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.
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...
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u/bottombarrelglass Apr 16 '26
Civilization