[Civ VII]Learning from Napoleon - A Civ VII Exploration/Tutorial

[williams482]

I'm enjoying the thread so far, thanks for doing it! It's interesting seeing the blend of mechanics from Civ VI, Humankind, and Old World that made it into VII.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Part VI: Glory, God, and Gold (turns 50-80)


There's a bit of schizophrenia in VII's design. On the one hand, they wanted to expand the pool of great figures available as leaders, beyond the traditional kings and generals. But on the other, nearly a third of all the leaders in the game come from a single century (more or less) of human history. On the one hand, they talk about "building something you believe in" and increasing player choice - but on the other, large parts of the gameplay are on rails (Distant Lands) or are no longer choices (population management). On one hand, they were obviously inspired by the European Age of Exploration & the discovery and conquest of the New World in our own 16th and 17th centuries - but on the other, the way they've designed the game guarantees this can never happen. All civs on the map start on equal footing at the dawn of the Exploration Age, so your pixel-Columbus won't find a Stone Age or Bronze Age civ awaiting him on the far side of the ocean blue, but rather a fully-fledged peer competitor. The design guarantees that significant tech differentials can never happen, and we'll never see Spanish musketeers battling Aztec Eagle Warriors. Something I noticed during today's session, as we more fully explore our own New World. 



This is prompted by my meeting Charlemagne, the last leader in the game. There are only ever a maximum of 8 civs in one game at the moment - with only 10 or 11 civs per era you can't really have more than that, and as it is you'll see all but 2 or 3 civs from each era every single game anyway. In our game, Freddie d. G. and M. d. Lafayette are dead, leaving Tubman, Xerxes, myself, Amina, Catherine, and now Charlemagne. I met him as his own cog crossed paths with mine in the open ocean, which throws into relief how equal in tech we are - Charles is the most backward AI in the game, as we'll see, and even he is crossing the seas to explore new lands. So the devs tried to make the Golden Age of Exploration, but with Spain on both sides of the Atlantic. I definitely feel better colonizing imperial Spain than I do hapless native tribes, but still, schizophrenic messaging.

But I should really emphasize, I'm having fun. Already it's hard to imagine going back to Civ VI's systems. For example, I love town building:


It's time for Londres, my off-shore colony, to expand. I have a variety of options for my new pop. There are two resources available to grab right away - Whales and Pearls already in my borders. If I have resource slots at my main cities, I can slot that new resource for bonus food or production or happiness back home. However, there's also a tea resource to the northeast outside my borders - if I build a farm on the neighboring tile, it will pop my borders and let me expand to the tea next, which will not provide immediate benefit but WILL begin generating treasure fleets to send home. I could even grab a fishing boat to the south, to pop the borders over the narrow strait and block other civs from transiting through. 

Eventually I grab the 2 hammer/2 happy forest tile, popping my borders over the tea and the two coastal tiles. Knowing what I know now, this city is a prime candidate to throw down a fishing quay, which adds food to fishing boats, and then I can rapidly populate the fishing boats in the seas around the island. Finally, I could then specialize the town as a fishing town once I'm satisfied I have enough, sending all that food to support my larger cities on the mainland. I didn't know all that stuff at this point, however, and I was simply doing what seemed best at the time. 

By contrast, city building is more complex. For example, here's an unnotated screenshot of my next pop growth at Rouen. It can be overwhelming!


I could claim any of the green tiles as a new rural improvement, typically adding food, gold, or production, like the 4 hammer claypit in the southwest, or the 4 food/4 gold farms available. Alternatively, my new pop could join an urban district as a specialist, boosting science and culture at the expense of food and happiness in support. Specialist yields are influenced by the buildings present on a tile, of course, hence why you see some variation. Again, at the time I scarcely understood exactly how it all worked, so my yields are a bit all over the place as I plopped down buildings willy-nilly, but with a bit of experience, you can stack appropriate buildings on the same tile to get some truly absurd specialist yields. At the moment, each tile can hold only one specialist, but tech (and wonders, like Angkor Wat, which is emerging as one of the best wonders in the game) can increase that amount. In fact, one of the paths to a scientific victory is achieving a yield of over 40 on one tile. 

In Civ V or VI terms, 40 yield is absurd. That might be the science generation of an entire city by the industrial age. But with specialists in Civ VII, it's actually...common? Look at Rouen's yields at top left. They're all fairly high (by previous game standards) already. VII has gone with a high cost/high production approach to most things, so you quickly snowball from the minor yields of Antiquity to truly staggering sums by Modern. Again, at this point of the game I didn't know all that, and I don't recall what choice I made here. Today, I'd probably take the 4 production claypit, which is effectively a 10% boost to Rouen's production. Food is less useful than in previous games since you need truly enormous amounts to actually grow, but here the lure of an 8 yield farm probably drew me to one of those tiles. 

We continue to explore, including finding a natural wonder close to home, Table Mountain!


This is one of the few Natural Wonders I've visited in person, and it truly merits the name. 



Chev looking southwest towards the Atlantic Ocean & Cape Point from Table Mountain

At home, most effort is geared towards supporting the exploration and colonization effort. I have no city on the western coast of my continent, but the city of Aquilea sits on a lake with a river running down to the sea, and soon ships are sliding out of her dockyards and running downstream to the ocean:


A Stonecutter and an observatory in the same district, already I wince looking at it. 

One reason I like exploration so much is the game is just beautiful. This is just a random mountain of no consequence, but it's lovely.

 

Disasters are still present in Civ VII. Two turns after my brand-new cog is finished, she's damaged by a river flood, which also pillages many of my buildings at Aquilea:


(LET ME NAME UNITS, FIRAXIS. WHY IS IT JUST A RANDOM COG? WHY CAN'T I NAME IT DISCOVERY OR EREBUS OR SANTA MARIA OR BOATY MCBOATFACE?). You have volcanic eruptions, tornado outbreaks, haboobs, blizzards, hurricanes, all the old goodies from Gathering Storm. You can turn disaster intensity down to Light, but you can't disable it entirely. They're rarely more than a nuisance, but I do have to turn my ship around and dock for repairs, since she's too battered to cross the ocean now. 

I keep a wary eye on my neighbors, especially Xerxes. Persian - er, Mongol - units move up and down my coast near Ravenna - one is a trade ship, sure, but the other is a Mongol horseman:



And at Londres, Mongol warships sit just outside my territorial waters:


I worry about him pirating my treasure fleets when they spawn, so I begin to beef up my own naval patrols in the area, starting with a Naval Commander unit - basically a Great Admiral. 

It's also at this time that I start to focus on the victory conditions for this age. To complete the Expansionist legacy, I need to accumulate points for settlements converted to my religion. Settlements in distant lands count double. 



Misunderstanding this, I send a missionary to nearby Tarnovo on Bulgaria Island to convert the city:


You can just make out the Hinduism Majority sign.

Religious conversion is way less obtuse in VII than in VI. There are no more apostles and gurus, just missionaries, and they don't battle each other. Instead, each charge automatically converts segments of population, with one key wrinkle: If you convert a city where NO religion is present, the ENTIRE city will convert to your faith. If you convert a city WITH a rival faith present, you will only covert either the URBAN or the RURAL population, based on where your missionary is standing. So no faith = 1 charge converts the entire city, rival faith = 2 charges needed.



A missionary converting only Ravenna's urban population to Hinduism, from the vile heresy of Protestantism.

 It does kind of mimic the rural/urban split of many faiths (Christianity, especially, grew out of the Roman Empire's cities, while paganism lingered in the countryside for centuries), but on the whole it feels too easy. It's a constant chore to keep your own cities converted as the AI loves to spam missionaries, which you can't kill or block, and eventually I gave up bothering. 
Anyway I misunderstood hte assignment anyway. You don't get expanionist points for ANY city following your religion, only YOUR cities. Once I worked that out, I became somewhat, uh, more aggressive than I had been. 
But that's not for a while yet. In the meantime I gear my government towards religious fervor, as we spread the light of Hinduism over the sea:


Going clockwise, my Roman tradition Latinitas boosts my towns, Evangelism boosts missionaries, Jure gives me culture and happiness in my settlements, Commune gives me a production boost when I pave over obsolete buildings (a mechanic I scarcely understood at the time but 30% production seemed good), Familia Regis is a Norman tradition boosting my culture by 6 (2 each for Latinitas, Familia Regis, and Palisading), and finally Palisading boosts wall-building by 50% - this applies to my Motte & Bailey uniques. 

Further, I enhance my religion via a third culture tree (more of a culture bamboo stalk, really, as there's no branches). Theology -> Reformation -> SOmething else successively modify and grow your religious boosts. Still thinking I'd win expansionist points merely for converting rival cities overseas, I concentrate on further missionary improvement ("that's what she said!" wa-hey). 



In terms of foreign policy, my first sponsored city-state comes of age and as it's a science state I get to pick a science boost:


I take 5% boosted science, but in retrospect the free techs would have been great as I actually wound up suzeraining something like half-a-dozen city states this age. Maybe not the best use of my influence but I'm learning the ropes here. 

We continue exploring, finding more natural wonders like Kilimanjaro:


Natural WOnders are understated on the map, as the devs tried to blend them naturally into the landscape, instead of the gaudy monstrosities in VI. On the one hand, it's pretty, but on the other, they don't stand out at all. I've had a few natural wonders visible in previous screenshots - can you spot them? Hell, in another game I had Uluru in my capital city and didn't realize it for more than 60 turns, thinking it just another desert mountain. 

Then again, my wife often tells me that I have potatoes for eyes, so your mileage may vary. 

Navigable rivers are tons of fun. Here my cog ventures up a river and finds a wide lake in the heart of Amina and Charlemagne's continent:



Most importantly, I make good progress on the economic path as my first treasure fleets arrive home:


Londres and Bayeaux are in Distant Lands. That means they have access to resources like Tea, Coffee, Spices, Ivory, etc. If you have a settlement in Distant Lands, with those Treasure Resources hooked up, AND a district on the water like a fishing quay, then it will periodically spawn a treasure fleet. 



This is an unwieldy civilian unit that sails for home (just needs to enter your borders on your home continent) and then can be unloaded for gold and economic victory points. They're open to attack, but I never found an enemy fleet to try and pillage. 

Which is a disappointment! The AI is overall better than in VI, but it still doesn't really know how to play the game. It can keep up in Antiquity but as Exploration went on it fell further and further behind. Check out the ribbons by turn 80:


I have no idea what I'm doing, but I make twice as much gold as my nearest rival, Xerxes, twice as much influence as Catherine, twice as much science as Amina, three times as much culture as Amina, and have 2.5x as much happiness as Xerxes. I'm just faffing about mostly and I'm demolishing them, and this won't go away. 

Anyway, that's all I have time for today. We started (mistakenly) converting overseas settlements to Hinduism thinking that would help our victory condition, but it turns out we also have to own those settlements. So next time we'll introduce Amina and Catherine to our peaceful Hindu ways, by force. We also began accumulating our first treasure fleets. This mechanic will be mostly background from now on, except when Xerxes, Amina, or other civs begin to threaten our supply lines over the oceans. See y'all then!

[Sullla]

Chevalier, I'm really enjoying this thread and your enthusiasm for Civ7 does a great job of shining through. Very much looking forward to each new post that you add. However:

The AI is overall better than in VI, but it still doesn't really know how to play the game. It can keep up in Antiquity but as Exploration went on it fell further and further behind. Check out the ribbons by turn 80:

I have no idea what I'm doing, but I make twice as much gold as my nearest rival, Xerxes, twice as much influence as Catherine, twice as much science as Amina, three times as much culture as Amina, and have 2.5x as much happiness as Xerxes. I'm just faffing about mostly and I'm demolishing them, and this won't go away.

I've had the identical experience in my own limited games thus far, with the AI being completely unable to keep pace with the human player the longer the game goes on. I'm extremely concerned about this because it was the same problem that killed my enjoyment of Civ6: the AI simply couldn't play the game, like, at all. If this isn't corrected, the game will have a very short shelf-life for Single Player stuff because there's just no opponent in there to play against. Let's hope that Firaxis actually cares about the AI this time around.

[T-hawk]

Just a reminder that the AI was only ever good in Civ because Blake cared about it as a solo project and Firaxis took his efforts. Other than that, we've only ever had pretty rudimentary AI. Good AI was a one time exception, not the norm. 95% of the pubbie Steam player base only ever cares about comp stomping anyway.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

The AI and the railroad-y play are my two biggest concerns. The UI gripes are a mixed bag for me. There are a few irritations, but by and large I can shrug them off or work around stuff, hoping that they'll be patched. It hasn't materially impacted my experience of the game.

But the victory conditions make this very much NOT a sandbox game, and the map options are terribly limited (Continents and Continents+ both suck, largely, Fractal is playable). That, with an AI that can't play the game, might mean I grow tired of this one much more quickly than I did VI. It'll just be the same 8 of 10 civs chasing the same victory conditions (so the same actions every game) on basically the same map every time. While there's lots flash in the presentation (it really is one of the prettiest games I've played), there's a lot of cracks in the edifice, too. Limited narration, much less than Sean Bean's lines in VI. Limited music - I've revised my estimate that there was ambient music earlier, and now I realize I only ever hear one of the 8 present civs' main theme, alternating with my own civ's theme. No ability to rename cities, no ability to rename units, and then all the UI stuff - it's just a very unpolished, incomplete game right now.

I feel it needs a few months to fix the obvious UI problems, to add in ambient sounds and music pieces (VI did an excellent job with its music, 2-3 ambient pieces per civ = 60-70 2-4 minute tracks to add, doesn't seem horribly difficult), patch in bizarrely missing features like city names, unit lists, hotkeys, fix map generation, and expand the variety of map types and sizes on offer...well, that's a hefty list. So while I am enjoying the game, I think the core is solid, it really needs a lot of work right now.

[Borsche]

Just a reminder that the AI was only ever good in Civ because Blake cared about it as a solo project and Firaxis took his efforts.  Other than that, we've only ever had pretty rudimentary AI.  Good AI was a one time exception, not the norm.  95% of the pubbie Steam player base only ever cares about comp stomping anyway.

There's good AI, and then there's serviceable AI. My experience has generally been that 5 and 6 weren't even serviceable. The AI in 3 and 4 could be stupid and extremely exploitable, but they could engage with most of the systems and keep up with (or surpass) your average pubbie.

I think a good comparison here would probably be something like WoW classic. Yeah, people beat Onyxia within like a week of release, proving that actually it was never a difficult raid. But back vanilla, when people did not have the same system mastery and game knowledge that they have now, it provided a challenge. For all that the AI cheated to hell in 3 and 4 (and 2 and 1), at least players couldn't wander in blind and run laps around the AI on the highest difficulty levels.

'good' or 'difficult' AI aren't even the real concern here. You really just want an AI that can expand and take advantage of, at least, some systems if not the majority of them. When they've done so much to cut down on the multiplayer options in the game, its the least the devs can do. And if the weaker players only care about comp stomp, well you already have the easy mode difficulties anyway.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Part VII: To the World's End (turns 80-End of Exploration)

I will say this: Prioritizing culture and happiness is very strong in Civ VII. I never have quite enough science to finish the tech trees in each age, but I have my pick of civics, and since each Celebration increases your civic slots, I can basically place every single one I desire in my government:



One mistake I made this game was not understanding how urban districts work compared with VI. For example, my city of Bayeux seems unable to build any buildings at all:


I knew I was misunderstanding some of the requirements, but didn't realize what it was until after the game. See, in Civ VI, you can plop down a district and then buildings anywhere in your borders, just find the best adjacency. But in VII, cities need to be continuous. So even though Bayeux has plenty of flat land, none of it is connected to the city center, and my rough mine was blocking any expansion. I could have snaked my fishing quay around the mountain and opened up the plains that way had I known - quays and shipyards and wharfs and other aquatic buildings count, and are key to crossing rivers and straits with your cities. Anyway, lesson learned for next time. 

Meanwhile, on the desert coast north of Catherine's empire, I found two resource colonies. Kaem in particular has tons of production available.


Okay, so cities vs. towns. This design reminds me very strongly of the City Lights mod from VI. Probably they lifted it from elsewhere, but the crux as I've worked out over two games is this. All Civ VII settlements begin as towns. Towns get +50% growth bonus to start, which is great for getting them up and running. However, they generate no production, which is automatically turned to gold (1:1, a horrible ratio by Civ VI terms but I'm not sure if hammers:gold is 1:4 in VII as it is in that game. I THINK so, but haven't bothered with the math yet). Towns also have a limited build menu, and cannot access specialists, limiting your ability to stack culture and science in particular. So, food, gold, and happiness, more or less. Cities function as normal, with a larger build queue and access to specialists, but grow more slowly. So, the trick is, at a certain size, your town can specialize, and it loses its 50% growth boost and instead begins sending its food yields to nearby cities ("attached" cities, which the UI helpfully highlights absolutely nowhere and I think means only cities directly connected by road to the town. You can work it out by looking at the detailed yield screen and seeing where the food is going). That lets cities grow quickly, while the town slows its growth, great for grabbing more specialists.

So, with a town like this, with lots of high production tiles around, I might keep it as a town long enough to scoop up all those hammer tiles nearby. Then, convert it to a city to take advantage of the high production and limited food in the area, while my neighboring settlement can remain a town and feed this one. Other towns I might keep in growth mode until I get all the worthwhile resources and tiles, and then specialize them and forget about them. I think I'm working out how you're supposed to use the system. 

Meanwhile, I had been trying to work out why I wasn't scoring Expansionist points for converting settlements. I'm not 100% certain, but eventually I decided I probably need to own settlements of my faith in distant lands. Amina of Hawaii hates me for basically no reason that I could tell. She'll do:


She has one coastal city, while most of her empire is well-inland, behind the highland city of Yasodharapura, crouching on the cliffs behind Saba. I can seize this city with my superior fleet, use it as a base to establish my large army left over Rome, and then march inland on her Aksumite homeland. 

Let's get it on:

 

Once again, I gin up support for the war against the wicked imperialist Hawaiians, explaining that their aggressive living in their own homeland requires us to bravely defend our way over their border and hastily form defensive lines around valuable resources and key locations in Hawaiian territory. In self-defense, purely, of course. 


The more influence you spend on war support, the more war weariness the other guy suffers. She'll lose combat strength against me and happiness will sag at home. 

The treacherous Catherine & her Mahapajits, in a stunning display of scumminess, honor their alliance iwth Hawaii and join the war, too! How dare they:

 

My fleet of 4 carracks, led by an admiral, engages in a ferocious but one-sided naval battle in the waters of Saba, as my expeditionary force wades ashore:


Interestingly, naval units can now counter-attack when attacked on their turn, which makes first strikes, so important to naval victory in Civ VI, less crucial. A welcome change, even though it does lead to some of my ships getting roughed up. 

Amina's outnumbered carrack is soon in flames:


And soon goes down, while I begin chipping away at Saba's defenses:


Amina deploys 2 knights in defense, a tier 2 cavalry unit that will overmatch my swordsmen here, a tier I. However, I have the advantage of dominating the littoral, and my carracks will clear out the enemy cavalry to enable us to occupy the city. My swords need only hold their ground behind fixed defenses. 

A second carrack attacks from the south, while you can also see a second wave of archers and siege units assembling on my off-shore island, waiting for the beachhead to be seized before crossing over:

 

One of my carracks is badly damaged in the naval battle, but the second Hawaiian warship is sunk without loss on my part. I love the detail of fire arrows zipping back and forth:

 

In the north, Catherine attacks my colonies on the mainland, but since I'm Normandy I automatically have medieval walls. I rush-purchase an archer to hold the walls against the Mahapajiti knights:

 

Soon, her invasion force becomes serious as two units of crossbows and a man-at-arms company move in around the city, while the knight begins battering the walls:

 
I have a second archer, which I position over the nearby river and harass the enemy from the safety of the far shore. 

A few turns later, I finish my Motte & Bailey, providing additional fortification and spawning the busted Chevaler unit (hi), which, um, finds a settler joining the invasion:


Settlers aren't capturable in VII, you just kill them. I do so since I don't want to cross the river with this cavalry yet. Instead the Chevaler operates on defense around Kaum, shredding a man-at-arms trying to cross the minor river south of the city:


The damned unit gets +3 against the enemy MaA because he's a slower unit than the horseman, a further +3 from my Norman traditions, a further +6 from my horse resources, 
a bonus +3 since we're fighting in Distant Lands (policy card)...Yeah. The Chevaler hits the same-tier Man at Arms like a truck. I've also been on the other side of this - fighting the Normans sucks. Don't do it. 

To the south, at Saba, my swordsmen are badly battered by the Hawaiian cavalry force, but the carracks, now uncontested at sea, sweep them off the field and pave the way for a sword to occupy Saba (note the fortifications around my swordsmen, who fought purely on the defensive - the tactical minigame is better in VII than in VI or V. I feel it's properly refined now). 

 
Do you see the next step? North of Saba, an estuary is formed by the joining of two rivers running down from Yasodharapura. The city is on a height above those rivers, but without ranged units Catherine won't be able to stop my carracks. The fleet can sail up to the very walls of the city and repeat the maneuver for my swords. 

I bring across my second wave and land the corps north of the river, where it can pressure the city from the north while my initial force moves up from the south:


Need to regroup and heal before pushing inland, though, everyone has suffered casualties. 

I also hit 78% age progress, as my conquests FINALLY trigger the final level of my military victory, while at home my specialists are starting to really take off and I secure the scientific Golden Age, as well. 






So much age progress means the crisis spawns. In this case, religious schism:


I have the option to either initiate a Counter-reformation, losing happiness but boosting my missionaries, or embracing toleration, weaking my missionaries but improving happiness. Shit, I barely understand religion anyway, let everyone in. 

Speaking of missionaries, in a baffling design decision, the little bastards don't respect borders and are unkillable. That makes them perfect spies and scouts in a war:


A pair of missionaries helpfully report back that Catherine has a strong division of crossbowmen defending Yasodharapura. Those will shred any land assault on the city, but the river access means my fleet can move in, and naval units dominate land units in this game. 

The fleet moves in, while a crossbow reels back from the walls:

 

The next turn Amina & Catherine come asking for peace:


In another bit of excellent Civ VII design, it's impossible to duck out of the screen to check and see where any of these cities are. I close the screen to look around and in so doing reject the deal. I open it back up, can't recall which city I was after, so I take my best guess (her second-largest city, surely not her largest), and find I've acquired a lovely little iceball colony:



Excellent. Just what I wanted.

Fuming, I open up Amina and demand her largest city to make up for it. Amina is happy to surrender her ancient capital of Aksum:


why, Firaxis, why (this has since been patched). 

Well, all that's left now is piling up treasure fleet points, so we careen through the age & the Reformation crisis, which frnakly I've not paid a jot of attention to.


I slot two irrelevant crisis policies (I don't care about religion and it doesn't seem to be negatively affecting me in any way), and less than 10 turns later the Age of Exploration comes to an end:



The war system works well. I like the tug of war mechanic, rivers provide meaningful interactions between army and navy, commanders matter, terrain and positioning matter, strategic resources matter - it's a much more elegant and clean system than the previous two iterations, while still feeling familiar to anyone who's played those games. But the UI and diplomacy need work. Not being able to tab out of a peace deal to check what's on offer is nonsense. The AI's weighting of cities is nonsense. We've gone from robots that would fight to the bitter end over an iceball colony at the far end of the world to robots that will surrender their capital to you after you capture an outlying coastal town. There's gotta be a balance. 

The crisis of religion was stupid. It didn't even annoy me, it was just...pointless. I paid it no attention, clearly, and neither should you. The science victory was fun to pursue, I think I got the culture legacy (pile up relics) without really trying, militaristic needs some tweaking (still don't know what conversion means - my cities or anyone's?), and economic is honestly a bit tedious - wait for treasure fleet to spawn, move it, click done. Repeat. 

Oh, well. We're on to Cincinnati the Modern Age.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the report! Showing those far lands empires who the mightiest is.

Not being able to check what is being offered in a deal seems...very awkward. Civ 7 not presenting information to the player very well seems to be a theme, unfortunately. How you are supposed to make informed decisions this way is a mystery.

[Krill]

I'm wondering if a single player democracy game is worth it.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

One bright point - in another game I played where I deliebrately refrained from murdering any AIs, the robots did a MUCH better job of filling up the available land. Fractal also generates much better maps than Continents or Continents plus.




So maybe the AI CAN settle (it still can't keep up past Exploration, though).