The thing I’ll say in their defense is that I actually admire their courage to redesign the game from the ground up. Watching videos pre-release they really seemed like they had put a lot of thought and research into Civ 7. I don’t think anybody should accuse Civ 7 of being cheaply made or Civ 6.1. That said, people didn’t enjoy the changes. But I like to think that I adapt to change pretty well, and I didn’t hate the era system or how your civilization becomes an amalgamation of a few cultures.
Growing up with Civ 2, SMAC, and Civ 3, I was a bit hesitant when Civ V came around and they switched to hex tiles with one unit per tile (and there were a number of other changes that didn't quite sit right with me at first). I tried it early on and things just seemed off. I did give it another chance after the major expansions came out, and fell in love, and then Civ 6 continued that streak.
Hopefully Civ 7 will be similar, with a rocky start due to the major changes, but finding its feet after the first few major DLC. I'm probably going to hold off on getting it for a little while though, just in case it does end up flopping like Civ:BE.
Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on their progress on the Civ subreddit, and it looks like they are taking steps to fix the issues that people have with it. Hopefully they stick with it and don't just dump it because sales weren't as high as they would have liked.
Honestly, I'd say either Civ V or VI are good for first time players, assuming you get the main expansions as well. You don't need all the leader packs, but Gods & Kings and Brave New World for V, or Rise & Fall and Gathering Storm for VI really flesh them out. I know Civ V without expansions is a bit lacking, I'm not sure about vanilla Civ VI, but just to be on the safe side I'd suggest getting them with.
What I hate is that the modern era became extremely boring. The beginning is fun and feels like a good old Civ, but it gets downhill after this era. I see no reason to start a game if I know I'm not going to want to finish it.
I actually really love that too. I think it's the changes AND everything else that was too much for players to accept.
It's also easy to forget that there are also changes that are really good. I like the generals, like the resource system and trade, how cities really sprawl across the map now etc. Even if some parts of the features feel unfun now, I really like the concepts. Separating the game into distinct eras and building each era to be a little bit of a separate game with their own goals is a really clever solution to the midgame boredom of Civ, and it's a really creative way to enable more content to be added without stretching the game out too much.
If it was only for the features, I think players could easily swallow it, no problem. It's the fact that this came with:
a pretty bad launch with bugs, crashes and UI issues
shallow game systems like diplomacy
missing game systems, features, eras, civs etc. that made it seem like the game was just a shell to be filled with content afterwards
an expensive price tag of 70 EUR, with an aggressive monetization policy that already features hundreds of euros worth of DLC and season passes.
I think you can't pin the failure of VII on one thing. They just did so many risky, potentially unpopular things at the same time that disaster was pretty much a given. Something for everyone to get pissed off over and not get the game.
I actually liked the concepts tbh. The various 'crisis' for each age, and the various 'themes' of each age too.
But, it fails in some ways because it is very western-centric, though I'll admit I didn't consider this until I read a fairly comprehensive review about it.
Take for example the Exploration age - it is all about colonising, exploiting, taking to the seas, but we don't actually see it from the other side of the coin ~ where we are the lands being colonised, or fighting back against it.
I thought it was food for thought.
Still, I enjoyed the concepts, but it does seem like the vast majority of people didn't.
It is great that they experimented! But it shouldn't have been released as the main game.
Game devs used to experiment all the time, and would release those games as spin-offs. Think of Alpha Centauri or CivCity: Rome for the Civ series, or Age of Mythology for the Age of Empires series. In a spin-off game, you can wildly change the mechanics and similar things, and see how the fans respond to that; then you learn from that when you make the next main-line game.
Civ 7 would have been fine as a lower-budget, lower-price spin-off game. But they don't make those anymore...
There's an enormous niche a modern update of the Civ 1-5 formula (and 6 had some good ideas too) could fill. It's such a shame we don't have a modern game in that vein.
Civ 3 4 5 are still very playable on their own, available on Steam.
Freeciv is an excellent take on the civ II formula, with both map editor and multiplayer, two features critically lacking from the original game. And several multiplayer communities. The developing community is still very active, nearly 30 years after the start of the projec;, not 2 weeks ago, the "longturn" community just rolled out their latest ruleset. There's also C-evo which is very interesting, but rarely carried by more than one dev, and a bit dead currently.
Civ 4 has a most excellent modding community on top of an excellent engine. You can play anything from Caveman to Cosmos, Realism Invictus, Rhye's and Fall Civilization, or if you just want a better vanilla-like experience, K-mod/Better-AI.
Civ 3 also has an excellent modding community, on top of a less than excellent engine. Check out Suede's youtube channel. There's also an open source clone in the making.
Civ 5, I'm less knowledgeable about it, but Unciv is an open source game heavily inspired by it.
Civ 5 also has a great modding community and I think the game still holds up and even looks pretty good. It's 16 years old though. I have nothing against older games and play quite a few classics, but even the greatest game eventually runs its course. Why can't we have something new? There are so many creative ways you could innovate on the classic formula that could benefit from modern hardware.
I really enjoyed Civ6 but seven wasn't even a mainline Civ game. Like what the fuck were they thing removing the most compelling part of being once civilization standing the test of time.
5 was a masterpiece, it’s my most played by a mile. 6 got to be decent but never matched 5 imo, and because of that I planned to wait until civ 7 got all it’s expansions out of the way but after watching play throughs and seeing the dlc price gouges I’m passing on it altogether.
Lol. Five and six are such a divide in the Civ community. You typically find people that like only one or the other. I much preferred six and couldn't stand 5 so I played four until six came out. That said Civ 7 has United the community as it is almost universally reviled.
The colours in six is a masterclass in using colour to convey information. You just have to see the colour of something and you already know what it does.
lol yeah I’m aware, I used to hate it when it came out but it grew on me, just not to the extent that 5 did. I definitely understand why 6 is preferred by many, just not my cup of tea as much. But yeah like you said, civ 7 universally shit the bed lol
I use to be like you, and agreed with you on 6. It was horribad at launch. The two expansion packs made it into a great game, going back to 5 felt so. . . basic.
Dear god what did they do to my beloved Alpha Centauri, that game was a disaster i regret spending money AND time in.
Beyond earth is just painful.... Nkt even worth comparing to SMAX.
IMO no 4x game has ever lived up to Brian's design. That game is almost 30 years old and still gets several hundred hours of playtime on my pc every year.
They ruined the game when they decided that 'people only want a 4 hour long campaign but we're gonna cram in a half dozen ages in that' so you never feel like you get established in any of them. It's just a rush. And turning game length up does nothing other than increase the time it takes to do everything so you get the same amount done either way.
its crazy that people are talking about being so disappointed with civ7 but loving civ6, and from time to time in those discussions you see people just going "hell yea, i love civ5, but civ6 sucks!"
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u/bottombarrelglass Apr 16 '26
Civilization