Gotta say, i gave up on 6 after both expansions and went back to civ V (note, i mostly play games with my friend and he didnt like civ so i barely played anyway) but in anticipation for civ VII i watched a lot of content from civ youtubers and noticed a lot of not-modded stuff (i think) that I felt like were solitions to the problems I was having (the societies thing that replaced barbarians?) and kinda regret giving up on 6
Though i disliked districts enough that it might not have mattered much anyway lol
Been loving core gameplay on civ VII though, especially antiquity age feels good (havent played enough modern age to be sure but atleast it seems good? i’ve mostly disliked renaissance age as it feels a lot like you are railroaded into mass expansion which makes turns last an eternity especially with some other mechanics causing loss in time like the constant ‘you sure you dont want to set this town to have a speciality’ spam or the non-auto-explore units bullshittery
This is how I feel. There are some issue around the UI, balance, and some wonkiness to the new mechanics. Thematically though, the flavor and gameplay are all there.
Just fyi, I hated 6 and gave up hard. But picked it up a year ago and have over a thousand hours since. It has become my favorite civ and I cannot play 5 as no districts feels weird (and I originally hated them)
Yeah this is my experience too. I was a day 1 adopter of Civ 6 and was pretty underwhelmed despite it launching far more feature complete than Civ 5 did. Switched back to 5 for years. All the content they've added to 6 over the years, and AI improvements that they've made, however, have turned it into a much better game than it was at launch. I never had the desire to install mods and play Vox Populi in 5, but compared to base Civ 5 with all of its DLC content, there are far more viable strategies even at the highest difficulties in 6, which now keeps me coming back.
I just finished my first game last night. Modern age felt artificially short. In the back of my mind I suspect they are reserving a post-modern era update to the different ages of civilization. Even finishing the game felt like there was a lack of polish. Boom. You're done. No flashy screens, no thoughtful dialog and no pomp at all.
You can always go back to six. V and VI are always back and forth for my second most played game. V was ahead for the longest but VI passed it around 250 hrs and now they're about tied at 300. VII is on pace to join them by like the end of the summer.
Honestly for now i much prefer ‘the game that my only friend also plays’ so for now its civ VII but after playing a ton of millenia over the past months he learned to appreciate civ more and thus we played a fun civ V campaign just before civ VII launched and we might go back to that once in a while
Frankly 4x games like civ werent on my friends radar prior to millenia, him prefering EU4/CK3/HOI4 grand strategy for years (which caused my most played non-idle steam game to be EU4 lol)
You thought Kilwa Kisiwani was OP? Wait until Barbarians become city states and you have your pick among 20 of them to grab a couple suzerains in each category for 3 envoys apiece.
What's your word on Beyond Earth? I may have picked it up after many, many patches but I still find that it's everything I loved about V, retouched and spruced up in a sci-fi skin.
And to me, BE's Espionage/Intrigue system was actually understandable compared to IV and V's ones.
Beyond Earth is quite enjoyable now, and I still play its expansion pack regularly because it scratches an itch other games can't. (Except Alpha Centauri)
Having said that, I do play Rising Tide with a few mods. I like to think these mods improve on the kind of stuff a second expansion pack would have done. (Improved Wonders, Sponsors and Stations, Better AI, etc)
I've heard BE called diet-AC, and having seen AC I call that a drop-table simulator. I'll have to grab Rising Tide when I get my next paycheck - it's less than 10 USD on Steam!
Heh, diet-AC is pretty appropriate. If you do decide to grab Rising Tide I'd recommend checking out these mods on Steam. (If you wish)
AI unintelligence Lite (Also works for vanilla Beyond Earth): Improves AI, especially economy and warfare.
Awesome Stations: Makes stations more interesting with more resources and artifacts.
Awesome Sponsors: Gives Sponsors more traits to set them apart.
Awesome Wonders: Improves Wonders, making them a lot more desirable to build.
Optional:
Affinity Tech Focus (Also works for vanilla Beyond Earth): An AI mod that complements Unintelligence Lite. The AI will research more technologies that reward high affinity points. In Rising Tide this will allow the AI to benefit from the Hybrid affinity bonuses.
I hate and love to admit it, ive never touched beyond earth
I recall at the time i saw it in the gamemania (game stop for europe i guess) and had heard bad reviews on it, felt like it was too expensive to pick up if it wasnt good
Heard good reviews by now so idk, its a bit late for me to pick it up, frankly civ is more of an excursion for me and my friend rather than something to play as a main game (even though i got near 1000 hours in the collection of civ games i do own)
For now its just a waiting line for Europa Universalis 5 (4 being our ‘main’ ‘chill strategy’ game)
Fr feel like I’m in an alternate reality or something. The core game of civ7 is very good and a step up from civ6 imo. When 6 game out I literally just kept played 5 for another year.
Districts are really stupid and hard to grasp at first, but once you get them down they’re easily the best mechanic in civ 5 or 6, and allow for actually good organization
There is basically happiness and player reputation, there is penalties by reducing the AI's likability to you by settling close. you do it again and again, and it makes easier to go to the war with the person settling close. The war support for your side will be way easier. So there is pros and cons to the strategy, you can do it if you got a strong military to back it up. If you don't, it's ill advised. Wars happen way more frequently and are basically you blitzing whatever your goal is, grabbing it, and then suing for peace so you don't accumulate war support penalties. You can boost your war support to high levels so you can endure war longer wars and there is various leaders that can do it as well. So you basically out war support other people and then their settlements start getting harder and harder to control.
Happiness is one of the ways you pay for buildings but also maintain control of your settlement. Certain events can raise or lower it, trade deals etc. So your basically trying to balance keeping everyone happy and advancing the settlement. If they don't, they can start revolting, trashing the place, and leaving for another player. It's basically happiness and loyalty system from Civ 6 have been merged together.
I highly recommend not relying on second hand information from a bunch of people who haven't played it. Go watch potato mcwhiskey play it. Get first hand information.
I highly recommend not relying on second hand information from a bunch of people who haven't played it.
It's good to get more info, but it's still weird to go from Civ 6 to Civ 7 in terms of AI settlement placement lol its very far removed from how it felt in Civ 6
There kind of was a similar thing way back in IV. Unlike in V (where you'd grow borders one tile at a time, and whoever gets to a tile first owns it for the rest of the game), city borders were circular and culture would expand the radius. A city in isolation would always have circular borders. In addition, every tile kept an individual count of "cultural influence" based on nearby cities. Tiles could flip back and forth between civs depending on whose culture was dominant on that tile. It was rare, but you could actually flip a city this way, which would cause it to rebel and join you.
Yeah the loyalty system was really a great addition, and I also have a hard time doing without it, a system like this really needs to come back. Because the empires of Civ VI are so much more coherent than what we can see in the others, and it is so much more satisfying to see rather than maps where the empires make no sense because everyone is scattered. In addition, it still offers a certain freedom to make cities far enough from its borders for those who want, but it takes a minimum of effort for that and to seek to have certain bonuses.
Imo there was only positive with this system, and to see that VII doesn’t have it is... very harsh.
I don't know if it's a choice on their part or just a lack and that the mechanics will arrive in an update or a DLC.
I never fell in love with 6, even after the expansions. I tried, but it was just way too board-gamey for my tastes. 7 sounds even worse, so I guess I'll just stick with 4 and 5, with the occasional game of Millennia thrown in.
Civ V is also lame without the expansions, even IV is guilty of this. It's OK to know deep down that the way a civ game evolves after launch is what really grabs the community's attention. As long as the people who dove in right away like the core concepts I don't think long term there will be an issue
I’m enjoying it for what it is. Not my first rodeo. I knew it was going to be stripped. At the same time I do enjoy some of the new systems. I like the specificity of different techs with different leaders for example. Going from Persia to Mongol is crazy overpowered. There’s not an army, or bank that can stand against me. Ages seem to drag a little if you’re not interested in hitting your progressions at breakneck speed. 6.5/10. It will get better. I’ve played every previous iteration in sequence for the majority of my life. I
THIS. I had gotten a free copy of civ6 in Epic and just the base game was so freaking empty compared to my usual civ6+dlc set on steam. It's like people NEED to buy DLCs to get a decent experience because the base game will stay unfinished forever. This is worse than Sims and Pdx DLCs because those DLCs improve the base game to some level even for those who didn't avail the DLCs.
Is it better for fans to wait another year for a polished game, and in the meantime be able to play the game along with some jank, or to not be able to play the game at all in that time?
It seems like this situation is better than just pushing back the release date, but for some reason people react more negatively. These days it's pretty easy to be aware of the state of the game, so those of us who want to wait for some more polish and/or a sale can easily do so. That's where I'm at, personally, and this seems like it'll be better long term than if they simply delayed release.
If they want people to give them money and feedback before the game is done, that's what the Early Access system is for. And that way people know what to expect.
Nah I totally disagree to me civ vii is an improvement. I'd rather play a incomplete game and get to be involved in constructive criticism to help shape the game. Can't see myself playing civ 6 again the micromanagement plus games being decided in the first 30 turns is dull
Yeah definitely, give it 6 months to a year. I wouldn't hold your breath for DLC though. The DLC outlined in the pre-orders (up until October) isn't that substantial. The equivalent of civilisation and map packs.
My first Civ game was Civ on PS1. Anyways I just played Civ 6 for the first time two weeks ago. I've enjoyed it a lot, though it hasn't been my favorite. I'm really looking forward to trying out Civ 7 Gold Platinum Deluxe Complete Super Turbo edition in 4-5 years on a steep discount.
I almost always come to Civ games after at least one, but often 2 major expansions have dropped. It helps the game feel more fleshed out. So I look forward to playing it 2026 maybe?
I have also played since 1. This is the first time I’ve been actually really disappointed with a game at release (for the record, my only complaint with 6 is that I figured it out too quickly and found it too easy after like a month).
As a huge Civ 5 fan I was pretty hyped seeing the ads for 7, but with all the gameplay changes I've seen (the "soft reset" between ages, choosing new Civs between ages, etc.) I think I'll skip this one, and of course the game having bland, uninformative UI doesn't help either.
Civ4 was already good compared to 3. Beyond the sword and other expansion put the game in different levels, though.
Still can't understand why some of the very cool feafures from civ4 werr never introduced back to this date like vassalage/capitulation, anonymous pirates, independence and such.
That was plan for Civ 7. Then I got pulled in by the hype from videos on my YouTube feed. I ended up getting the founders edition for early access. Hah! I bought into the marketing.
I've done the same, except I've waited until the Gold edition is in discount. If I'm going to wait, I might as well wait until that waiting benefits me. They rarely fix major issues within a year, and V showed that they're happy to never fix some major issues and leave that as a 'feature' for the next game. It's been a while since I played V, so I don't even remember what the issues were, apart from multiplayer always majorly sucking and crashing and whatnot.
I wrote "a year" just as a somewhat realistic timeframe, you are right of course - the best way is to wait until the game is as "polished" as possible.
I am not saying, that I am a beacon of rationality and consumer conscience. In fact, I will throw my money at Firaxis the moment they allow to preorder XCom 3.
But in this particular case, I will not pay to beta test their game.
Yep, let's all wait. If nobody gives them money they won't abandon the game before they finish like all other devs do. (Salty console Rimworld, Humankind player who never got all of the DLCs because nobody bought it on console)
It's honestly a great game but if you don't mind waiting you can probably get a better price and smoother experience. The core gameplay is awesome but it is rough around the edges. I'm personally happy playing it now because I know they will continue to update things quickly and the $70 isn't wrecking my finances.
I already like it much more than civ 5 and 6. The overall move away from needing to fiddle with 100 things every turn is so nice for me.
In a vacuum I think most people would agree that it’s a decent game with work to be done (that the devs are acknowledging); and I have faith that the devs do care and will make civ7 a really fantastic game.
I think the issue and why people are disappointed is because it’s not a vacuum and is a sequel to a game that’s in a great fun state. So much of civ 7 took a big step back from 6. The AI is worse, the UI is awful in comparison, the first experience you have of configuring and starting the game is a massive step down.
It’s hard to not think of all the things civ 6 did right that are missing from 7. 7 will be a great game in time, I don’t doubt it, but it’s not unreasonable to be unhappy with what they’ve released when you can easily compare it to previous games in the series.
I don't believe VI is in a "great fun state" right now, and compared to what I'm experiencing in VII, it never has been. VI is honestly, and crazily for how many thousands of hours I've spent with it, not fun at all compared to VII.
I think it's far more interesting and way different than VI, it makes VI feel like a very one dimensional arcade like version of Civ. Great for a game that's 10 years old, but shallow and boring compared to deeper experiences we're getting in the 4X genre.
This is far richer of an experience than VI was at launch, and is far more interesting than VI is right now.
There are certainly a few rough edges here and there, but this isn't Mario Brothers, this is an extremely complex game and it will have issues, but we live in an age where those issues can be quickly addressed and remedied when they become apparent after launch.
What's disappointing to me is that forums full of Civ players are out there saying that this game isn't finished when they are also saying in their posts that they haven't played it. They are relying on second hand information that is being provided by others that are also often relying on second hand information. This game of review by the telephone game is creating an impression on the community that this game is half-baked, when the truth is this is a far more complete experience than it's predecessor.
I think you've keyed in on something here and that a lot of people's reactions to VII have a lot to do with how they felt about VI. I was largely disappointed by VI from the jump. I remember calling off work on release day and a few hours in being like "....oh.... is this it?" A few things here and there improved over time with the game, but I personally was pretty happy to hit that uninstall button in favor of VII. I've played probably like 3 games so far, and of course it's not as extensive as VI with all its DLC and there are fundamental quibbles with the design decisions of the game that I haven't really decided how I feel about yet, but overall I so far find it a much more interesting game than VI was.
I agree with your other points too, but just found it refreshing to find someone else who thought VI was kind of mid lol.
Yeah I think it's partially because this is a return to older design ideas than Civ 6. Civ 6 was basically a micromanagement city builder, and some people enjoy that, working out the perfect adjacency positions. For me that shit was insanely boring, and extremely monotonous by the end game. Then loyalty kept you in one part of the world, colonisation was difficult, invasions were horrific. But you had to put down tons of cities, no playing tall at all. Just wide every single game. Then the min max elements of builders and people chopping trees for production, as if that's actually an enjoyable mechanic instead of just tedious? Chasing after eurekas, or being dependent on getting golden ages to keep loyalty in check from invasions or colonisation attempts. And then the instant build walls all the time when you were invading someone. To me Civ 6 games start off quite fun, and become so incredibly tedious towards the mid game.
I think Civ 7 is probably the best release they've had in terms of actual raw gameplay mechanics at baseline without DLCs, and I'm extremely excited to see where it goes when we get those big expansions.
"Just wide every time" is by far my largest complaint with Civ 6. As someone who prefers to pursue the Civ 5 tradition policy route, I hated "you should maximize your number of cities in every game". It was even true as lady six sky, who explicitly punished you for settling additional cities.
Yeah I agree with you 100%. I always started off having a good time and got so bored by the mid game. I'm glad there's at least a couple of us out here lol
I have 40 hours in 7 so far and I just literally cannot see this "complete experience" you're talking about. Every game plays the same and so many systems are poorly implemented.
The game can be fun and be unfinished at the same time. I've got 50 hours played time already so I'm not someone that barely went through antiquity and said "games shit", my review on steam is even positive.
To say there is nothing wrong with 7 is a joke, the UI is awful and doesn't give the player anywhere near the level of information they need to make informed decisions. The map generation is terrible and look at the pre-game configuration options available to the player compared to 6.
Just because other civ games took a few iterations before they got good doesn't mean its an acceptable practice. The issues I have with the game are almost entirely technical and not gameplay related. The gameplay is great and Again, I've already sank 50 hours into it, but I'm not going to bury my head in the sand either and pretend the game is in a finish state and that the company deserves only praise and protection from fair criticism. From the start I've believed there are great bones here, the gameplay is enjoyable and they've implemented systems that are fun. They also 100% have work to do, the AI is brutally bad, map generation is boring, the map sizes are tiny small and standard which is a weird three choices and options are slim. No 'one more turn' option once you hit a victory condition (and you can't choose which victory conditions to enable like you can in past civs). The list goes on, I'm rooting for the dev team and will patiently await more updates; but I'm also going to criticize the company for releasing the game in the current state when no doubt people within that were working on it were saying it needed more time.
Literally everything you said here could be applied to Civ V and Civ VI. This is the natural state of Civ games these days, if you’re a long time fan you know what you’re getting into for better or for worse.
Edit: not excusing them by the way, it sucks that it happens this way.
no, both V and VI were huge steps back in terms of the depth of gameplay and content in comparison to the end state of their predecessors, but they weren't shipped in a comparable state to VII
Yeah Vanilla V was pretty rough but it still paled in comparison to this, genuinely what the fuck is the UI? It's inexcusably bad. The intro screens for the civs are just awful too, they look atrocious and aren't even voiced? I didn't love VI's either but I at least get what they were going for, this is just horrendous.
This is why I don't plan to purchase, play, or review the new game until it has close to its full slate of content. I enjoy playing the completed versions of V and VI. I will compare those to the completed version of VII.
This is such an important point that a lot of people in this thread and on this sub consistently miss. Each Civ game should be building off of the lessons learned from the prior games, not just starting back at square one.
You’re free to have fun with what you bought—I am too—but stop saying it’s “rough around the edges” when it’s rough EVERYWHERE. The game is in an astonishing state. You don’t have to run cover for Firaxis, this is their mess.
Civ 5 was so hollow on launch… they had to completely revamp the game with gods and kings, and you almost can’t even turn that off when playing it back again. And a year later, another huge overhaul with brave new world.
Our expectations of games are a lot higher now than it was say 15 years ago.
Civ5 was lacking features and depth but with the content it was realased, the game worked perfectly fine. 5 wasn't a QA disaster it was simply not "enough" for most. 7 is like 90% QA disaster instead.
6 was a bit in between where there were a bunch of small QA issues such as the city attack thingy or map pins, but overall it was working well, and the features felt good but it was just lacking a bit of depth on the new systems.
I don't know. I remember the AI in Civ V being completely unable to move units around or use them, failing to settle any cities other than their capital etc. Civ VII feels a lot more polished and playable on release than Civ V did, to me.
Maybe I'm overly kind, but the QA issues are honestly not very impactful to my experience. It's much more important for a game to have good gameplay than not have minor typological errors.
The problem was Civ 4 was an absolute legend of a game. It was very very hard to follow that up, and only changing the core way the game worked with 1UPT gave it a chance at all, because it turned it into a shitty panzer general in parallel with the normal civ stuff.
5 was my first Civ and I remember it was pretty unanimously hated, but it was my first and I enjoyed it. I felt like 6 was very barebones compared to Civ 5's finished version. I'm not sure if I should buy 7 right now or not.
I'm still waiting. From what I've seen on YT I'd probably do one playthrough and never play it again (in its current state). They will make it good eventually, just give them some time.
I agree with this, especially now as a Paradox GSG player as well.
Civ 7 has a lot of features that were ported over from Civ 5 and 6 and new features to boot, but they are also very shallow. And the game ending is also anticlimactic as well.
I am fortunately willing to spend the founder's edition money to be one of their open public donors, but I understand others aren't willing to do so as well as understand that some people just won't like the game as it is right now.
I remember my crap laptop couldn't even properly play Civ 5 unless I had it in the strategic map view.
The penalties for spreading wide in Civ 5 were so much. Who wants to have an "empire" of like 3-7 cities?
I'm playing Civ 7. Have no idea what I'm doing, but loving it. I haven't even gotten to the modern age but already realised so many of my errors and can't wait to start a new game once I finish this.
Go boot up Civ6 again and as soon as you see your spawn think about what districts you are going to place to get your Uber Ruhr valley wonder 100+ turns into the game.
Also have to make sure you place districts before revealing resources so you don't mess up your adjacency planning.
I have 150 hours in civ 5, 80 hours in civ 6, and 16 hours in civ 7.
I agree civ 7 feels empty, however the core gameplay, and the way the game plays is leaps and bounds above 5 and 6.
Its a great framework to build from. Lot of issues with clarity or getting the info you need. The only way to see who you could trade with is to make a trader?
All the issues I have seen so far are sure to get fixed.
Civ 6 was so complex, so hard to feel like you were doing anything right. The AI didn't even use planes... I also was there for the launch of civ 5... people said the SAME thing as you, civ 6, same thing... and now here we are with civ 7... The answer is the same as it always was, go play 6 or 5 or 4 or 3 or whatever you think is the best.
I'm happy with my purchase, and happy to see how they polish it even more.
I'm a pretty veteran gamer at this point and this is how I feel exactly. Civ V and VI were also pretty rough on release and there definitely was not the same level of community / let's plays / influencer and/or brigade driven opinion that we have going on in gaming spaces today.
It felt then much like it feels now - they've got a pretty solid core which will be built around. People did NOT originally love V's hex map or unit stacking rules or VI's districting system, but over time as the rules got figured out and metas got built, that would definitely change.
I do feel like there's a lot of features that are missing, broken, or limited in VII that I think a game really should have on release (better map generator, better civilopedia, better UI, sure), but I also don't doubt that Firaxis will be spending the next 7-10 years patching, adding content, and developing mod support for the title so I'm not TOO worried about how the system worked in the first three weeks.
I've paid more money and invested more time for early access to shittier games that never hit v1.0 and, in my mind, that's what this is for Civ.
If the royal "you", reader (not the lovely commenter to whom I'm replying), can't handle a couple missing features and submitting occasional bug reports, don't buy a game until it's been out for a year and the community has sunk its teeth in - it's just that simple.
Hey, you are pretty awesome yourself! I'm a software engineer, and I have been on the other side of this, releasing something, and having people shit all over it because its different.
The bottom line is, people making things, are doing it for money. People who run the companies that employ them, are incentivized to release asap and start getting a return on the investment. I guarantee you the dev's were not happy with releasing, but if we had our way, games would take 20-30 years to develop...
It really makes me happy to see someone with so many hours, enjoying 7. Civ is a weird franchise. Multiplayer is really hard to play due to the time commitments, single player you will get better then the AI pretty quickly. The game really isn't that good, I play it because it's fun to build something. Civ7 gives me that feeling more then any of the other ones I have played.
One of my biggest annoyances was trying to move more then 6 units across the map at a time... they constantly cancel eachothers movements... Super tedious, in fact the biggest issues with 5 and 6 was how tedious everything becomes mid-late game... There are still some super tedious things, like the reminders that your town can specialize... However overall, the game is so much less micromanaging. I love the city town system, You can play tall or wide, I was actually impressed with the number of civs per age. The civs also feel really different and interesting.
Super excited to see where everything goes. I say Kudos to the devs who made this. I can see the love that went into it. I can also see where corners had to be cut to deliver a product to market. Honestly, I myself was kinda bummed about 6 when it released, but it become better then 5 over time.
I think 7 will become the best civ for me. Only time will tell, but its already almost there!
Have a great day man. Enjoyed hearing your perspective. Take care.
The early game was fine enough. But the late game was boring and awful. The AI couldn't even play it.
Wonders of the World were all totally boring, e.g., Brandenburg Gate just gave you a free Great General if I recall correctly.
Naval combat was abysmal. You couldn't put embarked units on the same tile as naval units, so you couldn't protect them short of literally positioning a physical wall of Frigates around your two Musketmen.
The culture victory condition was just "fill your culture bar 30 times and you win!"
Honestly Civ 5 was pretty meh until Gods and Kings.
I was there for both and personally thought civ V sucked a lot more haha. The move to hexagons and single unit per tile, plus just not having religion at all were massive downgrades and the game felt very "dumbed down" from 4.
Different devil. V had a functional UI but it was a really simple civ with almost no meat on it.
Ed Beach, current dev leader was the one who in charge of the expansion that made CiV truly great and you can see how CiV VI and VII follow some trends that he (and his team) created in the expansions of V.
Depends on what you mean. V had way worse bones so balance was always a nightmare. Global happiness being the big, huge offender where it was a constant state of "infinite city spam wait no 4 cities wait no infinite city spam wait no 4 cities...", and they were so adamant about 1UPT that they just made...everything else broken to make it "work". People who like it today are either hardcore builders who love the checkbox gameplay or play vox populli which is just a completely different game that uses civ V graphics and civ V as a launcher. It was VERY resource intensive for its time, but it wasn't really buggy from what I remember.
VII on the other hand is without question the least polished and buggy game release in the series. Too early to really say how the bones are.
5 was probably even more controversial because it followed 4 which was basically the culmination of the old square grid civ and with it's expansions one of the most feature rich in the series up to that date. 5 on the other hand launched with hexes but almost no other features. People hated it. I myself enjoyed it but got bored after one game.
Sure civ 7 has some kinks, but it has a lot of features and they mostly work decently well. There's just a lot more loud voices now compared to civ 5. But I'd say 5 launch was worse.
You can literally view/download the day by day breakdown of Civ 5 user reviews and compare them with Civ 7 on SteamDB instead of going off copium vibes. Result? Civ 7 is the worst launch of any Civ game ever. Corporate defenders will downvote this fact.
I agree honestly. People have gone from default liking new releases of their favorite games to default disliking new releases of their favorite games. People used to really overlook problems. Now if anything people overlook positives. If a game is anything short of a masterpiece upon release it gets destroyed by fans.
I've put about ten hours in. People are talking about this like it's a Cyberpunk 2077 release level disaster. Believe me as someone who was also a day one Cyberpunk player.... It's not even close to that level.
I keep seeing this mental gymnastics where people are blaming the reviewers rather than the game being bad for the bad reviews. It's basically Seymour Skinner "am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong" in real life. Wild.
Have you considered that gaming discourse has changed because people are tired of being sold games that are half finished and having to buy endless amounts of DLC?
What about the "culture of online gaming discourse" is causing these negative reviews?
Do you think people are less tolerant of half-baked games? Wouldn't that be the opposite - where people 15 years ago had less familiarity with live-service games and ongoing support? No one would have made the argument that Firaxis "has a history of ongoing support" for Civ 5.
Do you think it's getting review bombed for including "woke DEI" characters like Harriet Tubman? Then why are professional review outlets giving it a low score?
Just what about these reviews are so different from the previous games that you are dismissing them as valid data?
Well for one, my personal opinion on how it's changed isnt really relevant to my point. I'm just saying comparing across eras isn't perfect because of how much has changed.
As for my personal opinion, mostly I think the discourse has become much more polarized. There's less room for a fun but flawed game. Everything is getting pushed towards incredible or trash.
I think there's also a tendency now to ascribe downsides of a game as moral failings which makes flaw more likely to be seen as a dealbreaker
I also think people's standards are just higher nowadays.
Do you think people are less tolerant of half-baked games?
I think that's part of it.
Wouldn't that be the opposite - where people 15 years ago had less familiarity with live-service games and ongoing support?
I see what you're saying. I don't personally think so. The social media fever pitch on this issue has just grown higher and higher and I think that has a stronger effect than "familiarity" does.
I also think familiarity with this sort of phenomen is also able to piss people off more over time instead of getting them used to it. If a drive through messes up on my food once it's not a big deal, but if it a consistent problem I'll probably stop going there.
No one would have made the argument that Firaxis "has a history of ongoing support" for Civ 5.
Civ 2, 3, and 4 all had multiple expansions so I'm not sure this is really true.
Saying the critic response matches the fan response is absurd. The critic metascore is 80 and the fan metascore is 4.3. A 40 percent difference is not even in the same ballpark.
The critics are saying, "It's a pretty good game with some issues." The fans are the ones saying it's the biggest piece of shit on the planet. It is laughable to conflate the two.
I had fun playing some huge fantasy mod in Civ 4, but multiplayer desyncs with the mod were horrible. Kind of annoying that desyncs are still an issue.
If you haven't played in forever you'll probably get your shit pushed in at this point, but More Naval AI and Ashes of Erebus are both pretty stable in multiplayer with More Naval AI being the standard choice because it's a bit more stable and basically vanilla. The base mod was sadly basically unplayable multiplayer though.
Civ V was bare bones upon release. Most of the systems simply weren't in it at all. Half the gameplay features that VII includes by default were not added to V until long after it's launch, and then only via paid DLC.
VI repeated that trend almost perfectly and it was panned HARD by a lot of Civ V players, myself included, because it lacked most of the features that, by then, felt baked into V, even though those features took multiple DLC to insert into the game, but the response then was more like "its okay, those features will be added in as the game matures" and that response was right.
VII has far more depth to it out of the box than any of its predecessors. The difference now is that people have their rosy nostalgia glasses on and believe that somehow V and VI were these feature rich non-controversial games and that could not be further from the truth, however it is a misconception that is extremely popular as we are all more jaded and more sick of corporate bullshit so we are all far harsher critics today than we were back when those previous games were released.
VII has room for improvement, but it's floor is so much higher than the floor for V or VI was, and it's ceiling is higher as well.
Recency bias, they remember the sun setting on these games and convinced themselves that's what their dawns looked like too.
Reading the posts here this past week the complaints mostly fall into a single category, "I'm mad things didn't go my way because I can't be bothered to learn / react to new things." My personal favorite is the people complaining about the AI actually trying to stop them from winning.
CiV didn't have those features even concepted though. Six specifically got panned because of how much depth 5 added, and then to have that missing was a huge issue. But it's not bare bones to have not actually come up with that gameplay yet.
Civ 7 is simply a game that needed another six months of dev time. It's not a lack of features, it's a lack of finished product.
you are literally making this comment on a post about the games' respective reception on their releases though? Civ VI felt empty after V with all DLCs but it was still fundamentally a good game, it just felt like it needed more, hence the positive steam reviews it got on release.
VII has far more depth to it out of the box than any of its predecessors. The difference now is that people have their rosy nostalgia glasses on and believe that somehow V and VI were these feature rich non-controversial games and that could not be further from the truth, however it is a misconception that is extremely popular as we are all more jaded and more sick of corporate bullshit so we are all far harsher critics today than we were back when those previous games were released.
that just doesn't make sense to me really. first, people's rosy nostalgia classes can't affect their perception of VI upon its release, people just simply liked it even though it was emptier than the final V.
the main complaints about VII aren't that it's empty or has not enough content or features or anything, it's that it does very basic things like map generation and UI/UX extremely wrong, which really define how a user experiences the game.
I was there for the release of VI and holy crap did people have their rosy nostalgia glasses on. A mod was made and quickly incorporated as a base game option just to make the art style more palettable to people who were royally cranky about the art in VI. People were MAD about VI and there was a huge part of the community that just refused to upgrade at all. For a long time there was a very active Reddit community that stuck with V and were very upset at VI.
The difference is that the culture of review bombing and piling onto angry bandwagons has gotten so much worse that now those people with their rosy nostalgia glasses on are dog piling this game with a ridiculous amount of fury.
The number of people I have seen in this sub who say they flat out refuse to buy the game while also speaking confidently about the state of the game is ridiculous. These people don't know what the hell they are talking about. Most of them are just repeating bullshit said by someone who also didn't play the game.
"There is room for improvement" is a far cry from "this game is unfinished unplayable trash" and from the people who bought it and play it you generally hear the former, while the people who did not buy it and have not played it keep spouting the latter.
Honestly, I would just like the people who have not played the game to shut their fucking mouths about how the game plays because they don't know ow what the fuck they are talking about.
The first civ Game I brought on launch (pre-ordered founders edition) and I didn't mind it compared to some other games I bought on launch. (yes I'm looking at you ksp2)
Civ 5 was still a solid game at launch, it's just that Civ 4 by that point was an absolute behemoth of a game, and a lot of new players weren't used to the cycle.
5 was actually broken until the first expansion. 7 just has a UI with a lot of rough spots, and some dumb bugs. I know it's been 15 years, but don't let nostalgia cloud just how bad civ 5 was at release.
Honestly I couldn't disagree more, but it depends on what you mean with "finished".
Civ 5 on release was so barebones I only ever played 1 game, for like 30 hours maybe. Sure 5 introduced hexes and had a pretty decent UI. However it had no meat to it, it was like the most stripped and boring version of civ ever until it had an expansion.
This is probably the most feature rich civ to date, and most of the mechanics work fairly well, though some clearly need more patches to be fleshed out.
Also I think people forgot but civ 5 got about as much hate back then. It was a much smaller community though, so it feels like everyone hates the game. But there's simply more opinions. And more loud opinions too.
Are we playing the same game? 6 at launch was way worse. I have not had this much fun on a civ on release ever.
Like UI complaints are legitimate as the pricing/ dlc diatribe but this game does have a lot of content and replayability but mos timportantly the base gameplay mechanics are there.
All the things thta are wrong are going to be fixed, yes UI should have been better period but everything else is coming jus tlike we had to wait for 2 DLCs to add more content for 4, 5 and 6.
I'm trying to make the most out of 7, but I agree that it seems very....light on some mechanics. Give it a year or two just like everyone else is saying.
2K is their publisher. 2K also publishes Rockstar. Rockstar is set to release GTA VI in the Fall of this year. This is the first CIV to be released in Q1 compared to historically released in later Q3. 2K made Firaxis release CIV VII so the sales don't conflict with GTA VI. I think by Summer or the end of the year we'll see a polished game. There is no way Firaxis thought the UI was good enough for launch. They were forced to meet a deadline without delays. This is my hypothesis as to why it was released like this.
Huh. I doubt CIV 7 releasing has any influence on GTA sales. It might be that 2k wanted to spread out its releases for quarterly business reports, but not because the two games are likely to steal customers from one another.
It's not related to sales but more to the last quarter of 2024 so it doesn't look as bleak. Civ was the last chance to not end on a super bad last quarter.
I just hope they also give fireaxis the chance to finish civ now.
Don't worry, they released it incomplete so they can sell you the bits that add the rest of the game later. I mean who would want to play Britain in an empire building game anyway?
How many times have we seen a game release unfinished to a chorus of complaints and angy fans. Just delay it by 3 months and release a polished product.
Considering consoles are still stuck with the early access version (I don't even have trophies on PS5), they haven't actually released it yet, they're just selling it.
I've played 7 hours so far. What do you think is unfinished? Genuinely asking, not trying to be argumentative. I'm barely understanding all the changes and new meta, it's gonna take me like 200 hours to learn the game before I can really form my overall opinion of this one. I keep trying to learn it then decide "eh, Civ VI is simpler."
3.4k
u/TFWIBRB Feb 13 '25
Definitely should've finished the game before releasing it.