Civilization 7 Outlines Crucial 1.1.1 Update as It Struggles to Compete on Steam Against Civ 6 and Even the 15-Year-Old Civ 5
Civilization 7 update 1.1.1 goes live today. Check out the patch notes.
Isn't this the rule with every civ launch? They're all somewhat half-baked on launch (although 7 admittedly looks quite a bit less baked than the others).
That said, I feel Civ formula seems to be in decline. To me Call To Power was peak civ ( yeah, fight me ), but while 3,4 and 5 were great "second-bests", I couldn't really get into 6 and I'm not really planning on playing 7 ( not with this 3-age format anyway ).
At a certain point they're beating a dead horse. Outside of graphical updates (which I thought the cartoon-y look of the leaders in civ 6 was a huge downgrade), the core gameplay is still mostly the same throughout the series.
I watched a video on civ 7 and it seems like they really tried to shake up a lot in the game, I think for this reason that they needed to try something fresh to stay relevant. But really this is to its detriment rather than benefit.
I'm not sure if the three age thing is to "even the playfield" on those marathon long sessions when one civ runs away with the ball so to speak, but really that's one of my favorite parts of the series. Like it's awesome to take out some cavemen with navy seals or launch nukes when everyone is cowering in fear. If everything gets massively reset, then why even try to get ahead? I've not played the game so there could be more nuance but that's my general impression.
The part that turned me off is it is a complete rip off of Humankind, which was okay but got stale for me pretty quick.
Yeah releasing an unfinished game without any exciting new changes and adding more dlc each iteration has been killing new civ releases and burning many long term fans who get hyped for a new civ. Paradox, Ubisoft, MicroProse, etc pull the same predatory monetization shit and when the price tag is 70 USD their half baked, missing ingredients cake just doesn't look appetizing to most.
I'm not paying $120 Australian for it no matter how improved it is
Yeah that's honestly the main thing for me too. It's $120 Canadian for the Deluxe version. My price point is like... $30, especially since by all accounts it's not even finished.
I'm sure I'll move on at some point, but I'm currently running maybe 30 mods on civ 6, and they are mostly QoL. Parts of both gameplay and UI are just poorly thought out even to this day. So I was expecting the new game to be released in a state I'd dislike. It might take longer to improve than I thought, though.
From what I've seen, Civ 7 is trying too hard to be Humankind. I don't really want try it.
I mean, the ages thing grew on me. It was way too common in other civs to just snowball early and dominate the rest. Any modern civilization was just bad, because by the time they got online it was over.
It also speeds up the games a bit. I simply do not have the time as a full adult to sink 10+ hours into a single game. I have actually finished every game of Civ 7 I've played so far, which has never happened with any prior Civ installments at my current playtime.
The entire series really peaked with civ 4 and 5. 4 was the more complicated, less streamlined but still really fun game, where each game kind of felt like a dnd campaign where tons of random things could happen and you had a lot of flexibilty with your Civilization. And Civ 5 was streamlined, simplifed to be easier to learn, and while choices were reduced, the more streamlined nature made it easy to jump into a game, and civs still had uniqueness about them, and its also great fun.
Civ 5 is also a beautiful game. The artstyle has this epic, renaissance painting quality, and every world leader looks badass and awesome. Even the portraits of the units, like the worker and scout looked like something out of an italian paimting. The artstyle felt more authentic and mature, at least to me, and they haven't really recaptured that epicness and beauty since.
As always the best route is to wait for first expansion and buy it then for like $40. Most of the bugs should be worked out by then, and the first expansion usually has all the original planned content that they ran out of time and rushed the game out before it was ready to go.
Civ 7 is out?
I haven't tried civ7 yet but I really like humankind, the only 4x game that I actually finished thrice. If only Humankind didn't die, maybe it would have had more content added.
Civ 7 is out now? Jesus. I can only handle the strategic view from civ 5
5 is the best one imo
Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: Denuvo Anti-tamper
Requires 3rd-Party Account: 2K Account for Online Interactions
Somebody please wake me up when these atrocities are gone. (And thanks, Steam, for making them easy to discover.)
The game is lietarlly half cooked, and they clearly wanted to sell the other half piecemeal as DLC.
The game literally only has 3 eras. Every other civ game has 6.
But don't worry, they're adding Mount Everest.
What a fucking joke
That felt like Civ 5.
Playing it on launch, it was so bare.
Playing the Complete version, it was finally fun to play.
I'll pick up Civ 7 in a few years when I can get the full pack for a reasonable price. It's the way Civ works.
The game isn't even done yet from what I can tell from streams. I'll definitely wait for the full game with all the dlc.
Everyone knows you don't buy a Civ game the first few years it's out.
As far as I'm concerned, they are still in the beta test for at least the next 2 years, then MAYBE I'll think about grabbing it.
Same with Paradox games. 4X in general is just really hard to get right on release because of how many interlinking systems there are, so waiting for balance updates at a minimum is never a bad idea.
puts on flame resistant hazmat suit
... Civ 7 is the Civ series shitty attempt at copying Humankind, Humankind is currently $12.50 USD, $25 for all DLC + base game, and is a way better deal than Civ 7 at $70, if not just actually a better game than Civ 5 or Civ 6 + all their existing DLC/expansions.
I played the Humankind demo and found it to be genuinely awful and borderline unplayable. I’m surprised it’s caused this much panic amongst 2K, unless Humankind has gotten a lot better since the demo.
I never played the demo, started with the full game... maybe a couple weeks after launch.
As I said in another reply, yeah, it absolutely was rough on a technical level for the first few months, a good number of actually fairly common edge cases where the game's systems would break, things wouldn't actually work as intended, as described by the game itself.
But, after about 6 months, they fixed basically all of these... and didn't really even have to do like major tweaks to the balancing of the game... the problems were technical implentations of the designed game, and once they got those ironed out, the game as envisioned was now actually the game as it performed.
Go pull up the steam store page right now: Overall score is still 'Mixed' it did indeed have a rough launch... but Recent Reviews are 'Very Positive'.
The people that bothered to stick with it... well they seem to very much like where the game is now.
So, I'd say yes, the general consensus of people still playing it is that it did indeed improve significantly.
Also, its pretty undeniable that 2K, Civ 7, very much did try to ape some, but not all, of the changes that Humankind put on what is basically the Civ formula, that just never occured to them.
The entire concept of you and other players basicslly just having the avatar of your civilization remain the same for all time, but the civilizations themselves change, with historical eras?
Thats one of the most obviously visible differences between Humankind and any Civ game that existed ... prior to Civ 7.
It is also, somewhat ironically, one of the main reasons those initial reviews of Humankind were 'Mixed': a whole lot of Civ fans just thought the whole idea was stupid, and were vocal about it.
... And then Civ 7 does the same idea, but more watered down, with only 3 eras, 3 different civs per playthrough, as opposed to Humankind's ... well basically 6 + 1, where that + 1 represents your pre-civilization nomadic tribe/culture, basically playing a fairly different kind of game, prior to building your first real city and thus advancing to your first choice of civilization.
Also, worth throwing in here I guess: Advancing through eras works with a similar mechanic as to racing to build wonders in Civ: You can only have one player as each civ at a time, so if you really want to have first dibs and the full range of civs to choose from, you have to be the first to era advance, otherwise another player may beat you to it and pick the one you were planning on.
But, it also works differently than wonders: Wonders are just built by a city in Civ. Eras in Humankind are advanced by earning points for completing basically era specific mini objectives... and you have a range of different options to choose from, maybe you go for numerous easier objectives, or focus on a few, more difficult ones.
It may have not caused that much panic, but Amplitude consistently put out interesting ideas and enhancements to the Civ-likes in their games, so no wonder Firaxis might use these as templates and negate any unique features their competition might have over them. Plus, the Civ genre has to move in some way, anyway.
Haven't played Humankind yet, but Amplitude's previous Civ/4X-like "Endless Legend" was amazing and very fresh take on the genre. And it looked like Firaxis were already trying to copy some of it in Civ 6, so I'm not surprised this trend continues.
Civ peaked at Civ 4 and all its expansions for me.
Yes, doomstacks were a problem, but hard pivoting all the way over to Civ 5's only one unit per tile led to a whole bunch of other bullshit in the opposite direction.
Humankind ... just has better inter game system synergy, and those individual systems seem better thought out, more engaging and less... cheesable, exploitable, to a great extent due to how everything meshes together.
The first few months after launch absolutely were rough, with some pretty significant bugs in specific, but often crucial scenarios... but they got ironed out, and the result is great.
Also a lot of the initial backlash was from the pollution / global warming mechanic... they quickly added an option to just turn most of its effects off, but to me the entire thing read as a bunch of people being used to massively colonizing, industrializing and war mongering and then being angry that ... that has consequences.
Guess those people have trouble grasping the concept of an externality.
Oh well, they've all been filtered, recent steam reviews are 'very positive.'
I’m having a hard time getting into humankind. Any tips for someone that loved civ 5 and liked civ 6?
Err... well, without any mentions of specific gripes or difficulties you are having... entirely seriously, actually play through with the tutorial enabled.
There are 3 different tutorial settings:
No tutorial
Moderate tutorial (ie, you've played some Civ games and want to mainly focus on what is different in Humankind)
Full tutorial (baby step you through everything like you've never played any kind of turn based 4x before)
The middle of the road tutorial does a pretty good job of highlighting and explaining systems and actions that work differently from Civ, or are just entirely not present in Civ, but doesn't hold your hand through every single basic concept that you would already be familiar with as an experienced Civ player.
EDIT: Beyond that, I guess uh... a lot of the game sub systems kind of work... similarly to a lot of Civ game mechanics, but not quite the same, in some cases, significantly differently.
For starters, your civ progresses as you unlock new ages, but your leader stays the same. NPC leaders have a set of traits that affect their demeanor in diplomacy, as well as give them varying kinds of buffs for their gameplay.
These NPCs and their traits are actually classed by the total score of their cumulative traits, basically just a few minor traits are 'easy', up to a whole lot of powerful traits as 'hard'. You can pick to play against easier or harder NPCs as you like.
You can also unlock traits for your own leader by basically doing in game achievements.
But uh yeah, get used to the idea of swapping civs situationally as your progress through ages... or you can sort of 'prestige' a civ beyond its roughly historically accurate age, if you want a buff to ... i think its your renown or fame score generation the purple one lol. In some situations, it might make more sense to continue with the unique units, buildings, and sometimes civ specific gameplay mechanics through an age.
Other stuff uh...
City planning is pretty important, Humankind uses a multi tile approach to cities, where you can plop down varying kinds of districts and unique buildings according to the terrain around the actual city center. You may have to balance between urban design/zoning that is super efficient in the short run, but actually inefficient in the medium or longer run, as well as defensive structures, which you'll may want to place on a choke point tile, even if it would be highly productive with a non military structure on it.
Human kind uses a heigh layered terrain approach, with I think 7 different heights. A height 6 tile right adjacent to a height 1 tile will have an impassable cliff on that border. I like to play with more extreme height variations so as to both make the world feel larger in that land traversal takes longer, things like mountain passes and terrain chokepoints become as relevant as they often are in the real world, and it offers more interesting battles.
Rivers are in tiles, not borders between them. This makes crossing rivers more time consuming and annoying... but plays well into the rest of the games combat systems... also, if you embark on a river tile early game, this is basically the representation of building small makeshift boats... and now you can move much faster up or down a river, which is very much in line with how many real world civilizations used rivers as basically logistics highways.
There's also a system of regions, basically. You can assign a few cities to be connected to the same major city, and then basically micromanage the entire region of cities to coordinate their production to subsidize each other, in various ways. If you do this well, you can benefit greatly, but if you either screw it up or don't take advantage of it, you can be at a comparative disadvantage to other players.
... theres a whole lot of stuff that is different than Civ games, I could type for hours lol.
Civ6 still isn't in a state that I'm happy with playing it over civ 5, or even civ4. What makes them think I'd give civ7 the time of day?
should have kept that Luigi kid as QA
No ghandi = fuck you.
You know they're going to bring him back as DLC
Our words are backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
I'm still playing 4
Me too. It's still the best and the most moddable.
Realism Invictus* amazing mod for 4. Many other great mods also!
I never even knew you could mod it
As the article says, it's history repeating itself. This one made more foundational changes to the formula than 6 did over 5, and once again, if you're looking to play a Civ game, the old game is still going to be cheaper. I loved 6 when it came out, but when friends were curious about dipping their toes in, I just referred them to 5 because it was almost as good and far cheaper to try out. Civ 6 charts compared to 5 around the same time period are similar. I haven't picked up 7 yet just because I'm still trying to get through other games, but I'm looking forward to it.
I just referred them to 5 because it was almost as good
Why do you consider Civ 6 better than 5?
Edit for anyone else wanting to answer: Please specify whether you're including Brave New World (or Gods and Kings) in your comparison, since those expansions significantly improved upon the original Civ 5 release.
I'm not the person that you asked, but I do hold the same opinion. My biggest reasons are:
I don't think V is bad by any means. It was the one that got me into the series after bouncing off III and IV. I just think that most of the changes in VI were improvements
On a technical level, it functioned better. On an artistic level, I liked the look a lot better. On a gameplay level, they were pretty similar, but I liked what they did with city tiles in 6.
It's honestly been one of the most disappointing games I've ever picked up. Civ 6 was my first. I would play it well into the night. I was addicted.
At this point I forgot civ 7 even came out until I saw this to remind me. I played maybe 250 turns total over a couple games and dropped it. I have no desire to pick it up. The map generation is bad and the age system is formulaic. Makes it feel like on the rails for the same thing every single game.
I haven't played it and hate nearly everything I have seen about the age system, but they did make the map generation more varied in the latest patch. They've called the map inadequacies a priority to work on, so it will probably get better if you return to it down the line.
Holy shit, 5 is 15 years old now?! It still feels new. How old is 3?! Because that is my first civ
My first was Civ1 and I've played hell out of bith 1 and 3. Perhaps feel the same about 3 as you about 5.
When this game came out, took it as my cue to buy Civ 6 + the DLCs.
Bring back the UI team from 6 and I'm sold.
Has there even been a Civ release that was great at the start? I had the old Civ 2 "Multiplayer Gold Edition," which my friend, who had the original, said had a much better AI. Give it a little while and see what they can do to make Civ 7 better, then it'll sell well.
Civilization 4 was good at launch. Naturally it got even better over time.
Worth a mention that 4 is the most recent of these games released primary on physical hardware. That meant patching was a more difficult process so they actually had to hire a bunch of play testers to test stuff (and fix the problems they found). Contrast that to the approach of the most recent three games, which had their customers pay $70 for the privilege of being beta testers.
This is a shitty way to develop games. We should be mad about it because we deserve better.
I mean, each of these games are just the same as the previous but with less content more or less?
They do make changes throughout the series, but every new game is a complete reset to a basic game so they can sell you all the DLC and expansions to make it into a full game.
I honestly forgot about civ 7. Wow what a crazy long month it's been..
It's more expensive for a worse game than V or VI, both of which can be had for the price of dirt.
Not surprising.
My philosophy is that Civ 5 and Civ 6 are just fine. My friend was going to buy 7 on release and I was like "yeah, but you can just go play Civ 6. It's not like it's a bad game just because the new one is out." And I'm glad I convinced him otherwise because of how "okay" Civ 7 has been so far. Nothing against the game, I just already have the last three Civ games with all DLC and there is still a mountain of content that we already have to play with each other.
I think a lot of people are waiting for the first Civ7 expansion pack to be released, whenever that may be.
Civ 6 without R+F, GS feels like a completely different game. As an example, in vanilla you can expand anywhere right up to someone's borders whereas with the expansion straying too far from your territory you could just lose it to influential pressure from neighbouring cities.
I think a lot of people are waiting for the first Civ7 expansion pack to be released
I'm waiting for the last Civ7 expansion pack to be released.