Civ VII reactions
Jan. 28th, 2026 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackGeneral thoughts on large changes:
* Having three ages with only some things carried over between them actually works really well. If you do well on the victory tracks on one age it helps in the next age, but it's not impossible to catch up. And it's meaningful to pivot from science one age to conquering in another age to economics in another.
* Adding hexes to cities is simpler and meaningful, but confusing to people used to earlier Civ games. Each tile has a natural yield. When you grow the city (when you get a new pop) into that tile, it gets the appropriate improvement. Hexes adjacent to city tiles (within 3 of the centre) don't produce any yield but count as controlled by the city. (That's where you can expand into) Placing buildings also grows the city. Building count as urban hexes, they all need to be contiguous with the centre.
* Gaining influence spent for diplomatic actions works really well. It makes investing in diplomacy meaningful, for warlike civs as well as friendly ones. It makes a difference which civs you butter up, but you can't infinitely butter up a civ that doesn't like you. And influence is used during war to influence war exhaustion, so a more/less popular war makes a real difference.
* There is a soft cap on the number of settlements which I like. It's less runaway victory/failure than how many settlers you can build. But it's less dramatic when building a settler isn't A Big Deal.
* Independent powers make a bit more sense. There are villages which can be hostile (like barbarians) or can be befriended (when they become city states). Late in the age you get auto-hostile ones who act like barbarians. It feels more organic.
* I like mixing and matching leaders and civs, and mixing and matching different civs appropriate to the region between ages.
* They got rid of rock-paper-scissors units. But overall the balance of military seems fairly good. I really enjoy it when I have good unique milirary units, like horse archers (just always OP), or elephants with machine gun mounts (Siam FTW) 🙂
* Some of the victory tracks are really fun. In modern age, economic requires connecting a rail network and processing factory resources. In exploration age, military/expansion track rewards settlements in foreign lands, extra if conquered, extra if your religion, so it can reward a variety of play. But some feel more unfinished, just "do X amount of Y".
However, in the latest game, I noticed a variety of things other people have been annoyed about:
* The interface feels optimised for consoles in ways that hinder PC play. Eg things where you can't drag to move but need to click, then click again.
* And just has some unfinished bits. It's hard to deselect things. If missionaries are on an ineligible tile, the tooltip says "The population in this tile already follow your religion" not "this tile has no pop on"
* People have complained about this forever, but wow, the computer AI can be really bad. Ships usually hug the coast, but they only care about shortest distance, they don't care if one route takes damage and the other doesn't. And trying to get troops past each other into battle with the enemy is such a faff. You end up micromanaging a bunch.
And in my most recent game I discover:
* Mongols have a "bonus" to the victory track for conquering settlements, including settlements in the home continent, not only "distant lands". But it's not a bonus, it replaces the regular conditions, so if you've already conquered all the settlements in the home continent in the previous age, you get no benefit, but get the giant penalty that settlements in other lands only ever count 1, not 2 or 4 if conquered and/or converted.
* However, choosing a sensible religious bonus, they are racing up the cultural victory track anyway, all the need to do is conquer enough temples to display the artifacts in 🙂 Looks good economically too, none of the other civs stood a chance of settling in my home continent as I already filled it up 🙂
* Having three ages with only some things carried over between them actually works really well. If you do well on the victory tracks on one age it helps in the next age, but it's not impossible to catch up. And it's meaningful to pivot from science one age to conquering in another age to economics in another.
* Adding hexes to cities is simpler and meaningful, but confusing to people used to earlier Civ games. Each tile has a natural yield. When you grow the city (when you get a new pop) into that tile, it gets the appropriate improvement. Hexes adjacent to city tiles (within 3 of the centre) don't produce any yield but count as controlled by the city. (That's where you can expand into) Placing buildings also grows the city. Building count as urban hexes, they all need to be contiguous with the centre.
* Gaining influence spent for diplomatic actions works really well. It makes investing in diplomacy meaningful, for warlike civs as well as friendly ones. It makes a difference which civs you butter up, but you can't infinitely butter up a civ that doesn't like you. And influence is used during war to influence war exhaustion, so a more/less popular war makes a real difference.
* There is a soft cap on the number of settlements which I like. It's less runaway victory/failure than how many settlers you can build. But it's less dramatic when building a settler isn't A Big Deal.
* Independent powers make a bit more sense. There are villages which can be hostile (like barbarians) or can be befriended (when they become city states). Late in the age you get auto-hostile ones who act like barbarians. It feels more organic.
* I like mixing and matching leaders and civs, and mixing and matching different civs appropriate to the region between ages.
* They got rid of rock-paper-scissors units. But overall the balance of military seems fairly good. I really enjoy it when I have good unique milirary units, like horse archers (just always OP), or elephants with machine gun mounts (Siam FTW) 🙂
* Some of the victory tracks are really fun. In modern age, economic requires connecting a rail network and processing factory resources. In exploration age, military/expansion track rewards settlements in foreign lands, extra if conquered, extra if your religion, so it can reward a variety of play. But some feel more unfinished, just "do X amount of Y".
However, in the latest game, I noticed a variety of things other people have been annoyed about:
* The interface feels optimised for consoles in ways that hinder PC play. Eg things where you can't drag to move but need to click, then click again.
* And just has some unfinished bits. It's hard to deselect things. If missionaries are on an ineligible tile, the tooltip says "The population in this tile already follow your religion" not "this tile has no pop on"
* People have complained about this forever, but wow, the computer AI can be really bad. Ships usually hug the coast, but they only care about shortest distance, they don't care if one route takes damage and the other doesn't. And trying to get troops past each other into battle with the enemy is such a faff. You end up micromanaging a bunch.
And in my most recent game I discover:
* Mongols have a "bonus" to the victory track for conquering settlements, including settlements in the home continent, not only "distant lands". But it's not a bonus, it replaces the regular conditions, so if you've already conquered all the settlements in the home continent in the previous age, you get no benefit, but get the giant penalty that settlements in other lands only ever count 1, not 2 or 4 if conquered and/or converted.
* However, choosing a sensible religious bonus, they are racing up the cultural victory track anyway, all the need to do is conquer enough temples to display the artifacts in 🙂 Looks good economically too, none of the other civs stood a chance of settling in my home continent as I already filled it up 🙂