Civilization 7 is in development

[MJW (ya that one)]

Civ3 and 4 had city caps. Corruption and city maintenance. 6 limits you by making settlers cost more.

Without a limiter it's going to be like Age of Wonders 3 where you win the game at turn 65. However, Civ7 is much more oppressive than 3-6 (intentionally to prevent snowballing, to allow "distance lands" to always happen and to allow for AI to keep up) and that makes the game worse.
 
Don't know about 1 & 2 because I didn't play those games.

[v8mark]

I'm not trying to pile on Civ7 but I did feel the need to collect my thoughts together into an article on how and why the design choices went wrong. This one is simply called What Happened?

https://www.sullla.com/Civ7/WH.html

That's a really good summary, and I think it captures what people are missing when they try and make individual points about the game. For eg, "the civ-switching isn't that bad, it can even be thematic!", or "yeah, the AI sucks, but it did in Civ6 too, and that sold well!", or "the era transitions aren't *that* bad - it's certainly not worth giving up on the whole game because of it".

It's ALL of those things together that make the game an unrewarding experience. Firaxis profoundly messed the game up in a way they really haven't with a Civ title before. The Civ5 launch came close, but I think a lot of that really was veterans of Civ4 and their distaste for 1upt - a whole new cadre of fans grew to adore the game because the fundamentals were still there. The fundamentals aren't there for this game. AND they messed up the UI, AND they introduced the deeply unpopular civ-switching concept, AND they split the game into three ages which causes some real feel-bad moments in the middle of it, AND they didn't fix the terrible AI, AND they upped the price, AND they doubled down on even more predatory DLC pricing and sales than before.

The result is players are not hanging around, and I think a lot of them aren't even waiting to see if Firaxis have the skill or the inclination to salvage the situation. They're just moving on to other stuff, and Civ7 is mostly being ignored. It's actually quite astonishing to see how little Civ7 content there is out there, either on YouTube or Twitch. The big Civ/strategy/4x youtubers dropped it within a couple of weeks of launch and simply haven't returned. No-one is creating content for the game, no-one is watching it, and per the Steam numbers, very few people are playing it.

I really hope that either this is the wake-up call the franchise needs, or that someone else steps into the void and makes a really good 4x game. Old World is a pretty good effort, albeit with some quirks, and I've mostly been playing that instead of Civ over the past few months.

[haphazard1]

I think a core problem is that Civ 7 penalizes the player for doing well, dragging you back to the pack with the age transitions. If the player is that dominant, the answer is to increase difficulty/challenge level somehow. Combined with the repetitive straightjacket of the age scoring goals forcing every game into the same patterns, there is a lack of freedom for the player.

[T-hawk]

If the player is that dominant, the answer is to increase difficulty/challenge level somehow.

The problem is that they can't do that because that requires much better AI opponents. We've covered why that hasn't happened (1UPT, can't develop AI while game systems are constantly changing, only Blake ever really did good AI).

[naufragar]

Sullla, thanks for your write ups, both the article and the AARs. I haven't played, so I'm getting most of my impressions from you and Chevalier.

You prescribe a smoothing (don't take stuff away from the player, allow civ continuity). I wonder if Civ7 could work going the other way and leaning much harder into the changes. Roguelikes have already solved the problem of players playing many hours without the same character.

I wonder if you could add tons of different objectives and more granular point scoring: kill a military unit, get 1 military point. Build a building, get 1 economic point. Instead of having the age transition when someone meets the goals, you have an explicit timer. Then, when the age transitions, you have some cutscene or w/e about crisis and then you're given basically an advanced start menu with the points that you earned from the previous era. "You earned 100 military points, place ten musketmen or use 50 of those points to unlock new British Red Coats." "You earned 20 economic points, start with 200 gold or unlock new Chinese silk farms." If the designers are committed to eras, the roguelike system has three advantages: it allows success to carry over; it allows more competitive AI opponents (AI didn't do too well? Give them +300% points on Deity.); it allows targeted transitions ("this game I want to have a big religious transition, so I'll go for all the Religion Points in the Ancient Era").

If I had to guess, I'd think the devs want to learn more into the new systems, for the sad fact that people still play old games. Its hard to justify, let alone build, "a better Master of Orion" in a way that gets the old fans to part with their money. Why would I spend $70 dollars on an optimized Civ6? But maybe I'd spend $70 + DLC on a brand new idea...

[greenline]

If the player is that dominant, the answer is to increase difficulty/challenge level somehow.

The problem is that they can't do that because that requires much better AI opponents.  We've covered why that hasn't happened (1UPT, can't develop AI while game systems are constantly changing, only Blake ever really did good AI).

I'll beat the drum again that they should be relying on more aggressive AI bonuses. Bring back the Civ 4 Deity bonuses (pre BtS) where you just can't compete with the amount of free stuff the AIs get at that level, even if they can't use it with any degree of efficiency.

[yuris125]

Problem with 1upt is, if AI bonuses on deity are too high, they get so many units that the map becomes not navigable due to AI units on every tile (arguably Civ5 has this issue even as it is now)

[haphazard1]

If the player is that dominant, the answer is to increase difficulty/challenge level somehow.

The problem is that they can't do that because that requires much better AI opponents.  We've covered why that hasn't happened (1UPT, can't develop AI while game systems are constantly changing, only Blake ever really did good AI).

I'll beat the drum again that they should be relying on more aggressive AI bonuses. Bring back the Civ 4 Deity bonuses (pre BtS) where you just can't compete with the amount of free stuff the AIs get at that level, even if they can't use it with any degree of efficiency.

The 'somehow'  can be a combination of things. Ideally the AI opponents would be better, yes. At the very least they need to expand better, as Sulla noted in his article. Games that are 20 or 30 years old (Civ4, MOO) did a solid job of making the player scramble to get enough land to have a shot at victory; it should be possible to get that much from the AIs today.

It can also include straight bonus boosts at higher difficulty levels. There are many excellent players here at Realms Beyond, but seeing people beating the top difficulty levels of Civ7 within the first week of release indicates that the challenge level is not dialed up enough. The devs certainly seem to be aiming the game more for the casual player, but that should not mean making it so a casual can beat deity difficulty on their first or second try. At least I hope it does not mean that, because that would be a total abandonment of more serious players.

[jdevo]

This is the best write-up of what went wrong with 7. There isn't a single feature in 7 that I like. You should post this on Civ Fanatics, I'm curious what they would think about this.

[MJW (ya that one)]

It is possible to have competitive AI with 1UPT. Just give them big combat bonuses and cap the number of units they can make to avoid units everywhere. (Civ AI plays with fog-of-war hack so you would just share the number of possible units between them. AI Max Units on Map=Map size*some factor.)

That's not fun though, but better than they have now.