The AI can hang in the Antiquity age, and I did get fucked up in the Exploration Age in one Immortal game when my neighbor spawned as the Normans and locked me into a brutal war of attrition with his Chevalers (he didn't take any cities but the years spent building units let the other AIs race ahead of me). But by and large, at least not at Diety levels, the player should race ahead in Exploration and Modern Age has been a laugher so far.
It's better than in V and VI, though. It can and will take cities if you don't make a determined effort to defend - no more fending off entire invasions with 2 archers and a bit of city walls as in VI. It takes cities from other AIs all the time, even wiping out players, while in VI wars would drag on for centuries with not a single city changing hands.
If you ever played VI's Barbarian Clans mode, the Independent Powers are basically that, ported to VII. I like that you can't conquer city-states anymore, as that was a huge issue with balance in VI. Choosing the Suzerain bonuses are also nice, compared with the random die roll of VI. On the whole, I'd say better. City-states can even threaten isolated towns of yours, particularly coastal ones, as galleys are difficult for land units to fight.
(February 6th, 2025, 15:47)sunrise089 Wrote: I saw a soundtrack list where the tracks were called “France,” “America,” “China,” etc. Do people know if the soundtrack is entirely composed of those tracks presumably created for the game, or does it also feature historical music?
I recorded a lengthy video for YouTube with my impressions on Civ7 thus far which might be useful for some of the folks here. I'm not quite as optimistic about the game as Chevalier although I don't think it's a total write-off yet either. Very much a mess at the moment and a "wait and see" in the hopes that things get better. I'll spoiler my notes below in case anyone wants to take a quick glance rather than sitting through 90 minutes of me talking.
Intro
Short Summary: can be fun, some cool mechanics, nowhere near ready for release and strongly suggest not purchasing for now
Basically a revamped Civ6 so if you liked that game you will probably like this one, if not then no
Good
City Building is surprisingly good and deep
One Tile at a time
Urban vs rural - shift to specialists over time
Cities versus towns
VERY complicated, not newcomer friendly at all, decisions mostly can't be undone once made, gold/happiness trap waiting
Gold much more useful (upgrade towns to cities, rushbuy in towns)
Happiness more useful too, celebrations actually meaninfgul and desired
Diplomacy rework and influence genuinely really good (endeavors)
Military instructors: neat idea, help to relieve traffic jams, still wish the game would return to stacking (AI does not understand them)
Eh
Progression over time (profile XP and unlocks in a Civ game is weird)
Leader and civ choices are bizarre
Bad
Lack of setup options, especially map choices (cannot turn off natural disasters?)
Interface is atrocious and deserves covering in detail
You might not think it's that big of a deal but it undermines every aspect of the gameplay
Bad UI stuff:
- very difficult to distinguish terrain (ruins unit movement)
- all terrain gets certain predetermined rural improvements but game doesn't tell you what they are
- rural improvements and urban buildings are extremely difficult to distinguish at a glance (no color-coding, uses icons but no text?!)
- game doesn't tell you what a city finished building upon completion
- tech/civic screens look atrocious, game refuses to tell player beakers/culture/happiness needed for anything
- game doesn't tell you what enemy units do on hover, refuses to list HP for enemy units anywhere?!
- Basic unit actions like fortify and heal are hidden behind an arrow (?)
- No hotkeys for anything!
- Attribute point screen has text missing off sides, I can't even read what some of the choices are because there are no scroll bars
This is not some small issue, the UI is so bad that it fundamentally makes it difficult to impossible to play the game at times
Railroaded Gameplay (era goals)
- some of the era goals are well chosen: resources, expanding, even science codexes are fine
- some are not well chosen: building wonders, spreading religion in foreign cities, etc.
- seems to force the player into doing the same things in every game, I don't think this will hold up well for repeated playthroughs
- whole point of Civ is to let the player go off and do whatever they want and this hard-forces them away from that - not good
Eras
- very bad history (annoys me professionally)
- describe what happens, logic was to keep the game closer so players don't abandon games
- but forced rubber-banding is a poor way to do this, instead gameplay should have ways to recognize a winning position earlier (e.g. MOO)
- I dislike the crisis that ends an age but you can turn them off so that's OK
- age transitions seem to be very manipulatable, econ policy lets you keep all cities, use of commanders to store up units and rush AI
- you're basically doing the same thing in terms of city-building in the next age, just building over your previous tile improvements which now have reduced yields. Not sure this is fun!
- Era transitions feel largely pointless to me, very gamey and not needed. why not just solve the real problem of gameplay not recognizing an early victory instead of doing all this railroading?
AI
- builds lots of units, this is good! (units are too cheap in Civ7)
- they will attack each other and put pressure on the player, can actually conquer cities/empires in this game
- however, most of the game's mechanics seem way too complex for the AI to handle. They don't use army commanders well and they don't build cities very well either
- biggest issue is that they don't expand well enough which makes the game too easy. They are apparently even worse at playing the later eras
- the independent powers seem to be stronger than the AI empires much of the time which is really bad
- very, very worried this will be a redux of Civ6: game with cool mechanics which is ruined because the AI can't play the game at all (and Firaxis more interested in DLC than fixing AI)
DLC practices suck, super scummy, clearly releasing unfinished game and withholding popular civs/leaders
Summary: there are good elements here but this is currently a stay-away recommendation from me unless you REALLY loved Civ6
Strongly suggest waiting a while for patches to fix some of these issues but core problems unlikely ever to be solved
Why: why the February release when the game so clearly needed more time? Bizarre to rush out into a dead portion of the release calendar
I will never understand why the developers copied so much from Humankind which wasn't terribly popular
Thanks a lot Sullla. I actually had your video review queued up in another tab haha. Always appreciate hearing your thoughts, especially in written form.
I'd like to lodge a preemptive complaint that Civilization 8 has some really good ideas and playing it is mostly fun, but was obviously not well tested, has a UI that ranges from opaque to openly hostile, and sports an obviously incompetent AI which will seriously hinder replayability even as ~2/3rds of the current bugs are ironed out in patches and $60 expansion packs over the five-odd years following release.
The trend of Firaxis releasing new civ games in a terrible state and then slowly making them decent-ish after multiple patches and DLCs is not a positive thing. I know this is not uncommon in the gaming industry. But Firaxis should really be aiming to do better for a major title like Civ. And I have to agree with Sulla's point about 'why rush it out in February?' They already missed the Christmas window, so why not give it more time and release later?
On the AI struggling to handle the game mechanics, I keep hoping developments in AI technology will lead to someone producing better gaming AIs. Probably will not come from an established games company, though.
One item from Sulla's list:
Quote:- game doesn't tell you what a city finished building upon completion
I think this is part of the devs' intention that you play the game their way, with tiny empires. Since you are only supposed to have maybe three cities at most, you should not need reminders of what was being built. For whatever reason, Firaxis really seems to dislike building large empires in their empire building games.
Thing is, Civ5 was a major success, and for many people still is their favourite Civ game - despite arguably being the one with the worst AI. I'm convinced that Civ5's reception was the final nail in the coffin of the idea that 4X games need good AI to be fun
The other thing is that AI is very resource-hungry, and increasingly complex game mechanics only exacerbate this problem. Old World probably has the best tactical AI in a 4X game, but the empire management AI is underwhelming at best (the workaround was to embrace asymmetric start and make the game about the new empire led by the player overcoming already established powers). And the game still struggled with performance issues, which I believe were AI-related, for months after release
So - I agree that present day tech development could lead to better AI in games, but I also agree that if one becomes viable for a 4X game, Civ franchise won't be the one to pioneer it
As for Civ7 - sounds like despite its numerous flaws, it's a fun game to play. So while these comments don't give me any desire to get it now, they do give me hope that it will be worth buying some time later. And yes, the state in which major AAA games are released nowadays is sad, but there isn't much we can do about it. Other than not buying games on release - but I understand the impatience
Guys, I gotta say I pride myself on avoiding cynicism as much as possible, but I knew instantly why the game released in Feb. I didn't need to look it up, but I did, and sure enough Take-Two's fiscal year ends March 31.
(February 11th, 2025, 17:49)haphazard1 Wrote: For whatever reason, Firaxis really seems to dislike building large empires in their empire building games.
I think it has been very obvious since Civ V that Firaxis has no interest in making an empire building game. Their internal culture must consider that genre passé (or I suppose cringe given the demos), but the only part of the company I'm confident likes the grand scale and tradition of the series is marketing, hired gun Christopher Tin, and whoever makes the opening cinematic.
They patted themselves on the back for grabbing wargame tropes in their hexes and 1upt (a genre which is almost diametrically opposed to tradition civilization in scale) 15 years ago, and are patting themselves on the back for grabbing roguelike elements this time with the character progression and forced resets. That's when they're not patting themselves on the back for discovering Civ IV's unrestricted leader button which the Gamespot review described as offering "unparalleled flexibility in how you approach each playthrough." Unparalleled since 2006 I suppose.
Finally Sullla's video review, which I greatly enjoyed listening to, gave credit to Humankind for many of the new mechanics. I'm sure that's right, but I was shocked by how many ideas came directly from Fall from Heaven, again from 15+ years ago. Two that immediately come to mind are town production (appears to work exactly like Kurio settlements) and unit XP/promotions (works exactly like Luchurp promotions). I didn't take notes but I think there were others as well.
That doesn't mean the games aren't or won't be fun, and it doesn't mean they won't sell 10M copies each and be massive successes, but they're not trying to "build an empire to stand the test of time" anymore when you can't make an empire at all, and what you can make doesn't stand the test of the age rollover.
