Civilization 7 - Buy now or Skip?

[brainbomb]

Is this game worth 70-150 dollars? Buy it now? Wait? Is this gonna be an absolute banger?

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Newer is not always better with this franchise. After playing a fair amount of both V and VI (with expansions), I still prefer V overall. VI's cartoony art design was less interesting to me. Districts were an okay mechanic, but felt a little fiddly. Somehow, the diplomacy portion of the game was even shallower than in V. VI's DLCs were also less good than V's and in some ways even detract from the core game. Overall, V and VII are both good games. But if I'm sitting down to play a new campaign I almost always pick V.

I'm tentatively hopeful VII will be really good. I already love the way it looks. The new Eras mechanic seems promising. But why rush? At a minimum, I would wait until reviews confirm whether or not it's a flop. Civ games often get a lot better with their DLCs, so it might be worth waiting until at least the first DLC is released. Civ games also tend to get quite a bit cheaper over time if you're really willing to be patient.

[DreamTrawler]

Similar dilemma - the game is almost certainly going to be underpolished at launch, but Civ is one of the few game franchises where I know I’m always going to play the new installment.

[brainbomb]

Alright I bought the game

[Klaus klauts]

Buy Civ IV: Best Version ever, and quite cheap!

(If you buy this game from Steam, and want a non-English quotes speaker for the tech tree, you need to directly edit the sound file, which can be easily done: https://steamcommunity.com/app/3900/discussions/0/352788552262212346/)

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Alright I bought the game

Be sure to let us know what you think

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Bumping this thread to see if you (or anyone else) picked up Civ 7? The reviews so far look underwhelming, but I'd be curious to hear more perspectives on it.

[echidna]

FYI, there is a review of version 7 at:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/02/civilization-vii-review-a-major-overhaul-solves-civs-oldest-problems/
Apologies if this is old news or otherwise not useful.

[DreamTrawler]

I bit the bullet and ended up buying it full price with DLC pre-order. I played a little bit yesterday. Overall enjoyed it, but am considering returning it if I can and waiting for a sale.

The main thing is - I don't know if I can give a great review because I mostly skipped Civ 6, and in terms of UI and mechanics Civ 7 has a lot of similarities to Civ 6. I was having a hard time adopting new stuff after so many hours of Civ 5. There is a decent chance I might power through it and everything will click.

I think the civ-swapping and leader-picking stuff is interesting, though I didn't make it to the second age yet. It is a little railroady as you have to start working on "legacy paths" (scientific, economic, cultural, and militaristic) to get bonuses in the next age. So it's probably harder to pivot from one victory type to another.

Each Civ is super different. In Civ 5 I feel like they were pretty tame with how each Civ played, it was just a unique ability, building, and unit(s). In 6 they added more stuff with leader abilities. Now in 7 each leader has an ability, each civ has an ability, multiple unique units and buildings, and their own civic trees, which are separate from government policies. It makes the game very asymmetric which is interesting.

Other changes - barbarians and city-states have been folded together into something called Independent Powers. You can use Influence Points to make them friendly and even convince them to raid other civs. Presumably even more options in later ages.

There are no longer workers - instead whenever your city's population expands you pick a tile to improve. There's also something similar to districts from Civ 6, and some sort of distinction between cities/towns and urban/rural population but to be honest I didn't really grasp that aspect yet.

The UI is... quite bad. It's hard to find some pretty important things like what your standing is with various Independent Powers, or a breakdown of where your various stats are coming from (i.e. X gold from resources, from other civs, from trade routes etc).

The map looks beautiful, an improvement over 6 in my opinion. I did hear that the continents are super rectangular and uniform though.

[DreamTrawler]

Oh, one more thing I liked. Instead of ancient ruins there are now lots of "narrative events" which give you a choice of goodies. I really liked these from a storytelling perspective. They would say things like "People have come from afar to worship idols of their patron god. They are generous with their tithes" and then you can pick "Worship with them" and get happiness + culture or "Collect the tithes" and get some gold. Added a nice RPG aspect to the game.

[brainbomb]

Ive watched a ton of videos and playthru and it looks like they took the diplomatic system ui from beyond earth : rising tide; mashed that with civ 5 social policy ladder and anti city spamming happiness penalties, and then also kept civ 6 science and civic tech tree system almost identically.

Then made combat totally new compared to how its ever been done; and then stole humankind main selling point of changing evolving civs.

Overall its kind of alot and I wanna play because im so bored with civ 6 now; but I hated how civ 5 punished players who liked large empires and it sounds like they made civ 7 very punishing to fast builder player types

[brainbomb]

I live the momento stuff and the ability to have every game you play unlock a perk you can then plug in for your leaders. Thats sweet

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Overall its kind of alot and I wanna play because im so bored with civ 6 now; but I hated how civ 5 punished players who liked large empires and it sounds like they made civ 7 very punishing to fast builder player types

I found that Civ 6 went too far in favouring wide rather than tall builds. 6 feels like it encourages you to build as many cities as you can, as quickly as you can, and with surprising geographical density to maximize district adjacency bonuses, all regardless of which Civilization you're playing. That eliminated a whole dimension of interesting decisions regarding whether and how quickly to expand. It also took the brakes off of total conquest strategies, which I find a little immersion breaking.

Will be curious to see how 7 balances all this.

On another note, I saw the publisher is already working on substantive updates to improve the UI in 7. Maybe some of the mixed reviews just reflect a rushed release. Civ games often get much more polished a while after release.

[brainbomb]

The city loyalty penalities was also annoying so hopefully they never do that again. Capturing a city was hard enough only to have it rebel in 3 turns

[brainbomb]

So looking at steam the civ dlc pack is already coming out feb 10. This is stupid.

It adds nepal, bulgaria, simon bolivar, more wonders, great britain, ada lovelace, and carthage

[SpiritoftheRadio]

I have loved every civ since civ 3, and they all take at least one expansion before they become really worth it. That being said, if i had to pick a best civ, I'd pick 4, but probably from nostalgia and the experiences I had as a teen playing it more than it being the best. They're always good, but I dont rush to buy. I looked at the 150 for founders for very little and was sketched out. I'll buy regular and play a little and then get really into it in a summer or two when I have a lot of time and the kinks have been worked out. They do a massive amount of fine tuning with each expansion and with games as in depth as they are, you gotta let the dev tweak a bit before judgement. Very excited though

[brainbomb]

Status update

Game is incredibly fun. Early game is different without barbs but still sort of the same. Best thing this game has going for it is that opening build can vary more than civ 5 and 6. You can play as egypt for example and go for a quest that has you build 5 warriors in first 15 turns and its fun.
You can use diplomatic favor to just turn an angry city state onto your side and save your troops for an actual enemy civ.
Not having to make builders is really nice and is less tedious.

Diplomacy between empires has alot more options; and yet can be a bit redunadant. Once you make a deal with them they just keep coming back with more stuff to keep clicking.

Combat is sooooo much better than civ 6, in 6 it felt like once
Enemies had walls on higher difficulty that you had no chance of taking their cities. In this game the ai is more dynamic and simultaneously less defended. The archer is still great for when you get invaded and if the ai has alo
Of them it makes invasions alot nastier.

I havent even played a full exploration age yet or modern. Antiquity era is great and lots of fun. Get this game

[Sunstriker]

Glad to hear you're having a blast! :D
I love Civ games, so anytime someone is having a good time.... well that's a good thing!

I'm definitely going to wait for some patches, expansions, and a big sale I think. I cannot stand the UI as it currently is and I don't like how sterile the game feels at times. (Like with pop ups, it's usually text on a pretty bland background with nothing/very little to make it pull me into the world.

I'm also not a fan of how they've implemented changing ages. I'm not a fan of wars ending because some random timer went off, I don't like how they replace units, and I don't care for how after you've upgraded a town into a city you have to re-upgrade it after entering a new age. I think they're going for the feel of how some cities were once super important to empires, but as time goes on things change and they're not as needed and slowly dwindle but.... from a game play perspective it just feels bad imo. But I do love the idea of having my empire change as the world shifts and certain pressures impose their will on us. Very few empires have managed to have a continuity for hundreds and hundreds of years.

I love love love the new leader system for armies though. Omg. All that micro managing? So much easier. One of the big bright spots to me. (Also I love navigable rivers, but this is just a little thing for me idk if anyone else would care xD ) The lack of workers is.... well I'm sad to see them go since there are a lot of things that I loved about them. It was another unit to use, I could build offensive roads, it was a nice way to either hurt an enemy, or get another nation to like me more by giving them back....... buuuut by cutting them out things are just easier to handle. I don't really notice them missing that much. Heck in VI I often forget to build them, though I never played a ton of VI.

Basically....... I love a lot of the ideas behind this game, but dislike how a lot of it has been done. Given how a lot of Civ games go... I'm kinda expecting this to go the route that a lot of them do. Gets panned for its weak points and slowly gets a following of people who love it, for it to get updates and pull in new folks or people who'd tried it once but are curious about the changes....

Basically like a paradox game! xD

[brainbomb]

Yea its really odd that you can make all these city state allies and build armies and then an era ends and all your stuff just poof

[brainbomb]

They made it like you should only play 1 era and skip a full game