Civilization VII - coming February 11th

[Cat Headed Eagle]

If you are 100 years old, you should ask your son to Google with the date range enabled, and read forums.
Here's a 2005 version of this exact thread:

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This last guy is even saying Civ3 is when the series got bad, and Civ2 is peak. He hasn't updated his firmware yet.

In what possible way was Civ 3 a "step back" from 2?
>less personality, less fun, less "one more turn"
>no arguments, only buzzwords
Fucking grognards.

I think 2 was the last game to enable cities on hills/mountains? Both a shit move mechanically speaking, and also ahistorical.

 

[Starner]

I finished my first game of VII a day or so back because a friend gifted me an early access edition for my birthday. The game has some issues that are getting thrown around endlessly like the UI. Other than that the gameplay loop is fun. They took the Civ VI district mechanic, and made it more in depth in regards to min-maxing your yields. Each era has it's own flavor and gameplay mechanics which make it interesting. For instance, in the exploration era you have to settle new lands and exploit resources to generate treasure fleets. These fleets have to be taken back to your home continent to score points towards the economic path in the era if you decide to go for that.

The widely dreaded and debated era change ended up being fun in my game. The amount of combinations you can use for strategies is staggering. The people blindly saying the era change resets you, and makes it feel like you didn't accomplish anything are dead wrong. If you win an era effectively, the bonuses tend to snowball you further ahead. I think I had close to 1000 science by the Modern era vs the AI having around 200-300 each. Also the AI is more cut throat in this one compared to the docile clowns of VI. In the Modern era the AI knew I was steaming ahead for a science win so all declared war on me. Even formerly friendly nations did so to prevent my easy coast to victory. They took a couple of cities and forced me to go wartime mode to defend borders so I could launch the space race. This wasn't even on Deity either, but one of the ones under that.

All in all I'm excited to say this CIV will be considered a great game by the majority after a year of patches and content additions. Same as VI, same as V, same as IV, etc. etc. Same as it ever was.

 

[Fedora Master]

They took the Civ VI district mechanic, and made it more in depth in regards to min-maxing your yields.

Autistically pre-planning every single district for max yields was the worst aspect of the system because it means you can end up losing the space race because of a mistake in the stone age

 

[Starner]

They took the Civ VI district mechanic, and made it more in depth in regards to min-maxing your yields.

Autistically pre-planning every single district for max yields was the worst aspect of the system because it means you can end up losing the space race because of a mistake in the stone age

This wasn't my experience in Civ VI at all for Deity science wins. I'd usually just cowboy slingshot cities around and if you could get about 8-10 cities before turn 150 they could all be unoptimized and still coast you to victory by turn 280ish.

 

[whydoibother]

They took the Civ VI district mechanic, and made it more in depth in regards to min-maxing your yields.

Autistically pre-planning every single district for max yields was the worst aspect of the system because it means you can end up losing the space race because of a mistake in the stone age

This wasn't my experience in Civ VI at all for Deity science wins. I'd usually just cowboy slingshot cities around and if you could get about 8-10 cities before turn 150 they could all be unoptimized and still coast you to victory by turn 280ish.

Indeed. The usual Civ6 experience wasn't autistically optimazing cities, it was placing suboptimal cities in marginal land, because even if they just hit 4 population that's enough to get a couple of districts in them, and they are therefore worth it.
I don't think Fedora played the game much, or played at a very low level, or didn't play at all.

 

[Donald Gordon Lord]

I remember having fun with Call to Power. It's a shame it died with the sequel.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Was it call to Power that introduced lawyers? I remember mags of the day mentioning them as near-nuclear threats to your cities since they could fuck your finances up with legal action and whatever.

 

[Raghar]

Call of Power had front and back units in the army, and it had underwater cities and orbital stuff. It also had point buy for improvements, thus it avoided worker units managenment.

 

[flyingjohn]

friend gifted me an early access edition for my birthday.

Your friend secretly hates you.

Other than that the gameplay loop is fun

Not really.

They took the Civ VI district mechanic, and made it more in depth in regards to min-maxing your yields.

Adding more micro in a 4x is not a improvement. And if i actually wanted proper economic micro i would be playing ARA instead.

For instance, in the exploration era you have to settle new lands and exploit resources to generate treasure fleets. These fleets have to be taken back to your home continent to score points towards the economic path in the era if you decide to go for that.

Great, forcing a specific playstyle is a really "great" idea. Instead of just telling you a victory type and then you deciding how to get there, now you have to do these stupid repetitive actions. I am not even gonna go about nukes and military victory. This just makes every game the same practically since you will be doing actions to finish the stupid goals and not to just play the game.
EDIT: Also, messes with the map generation.

The amount of combinations you can use for strategies is staggering.

Meaningless because the AI can't do anything simcity wise. Allt this does is give the player an even bigger advantage.

The people blindly saying the era change resets you, and makes it feel like you didn't accomplish anything are dead wrong

It is not about feeling "that you didn't accomplish anything", it just feels weird for units to teleport out of a war and cities becoming towns again.

If you win an era effectively, the bonuses tend to snowball you further ahead

So their anti snowballing mechanics don't do jack shit, what a surprise.

think I had close to 1000 science by the Modern era vs the AI having around 200-300 each

Great,same stupid AI. But now without the ability for Ai mods thanks to denuvo.

Also the AI is more cut throat in this one compared to the docile clowns of VI

Not a good thing. The ai is a tactical moron. I have seen plenty of streams where a single almost dead unit never gets focused b< the AI and it just loves dancing around cities that have any defence. Ruthless AI needs the tactical part done right. Also, leads to stupid things like a civ declaring war and then giving you cities even though you didn't do anything. I am not even gonna go in how the Ai wastes commanders.

They took a couple of cities and forced me to go wartime mode to defend borders so I could launch the space race. This wasn't even on Deity either, but one of the ones under that.

Were the cities undefended or defended by a single unit? They did change siege mechanics making it easier to take cities. But i have my doubts the AI can take any city even if you have 3 units around it.Especially with your tech lead.

All in all I'm excited to say this CIV will be considered a great game by the majority after a year of patches and content additions

Firaxis patches are slow, you will be lucky to get the UI fixed by the end of 2030.Paradox dlc model does not make me want the game, it just makes me never want to play the game.

Same as VI

6 become much worse with updates and dlc. They gave up on the AI and the new modes were silly or just too easy since the AI can't play them. Also, the constant stream of dlc civs was not a good thing.

same as V,

V vanilla was amess, Gods expansion made it decent and BNW just made the game boring as fuck. 4 city tradition and passive AI came with BNW.

same as IV

Not really. Beyond the sword additions were not seen as amazing. Corporations and espionage were always hated by the community.The bug fixes that came with the expansions were welcomed, everything else was a mixed bag.

 

[Mitleser2020]

https://x.com/wasphyxiation/status/1888421095910605152


https://x.com/WonderingBashir/status/1888432080058483062

I remember having fun with Call to Power. It's a shame it died with the sequel.

The sequel was my first civ game. One of the reasons why I did not care for contemporary civ games like III whose combat seemed primitive compared to what CtP2 offered.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

in the exploration era you have to

and again, the game kept moving from "do whatever you want" to "do whatever i tell you to do".

 

[whydoibother]

"I don't like this Civilizaiton game, and btw I don't like the other Civilization games either".... okay? What's with so many tourists voicing opinions? Is this game part of the kulturkampf or what?

If you want to post negative opinions, post some from actual Civilization players on Twitch and YouTube. There's plenty of legit negativity.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

All Civ games have flaws. It's just that, when you have nothing else to rely on, you end up noticing all of the other things.I don't remember 6 being vilified back at release, not as much as this, but 5 still kept the top spot for multiplayer activity for a long while.
It does feel weird that they steal from Amplitude a second time. The districs worked out fine, but why steal from the shit game they made to try to ape your own series?

 

[Fedora Master]

I wonder how many "Great Women of History" they managed to shove in this time.
What about the Tech quotes, I bet there's a ton of cringe in there too.

 

[flyingjohn]

I want to build and use nukes in civ 1-6. I research the tech path to that tech and build the project/unit and blow some shit up.
I want to build nukes in civ 7:

 

[Donald Gordon Lord]

I wonder how many "Great Women of History" they managed to shove in this time.
What about the Tech quotes, I bet there's a ton of cringe in there too.

Having Tubman as a civ leader is silly already.

They should add Winnie Mandela as a general, destroys any city improvements and turns all surrounding tiles into desert. +2 damage if you have a rubber resource.

 

[Frank Capicoli]

Is the soundtrack at least good?

Did we at least get something good out of this trainwreck?

 

[Starner]

I'm having trouble understanding the argument that older Civ games were more open. I've played every Civ from 1 to VII, and none of them are that open. The way Civ games are set up always creates best strategies. As you play you learn what these strategy lines are, and you learn what the useless shit/mechanics are. Civ games as a whole aren't that challenging because single player games as a whole aren't nearly as challenging as multiplayer games. Every AI ever designed for Civ has easy exploits. Even in these described AI mods, I'm sure the AI funnels you into specific playstyles if you want to win. If Civ VII released and had treasure fleets as a mechanic not tied to the progress tracker, you can bet people would still do it anyways if the mechanic was powerful enough to be an optimal play, or it would get ignored entirely. There is no in between for experienced players when it comes to Civ mechanics.

In Civ VII your goals are segmented differently than before, but actually playing the game doesn't feel different from other hex based entries in the series. It's funny to argue over Civ like this anyways when Dominions multiplayer exists with way more complex decisions than any Civ game has ever had.

 

[Donald Gordon Lord]

Call to power also had diamond age where you could build the big brother opticon and shoot guys in drop pods from space anywhere on the map. Fun game.

Civ 4 also had that fantastic fall from heaven mod where you started out at the end of an ice age. Probably spent more time playing that than the base game.

 

[awsker]

Is the soundtrack at least good?

Did we at least get something good out of this trainwreck?

Usually the only thing I get out of a new Civilization instalment is a main theme from Christopher Tin. Also the case in this game, but the theme is not a banger like previous ones. Two problems caused this I think. First, Tin stated in an interview that he wanted to reflect the game's disjointed Age-hopping system in the composition, so what we got was three separate songs mashed into one, none of them having a really distinct theme. Second, Tin has begun to enjoy the smell of his own farts a bit and now composes "difficult" music for the purpose of impressing his composer colleagues.

There's a saying, or maybe I made it up; a leitmotif is good when you can whistle it. The main theme of Civilization VII is hardly whistleable.

 

[flyingjohn]

I'm having trouble understanding the argument that older Civ games were more open. I've played every Civ from 1 to VII, and none of them are that open. The way Civ games are set up always creates best strategies. As you play you learn what these strategy lines are, and you learn what the useless shit/mechanics are. Civ games as a whole aren't that challenging because single player games as a whole aren't nearly as challenging as multiplayer games. Every AI ever designed for Civ has easy exploits. Even in these described AI mods, I'm sure the AI funnels you into specific playstyles if you want to win. If Civ VII released and had treasure fleets as a mechanic not tied to the progress tracker, you can bet people would still do it anyways if the mechanic was powerful enough to be an optimal play, or it would get ignored entirely. There is no in between for experienced players when it comes to Civ mechanics.

In Civ VII your goals are segmented differently than before, but actually playing the game doesn't feel different from other hex based entries in the series. It's funny to argue over Civ like this anyways when Dominions multiplayer exists with way more complex decisions than any Civ game has ever had.

Let me give a simple explanation:
You are tasked to deliver a package to location y. Location y has 5 ways to get there.Everything you do from your current location to y is your own choice.You can ride the bus all the way, you can choose to ride the bus for only one station, etc...
Now imagine this:
You are tasked to deliver a package to location y. Location y has 5 ways to get there. But, you need to do specific tasks in order to get to y. Like going for a specific amount of stations on a bus, going through specific streets, etc...
On paper the first one option is very similar to the second. You will probably optimize and probably do some of those checklists things. But you are still following a checklist in the second.
That little bit of freedom that civ gave you is gone and you just start following the age victory stuff instead of trying your own thing.Even if your own thing has elements from the checklist.

 

[Starner]

Let me give a simple explanation:
You are tasked to deliver a package to location y. Location y has 5 ways to get there.Everything you do from your current location to y is your own choice.You can ride the bus all the way, you can choose to ride the bus for only one station, etc...
Now imagine this:
You are tasked to deliver a package to location y. Location y has 5 ways to get there. But, you need to do specific tasks in order to get to y. Like going for a specific amount of stations on a bus, going through specific streets, etc...
On paper the first one option is very similar to the second. You will probably optimize and probably do some of those checklists things. But you are still following a checklist in the second.
That little bit of freedom that civ gave you is gone and you just start following the age victory stuff instead of trying your own thing.Even if your own thing has elements from the checklist.

I can understand your perspective better now. The disconnect I think is that I'm viewing this discussion from the lens of highest difficulty settings. When you play Civ 2 on Deity for example, there are not a lot of meaningful ways you can play if you want to win. You always go low improvements early, caravan cheese to build the necessary wonders, super city stacking, etc.

Also in your analogy, if you break down Civ games they all fall into scenario 2. Each game has hard coded win conditions and they all require you to do specific things to get there. To win a science victory most games require you to research and build specific things to win the space race. There are specific tasks you must do to complete those victories. For VII each era has hard coded goals for you to reach, but it isn't stopping you from reaching them how you want or from playing the game how you want. In practice solving these objectives each era is just stuff you would naturally be doing anyways. If you are wanting to get a domination victory, you will check off every list thing every time without even having to look at it. The first time I played I rarely checked the list. Through playing how I wanted, I was able to complete most things naturally. I think the issue here is you are thinking the list somehow limits your choices. You actually have more decision points in VII than VI for instance.

Thanks for explaining your rationale. What Civ games do you hold up to be very engaging, and what elements do you think make them special?

 

[flyingjohn]

What Civ games do you hold up to be very engaging, and what elements do you think make them special?

Personally always come back to civ 4. Find it the least annoying when it comes to annoying mechanics.
There Is no corruption like in civ 3, but ics is limited by other factors.
Stack combat is just simply fun for me. I like building my stacks and it doesn't have civ 2 "one unit dies, everybody dies".
Economic wise, the focus on great people is much preferred to the blander earlier civ games.
Diplomatic wise, vasellage and cities breaking off from you to form new stuff is great. Vassalage something that needs to return.
It is also my favorite when it comes to graphics, like the cartoony look personally.
Audio wise, minus some techno songs from 2, it is my favorite civ ost. Spain theme is underrated.
Still doesn't compare to alpha centauri though. Probably should have went more in depth, but it is late.

 

[Donald Gordon Lord]

Beyond Earth and the expansion on sale right now on steam for 12 bucks if anyone's interested.

The only time I've ever seen it discounted.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I bought that one on sale ages ago, but man, is that game boring as fuck.