Civilization is one of two games I’ve had on every computer I’ve ever owned since I first encountered it. (The other is netak.) That’s important to my family too. My wife plays it frequently (although she’s been on Baratro Kick recently), and I remember a middle school kid in middle school.
Obviously, I’m suited to this long-term turn-based strategy series. However, as is currently constructed, Civilization 7 has some real flaws. And although they may be fixed in future updates (and there are workarounds), this is a bit sloppy.
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The most basic problem is that combat sucks.
Before we reach that reason, let’s first talk about some of the big new ideas of Civilization 7. It is clear that the main design concern this time is to address two criticisms of previous iterations. In fact, the game is successful with that score.
One concern is the “snowman effect.” In most previous versions of CIV, tension tends to fall into the middle from early in the game. In these early periods of history, you need to expand quickly, and you may encounter dangerous deals with wild bars and city-states, and other countries can attack you when you are not actually ready to go to war. But by the time you enter the late game, you can give power through every challenge you face. Because you can be smart enough to ensure you have excellent technology and have enough military forces to deal with any challenges that AI poses at you. In other words, the final game can be boring and you’re just heading towards a rather inevitable victory.
This is the motivation behind Civ 7’s most drastic change to the formula. The basic idea is that as age changes from ancient to modern times to exploration, there is something like a reset. In previous iterations, you played the same civilization from front to back. If you choose to play as a French, American, or Aztec, you have always been French or American, or Aztec. In this game, you change civilization with each age change. I was the Greek, then the Ming (Chinese dynasty), and then the French (Vive L’Empereur!).
With each change in times, many of the military units disappear (you can maintain six, and even what the general can maintain). You will maintain your settlement, but the town you promoted to the city will become town again (you can maintain or establish another city). With negative policies and relationships with AI opponents, war will disappear. In other words, you’re maintaining a lot of progress, but it’s like you’re starting a new game.
You can also choose what your new civilization is with the changing times. At the end of the classical era, I was far behind technology (as a Greek, does that make sense?), and chose Ming, which has the advantages of technology. Here you will find delicious strategic choices in that the next generation of civilizations will most benefit you.
Civ 7 distinguishes between “towns” and “city.” Cities are very similar to other versions of the series, using production to build buildings, units and wonders, but cannot establish complex construction projects with money. The town can improve, but only spend money to make things. You can promote your town to the city (although you may have a lot of money spent on improving the town), but at the end of your age, you don’t want to do that, as the promoted city will be demoted to town again (except in modern times, your town has a decent production economy.
In other words, the basic idea behind this system is to reset the game and economy with each change in the era, avoiding the previous version of the snowball final game. And it works! It solves that problem, but it has some drawbacks.
In some respects, you stop equating with civilization and instead identify with your leader. I played as Machiavelli. Machiavelli has several advantages in diplomacy and will try to avoid war if possible. But you also tend to identify AIs that are at odds with their leaders. Frederick the Great was a permanent pain in my butt for me. It has the advantage in that it is undoubtedly arguably playing Greek Ming France, as it will be a rather different experience from the same inheritance as Machiavelli. In other words, the diverse combination of leaders and civilizations creates more and more interesting choices.
One other criticism of late match CIV in previous versions is the amount of monkey work you had to do. You had a horde of worker units you had to manage, and you could partially automate them (just build a railroad until I told you), but it still took a lot of time. Oh, build a farm here. Ah, build a path to this city. This has created a considerable amount of crushing, especially on the larger maps.
This is completely gone in Civ 7. Improvements to decimal sphere do not require the use of workers. Instead, choose hexadecimal and order the improvements with a hammer (for city) or gold (for towns) and wait for them to be completed. Roads and railways are automatically completed between settlements over time. Most of the time, this is good, but sometimes it gets frustrating (why am I not owning a train? here But when I could completely use one? ) But it completely reduces the amount of busy work you face.
It’s not just workers. Another improvement is the use of military leaders. Prussia has just been invaded (thank you, Frederick the Great), and I need to bus a lot of military forces on my southern border. Instead of moving them one by one, I can bring military leaders and combine a bunch of units under their command, move them where it is needed, then the commander can attack as a whole or deploy units around that commander to control more territory. In CIV, being in war makes the game much slower. Suddenly, you need to activate (or build) a large number of military units and control them over multiple rotations. As is still the case with this edition, the military leader system improves the problem to a significant degree by grouping multiple units under the leader and throwing them around the map by issuing commands only to the leader.
In other words, Civ 7 takes time-consuming chores from previous iterations of the game and makes them faster. Do you need to command workers? There’s no more. Do you need to move a lot of troops? Easier. In other words, a smart and admirable design decision.
This further confuses how the combat interface is tedious. To attack an adjacent hexagonal unit, select the unit and click the hexagon you want to attack. It’s simple isn’t it? no! Did you click the “Go” button first? No, no attacks occur. Instead, you get a dialogue that talks about enemy units.
Now, do you have to make it clear that you want to move to hexadecimal to provide an attack? Fine, okay, click on the unit, then click the move button, then click the hex button containing enemy units. That’s obvious, right? no! Click (Move), then click on enemy units to display a dialogue about enemy units.
It could get worse. Let’s say the enemy forces are in a city with the city flag along the hexagon. Have you clicked on the banner? Even if you select a unit and then the move button, you will get a dialogue about the city and won’t attack. In some cases, 90+% of hexadecimal items are occupied by either the enemy unit icon or the city banner, and the only way to cause an attack is to zoom in and click on a small 10% of 160% that is not occupied by the enemy unit icon. or City banner. Otherwise you’re sitting there like an idiot.
The UI gives no interaction as to why you are failing. In the early user experience, I actually Googled “How do I attack with Civ 7?” There’s no help there. In the end I figured it out. You cannot click on a unit to attack. You cannot click on the city to attack. I have to click anywhere… Other than that Attack.
This is a BrainDead UI/UX design. If I haven’t selected “Move” yet, the game might reasonably say, “Okay, players want information about the unit or city when they click there.” It’s okay, maybe that’s true. Or the game can give you a “attack!” button to make it completely clear what I want to do. However, all other iterations in the Civ series assume that when you move to an enemy unit or city, you want to attack it. Therefore, there is no verb other than “moving”. Apart from that, it means… nothing. “Interface” will not let you attack unless you click specifically… Other hexagons you don’t really want to attack.
This problem is Blindly clearand the modification is simple. It is clear that if a user clicks on the “Go” icon, they want to attack. There may also be a modal dialogue saying, “Oh, do you want to attack?” This would still be ridiculous, but at least it’s better than what I’m currently experiencing.
As mentioned before, I usually prefer to avoid wars in the syving game, but in this iteration it is also more difficult to achieve the victory of world conquest. First of all, there is a severe happiness penalty if you exceed the limit on the number of cities you are allowed to own. But there is another difference. By default, CIV7 is separated by deep sea zones that generate worlds with different continents and cannot penetrate the exploration era and its accompanying naval units. Therefore, the world conquest option is not feasible at the start of the game either. There are citizens on other continents that cannot even reach the age of exploration.
Like other previous citizen archipelago-style distribution, startups have other world-generation options. However, this default setting is surprising in its own way, as only the original Civ had this kind of “continent” setup. Playing Civ 1, I came across an incredibly advanced France on the other side of the globe. And I was able to defeat them, but I did so only by firing the harbor by pumping out the battleships and sending them to the other side of the planet. Civ 7 (as far as I know) has been the first game in the series since then, focusing on the disconnected continents. In a sense, this continental distribution is more realistic, and this is a rational design choice, and I think it’s probably something I like.
The game has real UI issues, especially in combat. I personally like to play the version that minimizes civil war, but I can’t always secure it. I chose a leader with the advantages of diplomacy, but I found myself in war for many of the games (opponents appear to be particularly aggressive in the exploration era, but it’s easier to avoid wars early and later in the game). And of course, some players prefer aggressive strategies than me.
Otherwise, major design changes for Civ 7 will help address the important criticism of previous versions and ensure that, even as the game is progressing, you will face challenges rather than boring, although to some extent. By the time I wrote this review, I had spent over 50 hours playing the game – despite its flaws, the desire for Civilization 7 to cultivate history “another turn!” and to see what happens next.
This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.