New Civilization game currently at a 51% rating on Steam
(store.steampowered.com)
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Every time I turned on a stream to watch it, the avatar icons for the computer opponents were all just a variety of brown women scowling at the player. History has been retconned to be 2025 UK Parliment
Even without scraping the bottom of the barrel for notable female historic figures to make into leaders to ensure there's the needed diversity quotas, the mixing and matching of leaders to civilizations, and that you are forced to abandon them for a new one at the start of every era is what's really annoying. I can't become attached to any civ, but thank goodness I can play the whole game as Harriet goddamn Tubman. Chalk Civ7 up as another game in a franchise I loved that I will refuse to ever buy.
That sounds terrible. Good thing there's always civ 4 and civ 5 - plenty enough civ to last me the rest of my life
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1295660/discussions/
Steam Forum completely locked down.E: I completely missed that Firaxis gave their Steam forum multiple categories. Thanks u/Zakat for pointing this out.AndIt's getting a lot of negative reviews even from 'the industry' and Firaxis-friendly youtubers, and on the Steam forums.Every new thing I learn about this game makes me like it even less, and I've been a huge Civ fan for two decades (I've bought Civ IV complete three times.)
Basically zero classic franchises have the people that originally made them great working on them. At this point, I see every long running franchise the same as a skinsuit wearing goblin.
They've been trotting out Sid Meier as a mascot for 30 years even though he dipped out before even contributing to Civ II.
And they won't let him make another Alpha Centauri game because they were really educational and got people into reading history.
It's a mess of base game content locked behind serial DLCs, missing features that were in previous titles, changing classic mechanics to create Humankind-lite mini games that no one asked for and DEI BS that shoehorns in female leaders and tribes no one has heard of while leaving out historic civs like Britain.
They left out Britain as a civilization?
That's about as crazy as leaving out Rome.
Apparently there's exactly 1 (one) British leader...
You did see the navigation on the right?
Nope, I haven't seen many games break down their steam forums like that. But now that you've pointed it out, I've corrected my post. Thanks
It's amazing that YouTubers engaged in access journalism are capable of more honest interrogation of these products than journalists engaged in access journalism because the YouTubers are actually fans who want to see good products even with their inherent bias (and slight corruption).
The real question is: "Are you an Alpha Centauri fan?"
I've played the game and it's two "spiritual sequels" (Final Frontier, and Civ:BE), but I find the dated interface/mechanics, along with the relative lack of modding capabilities detracts a bit from my enjoyment of it.
But the writing is fantastic. I'll just leave this here.
They built an entire mainline game to steal Humankind's "your civ changes through the ages" mechanic and its literally one of the biggest reasons why people hate the game.
Like, we can dab on the retarded leaders and how fucking stupid Tubman is, but even if all of those were great the game would still be fundamentally broken, ugly, and terrible on a gameplay fundamental level.
This isn't a game missing crucial features that will be made whole in the inevitable Expansion, like 5 and 6 were. Its bad on such a central level that they will have to swallow their egos and change entire major mechanics they considered good things to make it work, and they won't do that.
its because all these map-painting games encourage the player to make his country great. thats a mindset the globalists don't want to encourage. hence all the clumsy attempts at anti-snowballing balance, "pushing playing tall as a valid playstyle", and now the whole nation-switching schtick.
While I'm OK if Wide is the optimal/meta approach, I will die on the hill that Tall should be a valid playstyle for these games. I like taking over a couple islands or a section of a content with a choke point and focusing on making my cities glorious a lot more than just conquering everyone. (And, well, if there is a later-game resource that doesn't exist in my area, I guess it's time to make a new colony to get it).
The nation-switching thing is complete garbage though. If I'm playing Civ I want an alt-history thing going, and I want to play as a particular nation not just as a numerical bonus. If all I care about is the numerical bonuses, there's much better 4x games out there (I'd highly recommend Age of Wonders 4) for that.
The concept of building tall is great, but it's really hard to execute in a way that forces the player to choose between tall vs wide.
I though MoO3 had an interesting mechanic where new colonies ran a deficit for a long while before being able to produce a surplus.
Wide play definitely becomes tedious, especially from a colonizing perspective.
If you don't continually pump out Settlers to claim every last square of the map, your AI opponents definitely will.
But most of the cities and territory you claim in the latter 2/3 of the game are irrelevant to your actual victory because it is so resource-intensive to make newer cities productive enough to matter.
For me, this reality alone tends to limit me to the smallest map types (the other is hardware performance) so that the race to colonize every last inch ends quicker.
Tbh that's why Civ has never grabbed me such as other games, and i realize I'm crossing genre here, but I've always been drawn towards small, brutally effective vs the encompassing unstoppable legion as a vision. I will without hesitation make a superstar with support before I make a well rounded and balanced team.
Yes your archers support your melee and calvary on the flanks, meanwhile I have no Frontline infantry and have only built stealth snipers.
Point being, I don't think it's actually THAT hard to balance, homm did it pretty well, the roadblock to tall in Civ imo is that you hit a production ceiling for each city where there's nothing useful left to build.
And I'm not even saying I want an non-military victory from it, I just want to build an as effective but different tall based military. Make it possible to have one awesome city, and I raze every other city I conqour.
Well this game harshly limits your ability to settle new cities to a point where Tall is almost the optimal/meta playstyle for a long chunk of it.
But it shows the problem with the Tall/Wide balance. Anything that might make Tall viable either comes by gutting Wide with harsh restrictions or will also apply to a Wide player anyway and keep the gap alive.
The other unbelievable thing is that Humankind itself was dead-in-the-water by 2021.
It's pretty unbelievable that they would copy a failed model 3 years later after being in development forever.
Or that they wouldn't change course when they saw how fast Civ influencers and serious players dropped the Amplitude IP.
Its even worse because Amplitude was already a successful "Civilization at home" company. Endless Legend is a very good game that manages to successfully turn Civ into a fantasy game that its all around pretty enjoyable. Except for the combat, we don't talk about that.
So they clearly knew how to make the game functionally, and something about the unique elements made it fail. Making it even more baffling that Firaxis thought taking one of those was a good idea.
I never played Humankind. I heard it was kind of a meh knockoff of the formula.
Did they actually steal a worse game's mechanic because they are stupid and insecure, or was it actually innovative (or at least wanted) the way that Cities Skylines replaced Sim City.
Humankind released in 2020. It had lots of hype during its pre-release phases that it was going to be a "Civ killer" by innovating on some things that Firaxis had let become stagnant over decades.
But everyone, including all the Civ streamers hungry for a new 4X IP after Civ6 was already 4 years old at that point, got bored and memoryholed it within a few months.
I'm not really sure why it bombed so badly as I never played it either. But it seemed to be a combination of the Civ switching mechanic being too generic and the same system creating irreparable balance issues.
Sounds like now would be the time for them to create a Humankind sale.
Humankind has been on sale for 15-20 bucks a few times the last Steam seasonal sales.
I considered it but ended up buying Old World instead (which I haven't tried).
Humankind is also woke as shit though. They had a tranny as the face of the dev team on their pre-launch dev streams.
The title cards for the game also literally have jogger doctors in lab coats and danger hair girlboss freedom fighters.
Hnn. That's unfortunate. Let me know how Old World goes when you find out!
Its an innovative idea that everyone can see the potential in. In a way, Civ 3 having your leader "progress" every age from a caveman to a well dressed gentleman is the seed of that idea. But neither Humankind nor Civ7 actually managed to make it work in anyway that feels right.
So in this case, it feels like they arrogantly thought they could take a failed game's call to fame and use it for themselves. And ended up doing even worse. Because afaik Humankind's version was just kinda boring and not impactful enough for how important it was. Which ironically is the opposite of Civ7 which has it so impactful it ruins the game with no ability to mitigate or truly control it.
Yeah, that idea definitely works. Effectively your leader is like the old Assyrian "Gods". Each city-state had a God, and as a result, each God represented the metaphysic of a city & it's people. Your Civ leader would act in the same way, but you'd have to figure out how the personality traits of your Gods would move through time and tech.
The problem I can see is that, from a gameplay perspective, there's almost no way to balance that. Some cultures will be inferior and others will be superior based on the leaders attitudes. Otherwise, you'll have too many and they'll basically all play the same.
"Why is every multiplayer game played with Trump, Bismark, and Aethelred? Why doesn't anyone want to play as Mandela. Wait, why does Mandela get bonus points to light infantry?"
Much like Total War however, the question remains.
Who the fuck plays multiplayer? Basically no one, its a dead empty avenue on the game for a variety of reasons but it remains that way. Nothing they can do will change that fact. The people who play these games play for single player, or coop multiplayer with their friends neither of which need considerable balance and in fact would benefit from hilarious unbalances too.
Its the same forever cycle of chasing an esport scene that doesn't exist, listening to "influencers" that make 1000 videos on your game alone and become sort of brand ambassadors that legitimately mindrape the fandom with their opinions.
Which is a larger problem that I have extreme opinions on, because LTC-niggers have ruined Fire Emblem more than the Woke ever did. A grim reminder that we have more than one enemy at play.
I was under the impression that the only good way to play any Total War game was with Multiplayer because the AI is so shit.
And what you point out is fair, but I think it's a culture war that can be more easily won because they are funded by morons, not Blackrock
Of the dozen or so people I know who play Total War I can't think of a single one that plays multiplayer with randos. Lots of us play together but that's often not antagonistically, leaving it just against the AI. TW W3 specifically has something like less than 5% of players even touch the PVP mode, even though it made up like 90% of the balance patch notes for months on release.
The AI is shit but the point of the game, both Total War and Civ, have literally never been about challenge and anyone who says otherwise is trying to flex. Its about painting maps and power fantasies of building an army and steamrolling your enemies in various ways. Getting epic battles is part of that, but that's stand out singular moments not game long struggle sessions.
And I don't think its a war that can be won much easier than a Blackrock funded one, because most of the time its a Chinese funded one that is putting dollar signs in the eyes of Western Devs who will chase that dragon into bankruptcy.
I think that that's a bad game design then. You gotta pick one or the other.
I kind of like what's happening with some "city builders" now. The standard is obviously Cities Skylines / Sim City style managing zones, logistics, economics, and budgets. But on the other hand, people are moving the formula around to be more specific in focus. You've got some games like Banished that are basically making it a survival economy simulator. But then you've got games like Obrek which we could call a city painting & aesthetic manager.
If that's truly the case, then I think Total War need to shit-or-get-off-the-pot. Either make a good AI to build a competitive war monger simulator, or build a simplistic war mongering aesthetic builder. Don't do both.
+5% over the last 5 days by that mark
https://communities.win/c/Gaming/p/19AKYQzzz3/civilization-vii-reaches-mixed-r/c
Will be worth keeping track of whatever ups and downs continue to follow.
I've seen speculation that the casuals that are now just buying the base edition will/are reviewing it more favorably.
Because casuals won't notice how stripped down & half-baked this release is after 9 years in development because...they are filthy casuals.
Game companies depend on filthy casuals to make profit. Casuals that dont know whats going on or have lots of moolah.
looks like 2k had a bunch of new hires that knew nothing about Civilization write a new game from scratch.
The horrifying thing is that they have FT "historians" on staff.
Nah, as a history major, "professional historians" have been captured for a while. You have to toe the party line about the causes of WWII, the War of Union Aggression and the foundation of the U.S., or you get blacklisted.
Damn, you can't even question the Holocaust numbers?
And note, not denying it like the actual alt-right does, but saying "Hey, maybe the number was overexaggerated or underreported"?
Welp, there goes your tenure track.
Damn, whatever will i do not being able to teach in crapa-demia?
It's not so much that it is surprising that the History majors they employ are pozzed.
It's that an IP that only drops every decade keeps flotsam on their payroll to simply opine on the supposed hagiographical authenticity of their product.
I guess they just can't respect legendary conquerors like Harriet "Literally Who?" Tubman and Hatchetslut.
They really went bananas to include 50% girls in the leaderships, eh?
I posted that it was kinda sad that Tubman gets in the game AFTER slavery is removed, so she has no way to meaningfully interact with the things she's known for.
I got a three day ban for "veiled racism".
And lol at this DLC
And almost every one of those reviews is from someone who bought all of it, because the early release period was only available to the 120$ version and lasted the prior 5 days.
Its actual release date, today, has seen it go up marginally. Probably from people rushing to defend their baby from those hateful Nazis.
Lol. LMAO even.
If you played Civ past 4 you deserved to be disappointed (it is acceptable to play civ 5 with a permanent grimace).
Civ V and even BE have some decent mods, but they felt like such a dumbing down from previous games in the series (which obviously peaked at Civ IV.)
That's felt like every game. Though civ has been especially bad, using dlc to fix basic issues. I stopped at 5 for a reason.
5 was fun. 6 was a definite step down.
A broken game made by broken people.
I'm shocked it turned out as good as it did.
(yes that's sarcasm)
Tiene denuvo, no tiene dinero.
It's low key hilarious that if you run into another civ and it has a black female leader, you know goddamn well you're going to have a problem and will probably end up wiping them out. Tubman has spies/saboteurs making her untrustable and Amina is Sparta so war nonstop. Their character intros are always condescending and nasty. It's very difficult to take them seriously.
Checks out.
Have you seen the UI? It looks horrible. Even the Reddit Lefties are complaining about it.
Et tu, firaxis?
In my university days, 51% was called a passing grade. Looks like they took the smart approach, minimum amount of effort to pass the class.
"Award-winning franchise"... Thanks to Concord, Civ7 won't even get the award of "biggest flop", it'll just be lost to time.
Flush it down the toilet.