Civilization VII

[Dramadon]

Your review doesn't make me want to run out and start playing this. It sounds like a micromanaging nightmare. Maybe between 5 and 6 they've just have done the best possible ways to organize these types of games and everything else is just less fun. I mean, I can't think of ways to make those games better either so I guess it's good I'm not on the development teams.

[Wool]

It's still pretty fun. Most (not all) of the new systems they came up with can be pretty interesting, there are just so many of them. On one hand, it lets the player choose what they want to do and not bother with the rest, but on the other it sometimes feels like too much is going on.

I still think it's worth trying, but yeah it isn't something you should rush to play.

It sounds like a micromanaging nightmare.

It can be, though I didn't even mention the most micromanage-y part. Resources are basically loot now that once you gain you can equip to your cities to give various bonuses. It's a fun system, at first. Once you have 20 cities and 50+ resources it starts to become a burden. You also can't swap equipped bonuses except on turns when you acquire a new resource or a new resource building, which is kind of annoying.

Still not as bad as a lot of other games in the genre though.

[Wool]

Later this month, on May 19th, Civilization VII will be getting a major update that they are calling "The Test of Time". This is an overhaul of the entire game meant to address player concerns and criticisms over the past year. While there are many small general balance changes, when you look at the biggest changes it seems like the primary focus is on making all of the eras in the game feel more connected. In past Civ games, playing through all the eras feels like a single game, while in Civ 7, each of the three eras feels like three different games stitched together.


The biggest three changes they are talking about are:

- You can now play the entire game as a single civilization. They are reworking the way era and civ bonuses work by allowing you to customize the civ you are playing as. Where before each age you picked a new civ and got new bonuses, now in each era you can either double down on your original choice or pick units and bonuses from another civ that was designed with that era in mind.

- New victory system. As I mentioned earlier, it seems like they are changing this to make it feel like your final victory is something you worked towards the entire game. In the current version you work towards a victory for each age, with each one giving you bonuses in the next.

- A new system referred to as Triumphs is replacing the Legacy Path system. As far as I can tell, the primary purpose of this change is to give players more flexibility instead of forcing you down a path.



When I first heard about these changes earlier this year, I was nervous. As disappointed as people were, I do not think making this game more like the old games will make it better. Those games already exist. Trying to pretend this game is something it is not would only make it fail at both.

Still, I remain hopeful that these changes make the overall experience feel more fluid. I'll probably try them out, as I already replayed this a few months ago so that I could compare the new system with the old, but it might be another month or two before I've played enough games to talk about it.