r/civ

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

Hi all, I’ve played Civ since Civ IV and was hesitant to get VII after the negative and mixed launch reviews. However, the latest update seems to be getting much better feedback!

Now I’m stuck deciding between the Standard, Founders, or Deluxe editions. I don’t really care about skins, but I do like having a variety of civs, and I’ll be playing on Steam Deck.

For those currently playing, which version did you get, and was it worth it? Thanks!

I'm finishing my first playthrough as Machiavelli and Greece from beginning to end and I just wanted to say that I loved how they modified the end of the game with the leader's voice and seeing emblematic places of your Civilization. It finally feels like a real victory.

I actually liked the civ switching, it added extra flavour in each age. I only disliked units spawning, others lost and cities changing names on each age change. Thought that was weird.

But for someone who enjoyed playing a civ in each age, is it worth coming back? Has the last age / modern improved?

Usually I leave most towns undeveloped and don't spend money on improvements (apart from fishing quays in distant lands) because I need the money for other things and I don't see the benefit.

Is there actually a reason to spend money developing towns?

Also, how can you tell which focus to give towns?

In Civilization VII, peace negotiations are strictly limited to exchanging settlements (keeping or returning cities/towns). While the introduction of the Influence economy and resources via trade routes creates a distinct diplomatic loop, limiting peace treaties strictly to land transfers feels restrictive. It forces players into binary choices: either conquer/cede territory, or settle for a blank White Peace.

Proposed Solution:

• Gold Subsidies: Add the ability to demand or offer a lump sum of Gold or Gold-per-turn as war reparations. This allows a victorious player to cripple an aggressor's economy without cluttering their own settlement cap.
• Influence Transfers: Allow a defeated empire to cede a portion of their stored Influence or grant the victor a passive Influence-generation bonus for a set number of turns.
• Forced Trade Agreements: Allow players force trade statuses during a peace deal, forcing the defeated civ to give up luxury or strategic resource for a certain amount of turns.
• Demilitarization / Treaties: Introduce options to force the target civilization to disband units or promise not to build military units near borders for a set duration. If the civ does not comply it allows the player to declare war with additional war support and military attack bonus.
• Religion/Ideology change: It may be more challenging but the player may force the other civ to adopt their religion in Exploration age or Ideology in the modern age.
• Civ Opinion: If a civ is antagonistic a war may be utilized in the peace talk in moments of decisive victory to force the civ to have a friendly opinion of the player.

Why this improves Civilization VII:

• Protects the Settlement Cap: Currently, taking a city in a peace deal can severely penalize a player's settlement cap. Gold or Influence reparations provide a viable alternative reward for winning a war.
• Historical Realism: Throughout history, peace treaties rarely just involved land swaps; financial indemnities and forced diplomatic concessions were the norm.
• Dynamic AI Behavior: It gives the AI more options when it is losing a war desperately, allowing it to save its core cities by offering deep financial or diplomatic concessions instead.

Allowing players to integrate other core economic and diplomatic currencies into the peace deal interface would make war and especially diploymacy more feasible. Especially in games where the player is trying to play tall but still want to punish Civilzations that harass them. Some the proposed ideas maybe a big ask but even a few such as gold, influence and resources would be huge improvement.

Anyone having issues with the test of time update where you can’t past the first turn as the game instantly crashes on Direct x12. On Vulcan the game keeps glitching. I’ve never installed any mods, I’ve verified the game files, rebooted steam nothing really seems to be working. Anyone had any similar problems but has managed to fix it?

The AI is the worst. Me and Himiko are almost in an alliance. We're chill. We're having fun. Then suddenly SHE SETTLES NEXT TO ME and then is MAD AT ME?!

Devs please. Remove the relationship debuff when the AI decides to settle the one open square next to you and then immediately gets mad and declares war because of border friction.

I get there needs to be conflict, but it feels silly that it appears that they get mad at me for THEIR decisions.

I've not seen this mentioned anywhere yet.

Does anyone know if they have plans to create a true start location Earth map?

It's the only thing making me prefer vi over vii as I like it to be a more historically accurate role play type of game.

With ToT, decided to give the game a go again after not playing it for over a year (I don't think I even finished my first attempt at a game). Was very pleasantly surprised to find that all my issues with the UI seem to have vanished. The only time I was confused about something is when I couldn't figure out why I couldn't build a Library, before realizing I already had a Library in the city. The Treasure Convoy system is much more intuitive, as is the religion system. You are told exactly what will be overbuilt and how that will change your yields. Specialists seem to be actually worth it? My one complaint is that visually it's still basically impossible to tell at a glance what is in a given city, but other than that I'm actually absorbed in the gameplay, and want to finish the game I'm playing. The new victory system might just be "fill this bucket", but it's better than the previous version, especially since I can actually work towards victory from the beginning of the game. Good job, Firaxis.

Trailblazer Triumphs!

Today I selected this setting to try something new and MAN I LOVE IT. Along with this there a few that comes to mind that feels so great. Title swap, Choosing Capital, Happiness mechanics, yield (hello forests!!!!), etc.

What “small” or “little talked” change/setting have been a welcome surprise with the new update?