Civilization 7 is in development

[haphazard1]

Very good points, sunrise. Particularly the fiscal year aspect. Civ 7 still kind of looks like an empire building game, but given the way the ages and victory conditions seem to work it really isn't. Can you actually win the game in the traditional manner, by conquering all your rivals? Is that even possible, or will they respawn with the next age even if killed? I have not see anyone mention killing off a rival empire yet.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Very good points, sunrise. Particularly the fiscal year aspect. Civ 7 still kind of looks like an empire building game, but given the way the ages and victory conditions seem to work it really isn't. Can you actually win the game in the traditional manner, by conquering all your rivals? Is that even possible, or will they respawn with the next age even if killed? I have not see anyone mention killing off a rival empire yet.

Two AIs were killed off in my demo game, one by myself and one by one of the robots. You can win by eliminating all other players and just saying "fuck it" to the victory conditions.

[Japper007]

I feel the lack of scale yeah. Just when you are about to break into the big leagues, you're past the point where happiness is a problem and can finally actually start filling the space, the game slams on the breaks, Age Transition time!
 I never have the feeling my city is more than just a hamlet. A city could only have your unique quarter and maybe a library and academy after the entirety of Antiquity! I'm pretty sure the village I grew up in was up to that level of development (more because it also had a market and a shopping center, which would be a Modern Era CITY in 7 ) and it was a rural dump. 

It's also weird that the Age mechanic doesn't even do what it sets out to do. If you manage the transition well, you basically just keep snowballing. You'll still have your armies and settlements, and maybe pick up some nice bonuses even. And the AI which is supposed to be able to rubberband back due to it, screws up the transition (doesn't get age objectives, even with the absurd yield boosts on higher difficulties) and gets reset to the stone age.

Still though, I'm having fun. Took a few days off work to play last week, and I think I got my money's worth, with some new combos still to try in the coming weeks. (The tragedy of finally having the money to drop on a new game, but not the time ) I actually think it is fine from a replay perspective, a bit better than civ 6, where you do the same thing every time (I.e. Commercial Hubs, Campuses, Industrial Zones, coast to victory, at least against AI). Your start can have a lot of effect when it comes to wonders, what resources you get, what neighbours, all interesting. Maybe I'll rethink that after a few dozen hours more.

[Borsche]

I think their biggest concern is to prevent a player from having to manage like 20+ cities. Which is an understandable concern, I've had games of Civ3 and Civ4 where that kind of bloat could feel really tedious. And especially in the late game, as the commerce and production of each city could balloon to where cities could feel homogeneous (or at least much more so than they would feel in the early/mid game).

The easy solution is to just get the player to play on smaller maps. The difficult solution is to streamline city management while fostering a more interesting decision making environment (particularly in the late game).

Firaxis's design philosophy, however, mostly seems to be to trying to aggressively cap expansion. Keep the player down to 4-6 cities, whether there is room for more or not. This has the added benefit of not having to care if the AI doesn't/can't expand - they only need 3-4 cities to technically compete with the player anyway.

The funny thing is, I don't think I'd mind that design too much if the 4-6 cities would actually fill in all the empty space on the map (and if the AI would also expand to 4-6 cities instead of being stuck on like 2, or 1). It's mostly an aesthetic complaint to have huge swaths of unfilled land on the map, but from a mechanics perspective, that is land that should be exploitable by the players. Towns help with this a lot, but again, the AI barely settles anyway so you don't even get that.

[Magic Science]

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.

Hold that thought until 2036.

For whatever reason, Firaxis really seems to dislike building large empires in their empire building games.

So do we in most big Pitbosses. Though I would agree that "three cities" is much too small.