I've been a fan of the civilization series since II. However I haven't played all of them due to being busy at different points in my life. Didn't play VI for example, but I did enjoy V, some of the DLC for it was good IIRC.
I'm concerned about the pre-order push, and that there is going to be a Switch version. But it does look like it could be good? No way I'm pre-ordering, but would like something to look forward to.
Zero. Civ 6 was basically unplayable from all the woke nonsense, especially the purely fictional leaders of shit kicking minor tribals from the history bargain bin that inexplicably are easily the most mechanically powerful in game.
I got Civ 6 for free and I wanted a refund.
One of the biggest problems with Civ 6 was that the AI couldn't play it's own game.
The AI posed zero military threat once you survived the initial Ancient era.
Other CPU players could be difficult to conquer at times because of how OP walls are. But they hardly ever rebuilt units once they take some initial losses. They never declare war passed the midgame and never pose any existential military threat.
A lot of players liked all the DLC that Civ 6 had. But all the extra features simply compounded the problem that the AI couldn't handle the base game, let alone each new layer of complexity.
So far with Civ 7, there hasn't been much focus from the devs re: improved AI. They've completely overhauled all the game mechanics wrt changing civs midgame, no districts, soft settlement caps, took away builders, revamped the era system, etc.
The chance that they made so many drastic changes means it's unlikely that they've invested enough resources into making competent and challenging AI.
Civ is one of the most famous examples throughout gaming history of "difficulty levels just gives free resources to the AI." Its always been basically lobotomized and retarded, and was playing a completely different game than you were that just traveled along the roughly same path.
Its very much a game meant to be played with real people, but its also impossible to get that many people together for that long.
They really should make a single player focused Civ game, but I have zero expectations that they would be able to do it well. An indie developer might be able to pull it off though.
I didn't even realise that the AI was so bad because I couldn't bring myself to play the game that much and study it. This goes back to my long running theory on game dev in general where I think that what likely happens is you have some third party contractors maybe or some expert programmers staying short term at the beginning of the project to get things up to speed.
They take their money and then leave the 'DLC devs' to it to keep adding stuff except as you point out because they keep adding all these new features in the old AI simply can't keep up because the game hadn't been designed around any of the new features.
This is why I believe for example Creative Assembly does what it does with spamming endless DLC. They simply don't have the expertise anymore to have people look through the code and fix shit or add new AI code to make things at least work. Shocker, no one with that level of skill would work with a bunch of woke arseholes on top of it they're going to go off and do their own thing because they can.
Which of course explains why so much of the innovation is coming from the indie sphere or people are forming their own companies with investor backing these days. Base greed is obviously a main driver behind DLC policy but I think it's also a tactic to cover up how much of a brain drain these companies are suffering from. Pretty soon it's going to get so bad with the DEI targets and everything I bet any of the artists who aren't woke will be quitting as well because I wouldn't want that crap anywhere near my portfolio.
I used to play World of Tanks on console.
The dev team, which was separate from the PC version, would openly admit that certain features of the game couldn't be improved or changed because no one from the OG programming team remained. And no one from the existing team understood their legacy code.
I’ve missed the last few. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised with them adding wokeness.
it simply cannot be better than civ 5 with the brave new world expansion pack.
Classic reference.
But all I've wanted since they announced V was Civ IV with hexes.
Yep, Civ 5 was the last correct version of a Civ game.
Civ4 + Fall from Heaven mod
There's at least one version of that which is still being actively worked on, and it's pretty good.
I loved Rhyes and Fall for Civ IV.
Some proposed changes to Civ 7
That is one awful list.
That's the general consensus from the community.
The takeaway I get from that is that they listened too much to the people screeching that Civ 6 was "Big'n'Tall or Lose" edition.
Extremely skeptical upon reading that list. Not optimistic but I hope it proves me wrong.
Horrible. Half the fun is having Albert Einstein and John Honeyman born to the Persian civ I'm playing.
It's going to suck, no question about it.
I was dumb enough to pay full price for Civ VI shortly after launch, and because exploring a 4x strategy game takes longer than 2 hours, that's $60 I'm never getting back. It was inferior to Civ V (talking base game to base game here, let alone the DLC) by every measure.
If you don't already have Civ V with the Brave New World expansion, I suggest taking a look at FreeCiv (an open source game based more on Civ II and Civ III than anything that came after, in active development since 1996, with the option for both desktop install and playing from the browser).
Edit: Or if you are willing to put in the effort, try to get Civilization II: Test of Time installed and working alongside the ToT Patch Project.
Always pirate a game to test drive it. You can always buy it legitimately if it's worth supporting.
Test the free demo on the Seven Seas first.
CC: u/TheOutlaw
Thing is, on a surface level I knew that even then, but I will admit to having a lapse in judgement (plus being somewhat inexperienced at the time and not knowing how to safely "Arrgh" newer more modern games at the time that I didn't want to risk it). On top of that, I just wasn't expecting such a massive downgrade coming from Civ V which I put a lot of hours into both pre- and post- Brave New World, that it burned me that much more.
Needless to say, I learned my lesson the hard way.
Depends on your definition of "good" I suppose.
Adequate? Fairly likely. As good as past games, like IV and V? I mean...2024...that kind of says it all, doesn't it?
Will Civilization 7 be fun? Almost certainly. Will it be as good as some of the previous entries? Personally, I doubt it. Will it be worth $70-$90, or whatever absurd shit they ask for it? Very unlikely. Will it be worth $70+ if you already own some of the past games? Well...that's up to how much you want to "upgrade," and what your income is. But, again, I doubt it.
Also, I absolutely despise TakeTwo/2K, despite them making some of my favorite games. I hate these companies, and think they're cancer. EA/Sony/Ubi/etc. get a lot of the hate, but I think these fuckers slip under the radar. Fuck 'em, they're awful.
They got rid of too many of the management aspects of Civ which people may argue with me about but it was interesting seeing a youtuber comment on this because the stupid leader system they keep insisting on for example is like a side-game compared to having everything focused on the big map which is the main reason you even do a Civ game in the first place for that classic just one more turn gameplay.
Didn't like the changes they made to the cities at all with those stupid districts and they got rid of the original infrastructure building too replacing it with builders where you have to clicky on tiles constantly and there didn't seem to be any automation method making that part of the game extra tedious.
I know there was technically some woke stuff in there but it wasn't that blatant, Civ 6 was released awhile before they got into full swing with the DEI but that will probably change with Civ 7. Even if you ignore anything woke, it's another case of, these games can't stand on their own anymore, they're just not that great.
Games seem to follow two extremes as well with their monetisation these days, either they're all in on a live service or they spam DLC content which costs more than the actual game and that's why so many of them are making the base games free now.
Slim to none, they were already slipping pretty bad by 6 and they seem determined to dumb it down even further. It will have a technical depth that makes it play like animal crossing: embassy edition. And yet still the AI will be too retarded to play it
Probably not. Civ6 was a downgrade from 5 imo in some ways, and I feel like 7 is going to continue that trend.
It will be terrible do to not enough female and LBTQ+ leaders. George Washington was a slaver owner btw. Obama should be America's leader
Bring back Colonization, cowards!
They've already stolen the civ changing mechanic from Humankind, which can either make the game be more replayable or suck complete ass.
Otherwise it'll be Civ. Every entry is vaguely the same game with basically a "what do you prefer" difference.
Absolutely no chance whatsoever that it's going to be any good, both because of the amount of rainbow shit that a popular franchise in 2024 will incorporate and because the people making it are very bad at making video games.
I had heard that it's going to require a Take 2 account in order to play. So I'll be sitting that one out for that alone.
Especially since VI wasn't something I wanted either.
Here's my fear for Civ 7. From what I can tell they've split the government into 2 types for your nation. The traditional ruler, and some kind of social progress leader.
Why?
Because there weren't enough history gayPOC and chick leaders in history. Now with the social impact leader, they can pump the game full of that woke jizz, and not have to be accountable for historic accuracy.
I don't think they're implementing co-leaders.
They've decoupled the leaders from their historic civs - such as having the ability late game to have whatever woke Cleopatra substitute they have this iteration leading Mali or Mongolia.
The social progress leader stuff is more that they've announced that leaders don't have to have historically led their nation anymore. The example they gave was Ben Franklin leading America.
This is an obvious ploy to stick as many female and indigenous characters into the game as possible because there simply wasn't enough historic options with the old constraints.
I’ll see what others say first
Every civ iteration removes a bunch of features only to release them a year later in expansion packs. I liked civ 6 hexes and districts but it was missing so many features that made civ 4 great. I barely touched civ 5 because it removed a bunch of modding features.
My brother claimed Civ 7 was going to have a mechanic in which you choose a different civ at the start of each age. He claimed another Civ clone had the same mechanic. I don't know whether to believe him. Regardless that doesn't sound like something I want to play, not that I would unless available DRM free.
[EDIT] I should add that I haven't played anything newer than the release version of Civ 5 and even that only for a few hours at most.
He's half right.
The OG leader you choose remains constant, but you change the culture/ethnicity/nationality of the empire your leader rules every new Era.
It's copying Humakind mechanics, which was another failed "Civ Killer" developed by Amplitude a few years back with the same novel mechanic.
But Humankind flopped hard despite having tons of hype from streamers pre-launch.
I haven't played it myself and don't really understand particularly why it failed. All the 4x streamers played it for a month live, then all simultaneous dropped it and memoryholed it.
I heard a lot of complaints about balance issues and the fact that changing civs so often meant a lack of identity and that there was usually an optimal civ choice that led to similar gameplay each time. Lots of complaints too that keeping track of enemies was confusing because they change constantly too.
I followed some of Humankind's development as well. One of their leads was a flaming troon.
Doubtful. I'm probably not going to get a lot of support in this view but I think the Civilization games have always been trash but were remembered fondly because most people played them as a child before the era of people having access to all the best strategies online. When you knew nothing about how these games worked mechanically and you were too young to truly understand, the games seemed massive/complex, strategic and fun. Nowadays with all these strategy games, everyone has them "figured out", as in they all play them like crazy, post videos, share strategies and before you know it, the best strategy is found. The problem with civilization games is the best strategy always involves some sort of cheese which makes the game not fun and always exploits the AI's retarded intelligence. Once you figure out the core strategy behind how you play to win, the game stops being fun because you realize, it's actually retarded. So then you "role-play" your own handicaps into the game to try to make it fun which it is for a few more playthroughs and then you're like okay that was that, then move on. Civilization would actually be a fun game if you played multiplayer with friends at a LAN party but it's not a fun single player game.
Less than zero.
They haven't released a good Civ since 3 (Maybe 4 but I dont have experience with that one). 5 was a painfully small world even on the largest map setting and it felt more like the console edition they published than any game prior.
Civ 7 will suck. I know Civ 5 is better (and most that have played 4 prefer it; but I'm too much of a graphics whore to go back to 4); but I've been playing 6 because wonders take up a tile and are visible.
Building tons of wonders in 5 is too boring in comparison to 6.
Rule number 1 : Don't pre-order.
Rule number 2 : If you're buying an Early Access game, it's because you're already getting your money's worth even it they would stop development now. Don't buy ''because it will be good... later''.
And don't give money to people who hate you. Ignore or sail the High Seas.
I would wait for all the expansions to be released before considering a purchase.