r/CivVII

I'm legitimately curious, because I'm getting my ass kicked. It's just the sheer numbers of troops the AI can muster combined with the bonus to combat strength they get that feels insurmountable to me. At least in Antiquity, I feel like I can't go to war with anyone because I'll get swarmed. Defensive wars aren't too bad, but even those can get overwhelming if I have a town on my periphery that they just send an endless wave after wave of fodder that way.

I grabbed Civ VII on Steam because it was on sale, and after about 20 minutes my gut reaction was: I don’t think I like this.

I’m going to give it another hour or two before deciding whether to drop it (or request a refund, though the price is not the point here), but I’m curious whether this is a normal “new Civ learning curve” reaction or a sign that the game just may not be for me.

For context: I’m a casual Civ player. I’ve played Civ VI on iPad for years, and that may be a big part of the problem. I almost never sit down at a computer specifically to play games. I usually just pick up the iPad when I feel like it, play for 10 minutes or two hours, and put it down. So part of this may be “I don’t actually like laptop/desk gaming anymore.”

My biggest immediate issue is the UI/readability. The map itself looks great, but there is so much text, so many small icons, and I found very little of it intuitive at first glance. The dark UI with lots of light text also felt harder to parse than it should. Maybe this gets better with familiarity, but my first impression was that the game was asking me to work before I was having fun.
A few other things threw me off:
I miss builders.
I miss the Civ VI rhythm of settlers/builders/improvements.
Buildings appearing through the city system felt weird to me at first.
I did not immediately understand the tech/civic progression, and I missed seeing a full tree.
The base-game leaders did not grab me right away, and because I don’t understand the systems yet, their abilities did not mean much to me.
I haven’t even reached the age-transition mechanics yet, which I know are one of the big Civ VII differences.

I know 20 minutes is not a fair amount of time to judge a Civ game. But the problem is not “I’m bad at it.” The problem is that I’m not connecting with it yet, and it already feels like more effort than fun and I don’t know if I want to give my time and mental energy to something that feels like a chore.

So, for people who bounced off Civ VII at first but kept going: did it click later? If so, when?
And for people who came from Civ VI, especially casual players: did you eventually stop comparing it to Civ VI and enjoy it on its own terms, or is this just a fundamentally different game that either works for you or doesn’t?
Basically: should I push through the refund-window discomfort, or is my first reaction probably telling me something useful?

Playing my first game of Civ VII and I can’t escape the impression that my game is done at the end of Antiquity. The new age feels like a totally different game with very little connection to the previous age. Almost like advanced start in prior Civilization series.

Do you feel the same?

https://preview.redd.it/jhsdylt1w9bh1.jpg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=87ef9156ba31490fb61ea3e6f9c6986608e0edeb

https://preview.redd.it/kxsl0oi6w9bh1.jpg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=60b9045fb5de37c786b8cd944b73614442a4ebd2

This week I ran a challenge with my community to reach level 30 army commander in antiquity age, and we literally got it done on the last turn of the age! Now we're going for highest level fleet commander in explo, and squadron commander in modern age. Highly recommend this challenge, it was super fun.

Rules: Get as many promotions as possible on a single Army Commander, a single Fleet Commander, a single Aerodrome Commander, Squardon Commander and Aircraft Carrier.

Settings: Standard size map, standard speed, standard age, deity, regroup, 10 turn countdown, shift-entering allowed to get full 140 turns.

My strategy: Ashoka to start celebrations when declaring formal war, Lion's capital memento (50% XP during celebrations), Sengoku Civ (50% XP card), Terracotta (25% XP), and Military City State bonus Age of Heros (50% XP I believe).

Played ming in antiquity and couldn't access ming in exploration. Seemed weird.

I was playing deity when I got the 5-turn warning of Ada Lovelace’s science victory. My cultural victory was just three turns behind so I reloaded and tried pillaging the spaceport but that didnt stop the countdown. Am I missing something here? Do I have to take over the city itself?

I love just building the best cities and towns I can but obviously that’s not going to help on higher levels. I’d love some insights into your favorite strategies, buildings, units, wonders, etc.

You either win as you get them out, and they are way to thigh cost to commit too. I’d rather build an aerodrome, or anything else that gives production than a factory.

And when I do get factories out, the factory bonus is weak to non existent, and you only get one resource, it just doesn’t feel good.

The sound design for the moment a rival wonder is built is so perfectly rage-inducing. I can literally feel myself tense up. Great job sound and icon designers, I hate it

Rival wonder built notification icon

So I'm not sure if its something with playing Isabella + Spain or just the Logistics ability, but the fleet commander can carry units which means you can load an army commander + loaded units into one slot of the fleet commander. So potentially with a super fast fleet commander (boosted with the conquistador for example) you can carry at minimum 4 x 4 = 16 units into a single fleet commander. That seems a little broken.

That being said, unloading that commander seems pretty glitchy which makes me wonder if this was intentional at all. If you just unload the army commander on its own, it'll unload but still show up in the fleet commander, if you "deploy army" then the army commander will teleport and unload again with the other ships. Sometimes it won't unload at all and just vanish and show up in the fleet commander again if you do an "assemble army".

Anyone else notice this? Was it always like this?

Edit: Ok looks like its a bug, but you CAN get it to mostly work. Basically deploying just the army commander doesn't always work, but deploying all usually does. If you deploy all and can't click on the army, then assemble again and load it back in and try again. It most consistently works if you deploy all to the ocean vs trying to deploy to land.

Religion panel, Exploration Era turn 177. I'm pretty sure I got my religion to be in the majority of all cities in all remaining civs.

I finally got a second belief. Deity game, and we're in the countdown to the Era Transition. So I was just fooling around while trying to wipe out another civ.

Hey everyone. Longtime Civ fan.

I’ve enjoyed 7 since its come out with the recent updates changing the game to actually be more or less a good complete game.

I’ve always loved winning militarily or through science. But it seems like the Science victory is just impossible now. I go into the modern age and other civs somehow have 60/70 innovation already. How the hell is this even possible? I always get to the point of researching future tech and build every project possible. So hoping someone could explain who maybes very knowledgeable on the Science path and gathering innovation.

So assuming you were able to do a better job on a higher difficulty such that the happiness is the exact same in your settlements on a higher difficulty as a lower difficulty, would more settlements revolt?

During the crisis where cities that are unhappy start to revolt, I’ve noticed that it’ll say a bunch of them “may” revolt but then only a couple or so will do so.

On higher difficulties, do you see more of the unhappy settlements revolt?

Again, keeping happiness the same. I’m not asking if it’s harder to keep happiness up on higher difficulties, I’m asking if the ones that are unhappy are more likely to revolt in that crisis on a higher difficulty?

I didn’t have any revolting in any of the games I played before 1.4.1. But now I’ve had issues of cities revolting in all 3 age changes across both of my games so far since.

Did they make it harder? I had plenty of games where I had unhappy cities and towns before the update too but it seems like revolting is happening a lot more now when that’s the case.

Post ToT I am enjoying experimenting with more diverse victory types and leaders in my games.

One of my new favorite plays is pursuing Culture wins with Rizal and Hawaii in exploration. I just love the synergies and how it all seems to work together. I usually do Fractal Continents so there’s some water tiles especially when I go for small islands in distant lands, consistent rural expansion giving lots of culture works really well.

Rizal’s fast celebrations give policy slots which I can make effective use of by moving quickly through the Culture tree. And I take the bonus relic every time, usually I even struggle to buy enough temples in settlements to slot all of them but I end up with 20+ relics also contributing to more culture and happiness, it’s great.

In antiquity I usually try to pick up Oracle to maximize the special event mini-bonuses, and I usually take the altar perk for +2 diplomacy to try to suze a few city states and get their unique improvements in every settlement.

My big thing right now is I am not sure what antiquity Civ is best. Hawaii non-apex in antiquity is underwhelming. I sometimes go Egypt for wonder bonus production, have experimented with Maya but tempo culture is less appealing than tempo science. On my culture runs I try not to be war-heavy unless I need to do a small Modern war to stop an AI winning.

Usually play on immortal but have started to bump up to deity my last few games.

But am wondering if I am missing something. What civ would you go for in antiquity and why? Anything else I should really be going hard for in exploration?

P.S. . I only have some of the bonus leaders and civs like pirates, both napoleons, Alexander…not all the DLC. Might pick it up in future but saving money for now while I’m enjoying as-is. But I’ll take any answer haha