight
Culture: World's Fair
Economic: World's Bank
Military: Operation Ivy


The military one is interesting. You no longer have to actually capture the entire world. We also know nukes will be in the game because they already showed one in the announcement. I believe being the first person to nuke an enemy is how you win a military victory, rather than nukes being something you use willy nilly in your end game wars.



P.S. They also do Q&A during these livestreams, and one of the questions was about whether or not AI civs from the distant lands you discover in the Exploration Age exist from the beginning of the game or are generated during the Exploration Age. Supposedly they already exist from the beginning. You just can't interact them because you can't cross oceans with Antiquity Age techs.

This doesn't explain why multiplayer games are limited to the 5 on the home continent though, or who or what populates distant lands in a multiplayer game.

[Wool]

They had a multiplayer preview livestream a few days ago, with two of the devs running a semi-scripted scenario as they raced to see which could complete their modern era victory type first. There will also be another one before launch featuring a few prominent Youtubers.

I was interested in seeing how they explained how multiplayer would work with their new era system restrictions. It doesn't seem they are doing anything particularly elegant to make it work, they are just treating each era as a new game and allowing saves from the previous era to dictate the starting conditions for the next, if I understand correctly.

This is largely thanks to the Exploration Age stuff with distant land bonuses. The base mechanics of the game seem so intrinsically tied to the original continent being treated differently from the overseas one that anyone who doesn't start off in the ancient era wouldn't have access to the same gameplay systems. I still don't understand what this means for AI that were generated on the distant lands however, are they just meant to be fodder like city-states, with no capability to win themselves?



As an aside, maybe it's because they sped it up to fit the one hour and thirty minute stream, but the game is looking much more streamlined than past games. If I'm right this will make the game much more reasonable to play for people who don't have time to play a single match for weeks, but it makes me think there will be blowback and that people will complain that the game is too "consolized". I already see people complaining about the UI (which seems fine to me?). I swear this must be some kind of subconscious automatic response for PC gamers.

[Milton Finkelstein]

I came upon a comment on CivVII that it didn't have, and wasn't going to get, Play-by-email or the modern equivalent ? So it wasn't able to play it asynchronous multiplayer - Is that still true?
I'd love to play it multiplayer, but without having to have everyone online at the same time to play it.

[Wool]

I don't recall hearing anything about this. I don't think Civ 6 had it at launch either, so it's always possible that it gets added later.

[Dramadon]

The early reviews are....not good. I was skeptical anyway because I didn't like the way the features they are borrowing from Humankind worked in that game, but I was interested in seeing their take on it. However, the issues I'm reading about aren't about the gameplay itself, it sounds like they let the accountants into the development room. The game ends in the 1940's. No information age, no modern military units, no space race, just a "Victory" screen and that's it. Almost like the accountants said, "You know what would be better than selling this game for $70? Selling this game for $70 and only giving them 3/4 of the game so we can sell the last part for another $30 of paid DLC!!!" Does that mean they don't even have nukes? This coupled with the number of bugs I've been reading about, the game is apparently virtually unplayable on some rigs (maybe those complainers are exaggerating, who knows). But, anyway, it doesn't sound like I'm going to get this game any time soon. I'll stick to V or VI, depending on what I'm in the mood for.

[Wool]

I haven't been following what the gaming community has been saying, but I find it likely that people are blowing this game's problems out of proportion. I still remember people throwing a fit over 6.

From what I've heard from people I trust is that the game mechanics everyone was worried about ended up being good and fun, but that the UI is terrible. You can also largely expect the developers to continue working on the game and adding new content because that is what nearly every civ game has done. Not having all the same mechanics does not make a game "incomplete".

I don't want to diminish the concerns themselves, only the way in which the gaming community overreacts to everything. This negative bias causes them to routinely make mistakes and encourages people to spread false information.

The game ends in the 1940's. No information age, no modern military units, no space race, just a "Victory" screen and that's it. Almost like the accountants said, "You know what would be better than selling this game for $70? Selling this game for $70 and only giving them 3/4 of the game so we can sell the last part for another $30 of paid DLC!!!" Does that mean they don't even have nukes?

Yes, the game has nukes. The military victory in this game involves being the first player to develop nukes and use them on someone else. I don't know what the person saying that did wrong. Maybe they weren't fast enough and accidentally got a score victory instead. Maybe they developed nukes and then just for some reason didn't use them. (the game ends after Operation Ivy, not the Manhattan project)

Space race is also still in the game. The science victory comes from launching the first manned space flight. The exact depiction has changed from game to game but it's all generally the same thing

About 15:40 in the video:



The information age stuff we already knew about. It might make interesting expansion content, but I'm not sure how they would implement it. It's not a coincidence that this game ends in the era in which American hegemony became a thing. All of the victory conditions are tired to it. How do you justify continuing the game after winning by being the first to nuke someone?

They could lean into the Cold War and MAD, but the Civ games have always been a little blase with how they treat nukes. I'm not sure if they would actually implement a system in which everyone loses.

[Wool]

I've been playing this for about two months but didn't want to comment on it until I had beaten it with every victory condition (and thus gotten a good idea on how the game works).

I think it's pretty fun, but something does feel off. I still think people blew things out of proportion but I do understand a lot of the criticisms better now. For example, I thought the UI was fine but when actually playing it I found I had to keep looking stuff up because there was always something I didn't understand and the game wasn't explaining it, or the UI didn't intuitive display it.


Most of the core systems that are new actually work fine, it's usually the smaller details that don't feel right or are annoying. One thing I really struggled with is that apparently they want your to be more flexible than in past games. Usually in the past you pick a victory type at the beginning and go for it, which is what I did as part of my initial impressions just to see everything the game had to offer.

China is one of the few civs present in every era, allowing me (I thought) to play as the same civ like any other civ game. Both Confucius and Han are good at science, Ming is also then good at science, but suddenly Qing in the Modern Era is good at Economics. I think the idea is you use your science to catapult the economic path at the end, I don't know, but that isn't what I thought I was signing up for, and there was no way to know this on the first time playing because the game doesn't tell you the bonuses for later civs until you are ready to pick them. They aren't even available (or don't seem to be) in the in game Civpedia unless you are in the relevant age.

This impression of intended flexibility was strengthened when I went for a conquest victory playthrough. I found that conquering other civs in every age totally neutered the game and resulted in me holding an overwhelming amount of land to manage and less and less challenge in each following age. I think maybe you are supposed to conquer neighbors in one era and then use that to strengthen other victory types, or use science or economics to boost a military for a domination victory in the third era. Doing it every era on a middle difficulty felt pointless, as it didn't take much to completely defang the opposition.


That's learning pains and I can learn to deal with it, but the one thing that actually annoys me is the way resources work. So Civ 7 is sort of like 6 in that your districts get adjacency bonuses, except you are much more free to make bad decisions and the game won't tell you why. Ignoring for a moment how long it took me to figure out that the 20 something buildings you can make boil down to "build by water, build by mountain, or build by wonder" there is a problem with the way resources work. Some resources will disappear during era transitions. So if you build a district between two resources and then build a wonder next to it to maximize science yields, in the next age those resources might be gone, bringing down your adjacency bonus.

Old buildings need to be replaced each age anyway, but relocating these buildings for better yields now means your wonder and specialist placement is no longer being properly utilized. It's annoying. This too, I was able to eventually deal with once I figured out what was going on, but it is very unintuitive and kind of strange. Resource bonuses also change depending on age, which sort of makes sense, but is also cumbersome and annoying to remember.


The last thing that annoys me is the AI, but that's true of every Civ game. Civ 6 was actually kind of chill, which sometimes led to overly peaceful games, but 7 is back to being hyper aggressive like in 5. They are hypocritical war mongers that will go out of their way to hate you and declare war on you. 6 had the loyalty mechanic that punished any civ that does the annoying thing of building a city in between your cities instead of near their own, but that's gone now. Instead there is a diplomatic system (that is actually pretty interesting) where doing this creates a diplomatic relation penalty. Except they do this, and then get mad at you for what they did. They then declare war on you, and then are mad at you for going to war with them. It's incredibly annoying. Both times I attempted a diplomatic economic victory I instead ended up at war with the entire world.

It's also kind of funny though, as the AI generally doesn't seem to want to declare surprise wars as often as Civ 5 did. Instead there is a diplomatic action that's only purpose is to tank the relationship and enable formal war if they end up hating you enough, which you can funnily enough deny. War is kind of a slog in this game by the way, even with the commanders. Something about the terrain just makes it take forever to do anything, so I usually just defend, kill all their units, and then threaten some of their cities until they peace out.


Those were my strongest negative impressions, everything else I've enjoyed. There have been several patches so it's good to see the developers are working on improving the game over time. Which leads me to the final negative: the price. This game feels feature complete to me, with most of the problems being balance or game flow problems, but I don't think most people would be happy paying more than $30 for it, yet even on sale it still goes for half that. And it's DLC does not go on sale (yet), costs $30, and contains like 4 extra civs. It's crazy.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. I enjoyed playing this but it's extremely time consuming and the pile of other games demanding my attention threatens to topple over and bury me if I ignore them any longer.