My overall feedback: best civ game so far, but...

[Morral]

Background: I have some hundred hours of civ5 and about 700 of civ6 /played. Far from most, but not nothing either. Played my first 2 full games of civ7 since yesterday morning so far. Saw you asking for feedback so here are my thoughts:

I absolutely love most new features of civ7! You basically get to play the best part of exploring and competing for land twice, with the second time being very different as you have much more resources at your disposal. And then an all out push for victory in the last Age trying to utilize your setup as best you can.

The above combined with the flexibility of being able to readjust your strategy at the start of every age, has for me made civ7 by far the most engaging version of civ when seen over an entire game as the slog truly is mostly gone! Just as it starts to appear a little, when you are set up in an Age and it is quite clear how things will shake out - the Age ends (on Standard speed and settings at least for me)! And even at the end you can work on min-maxing the legacies to squeeze out as much as you can without it being completely certain if you will get this final milestone or not. That is just brilliant.

A few aspects could be better and the UI can be improved a lot. I actually love the style and color, as someone who always runs dark mode in everything and plays WoW with ElvUI. But a lot of customization and quality of life features are missing as we all know.

Pros
- The ages, civ swapping and fluid goals of legacy paths combine to make this version of civ by far the most engaging experience from start to finish.
- Absolutely love how every age feels distinct and drives gameplay forward in their own way.
- Combat is vastly improved with the commanders
- Tediousness of managing a bazillion cities is gone.
- Tediousness of having to conquer everything to min-max your military might is gone.
- Tediousness of dealing with builders is gone. You still have the interesting min-maxing decisions of planning your city layouts but with only 1 click per decision which is a massive improvement.
- Separate leaders and civs gives a lot more replayability to try out different strategies
- At least on the recommended settings of small continents plus map, the entire map is contended the entire time and every single civ, unless completely neutered militarily, you directly interact with the entire game in meaningful ways.

Cons
- UI. Art style great. Functionality and clarity less so.
- Customizing options for game setup is limited.
- The 2 above once more, they are by far the largest issues.
- Everything with missionaries seems tedious in its entirety. Haven't played around with it much due to this, but will do it next game to try it out. Right now my assessment is that as long as it gets a rework in an expansion, then I can live with this for now. But this whack-a-mole missionary version of religion definitely seems to stand out as a pile of boring busywork in a game that otherwise managed to remove most of it, and will likely ignore it in most of my games apart from getting enough relics for the first milestone.
- I'd really like the AI to still be smarter, but at least the consequences are less annoying due to the rest of the changes (e.g. you don't have to spend an eternity improving the land of their mysteriously barren cities after you capture one anymore )

At the moment, provided that this release is followed up by strong dev support and a couple of expansions, I strongly expect that civ7 is going to have vastly more /played for me when civ8 eventually comes around than what I had for civ6. Now, if you excuse me, I need to start up a new game.

[256shadesofgrey]

The age transitions are literally the worst thing in civ 7 by far. Worse than the UI. These transitions break continuity. If I was in the middle of a war, about to capture a city, I don't want it to be interrupted 1 turn before I do. And I also don't want all my ranged units that I stationed for city defense to be replaced by melee units that won't even be able to get to the enemies much less wear them down before they get too close.

And while I like that I don't have to control multiple units separately when there is a commander, this feature isn't without its own problems. When I start marching my army to the enemy city and I encounter some enemy units on the way, I have to waste 3 turns instead of 1 to intercept them. Instead of stopping for 1 turn to do a ranged attack once, I have to deploy, shoot, then collect back to commander before I can continue marching.

If commanders instead turned into super-units with all the abilities of the units in their command, and combined strength of all of them, it would be awesome. But as it is, the commander is only useful for uninterrupted long-range transport and little else.

[Morral]

Majorly disagree about the age transitions. For me, they give a sense of urgency that makes the turns and decisions feel like they matter all game. And the reset is the foundation for making each era distinct and get these really cool "scrambles for power" which is the best part of civ. I also don't think it is that strange either, I just think of it as a fade to black at the end of an era and then you come back at the beginning of another one with some time of peace having passed inbetween. Of course things will be different.

It also provides for cool moments like in my first game where I was attacked by 3 of the ai and tried to defend on all fronts while waiting for the final treasure fleet to come to my land. The rush of having that ship make it before I lost a city, ending the age, was amazing. Overall, consequences from a time limit existing just gives all decisions more weight which I am a huge fan of.

Originally posted by 256shadesofgrey:

And while I like that I don't have to control multiple units separately when there is a commander, this feature isn't without its own problems. When I start marching my army to the enemy city and I encounter some enemy units on the way, I have to waste 3 turns instead of 1 to intercept them. Instead of stopping for 1 turn to do a ranged attack once, I have to deploy, shoot, then collect back to commander before I can continue marching.

If commanders instead turned into super-units with all the abilities of the units in their command, and combined strength of all of them, it would be awesome. But as it is, the commander is only useful for uninterrupted long-range transport and little else.

I am sorry, but this I also disagree with. If you think there are enemies about then just don't pack them up. The rest of the time it saves a ton of clicks when you just need to move around in safe territory or need to reinforce with new units to the front lines where the commander already is, which is the boring part where the movement has no decisions to it.

And a super-unit sounds awful to me, I don't want the dumbing down of doom-stacking. As it is, there are a lot of cool decisions of commander placement and usage of abilities. You have options for fast, blitz like attacks with commanders good at traveling+assault. Or more defensive ones creeping forward with instantly built fortifies backed by range. And commanders specialized in reinforcements or just boosting settlements if your civ are in a good defensive terrain setup.

Civ7 is different than previous games in many ways. But as someone who never had civ as more than a "side-game" (yet!) and thus are not very emotionally attached to things as they have been: it is just way more interesting as the amount and density of strategic and tactical decisions that actually matter have not only gone up, but has gone up a lot in the parts of the game that were the least engaging in the past (mid-late game).

[PROMETHEUS]

I sincerely think you have wronged game for years then , because this CIVII is a complete garbage bad rip off of Humankind or the like , ITs not a CIV game its a dumbified streamlined minigame for apps and phones. It has no depth , you do not even have time to develop a strategy or a proper technological evolution that you are suddenly forced into middleages and modern age, and you end without even reaching Alpha Centauri that was the ultimate goal of the Civ games!

[Morral]

Ok, that is just factually wrong and very emotionally charged. But I am leaving this thread now. I just wanted to add my experience so it's not just the angry mob who is visible. I stand firm in my opinion that if you can distance yourself from emotional attachment to features being exactly like they've always been and are able to look at things calmly and based on your own experiences instead of influencers playing for clicks and engagement like always, then civ7 is a big step forward where it matters.

[Townsendvol]

I dislike having to change civs at any point. I think you should have the option to change or progress with your current one. BUT I can still enjoy the game with the transitions as long as you add endless game, the ability to turn victory conditions on and off and fix up the UI as many have said.

Obviously add back MANY QOL changes that were in previous civs as well and fix bugs.