Finally watched the showcase

[tilarium]

Been crazy busy and haven't had a chance to watch the showcase yet until now. Honestly, it doesn't sound as bad as the comments here are making things out to be. The changing civ gimmick isn't my favorite but at least it doesn't sound as bad as Humankind. Phoenicians to Maya to English to Japanese to German to Cuban. It's so disjointed and make little sense. At least with Civ 7 there will only be 3 total and your choices are limited based on a historical, change or based on leader or how you've played the game.

Out of everything I saw in the showcase, the one thing that makes me question it is the cities themselves. It looks like every time you build a building, it has to be placed on the map. I'm worried that cities will just end up being to visually large as the game progresses.

[Bartoccioni]

And apparently, from what they're saying in comments, there's a limit (quite small) on how many cities you can found per Age

[tilarium]

Originally posted by Bartoccioni:

And apparently, from what they're saying in comments, there's a limit (quite small) on how many cities you can found per Age

That might make it a little better and as long as there is a large gap requirement between them. It didn't look like that though when they founded the second city. That's where my worry first started because from how they looked, I could easily see them merging together into one mega city.

[JuX]

Urban grid has 2 build slots and In the next age you can build over the existing urban grids. Thou judging from revealed material it looks like a mess anyway.

Originally posted by Bartoccioni:

And apparently, from what they're saying in comments, there's a limit (quite small) on how many cities you can found per Age

That is ill news, which tells me one of two things. Either they are incapable of balancing the amount of city disparity between players or the maps sizes are become even smaller. Probably the former, but wouldn't be surprised if map size gets downgraded again as well.

[Many-Named]

Originally posted by JuX:

Urban grid has 2 build slots and In the next age you can build over the existing urban grids. Thou judging from revealed material it looks like a mess anyway.

Originally posted by Bartoccioni:

And apparently, from what they're saying in comments, there's a limit (quite small) on how many cities you can found per Age

That is ill news, which tells me one of two things. Either they are incapable of balancing the amount of city disparity between players or the maps sizes are become even smaller. Probably the former, but wouldn't be surprised if map size gets downgraded again as well.

Maps were confirmed to be smaller, at least in 1st age.

[Oaks]

The smaller maps early game idea I find intriguing. Hopefully the age of exploration will be pretty fun, as all civs set out to find new places to colonizer.

[SLG]

Originally posted by Bartoccioni:

And apparently, from what they're saying in comments, there's a limit (quite small) on how many cities you can found per Age

Yes, but that does not stop you from having more. Research can increase the number. If you go over the limit there is a penalty.

[mitropower]

That city limit thing is another Humankind ripoff. We somehow all accepted that empire expansion makes people unhappy, which really has no basis in reality. In reality expansion was limited by available population and defense abilities. It was a weird balancing mechanic from the start

[GuNNuP]

Originally posted by tilarium:

Been crazy busy and haven't had a chance to watch the showcase yet until now. Honestly, it doesn't sound as bad as the comments here are making things out to be. The changing civ gimmick isn't my favorite but at least it doesn't sound as bad as Humankind. Phoenicians to Maya to English to Japanese to German to Cuban. It's so disjointed and make little sense. At least with Civ 7 there will only be 3 total and your choices are limited based on a historical, change or based on leader or how you've played the game.

Out of everything I saw in the showcase, the one thing that makes me question it is the cities themselves. It looks like every time you build a building, it has to be placed on the map. I'm worried that cities will just end up being to visually large as the game progresses.

the problem is humankind likely does all this better.

[Meep5659]

Originally posted by Bartoccioni:

And apparently, from what they're saying in comments, there's a limit (quite small) on how many cities you can found per Age

My understanding is that there is a soft limit for both cities and settlements with the game punishing you with happiness debuffs for exceeding the limit.
It incentivizes planning a good tall city then a couple wide settlements to aid the main one

[VhagarTheLastOne]

Originally posted by Bartoccioni:

And apparently, from what they're saying in comments, there's a limit (quite small) on how many cities you can found per Age

That sounds pretty intresting if land-grab is gone. It isnt Civ anymore tho.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

I am continuing to reserve judgment until I learn and see more. But so far, after watching a metric ton of hands-on analysis and previews, these are my personal impressions (caveat: watching a ton of different people's impressions combined with me not having very many brain cells to begin with may have led to misinterpretations on my part, so take with a grain of salt, and this is all just my personal entirely subjective feelings about what's been shown and discussed thus far, as always.)

Things I'm excited by/think look fun:

• Leader progression. I think having a persistent leader with progression all their own accomplishes two things. First, it anchors my empire to a fixed, unchanging personage. So despite civs changing from age to age now, the leader being more prominently customizable via its own progression tree, replaces the sense of a single civ persisting across the game somewhat. The leader is the thing that persists over the entirety of the game now with Civs almost being selectable bonus and cultural packages that the leader just oversees. And second, it gives us yet another layer of agency over the kind of empire we're governing. It's not just a static set of bonuses, it's an evolving set of things we have some say over. Much as we do with civs via things like civics, but for leaders. I think that's a clever and fun idea.
  
• Commanders. Somehow, it seems they've found a way to have the best of both worlds. Still no stacks of doom, but we can effectively use commanders as land transports now essentially. And they can conveniently give orders to all units of a certain type with a single function. I think this too is really clever and fun design.
  
• Unified resource category and cloning. Unless I misunderstood the hands-on previews I've been watching, there are no longer separate strategic and luxury goods. Everything is just a resource. And those resources, when traded or accessed by other civs via trade routes, don't get numerically transferred from us to them, instead they are cloned and they get a copy of them. And we in turn get gold back. Resources can also be sent to and stacked in specific cities. So you can do things like stack a large number of a certain resource for its bonuses, benefit from that, and attract merchants from other civs to that city as a trade hub, which benefits that civ with those resources, and you with potentially huge inflows of gold. This, combined with trade route numbers being related now simply to how many civs we've discovered (and then further modified by treaties and the like,) sounds like a more intuitive, streamlined, and potentially strategic, way of handling trade and the tradeoffs of letting opponents access resources and benefiting our economy.
  
• Visuals. I quite like the visual design. I do wish UI elements were brighter, more colorful, etc. But I'm sure the Workshop will have that covered in due course as per usual. Graphically it looks very pretty but also likely to be intentionally scalable to lower end hardware (for consoles if nothing else) so performance will hopefully be reasonable.
  
• Influence. Basically favor, but way more dynamic. This combined with how trade and resources work now, makes me hopeful that we can play peacefully more viably this time around through interdependence. It also just sounds like a system we need to be more engaged with, which I like.
  
• Global happiness being back as a limit on going wide. But with ways to mitigate it. I always liked this more, and the way they've done it this time looks engaging.

Things I'm indifferent about:

• There being "only three ages." Eh, I don't care. The tech tree and civic tree is going to be whatever it is regardless, we haven't had eras/ages in every past Civ game to begin with, and the three ages cover enough of history to be sufficient in a game like this imo.
  
• Leaders being distinct from Civs. This has been a thing in modded or custom games anyway, and I actually like the fun notion of "what if this leader ruled this civilization?" Civ has always been ahistorical, it's fine. More than fine even, because of the leader progression trees further refining the customization we have over them.
  
• Lack of builders and workers. Fine with me. Automation already made them sort of an afterthought in actual practice.

Things I'm uncertain about, reserving judgment on, or iffy about, but can imagine being fun depending upon how they're implemented:

• Crises. I think this is a cool concept. My only concern is that it could become repetitive if crises are not varied or engaging enough.
  
• Civs shifting from age to age. On paper, this is a cool concept. And I didn't dislike this in Humankind as much as some people did. But it could feel dissonant and incoherent, depending on how it's handled. A lot of how people receive this, imo, will come down to conceptual schema in people's minds. I.e. I'm not a meta-gamer, generally. I can switch into that mode of thinking when gaming, but I don't like to think of civs as just bundles of bonuses I'm selecting tactically. I'm more a roleplay-style player who wants things to feel logically and - if not totally, at least partly - historically coherent. I would like for the options for civ shifting to be multitudinous enough that we can choose one to shift into that makes some intuitive sense. For example, Rome getting to turn into Byzantium after its crisis period. Or Egypt becoming one of the Sultanates that ruled Egypt later on. Something like that. Or, barring that, I would like the option to at least cosmetically continue to have my empire's name be whatever I started out with, even if in a meta sense I'm choosing "another civilization" in terms of unique units, buildings, bonuses, etc. My concern is being railroaded through the choice and unlocking mechanics into civs that feel very dissonant. It's not game-ruining for me if that's the case, but I'm not sure how enjoyable or unenjoyable it will be. I need to see a lot more depth of analysis and unedited gameplay of this in action to know how I feel about it. Fun will rule the day in the end for me. If it's fun, I can easily forget about this conceptual tension I feel about it. But I need to see more.
  
• Ages "resetting" things. This could go one of two ways. It could just lead to a feeling of an empire evolving, layering as they described it, and emerging on the other side with the influences of what was done in the previous age also still being present. Or, it could end up feeling like what happened in the previous age was largely irrelevant. That's my concern. There needs to be some means of rewarding good play in previous ages that carries through to subsequent ages. How "full on" the "reset" feels, will determine that. And I need to see more unedited play of that to determine how I feel about it. It tentatively looks like the Legacy Path stuff and things like surviving (but diminished) bonuses from buildings from previous ages will be how that carrying forward works? How substantial or consequential that is will determine how I feel like about this area of the game.
  
• Ages being a global rather than per-civ thing, apparently. This appears to mean ages progress for everyone not just on a per-civ basis, and conversely, that that progression doesn't happen until everyone is able to. This was described by one previewer as "rubber banding" and intentional as part of the devs' design goals. I'm not yet sure how this will feel in practice, so it goes under the "reserving judgment" category for me. I could see it feeling very dynamic and like an evolving world system that exists beyond just our own civ, which is actually something I like conceptually. But I can also imagine an implementation of it that could be tedious or frustrating, leading to a lot of waiting for the age to end or the crisis to play out. This may, again, hinge for me a lot on how varied and dynamic crises are. If crises feel very repetitive or samey, then it would likely make me dislike this "hard stop until age progression" concept less. It depends.
  
• The Age-based city cap. I'm a tall player, so this is fine for me, but I can see it being an issue for others. Then again, it also all depends on the scope/scale of games. Which it sounds like they've intentionally made change from age to age. So we'll have to see how that plays out.

Things I'm not too keen on:

• City/minor states. Was just never a fan of these. Hopefully this time there's less interaction spam due to their presence, and/or we can disable them entirely again.
  
• Seems implicit in the game's design (age Civ shifting, minor civs still being a thing, etc.) that the civs splitting dynamically due to unrest mechanic I've missed for some time, still isn't back for VII. I feel like this happening both for our and other Civs, maybe even tied into ages, might have also been a more natural way to achieve the whole changing Civs premise in a way that's more familiar to some Civ fans. Not game-ruining or anything, just something I always liked and miss and hope to see someday again in some form.
  
• Border expansion being something we can (apparently?) only do manually now via culture bombing/purchasing. On the one had I understand and appreciate giving players total agency over border shapes and direction of expansion. But I'm a fan of emergent systems in games and things "just happening" and providing a sense that some things are outside of my control and just have to be managed. I preferred the combination of that + being able to manually purchase expansions if we so desired or when necessary. Again not ruinous or anything, just a preference thing.

So, all in all, for me, I think what was shown and discussed seems promising and potentially like a lot of fun but I need to see and learn more before I can decide that one way or another. Fortunately there's many months before release to get into the fine grain details, hopefully through more unedited gameplay footage and more hands-on analysis.

[Antoine]

Originally posted by Bartoccioni:

And apparently, from what they're saying in comments, there's a limit (quite small) on how many cities you can found per Age

I love it, no more AI spamming cities in every tile possible. And now placing cities will be even more important. You'll have to plan ahead

[Shepard-Commander]

Originally posted by JuX:

Urban grid has 2 build slots and In the next age you can build over the existing urban grids. Thou judging from revealed material it looks like a mess anyway.

Originally posted by Bartoccioni:

And apparently, from what they're saying in comments, there's a limit (quite small) on how many cities you can found per Age

That is ill news, which tells me one of two things. Either they are incapable of balancing the amount of city disparity between players or the maps sizes are become even smaller. Probably the former, but wouldn't be surprised if map size gets downgraded again as well.

So many design decisions here show an incapability to balance the game. They're dividing the game into what is basically three separately balanced ages since they can't balance the game. They're having you change civs because they can't balance a complete game.

[ParabolaWaVe]

I don't think the new features are going to be the worst thing ever, either. But will they be good? Will they contribute in making a better Civ game than the previous entries or instead worsen, limit or dilute the experience at least a bit? I suspect the later. And if that's proven to be the case after the game is released... what will be the point of those changes in the first place?

I'm reserving judgement for the time being, but so far, Civ VII doesn't sound like the game I want to play.

[grumble]

Originally posted by ParabolaWaVe:

I'm reserving judgement for the time being, but so far, Civ VII doesn't sound like the game I want to play.

That is how I feel.
I was really looking forward when I new nothing about it but now I am not -
I just hope it will not be as awful as what we know so far makes it sound.