Civilization VII

[Solmyr]

Btw, there are already several QoL mods for the game even though the Steam workshop isn't up yet: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/categories/civilization-vii-downloads.181/

[Tamas]

Thanks guys. Based on Syt's review it sounds like I will likely find it worthwhile to put up with the console-optimises UI and the ugly map generation.

[Tamas]

Any more opinions?

[Grey Fox]

Watching Quill do his thing. Unlike Civ 6, I'll get that one.

[Syt]

Played a second game as Frederick (Oblique). Still on second lowest difficulty because I suck.

Focused heavily on military in Ancient Age (Rome) and dropped behind on tech and culture and barely had any wonders. Made up some of it as Normans in Exploration Age, sparring a lot with Catherine (Songhai) and Ashoka (Chola) while allied to Himiko, Hatshepsut and Confucius. Charlemagne was also in the game, but he was far away, and we loved each other, so barely ever interacted. I completely ignored religion during this and thought I did all right.

In Modern Age I switched to Prussia. I largely dismantled Catherine's Russia and razed Ashoka's Mughal cities (they were distant and I was at settlement limit). I switched to Fascist ( ), and this led to my game-long friendship with Himiko and Hatshepsut to nosedive when they turned Communist. They were also allied with Confucius and Charlemagne, so I didn't want to go to war, necessarily, even with my tech advantage. In the end I managed to win by sending a man into space.

Notes after second game: trade is great, and there's not really drawbacks - trade copies the resources in the foreign city and gives you access, while the other side gets gold. (Prussia gets "Zollverein" civic that lets them trade with enemies during war.) Also, resources are mostly there for stat stacking - adding happiness here, adding food or production there, boosting culture ... Empire resources give empire wide buffs that stack. So no more "can't build X without resource Y" which overall made me pay less attention. I assume on higher difficulties it will become more relevant to min max the bonuses or try to prevent opponent access to some resources? Also, only realized in my second game how factory resources work. In modern age, a bunch of resources get reclassified as "factory resources". You can only slot one of them into a factor you build, but you can then send an unlimited number there. E.g. If you put coffee into your factory in Berlin, you can put as much coffee into Berlin as you have access to and have capacity for, but you can't assign e.g. chocolate or fish to Berlin now.

Urban sprawl was not as bad in this game as in my first one as unlike with Ibn-Battuta I didn't swim in gold/tech for the first two ages. It did kick off a lot in Modern Age, though. Still pretty messy to read on map.

I saw after I finished that a new patch has rolled out.

https://civilization.2k.com/civ-vii/game-update-notes/

I like this one: "Completing the final milestone of a Legacy Path no longer adds Age Progress in the Modern Age to ensure you have more time to complete a Victory."

Previously, reaching the end of a legacy path advanced the age by 10%, and by that time in my two games it was already sitting at or near 90%.

I'm getting more used to the UI, but besides the issues mentioned before - a lot of it feels just drab. Dark text boxes with functional sans serif text.

And of course the map variety is a bit of a bummer. Then again, I see why continents plus (two main continents with islands between them) is the default - the distant lands mechanic and treasure fleet stuff would be a bit harder on a pangea map. I often played on continents maps anyways, so not as much of a bummer, but the generation (at least in shorelines) seems a lot more uniform now. Though I did discover a neat thing yesterday - a navigable river leading from the coast to a big lake that had another normal river flowing into it. Still wish geographic features were labeled. Still not a fan of having to level up leaders to get all their features. (Or that one of the Napoleons was behind registering a 2K account.)

I do look forward to adding more civs, though - announced are Carthage, Great Britain, Bulgaria and Nepal. Leaders to be added will be Ada Lovelace and Simon Bolivar.

I'll probably start a Tecumseh game tonight to play around with city states a bit. I also wish there was more music variety. Like, that there were more generic tracks besides the civ specific ones. Because listening to the same 2 or 3 tunes (depending on how many folks you've met) during antiquity is a bit jarring, regardless of how good the music is.

[Syt]

Oh, and with 2 games finished, this is more than Civ 6 managed to get out of me at release. So I'm happy for now. Is it the best game ever? No. Is it competent? Yes. And with just enough new stuff to keep me interested. AI? No idea, I play on low difficulties for now.

Also watched a bit of Quill's tutorial/let's play, and it was an example of how some concepts aren't well explained in game. He tried to place a garden, but couldn't assuming he couldn't place it on a desert tile. However, the real reason (I'm pretty sure) is that you can only place urban districts next to other urban districts, and there would have been a one tile gap between the city and the garden.

I've heard some people complain about the new commander system and that it's just a glorified transport. Yes, in part. But their buffs matter, especially as they're the ones leveling up (not your units), so getting them trained to move faster, give more damage when attacking cities, improve their defense, or give bonuses to the cities they're stationed in. Main complaint is that if you unload them you have no control of which unit goes into which hex, so I often end up unloading them manually which is a chore - click army, click unit, unload, click hex. Click army, click next unit ... a manual/single unit unload button, or keeping you in the army would be helpful.

To occupy a city you have to occupy all fortfied tiles of the city (Berlin and Rouen in Modern Age had like 7 or 8 fortified tiles -Normans love walls ). Makes sense. Unfortunately, it's not always visible what tiles count as fortified. City walls - easy enough. However, some wonders count as fortified. When I tried to take Aksum from Russia, I took the city, but that wasn't enough. I mouse-overed the tiles and couldn't find what tile was missing. My artillery had no targets (i.e. defenses to reduce). In the end I swept my army through all tiles in the city until I found the right one. Some more (optional) map icons would be really helpful. Like having a map lense for military/fortification buildings.

Also noticed some annoying typos in quest texts - like calling it the Brandenb_e_rg Gate (the wonder itself is correctly spelled) or telling you to "destory" a number of units.

I hope governments get some love later. Currently you pick one of three at the start of an age, and its main effect is what buff it gives when trigger a celebration.

Also still carefully optimistic about them adding a fourth age - some buildings are marked "Ageless", meaning they retain their function in future ages. Some exclusively Modern Age ones are marked as Ageless, which only makes sense if they at least conceptualize transitioning to another age afterwards. And let's be honest, the cut off of ca. 1950 feels a bit lame. Gimme ICBMs, attack helicopters and the Internet, dammit! (Though it might need some reshuffling of civs, like maybe moving America further along? Though they do have Prussia and Meiji Japan for the Modern Age instead of Germany or just plain Japan, so maybe there's hope?

[Syt]

Civfanatics has speculation about future contents based on game files:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/asset-file-hinting-at-future-and-or-cut-content.695000/

Btw, I the somewhat jarring age transitions have one advantage: they help leveling the playing field a little bit in between. So instead of having a Civ clinging on to slingers till the nuclear age, there's two updates where everybody is put on equal footing again. A sledgehammer approach to addressing the issue, but better than nothing and probably easier than trying to get the AI up to speed.

[Solmyr]

Btw, I strongly recommend setting the age length to long when starting the game, so that you have plenty of time in each age. Also, there's a mod on Civfanatics that removes age advancement from Future Tech/Civic in the Modern Age, though I haven't tried it yet.

[HVC]

Watching Quill do his thing. Unlike Civ 6, I'll get that one.

Watched his Rome tutorial. Looks good, but the civ change thing kills it for me.

[Grey Fox]

Watching Quill do his thing. Unlike Civ 6, I'll get that one.

Watched his Rome tutorial. Looks good, but the civ change thing kills it for me.

Why? I like that part. Civ midgame is boring to me.

[HVC]

Watching Quill do his thing. Unlike Civ 6, I'll get that one.

Watched his Rome tutorial. Looks good, but the civ change thing kills it for me.

Why? I like that part. Civ midgame is boring to me.

Going from Rome to, say, aztec just throws me. I realize I'm probably the weird one, since civ isn't exactly historically accurate if you had to go down a certain path like Rome to Italy, or Gaul to France it wouldn't bother me.

[crazy canuck]

Watching Quill do his thing. Unlike Civ 6, I'll get that one.

Watched his Rome tutorial. Looks good, but the civ change thing kills it for me.

Why? I like that part. Civ midgame is boring to me.

Going from Rome to, say, aztec just throws me. I realize I'm probably the weird one, since civ isn't exactly historically accurate if you had to go down a certain path like Rome to Italy, or Gaul to France it wouldn't bother me.

That is what happens in Civ