Civilization VII

[Sad People]

I believe that what they said is that the icon will highlight a recommended path (like the English if you were playing as the Normans) for those who prefer to be more historical.

You might be right i was just trying to go off memory.

 

[NyQuil]

Wow. This article is deeply disturbing. I don’t think this game will be good even with DLC, it’s a trainwreck.

I'll give them credit for trying out some new things.

 

[MikeyMike01]

I'll give them credit for trying out some new things.

Most of it is taken from Humankind, so it’s not particularly original.

I'm pretty sure it says on the Steam page that the 2K account is for online play only.

I do expect the terrible 2K launcher though, heh.

The 2K launcher was removed from VI the other day, and they confirmed that it won’t be required for VII either.

 

[Tawnos]

Excited for it. I've played every version of the game and it's one of the few games I still play.

-Some of these ideas are definitely lifted straight from Humankind, but I expect they'll be executed a LOT better than Humankind. That game was extremely clunky/clumsy to play.

-I liked districts, but I think this version of districts that start of un-specialized is going to be more interesting.

-I absolutely LOVE that they got rid of barbarians. After the first run of playthroughs in VI, I almost always played with barbs turned off.

-I'm happy, but not as thrilled, that they're getting rid of workers and making it more of an automatic in the tile acquisition process. I liked workers fine, though they were better in V than they were in VI, but this many iterations in I have no problem with a new approach.

-The evolution of civs will be interesting. From a historical perspective, it makes a lot more sense than Rome making it all the way through to the space age, still being called Rome. And it makes a lot more sense that the Dutch aren't going to be available in Antiquity (I assume).

-I'll keep my opinion back on the visuals until I play it. I've never been satisfied with the look of cities in any iteration of the game.

-Regarding the pre-order thing persona, they did that for VI as well (Aztecs) and later released it as a DLC. There's going to be enough to play around with on release that I'm going to be fine waiting for the DLC releases.

-They mentioned nothing about win conditions at all, which I'm hoping they've overhauled a bit. At least make it so religion isn't just another version of domination.

 

[RandV]

-The evolution of civs will be interesting. From a historical perspective, it makes a lot more sense than Rome making it all the way through to the space age, still being called Rome. And it makes a lot more sense that the Dutch aren't going to be available in Antiquity (I assume).

I think there's a good litmus test here for how they're going to treat the modding community. There was a screenshot I saw that showed the choosing, which had a logical progression pick, an unlockable 'if you have the right resources pick', and then an 'other civs' button which didn't show its options. Meaning, they did build a 'logical progression' into the system, and as a lot of people probably aren't going to like this feature that's probably the first thing people will try to mod is locking in that first pick only. Just because you don't have to pick someone else doesn't mean the AI won't.

One of the problems with Humankind's system I'd say is that while it seems incredibly flexible in practical terms it was less so. Each civ had a focus with a unique district to boost it: food, science, production, expansion, etc etc. so what you really wanted to do is string together a good balanced build and with AI taking options off the board that made things more limited.

Another thing I'm concerned/curious about is with the reduction down to 3 ages if they're simply taking a new approach or if they're slimming down and 'simplifying' things. In one of the videos there was a lot of comments from them how infrequently people actually finished their games to the end, which has a whole variety of reasons and would be really challenging to correct. While it's good they recognize it there's also a lot of wrong ways to address it, like in my opinion how in Civ VI they went from workers to builders.

One more thing, I think the introduction of commanders could be an unintentional big help. A massive problem in V/VI when they went to single unit hex grid, is that when you the player are managing tactics the best method is to form up in a line melee in front range in back and hit at the same time. But in both games they could never figure out the AI which just sent columns of troops at you letting you pick them off with much smaller numbers. This idea that one commander unit takes the units to battle and they 'spread out' on deployment could naturally give a much needed challenge boost.

 

[Tawnos]

I think there's a good litmus test here for how they're going to treat the modding community. There was a screenshot I saw that showed the choosing, which had a logical progression pick, an unlockable 'if you have the right resources pick', and then an 'other civs' button which didn't show its options. Meaning, they did build a 'logical progression' into the system, and as a lot of people probably aren't going to like this feature that's probably the first thing people will try to mod is locking in that first pick only. Just because you don't have to pick someone else doesn't mean the AI won't.

One of the problems with Humankind's system I'd say is that while it seems incredibly flexible in practical terms it was less so. Each civ had a focus with a unique district to boost it: food, science, production, expansion, etc etc. so what you really wanted to do is string together a good balanced build and with AI taking options off the board that made things more limited.

Another thing I'm concerned/curious about is with the reduction down to 3 ages if they're simply taking a new approach or if they're slimming down and 'simplifying' things. In one of the videos there was a lot of comments from them how infrequently people actually finished their games to the end, which has a whole variety of reasons and would be really challenging to correct. While it's good they recognize it there's also a lot of wrong ways to address it, like in my opinion how in Civ VI they went from workers to builders.

One more thing, I think the introduction of commanders could be an unintentional big help. A massive problem in V/VI when they went to single unit hex grid, is that when you the player are managing tactics the best method is to form up in a line melee in front range in back and hit at the same time. But in both games they could never figure out the AI which just sent columns of troops at you letting you pick them off with much smaller numbers. This idea that one commander unit takes the units to battle and they 'spread out' on deployment could naturally give a much needed challenge boost.

Any mod to keep the first Civ is going to have to include the bonuses changing with each era. It seems like each era is going to need different bonuses to do well in them, as opposed to just the bonuses you start the game with.

Talking about people not finishing the game, if the barbarian and commanders are any indication, it feels like there was a focus on reducing tedium. Moving each individual military unit is such an enormous pain. And regarding workers/builders, I really missed the automate button that I think existed in V (but maybe that was IV?). Hopefully they've also eliminated the need to actively "research" future tech. That was so annoying.

 

[RandV]

Any mod to keep the first Civ is going to have to include the bonuses changing with each era. It seems like each era is going to need different bonuses to do well in them, as opposed to just the bonuses you start the game with.

Talking about people not finishing the game, if the barbarian and commanders are any indication, it feels like there was a focus on reducing tedium. Moving each individual military unit is such an enormous pain. And regarding workers/builders, I really missed the automate button that I think existed in V (but maybe that was IV?). Hopefully they've also eliminated the need to actively "research" future tech. That was so annoying.

If there is going to be a regular continuation for the modding community, I was thinking with the separation of leader/civ it might be more difficult to mod in new leaders but probably easier to mod in new Civs. If the latter is just a matter of names, perks, and bonuses, and no graphics, then it should be easy to drop in a bunch of mod civs to create a more natural options for era progression. At a glance it looks like they have one natural progression for each civ, which may not seem as such like Egypt -> Songhai, but mods could give you so much more options rather than going like Rome -> Mongols.

And I'm kind of sad about the loss of barbarians. I kind of cheated a bit in Civ V/VI as I used a mod to disable exp limits from them, but they were always part of my early game play. Talking about removing tedium and its relation to the end game, barbs were pretty minimal by that point. The end game drags because if you get a war you have dozens of units to move around... though I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Rather it's usually an imbalance in competition, the player has probably snowballed by this point to be well ahead and its just a mop up job to conquer every last capital or clicking next turn 30-50 times to build all your space ship parts. And at this point of the game it both takes longer for you to manage your turn and to wait for the AI to finish theirs.

 

[Osprey]