Pre-order was a mistake.

[konglin]

I should've waited until I saw the game demos before deciding to purchase. I'll never do that again. I trusted Firaxis and I was let down. I paid C$175 for the whole game with all the expansions. I didn't think that the new Civ game would be a version of Humankind (with leaders). You can play a leader for the whole game, but you have to change civs every era. You'd think that there would be minimum 5 eras to represent the span of human development, but there are only three. What a joke.

[plaguepenguin]

Whether any given mechanic works or not to make the whole a good strategy game depends entirely on whether or not it is carefully fit in with all the other mechanics in such a way that all decisions are trade-offs. You can only do anything that helps you win at the cost of not doing something else that also helps you win. There is no one dominant strategy that is always the best path to winning, but instead the player has to choose which combination of actions does better than other choices in any given situation, in a game that is complex enough that you are never in at all the same situation.

I bought Humankind and played it for maybe 6-7 hours before it became clear to me that it failed utterly to do what the Civ series has always done, create just such a system of trade-offs. The graphics were nice, it had some flashy nice new mechanics that Civ 6 lacked, but it just didn't do the basics, it didn't create a game that was interesting after you got some familiarity with how the systems worked.

No one can tell at this point whether this or that mechanic in Civ 7, or the game as a whole, will work at all well, because we don't know how all the systems both mesh and conflict with each other to create a whole that forces players to make sound trade-off decisions in order to win, and make it so that each game situation always has a different answer for what choices to make.

Take their latest reveal, Mexico, for example. They have a fair number of uniques that make celebrations more useful for them, and a few ways to get more celebrations. Great, Mexico is the celebration specialist. However, we haven't been told what vanilla celebrations do for you, so we have no way of knowing whether Mexico's better celebrations are going to prove a big deal, or a pathetic waste of a set of uniques. We don't know the standard ways to get more celebrations (beyond it involving excess happiness), so not clear if the unique ways that Mexico has to get celebrations are precious or just add something that isn't hard to get otherwise.

The mechanic that seems to have some people most upset, the age transition/play-as-a-new-civ thing, is even more of an unknown at this point, at least in the sense that we don't know how it will mesh as a game feature with all the other mechanics.

Now, if your interest in this game is something other than how good a game it turns out to be, if your main, or even an important consideration is that you can't get your jollies unless you can play the game all the way through from 4000 BCE to 2500 CE as the same caricatured stereotype that any historical civ has to be reduced to in order to fit it into a game, then, yes,you know already that Civ 7 is not the game for you. It won't let you play as the US for the whole game, with Ben Franklin (and couldn't they make the US leader more macho?) chopping his way through some jungle with stone tools to found Washington DC in 4000 BCE. If that's the only way you can make a 4X game satisfying, you're not getting that here, so, sure ask for your money back.

If you are instead interested in playing a strategy game, we don't yet know how awful or wonderful the age transition thing is going to prove. I would be disappointed if it did not allow a fair amount of continuity, and if you went too much back to square one to start each age. They have revealed a lot about the features that will create continuity from age to age, but they haven't come close to revealing enough details about how the non-civ-specific mechanics, the generic mechanics that apply to all civs, work,and without that context,who knows whether switching civs is going to turn out to be a big belly-flop or an amazing feature.

One continuity feature is that your leader and commanders don't change, and you get to add attributes and promotions that will carry through with them to the new age. If you have been obsessive-compulsive enough to stop action and read all the screens we have been shown in the livestreams, you have been shown some of the contents of these attributes and promotions, but we really don't know exactly how you get them. Some civs have uniques that make that easier, and we know that engaging in combats gets the commanders more points towards promotions, but we don't know the numbers, we don't know how frequent individual combats are going to prove useful towards different goals, and the devil is in those details.

You can unlock tradition policies in each civ's unique civics tree that carry over to your new civ, but we haven't been shown what the vanilla civics tree makes available to all civs, and we have no idea how easy or difficult it will be to acquire civics. How much of a trade-off will it be to get all the standard vs unique civics unlocked, plus their masteries, because we have only seen the standard civics tree as an illustration. We haven't had it revealed exactly what each of these civics unlocks.

Legacy paths can give you a Golden Age in the next age. Does that make the whole age golden, or just some number of turns? What are the golden benefits? You can't say how important completing a legacy path is going to be until we know all these details.

We're not going to have any idea, at all, how any particular mechanic, or the game as a whole, is going to be, until we get a chance to actually play it. They couldn't possibly reveal all the details in livestreams, and even if they made a few hundred of those, watching a livestream is not how most of us learn the details of a game anyway. We have to play it to learn it. Whatever confidence I have that this will turn out to be a good game is based on the devs' and this series' long track record of paying attention to the vital details unnecessary to a good strategy game. None of the other 4X games do this deceptively simple thing nearly so well and so consistently -- balance mechanics off each other to create the need to make different and interesting choices each play-through in order to win most efficiently. I don't care about the graphics beyond functionality, I don't need to identify with the notional civ or civs I am playing as -- I just want a good game, and any mechanic can be made to work to provide that, if only care is taken to put all the mechanics together in an overall context with each other that works.

[Brutus Hostilius Maximus]

Originally posted by plaguepenguin:

Whether any given mechanic works or not to make the whole a good strategy game depends entirely on whether or not it is carefully fit in with all the other mechanics in such a way that all decisions are trade-offs. You can only do anything that helps you win at the cost of not doing something else that also helps you win. There is no one dominant strategy that is always the best path to winning, but instead the player has to choose which combination of actions does better than other choices in any given situation, in a game that is complex enough that you are never in at all the same situation.

I bought Humankind and played it for maybe 6-7 hours before it became clear to me that it failed utterly to do what the Civ series has always done, create just such a system of trade-offs. The graphics were nice, it had some flashy nice new mechanics that Civ 6 lacked, but it just didn't do the basics, it didn't create a game that was interesting after you got some familiarity with how the systems worked.

No one can tell at this point whether this or that mechanic in Civ 7, or the game as a whole, will work at all well, because we don't know how all the systems both mesh and conflict with each other to create a whole that forces players to make sound trade-off decisions in order to win, and make it so that each game situation always has a different answer for what choices to make.

Take their latest reveal, Mexico, for example. They have a fair number of uniques that make celebrations more useful for them, and a few ways to get more celebrations. Great, Mexico is the celebration specialist. However, we haven't been told what vanilla celebrations do for you, so we have no way of knowing whether Mexico's better celebrations are going to prove a big deal, or a pathetic waste of a set of uniques. We don't know the standard ways to get more celebrations (beyond it involving excess happiness), so not clear if the unique ways that Mexico has to get celebrations are precious or just add something that isn't hard to get otherwise.

The mechanic that seems to have some people most upset, the age transition/play-as-a-new-civ thing, is even more of an unknown at this point, at least in the sense that we don't know how it will mesh as a game feature with all the other mechanics.

Now, if your interest in this game is something other than how good a game it turns out to be, if your main, or even an important consideration is that you can't get your jollies unless you can play the game all the way through from 4000 BCE to 2500 CE as the same caricatured stereotype that any historical civ has to be reduced to in order to fit it into a game, then, yes,you know already that Civ 7 is not the game for you. It won't let you play as the US for the whole game, with Ben Franklin (and couldn't they make the US leader more macho?) chopping his way through some jungle with stone tools to found Washington DC in 4000 BCE. If that's the only way you can make a 4X game satisfying, you're not getting that here, so, sure ask for your money back.

If you are instead interested in playing a strategy game, we don't yet know how awful or wonderful the age transition thing is going to prove. I would be disappointed if it did not allow a fair amount of continuity, and if you went too much back to square one to start each age. They have revealed a lot about the features that will create continuity from age to age, but they haven't come close to revealing enough details about how the non-civ-specific mechanics, the generic mechanics that apply to all civs, work,and without that context,who knows whether switching civs is going to turn out to be a big belly-flop or an amazing feature.

One continuity feature is that your leader and commanders don't change, and you get to add attributes and promotions that will carry through with them to the new age. If you have been obsessive-compulsive enough to stop action and read all the screens we have been shown in the livestreams, you have been shown some of the contents of these attributes and promotions, but we really don't know exactly how you get them. Some civs have uniques that make that easier, and we know that engaging in combats gets the commanders more points towards promotions, but we don't know the numbers, we don't know how frequent individual combats are going to prove useful towards different goals, and the devil is in those details.

You can unlock tradition policies in each civ's unique civics tree that carry over to your new civ, but we haven't been shown what the vanilla civics tree makes available to all civs, and we have no idea how easy or difficult it will be to acquire civics. How much of a trade-off will it be to get all the standard vs unique civics unlocked, plus their masteries, because we have only seen the standard civics tree as an illustration. We haven't had it revealed exactly what each of these civics unlocks.

Legacy paths can give you a Golden Age in the next age. Does that make the whole age golden, or just some number of turns? What are the golden benefits? You can't say how important completing a legacy path is going to be until we know all these details.

We're not going to have any idea, at all, how any particular mechanic, or the game as a whole, is going to be, until we get a chance to actually play it. They couldn't possibly reveal all the details in livestreams, and even if they made a few hundred of those, watching a livestream is not how most of us learn the details of a game anyway. We have to play it to learn it. Whatever confidence I have that this will turn out to be a good game is based on the devs' and this series' long track record of paying attention to the vital details unnecessary to a good strategy game. None of the other 4X games do this deceptively simple thing nearly so well and so consistently -- balance mechanics off each other to create the need to make different and interesting choices each play-through in order to win most efficiently. I don't care about the graphics beyond functionality, I don't need to identify with the notional civ or civs I am playing as -- I just want a good game, and any mechanic can be made to work to provide that, if only care is taken to put all the mechanics together in an overall context with each other that works.

i am not reading this

[jafthompson]

I read it and he has some very good points

[Bfloo]

Originally posted by jafthompson:

I read it and he has some very good points

Can you give us the quick version?

[plaguepenguin]

Originally posted by Brutus Hostilius Maximus:

Originally posted by plaguepenguin:

Whether any given mechanic works or not to make the whole a good strategy game depends entirely on whether or not it is carefully fit in with all the other mechanics in such a way that all decisions are trade-offs. You can only do anything that helps you win at the cost of not doing something else that also helps you win. There is no one dominant strategy that is always the best path to winning, but instead the player has to choose which combination of actions does better than other choices in any given situation, in a game that is complex enough that you are never in at all the same situation.

I bought Humankind and played it for maybe 6-7 hours before it became clear to me that it failed utterly to do what the Civ series has always done, create just such a system of trade-offs. The graphics were nice, it had some flashy nice new mechanics that Civ 6 lacked, but it just didn't do the basics, it didn't create a game that was interesting after you got some familiarity with how the systems worked.

No one can tell at this point whether this or that mechanic in Civ 7, or the game as a whole, will work at all well, because we don't know how all the systems both mesh and conflict with each other to create a whole that forces players to make sound trade-off decisions in order to win, and make it so that each game situation always has a different answer for what choices to make.

Take their latest reveal, Mexico, for example. They have a fair number of uniques that make celebrations more useful for them, and a few ways to get more celebrations. Great, Mexico is the celebration specialist. However, we haven't been told what vanilla celebrations do for you, so we have no way of knowing whether Mexico's better celebrations are going to prove a big deal, or a pathetic waste of a set of uniques. We don't know the standard ways to get more celebrations (beyond it involving excess happiness), so not clear if the unique ways that Mexico has to get celebrations are precious or just add something that isn't hard to get otherwise.

The mechanic that seems to have some people most upset, the age transition/play-as-a-new-civ thing, is even more of an unknown at this point, at least in the sense that we don't know how it will mesh as a game feature with all the other mechanics.

Now, if your interest in this game is something other than how good a game it turns out to be, if your main, or even an important consideration is that you can't get your jollies unless you can play the game all the way through from 4000 BCE to 2500 CE as the same caricatured stereotype that any historical civ has to be reduced to in order to fit it into a game, then, yes,you know already that Civ 7 is not the game for you. It won't let you play as the US for the whole game, with Ben Franklin (and couldn't they make the US leader more macho?) chopping his way through some jungle with stone tools to found Washington DC in 4000 BCE. If that's the only way you can make a 4X game satisfying, you're not getting that here, so, sure ask for your money back.

If you are instead interested in playing a strategy game, we don't yet know how awful or wonderful the age transition thing is going to prove. I would be disappointed if it did not allow a fair amount of continuity, and if you went too much back to square one to start each age. They have revealed a lot about the features that will create continuity from age to age, but they haven't come close to revealing enough details about how the non-civ-specific mechanics, the generic mechanics that apply to all civs, work,and without that context,who knows whether switching civs is going to turn out to be a big belly-flop or an amazing feature.

One continuity feature is that your leader and commanders don't change, and you get to add attributes and promotions that will carry through with them to the new age. If you have been obsessive-compulsive enough to stop action and read all the screens we have been shown in the livestreams, you have been shown some of the contents of these attributes and promotions, but we really don't know exactly how you get them. Some civs have uniques that make that easier, and we know that engaging in combats gets the commanders more points towards promotions, but we don't know the numbers, we don't know how frequent individual combats are going to prove useful towards different goals, and the devil is in those details.

You can unlock tradition policies in each civ's unique civics tree that carry over to your new civ, but we haven't been shown what the vanilla civics tree makes available to all civs, and we have no idea how easy or difficult it will be to acquire civics. How much of a trade-off will it be to get all the standard vs unique civics unlocked, plus their masteries, because we have only seen the standard civics tree as an illustration. We haven't had it revealed exactly what each of these civics unlocks.

Legacy paths can give you a Golden Age in the next age. Does that make the whole age golden, or just some number of turns? What are the golden benefits? You can't say how important completing a legacy path is going to be until we know all these details.

We're not going to have any idea, at all, how any particular mechanic, or the game as a whole, is going to be, until we get a chance to actually play it. They couldn't possibly reveal all the details in livestreams, and even if they made a few hundred of those, watching a livestream is not how most of us learn the details of a game anyway. We have to play it to learn it. Whatever confidence I have that this will turn out to be a good game is based on the devs' and this series' long track record of paying attention to the vital details unnecessary to a good strategy game. None of the other 4X games do this deceptively simple thing nearly so well and so consistently -- balance mechanics off each other to create the need to make different and interesting choices each play-through in order to win most efficiently. I don't care about the graphics beyond functionality, I don't need to identify with the notional civ or civs I am playing as -- I just want a good game, and any mechanic can be made to work to provide that, if only care is taken to put all the mechanics together in an overall context with each other that works.

i am not reading this

We all have our limits.

[plaguepenguin]

Originally posted by Bfloo:

Originally posted by jafthompson:

I read it and he has some very good points

Can you give us the quick version?

This is a complex game with all sorts of different mechanics that both interact with each other, but also have their separate little domains.

We only have some very limited information about only the new mechanics, and leaders, and civs, but little to no information about the context of the carryover features from Civ6 within which these new features will operate.

It is therefore quite premature to decide that this or that new feature, or the game as a whole, is going to be either awful or awesome. We have to see how the new features and the carryover features all either mesh together into an awesome game, or the devs didn't bother to make them mesh, and the game is going to be the mess that some of us fear. We're not going to know until we play the game.

The longer version goes into some particulars about the new mechanic that seems to be causing the most angst, and the concern the OP expressed -- switching civs every age. Get into the weeds and you're going to have to use a lot of words to say anything useful. Read the longer version if angst about civ-switching is bothering you, but you haven't made up your mind already to reject this game. Maybe it will allay fears, or maybe end indecision so you can leave Civ 7 definitively in your rear-view mirror.

[The Ludovico Technique]

Originally posted by Oaks:

Caveat emptor.

True, but also thanks to Firaxis for letting us know about their idiotic gameplay concepts in advance. Back to Civ V Brave New World.

[Brutus Hostilius Maximus]

Originally posted by plaguepenguin:

Originally posted by Brutus Hostilius Maximus:

i am not reading this

We all have our limits.

oh such a scathing remark

[Groo the one]

Pre-order usually is a mistake. Nothing new.

[Bfloo]

@plaguepenguin

Thanks!

The long version prob has good points, but that debate is going in circles.

[SLG]

Originally posted by Groo the one:

Pre-order usually is a mistake. Nothing new.

I have not encountered any issues when I have pre-ordered. I do not mean there were no bugs or glitches on release date. They are usually fixed very quickly.

[The Ludovico Technique]

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

Originally posted by konglin:

You have to change civs every era.

What a joke.

And that's my biggest selling point.

Aside from a dozen other very important artistic, technical, and gameplay changes.

If that's your only gripe, then I have a feeling you'll be crawling back within a year to take the game for a spin.

Especially after the game parks the bus in Steam's top 20 and never leaves.

Civilization VII patiently awaits your return.

Yeah, no. I give Firaxis six months after launch before they issue a patch to offer a single civ play mode when the fan backlash can no longer be ignored. Book it.

[Yglika]

I'm one of those (millions) who also wholeheartedly hates this idiotic Humankind eras non-sense but I'm too weak-willed to not buy. As I believe it will be still a game I can enjoy, only less.

[Groo the one]

Originally posted by Lee:

Originally posted by Groo the one:

Pre-order usually is a mistake. Nothing new.

I have not encountered any issues when I have pre-ordered.

That's fine, if pre-ordering is working as intended...

Originally posted by Lee:

I do not mean there were no bugs or glitches on release date. They are usually fixed very quickly.

Oh, "Lee - the beta-tester" did find bugs and glitches on release day! I can't imagine.

And no doubts, I'm sure, the bugs what "you" do find, are fixed pretty soon.

I tend to think about buying one year past a games release, nowadays. Game starts to be on sale, game is getting more bug-free and polished and I usually have more solid sources, for to know, if I'd like to buy a game at all. In case of Civ 7 I won't even think about, as long as it comes along with Denuvo Anti-Tamper. But this is another (sticked) topic.

Edited for to correct a typo.

[Elindos Phar & Family]

I agree with The Doctor :
It is very understandable that someone prepurchased it with no second thought on such a franchise. Thankfully, as others observed, it can be refunded.

@ plaguepenguin

Even if I agree that the mechanic may fit into something and that once played maybe some of the things will go well together, in terms of "high ambitions" of the game itself, it is in many ways a huge setback.

No longer can you play the initial premise of Civilization, such as "taking the maya" (or any other) and seeing them "alive" in modern era, and having the game designers imagine how would their planes, tanks, soldiers and buildings look like. Just like I could take the japanese culture and see it all from its different times. Etc. Oh yes, that involved making art for every civilization and every era as much as they could, but that's what we paid for too. No longer can you make it your unique story in that specific way.

In addition, I would not even see the other cultures be like that.

So I think it is a huge creative setback, an immense one even, and that's even if the game stands together in the end.

I see no point at playing specifically only the romans during the roman empire, or the huns during the golden horde time, etc, we have history games for that, civilization was full of "what if" potential. And the "what if" took a big hit.

Other mechanics will be nice in Civ 7, sure, as a "whole game" I can defend it, but for this specific "feature" it is very sad that we would find its defenders too. I agree with your "let's wait for the full game", but I will not "defend" an angle that seems like an unwarranted setback in the soul of the franchise itself.

As for changing civilization for another, there were already such mechanics in some very well known boardgame, which Humankind then imitated, so Civ here is imitating an imitator in addition to that problem. It's not "new", and it's soulless, it is the reason why I immediately thought Humankind was soulless too.

we love to play "a faction", to give life to a dream, we are not playing for victory or prestige points as much as we are playing a "what if" imaginary dream. Now these doors of imagination will close a bit, I am afraid. Of course, I can still play "points for victory", I just mean that it won't be the same game.