Civilization 7 is in development

[v8mark]

1) Look at how quiet this forum is generally right now. Despite the general dislike of Civ5 around here, and the warmer but still tepid response Civ6 got, the forum in general roared back to life when they came out. We ran a day 1 Potluck here for Civ6 that had a huge turnout. Nobody has even suggested running a game here. The CFC Civ7 forum isn't much better, and that's a way bigger site.

This is my feeling too. It's been really striking just how little chat there is about Civ7 anywhere. Forums are kind of old hat these days, but even if you look at the more contemporary spaces, there's really not very much out there about the game. 

Potato McWhiskey is a big Civ youtuber, was sponsored by Firaxis to help market the game, and his Civ7 videos have dried up - the most recent was 11 days ago, which is astonishing for a flagship title that released two months ago. His more recent Age of Wonders 4 videos have higher viewcounts, too. Marbozir, who wasn't sponsored as far as I know, has absolutely slated the game. Civ Reddit is also much more quiet than you'd expect just post a big release, and there are many many comments slating the game that have hundreds of upvotes.

This has been a truly disastrous release in lots of ways, and my feeling is that it's a very long way back from here. The general understanding is that it's not a very good game, and even for those who are inhaling the copium and insisting it'll come good, a $70 release and a couple of early $30 DLCs mean that goodwill is in short supply.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Keep in mind that Age of Wonders 4 is two years old...

[Cheater Hater]

I don't think it's flopped--remember, no other Civ has launched on consoles same-day before, so Steam numbers aren't telling close to the full picture. In addition, the DLC sales are just as important for success, and AFAIK they haven't started selling stuff that wasn't part of the Deluxe Edition. Finally, this Civ is trying to solve the problems of appealing to the mass audience--it clearly is doing that at the expense of the core audience, but the metrics aren't going to capture that engagement, and we aren't going to see it outside of things like the Circana report (where it was ranked third in the US, only behind Monster Hunter Wilds and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2). Is it the breakout success of Civ 6? Of course not, but it likely wasn't going to get to that unless it was literally Civ 6.5 (which has its own problems). Was it released unfinished to make the fiscal year to compensate for GTA6's delay? Of course, but that won't matter in a year when most of the obvious things are fixed.

[yuris125]

I don't know man... Wilds was always going to be the best selling game, but I would expect a game of Civ calibre to be ahead of KCD2 in its launch month. Civ being behind KCD2 could be attributed to the latter being a very good game, but I wouldn't say it's a great look for Civ

Also, if I understand correctly, launch month figures would include preorders. Will be interesting to see where it lands once March numbers are released and that's out of the equation

As for trying to appeal to casual players, I'm not convinced Civ7 succeeds there - as far as I can tell, casual players (and even a fair few enfrachised players) don't like at all leaders being decoupled from civs and civ switching mid-game. If majority of complaints was about the game being released in an unfinished state, I would've agreed with the view that it will recover - but not when the game's core mechanics are unpopular

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

If they had just not bothered with the stupid legacies and instead allowed you to simply carry over your buildings from era to era, I think the game would be a lot smoother. Yes, yields would quickly get stupidly large, but you increase modern costs to compensate for that and keep the scaling the same, roughly.

That leads to huge snowballing, of course, but as was pointed out you compensate for that by having the game recognize victory sooner. I suppose players would complain about never seeing the modern age, then, and I do admit, it is fun to have semi-peer opponents in the industrial era instead of the usual tanks crushing men at arms that I would get in Civ VI a lot.

[chumchu]

They have found an actual problem, easy opponents in the end game, just not a good solution to it. There is I believe lot of work that could be done on the AI to adress that.

I do not know if anyone here tried Ackens mod for civ 5 but it is an instructive example to me. The mod increased the difficulty by about 2 difficulty levels while lowering the AI-bonuses and the load times significantly. This was done by one expert player and novice coder integrating some previous AI-mods and looking over the AI:s strategic decision making.

[chumchu]

They have found an actual problem, easy opponents in the end game, just not a good solution to it. There is I believe lot of work that could be done on the AI to adress that.

I do not know if anyone here tried Ackens mod for civ 5 but it is an instructive example to me. The mod increased the difficulty by about 2 difficulty levels while lowering the AI-bonuses and the load times significantly. This was done by one expert player and novice coder integrating some previous AI-mods and looking over the AI:s strategic decision making.

Play testing and knowing the strategies of you own game is crucial if you want to make a good AI. That takes time

[T-hawk]

Play testing and knowing the strategies of you own game is crucial if you want to make a good AI. That takes time

Right. All the good AI in Civ ever came from modders after the fact. A company can't do it. They can't tune the AI to understand game systems while the systems are constantly in development flux. They can't take a year or more focused on just AI like the modders do. And the bulk of their player base never cares so it's not something to spend resources on. Blake's work in Civ 4 was a generational anomaly on multiple levels, not a new norm for Civ or any franchise.

[williams482]

Mohawk did it.

The tactical AI in Old World is phenomenal by the standards of such things. I've been burned very badly for sloppy deployments that the Civ V or VI AI would have never managed to effectually punish. The economic side is weaker but still more than capable of using it's advantages on higher difficulty levels. I'm also pretty confident that it would crush an average not-very-serious player on a neutral difficulty.

Blake's Civ IV AI is comparable, I think. None of the other Civ games I've played come close.

[scooter]

I think Civ4 AI on launch was in a much better state than more recent entries, although it's obviously true that it was still quite bad at the game relative to what came later. But I think that's a bit unfair to launch AI - players were not very good at the game on launch either.


I need to give Old World another try. I bounced off the first couple times I tried due to the Orders system, but there were a lot of good ideas in that game.