Civ VII looks awesome

[Philistine]

View: https://www.youtube.com/live/Tc3_EO6Bj2M?si=RbfvQYvT2QEw3e7u


I really like everything they are saying here, except for keeping immortal leaders through time.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I can confirm that look. I watched the presentation on the Games Com 2024.
I especially like that they "used" Hatschepsut for it.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

I always get every Civilization game but never manage to stick with it for any long period. It's always the type of game I'd love to love and keep trying to stick with but there's always other things.

I wonder how the switching of civilizations at the ends of eras will feel. Also I'm not sure how you explain that away narratively. It's not like cultures and empires just merge. It's usually when one conquers the other. So maybe it would've been a better idea to allow for that switching of nations but only to one you've just conquered? I don't know. It just feels weird and purely mechanical. But I guess there's other non-historical things in the game. But this one really seems to take the cake philosophically.

 

[Arhu]

I got various Civ games in sales and such, but never played more than like 30 minutes. I like the general theme, but then I'm always put off by the setting (read: real life Earth cultures). I prefer fantasy scenarios or sci-fi. Last 4x game I played and enjoyed was Age of Wonders 4, but that was missing something else.

I wish there was a modern sequel to Alpha Centauri ...

 

[largh]

I would be interested to hear what is radically different from the current entry?

The age system was used in Humankind as far as I understand. It worked fine, but it was also weird that buildings would suddenly change style so drastically. In Humankind, the beginning with a tribe was the best and most innovative part.

Every Civ game since the first one always falls to the same issue, however: non-adaptive AI. The AI is so stupid that it has to cheat to manage beating the player. Starting the game later than the AI civs and giving them bonuses seems only ways they can make the AI competitive. I'd imagine that it shouldn't be impossible to make an AI opponent which crushes you, but those are not fun either. Instead the AI should offer enough challenge throughout the game adapting the "difficulty" to the state of the game (player vs AI point difference or something) and player could choose how much they wish the AI to push and harass them. No-one has yet managed to do that well and these types of games are not satisfactory to play against the computer until something like that comes. Given the developments in general AI lately, I am surprised that there has not been focus on revolutionising strategy game AI systems yet.

I wish there was a modern sequel to Alpha Centauri ...

There is Civilization: Beyond Earth which reuses the Civilization formula in a sci-fi setting and Age of Wonders: Planetfall doing the same for the AoW formula.

 

[basharran]

I hope the initial release of VII will have at least more content than the original release of VI. That was really disappointing after the richeness of V.

 

[Couchpotato]

I hope the initial release of VII will have at least more content than the original release of VI. That was really disappointing after the richeness of V.

Nah they have to milk the audience with DLC's of skins and civilizations. Here's hoping they actually allow proper modding this time. Sure there are mods but they are limited.

CiV 4 was the best of the game with the largest amount of good mods.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3P_3Qku18s

I think I'm definitely going to skip Civ7 until they settle on things, because from the complaints of some the community it sounds like there might be some radical changes coming in the first year at least.


It's also sitting at 48% positive. Yikes.
Listening to Zakh's top 10 things he hates, it sounds insane how they chose to process the age transitions. I like the idea of having discrete ages, and skipping the in-between years. I always felt it weird how the transition slowly happens.
But how they chose to handle it is kinda insane. Basically, no matter what's happening on the map, when the age transitions it does so. You could be in the middle of a war, about to conquer something, the age just transitions.
And the effects are also insane. You just outright lose troops because they have no counterpart in the next age? And the rest of your troops just get whipped away, back? Talk about whiplash.

Truly insane how they thought this would go over well.



Some reddit opinions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/1ijtih4/man_this_age_reset_thing_is_wild

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/1ijtih4/man_this_age_reset_thing_is_wild/



Insane how this passed testing ...

 

[JFarrell71]

View attachment 6066

Insane how this passed testing ...

That's a design phase thing, not a testing thing.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

That's a design phase thing, not a testing thing.

There's testing all throughout the development. Not just when the game is towards its final state.
I would imagine they at least play test the mechanics and how it plays out way before even building most of the art, with just having blocks as placeholders and whatnot.
They probably don't even need the actual game engine for that. You could probably simulate it in some sandbox engine.
You design and test to see how it feels, and then go back and design some more.

It sounds like they didn't do most of that.

 

[JFarrell71]

There's testing all throughout the development. Not just when the game is towards its final state.
I would imagine they at least play test the mechanics and how it plays out way before even building most of the art, with just having blocks as placeholders and whatnot.
They probably don't even need the actual game engine for that. You could probably simulate it in some sandbox engine.
You design and test to see how it feels, and then go back and design some more.

It sounds like they didn't do most of that.

What I mean is that it's working as intended, some people just don't like it. Justifiably, perhaps, but Firaxis apparently thinks/thought that was good design. It's not a matter of testing... it's more like market research feedback.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

What I mean is that it's working as intended, some people just don't like it. Justifiably, perhaps, but Firaxis apparently thinks/thought that was good design. It's not a matter of testing... it's more like market research feedback.

Right, I get what you mean now. If they did indeed make a choice conscious of that whiplash then yeah.

The more I think about it, I'm not sure how you would do that and not radically change things around on the map.
If they want to stick with the time-skip in years how do you motivate keeping the units there, and just upgrading them to something else. it would also feel very weird and the transition would lose its impact.

It very much sounds like I would rather go for no age transition at all. Having things change underneath you, and then needing to again reacquaint yourself with where everything is after the transition sounds like one of the worst things I dislike in strategy games when I return to an older save, and I forget where everything was, what I was doing, etc.

Will be interesting to check in 1-2 years if they walk anything back. Though I would assume that's too big of a change for just an expansion.
I would assume Civ7 is stuck with this, and we'll see in Civ8 if they abandon it.

 

[JFarrell71]

Yeah, I haven't played it, but it doesn't sound well implemented. Or at least not to my taste. The way I've heard it described, things reset to the extent that when you advance an age, you're close to even with your competitors again. While I get how they might think that would keep the game interesting throughout, I would also think it would give players the sense that nothing they do matters until they get to the last age.

I wonder how the way they handled age transitions varies from Humankind, the Amplitude 4x game that did it first.

 

[largh]

Humankind is for free on Epic right now. Try that instead? It also has this age change thing but not as prominent.

 

[fadedc]

I like the idea of the age thing, or at least the idea of what they said they are trying to solve. The early game of civilization was always the most fun for me, but I didn't always find the late game had enough payoff, especially with the bad AI and the tendency for victory to steamroll towards either success or failure early on and the rest of the game being just playing out a forgone conclusion.

In theory ages is supposed to solve that and recreate the fun early game every time you advance while limiting the steamroll effect. But I haven't actually played the game and I have no idea if it works as advertised. If it fails, it wouldn't be the first time that a developer had a cool new idea that just didn't work.

Not as worried about the Steam reviews, any major franchise that makes major changes will always be review bombed.

 

[JDR13]

I'm not mad at Firaxis for making this since another Civilization game is as inevitable as death and taxes, but it kills me that it's going on 10 years since XCOM 2, and there's still no talk about getting another sequel in that series.

 

[notdart]

I'm not mad at Firaxis for making this since another Civilization game is as inevitable as death and taxes, but it kills me that it's going on 10 years since XCOM 2, and there's still no talk about getting another sequel in that series.

Probably another 20 years since they fired the xcom team.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Not as worried about the Steam reviews, any major franchise that makes major changes will always be review bombed.

Are you sure it's review bombed? I always understood review bombing as intentionally grading something negatively regardless of the quality. Moreso for some political or personal reason.
I've also seen some reviews and the game definitely has serious issues and bugs, outside of just the significant design changes. Of which some people are definitely not too hot about.
This video shows 2 pretty serious game breaking bugs (one involving local save files and one of a crash to main menu):

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrNBsSAfnUM


Also, it's been in 'mixed' (50-52% positive) for a few days now, when only the people that plunked down 100 euros (for the early release slot) can review it.
I suspect that the people that are passionate enough to put down 100 are the most vested in liking what they deliver.

 

[JDR13]

Probably another 20 years since they fired the xcom team.

They didn't fire the XCOM team at least not all of them. A few got hit when they did layoffs, but afaik the lead guy left to start something else.

They should have done XCOM 3 instead of Midnight Suns. Maybe things would have turned out differently for them.

 

[fadedc]

Are you sure it's review bombed? I always understood review bombing as intentionally grading something negatively regardless of the quality. Moreso for some political or personal reason.
I've also seen some reviews and the game definitely has serious issues and bugs, outside of just the significant design changes. Of which some people are definitely not too hot about.
This video shows 2 pretty serious game breaking bugs (one involving local save files and one of a crash to main menu):

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrNBsSAfnUM


Also, it's been in 'mixed' (50-52% positive) for a few days now, when only the people that plunked down 100 euros (for the early release slot) can review it.
I suspect that the people that are passionate enough to put down 100 are the most vested in liking what they deliver.

Review bombed might not have been the right term. I just meant it’s a common trend that the new game in a big franchise that people are passionate about gets poor early steam ratings because people are mad about all the things they changed. Not saying the ratings are wrong or right, just that they are hard to read into.

And definitely agree that I’d much prefer a new xcom.