u/eskaver

After watching a video from PaisleyTrees and just thinking over what the next DLC pack will be before the likely expansion, I had to really wonder what is the vision for Civ7 and what direction is it going towards?

A lot of hard work has been done to provide a new experience with Test of Time as the vanilla game had a larger shift in changes that soured its launch, barring UI and other things that I chalk up to being released too early.

But as much as I like TOT and Continuity, I can't help but realize that each update basically paints over the base game that I worry that the game is just losing its unique aspects all together.

Regroup has basically been made irrelevant with Continuity. It's nice to see Regroup get tweaks along the way but I wonder if it would've been better to just continue to change Regroup over introducing Continuity so early. Perhaps they can introduce a Unit Cap to at least bring Continuity more in line and establish how much is excess gold and influence in the UI.

Crises are basically mild annoyances lost in the shuffle. You don't even really get legacy bonuses from facing them. That's leaving aside how you can somewhat ignore them. My most recent game I didn't go Religion and realized how easy the Crises was doing so that it allowed me to expand even further due to the extra happiness.

Late Age buildings have never been resolved, especially made worse with the lack of legacy options. An easy tweak to me is to make them "Next Age" buildings.

One of the biggest mottos for Civ 7 has been "History is built in layers" and it seems like like the game only briefly touches on this now with Syncretism (which is unbalanced, imo) and how you can get artifacts. Previous legacy paths are slowly being consumed by the plethora of ways to get points that it hardly feels like there's a benefit for interacting with the Age specific systems.

The game is becoming increasing complex (and to some unwieldy) and variable, so what direction do you see the game going into especially with an expansion likely to come?

If you were around before the nerf, Espionage was underrated but also very powerful. After the nerf, Espionage has fallen off the face of the Earth because why wait so long and tank Influence when you can just do something else, even as an Espionage Leader.

Some changes I think could be done:

- Change the turn time from 21 turns (standard) to 20 turns.

Just a small tweak as I don't get why it's 21.

- All Espionage Actions cost 90 Influence (standard), except Convert Population which is increased from 40 to 50.

These two changes are to allow for the City State Bonus to more or less reset Espionage to what it felt like before with the cost being 75 Influence and taking 15 turns when you invest in a City State.

- Change Military Infiltration from revealing Commanders to decreasing Combat Strength; Changinf Military Sabotage from decreasing Combat Strength to Labor Sabotage and causing a Settlement to deal with Unrest for X number of turns.

Just making Espionage feel worth it. I don't know why anyone dares to reveal rival Commanders. This can be helpful for getting some Wonders, maybe, or stop unit spam when attacking a specific settlement.

- Change Sayyida Al-Hurra to gain two naval units instead of one for each complete Espionage Action. It's weird she gets one when Charlemagne can get two Cavalry. It's not like her kit is strong in general, imo.

Any other thoughts? What would you change? Any possible leader could be given an Espionage lens, new or old?

I don't run meta teams and I'd even refrain from using replica teams just so there's more a personal element to team building.

But as much as the meta might get annoying with staple teams, they aren't slop. They are literally the meta and any team that you build works to counter the meta.

Now, what could he considered slop concerning meta teams are the posts that go "Hey, I got so far with the not all that original team or staple Pokémon". Little shade, but yeah, I'd hope there's something more to a team than slight tweak to what we know is dominating the field.

This is a hot take and not even one I’m sure I agree with, but it could make for interesting discourse.

In Civ 7, each Civ has an associated Wonder that gives them a discount in production and the occasional early access to one Wonder in the general Wonder pool of à given Age. There are also other Wonders not directly tied to a Civ or at least not given the Associated designation and production bonus.

We will soon approach 60 Civs and thus 60 Associated Wonders and a dozen or so unassociated ones which is more than Civ 6.

My proposal is to remove Associated Wonders from the general Wonder Pool to reduce the appearance of Wonder bloat.

Because this removes the classic vibe of ahistorical placement of the Pyramids and the like, I’d propose using the Test of Time feature to introduce a repeatable Syncretic-like Civic that increase in cost that allows for you to access other Associated Wonders.

So as the pool of Associated and general Wonders increase, they’d do so in a way that at least doesn’t appear as bloat. That way, by the end of the game cycle, we don’t end up with like 150 Wonders available to all.

What do you think?

It’s weird that it goes from 6x to 4x.

Exploration should be 6x and 5x. It would also allow for the Modern to get a little bit more time. And it could future proof if Ages are ever expanded upon tech and civic wise, which tends to happen.

What are your experiences with Victory thresholds?

When do you think they’ll let us battle them, even if it’s a generic (repeatable or not) battle?

They added new scenes for the tier for the new season, so they might have something in store.

Maybe after all the gimmicks? Mobile release could at least be time to toss us a battle or two, even if it’s easy and just a way to have a cinematic cutscene to act as a “final ending” at least to the focus on Megas.

I don’t expect any serious single player content for years, but I could see this.

The Korean aspects, that is.

Yi Sun-Sin

Traits: Cultural, Militaristic (I know, another one)

Ability: Military and Production Buildings gain Culture adjacency from Quarters. Gain a certain amount of Culture per Age when completing a Fortification. Increased Combat Strength on Coast (embarked units and naval units).

The idea is to make this guy very defensive with synergies with Normans or Dai Viet but also the Korean ideas I have. Boring, but Admiral Yi was mostly defending Joseon and that’s all I got.

Goryeo

Traits: Economic, Militaristic

Ability: Gains a Treasure Convoy in the Capital of a set amount when making a Trade Route with a Settlement on Distant Lands; Culture on Fortifications, Fort Towns can build Production Buildings, increase trade route range and resource capacity.

Units: Gwaseon (light naval), a unique fleet commander

Infrastructure: Hanggyo (improvement); one per settlement that gives happiness base and science from fortifications.

Wonder: Woljeongsa (with the 12th century pagoda)

I wanted this to pair well with Yi but also be a good transition from Silla. I turned the unique trade route to the Capital into a way to get Treasure Convoys. I don’t really have an idea for a unique Civ ability, though.

Joseon

Traits: Cultural, Scientific

Ability: Science and Culture on Specialists but they have increased maintenance; increased production on city projects; combat strength on naval units, bonus yields from specialized towns

Units: N/A (didn’t want to go with Hwacha or Turtle Ship)

Infrastructure: Seowon (quarter) with Seodang and Jangpangak as science and happiness buildings

Wonder: Kyujanggak

The general idea is to end with the Civ classic “Science the Civ” with only slight synergy with Yi, strangely enough. (Part of this is because Sengoku and Hideyoshi are Exploration and Yi would be too but Joseon is Modern, so I had Goryeo fit more). The combat strength for naval units is the nod to the Turtle Ship and paired with Yi would double down on that.

What are your ideas? Part of theorizing around Civs is that they not only need something worthwhile each Age but also a meaningful unique contribution to their Apex Age. Yi isn’t too inspirational (the guy is, my idea is not) but we have so many militaristic leaders, so I focused more on synergy with the Koreas rather than interest in a vacuum.