u/Attlai

Greetings fellow civ enjoyers!

I'm part of the big crowd of "classic civ" players who didn't manage to fall in love with the civ swapping design of Civ 7 and who had given up on the game as a result. When the ToT update was announced, I was skeptic, but the positive comments from early access content creators slowly made me warm up with the idea and look forward to it.
So I decided to give it another chance, and I reinstalled the game yesterday with the ToT update. And well...it was definitely a more enjoyable Civ experience for me, and it might even reconcile me with the game.
Now, you can tell that the game was not designed for this, and that it will never feel like a full "classic civ" experience (once again, from the point of view of someone who doesn't like civ switching). But, I feel like it is a good compromise between a "classic civ" vision and the core design of Civ 7. A compromise that's honestly better than I was expecting.

There are still some hiccups, of course.
Like, with the civ now being continuous, I thought I would be fine with dissociating completely the leaders from the civ. And after trying the random leader-civ association, I realized that no, it still feels too off-putting (to me atleast), so I'll stick with default setting. Though it comes at the price of seeing a less varied pool of civs each game.
And also, now, when everyone is sticking to their civ, the age "transitions" feel completely artificial and arbitrary.
It's on the edges that you see the limits of the compromise. But I'm talking in good faith, and I do honestly believe that it's good enough for most "classic civ" players to enjoy the game now, and with it, enjoy the new nice mechanics of Civ 7 and its beautiful art style, without the frustration of the civ switching.

So, to any player who is like me, is still feeling on the fence, and already bought the game before, I do encourage you to give it a second chance like I did :)

With all that said, with the frustration of the civ switching gone, what were previously secondary gripes with the game has now become my new main criticism. Namely, there are 2 main points for me.

The first thing is the map readability.
The UI is definitely better, so it's not a matter of UI, but of pure visual reading. Because, while the art style is beautiful and very pleasant to look at zoomed-in, it comes at the price of being very hard to read at first glance. When I look at my city, unless I remember where I built each district (which never happens), I can't tell where is what based purely on looking.
It's fine when you have 1 or 2 small city. But once you get into exploration age, that you go past 2-3 cities, and each starts having many urban districts, it becomes unreadable. I have to open the city information, and hover on each district to know what is built there. And don't get me started on the Modern Age, where everything looks like undistiguishable urban blob until you zoom in.
It's one of those cases where aesthetic enjoyment comes at the price of gameplay readability.

And my second point is that we're really missing the "transition" part of Age Transitions.
As of now, Age Transitions are just an arbitrary big time jump to a few centuries later. But there is no transition whatsoever.
Instead, by the time you reach the last quarter or even last third of your age, so, arguably, when you reach the climax of your age, everything you research and build feel a bit pointless, because you'll barely have time to make use of it before it's rendered obsolete by the Time Jump.
The Age ends and the subsequent time jump still feel arbitrary and push you into a feeling of rush when you're supposed to be at your peak. I don't want to feel rushed when I'm finally getting to the best stuff of the age.
What's missing is an actual transition. Systems and mechanics that cover the transition between 2 ages, and make it so that you're not just time jumping, but actually living through the end of one of the peak of your civilization, and the rise of a new age. Such systems would also support better, imho, the narrative for civ switching players. And I hope future expansions (if they do come) will take a look at this part of the game, rather than adding a 4th age.

Thank you for reading me, and sorry for the text wall

Salom to all!

I'm coming for a 2 weeks rip in your beautiful country with a friend at the end of the week. We will do the "classic" Toshkent-Samarqand-Buxoro trio, but also with a bit of traveling in Nuratau region, and we wanna do some hiking in the Ugam Chatkal area.
The thing is, while we're both fluent in English, none of us speaks any Russian. And I've been taking a few private online classes of Uzbek to get the basics of the language, but I don't believe this will be nearly enough to make us get by, so I don't think I can rely on this very basic knowledge.

Which makes me wonder: are we gonna struggle as tourists with only english in the country? When we go off the main cities, like for hiking in Ugam Chatkal, is it gonna be hard to find information?
I'm also a bit worried about getting overcharged for everything due to people taking advantage of language barrier and lack of knowledge of how much things actually cost.

So, in short: with only english fluency (and a very basic Uzbek level), how much can we expect to struggle to get around ?

Katta rahmat in advance for all advice :)

Greetings my dear wholesome fellow ENFPs and other lurkers!

Wanna share a bit of misfortune of my personal life, to get some external hindsight.

I'm a 27 ENFP guy, and let's say my dating life in my 20s has been plagued by me trapping myself into toxic situations. But one pattern in particular I have observed is getting ghosted suddenly by someone who was dear to me, without any explanation.
It has happened so far 4 times during the course of my 20s.

Two of those were girls I had been talking with for several weeks, and with whom a very obvious mutual crush was developping. And in both case, the girl suddenly disappeared with no explanation, and no signs that things were dying down, and never ever reappeared.

Another was the one who was my best friend for 5~6 years. We did have a complicated relationship due to us being strongly romantically attracted to each other, but not wanting to get into a relationship due to distance. This complicated relationship did have bumps along the way. And throughout the last 2 years or so, she did develop a habit of suddenly disappearing for several weeks, or sometimes even months, without explanation.
And it all culminated when she eventually ghosted me...permanently. Once again, without any explanation whatsoever. And I still, one year later, have no clue about the reason why she ended our friendship in such a hurtful and insulting way.

And the last one was a close friend of mine from Ukraine. We had been friends for like 2 years, and she even came to visit for 1 week. Plus, she was a fellow ENFP. She really didn't have a nature of disappearing. But one day, she just stopped giving any sign of life.
And for a long time, I thought she had been killed by a Russian bombing. Until I saw her Telegram profile picture being new, which confirmed to me that she was alive. So this was a huge relief, but it also meant that she, also, had ghosted me without any explanation.

Now, I'm not gonna pretend that ghosting is something unusual in our connected society. We are all familiar with it, and I'm pretty sure we have all been guilty of it atleast once.
And ghosting someone you don't really vibe with anymore is one thing. But ghosting someone you're close to suddenly without ever giving any sign of explanation is another.
And if it happened once, even twice, I could have put it on the fault of bad luck. But the fact that it happened to me 4 times in less than 7 years is weird enough for me to start really asking myself questions.
And of course, it forces me to wonder if I am the problem. But the thing is, I'm honestly pretty self aware, I was seeing a therapist until not that long ago. If I had a toxic behavior that would cause people close to me to cut me from their life like that, I would genuinely know it.
But 4 times is a lot for it to be simply coincidence. And the only common point with these 4 people is that I had an online connection with them. So I guess you could argue that the relationship was less solid than with someone I'd know from real life. But I'm not fully convinced by this.

Which leads me to ask you my fellow ENFPs: Is this something you have also been confronted to in your life? And do you think it's just bad luck with choice of people, or do you think the pattern must imply a deeper cause?
And if there is a cause, I need to know. Because each of those did really hurt (to various degrees ofc), and I would like to not have to go through this ever again.

TL;DR: Throughout my 20s, I have been suddenly ghosted with no explanation by 4 people close to me: 2 mutual crushes, one close friend, and one best friend/romantic interest. Has this ever happened to you to? Can this be truly be just very bad luck, or must there be a deeper cause?

Spanish culture is disappearing in front of our eyes, and the world is remaining silent. An old and proud culture that has brought so much to the world, vanishing in complete indifference. It's not even funny anymore.

And I experienced it first-hand very recently.

I organized some kind of small meetup at a bar, with people from various countries, among which was one spaniard.
And, I kid you not: he showed up on time. The actual time we had agreed on.
This mf had the audacity to arrive right at the planned time, and acted as if nothing. What kind of shit is that???

I don't care what they tell you in school, this is not spanish culture.
Back when things were more proper, whenever you'd invite a spaniard to any kind of event, they would systematically show up at least 2 hours late like it's the most normal things. Then everyone would throw a little comment on how they're always so late, and we would all have a laugh at this.

To think that now, they come on time... This is what it's got replaced with. It is truly the collapse of spanish culture.
In a few years, it will have completely disappeared, mark my words. And no one will remember the good old times when spanish people were constantly late.

Rant over.