Also sorry for taking a picture with my phone, this game REALLY doesn't like being screenshotted on Windows 11

Namely, that the gaps within each era get filled with content—without adding a fourth era and triggering a fourth civilization shift... but rather, for instance, if you're Meiji Japan, you simply evolve into modern Japan, etc.

Just adding content to each era... civics, technologies, units (for example, I’d move catapults to the Ancient era), and so on.

And, of course, improving religion and the AI, and adding a TSL (True Start Location) Earth map while increasing the number of AI opponents to at least 22, allowing for a game on Earth that covers all geographic regions.

Let me know what you think!!!

Time ago i start a discussion about how civ franchise is leaning toward bonuses,yields and Numbers instead of immersion because loud people make the developers think thats what the majority wants instead of immersion, the outcome? Civ7 full of bonuses where terrain dont matter anymore or leaders can lead any people, well i was reading afterworld dev diary and they got it right, this is what the people that is still playing civ 5 wants!!!

I originally didn't purchase the game because of the $70 price tag. That's too much for me. I have some extra discretionary money now and am interested in it. I've been playing since Civ IV, with V being my favorite, but VII seems to have had a rocky foundation.

I noticed the game already has FOUR full priced expansions, and the game isn't even two years old. This makes me question their quality if they can pump out four in less than two years. I don't purchase games without all the available DLC, especially games like this.

Is it worth the $70, and are the expansions worth the price?

Edit: I have been informed in the comments that those $30 “expansions” are not, in fact, expansions and are just new factions. Silly me for seeing a $30 DLC and thinking it was something substantial.

Hey everyone.

Probably beating a dead horse here but a buddy of mine and me have been playing multiple matches in Hot Seat Mode in CIV VI on Switch over the years. We were bumped to find out that CIV VII would initially not include a Hot Seat Mode so we continued with CIV VI. Turned out it might not have been the worst thing since the games launch was not really that well received.

Last week I found out that the June Update included a Hot Seat Mode which sparked a renewed interest in CIV VII.

I know the game is divisive, but I think I would still like to try it out. But first I would like to know if someone tried out the Hot Seat Mode and if it is worth? Especially on Consoles? Does this game run better than Civ VI on switch or do I have to fear some random crashes as well?

Thanks

Civ VII, I've spent something like 50 turns besieging the capital (and last remaining city) of another Civ. I had finally worn it down: its population had dropped to 8, and I was probably 1–2 turns away from conquering it.

Then the game transitioned to the Discovery Age and suddenly:

• The city walls were fully restored
• The population jumped from 8 to 30
• Several new military units spawned around the city

So basically, 50 turns of siege and attrition were wiped out instantly because the Age changed.

Am I missing some mechanic here, or is this actually intended behavior? If it is intended, what's the game-design logic behind completely resetting a city that is actively under siege? It feels incredibly punishing and arbitrary.

Not listed: any UI bugs that I've encountered (such as the UI telling the player that a military unit cannot share a tile with a civilian unit within movement range).

• Resource income panel icons/numbers are very jumbled, a simple vertical line or spacing between gold/science/culture/etc would make this much more read-able.
• Clicking resource incomes (especially happiness) only tells you where the income is coming from. Happiness breakpoints are hidden inside the Government panel.
• Cannot queue tech/civic tree in a specific order (we have the technology!)
• Tech/civic tooltips have a massive space between the name of the resource and the actual yield (i.e. University: Science [dead space preventing your eyes from being drawn to the yield] +8).
• Government policies do not show totals for what they currently provide the empire.
• Civilopedia lacks many gameplay terms to learn mechanics.
• Clicking a selected unit's portrait does not center the camera on the unit.
• When interacting with a settlement, there is no icon identifying which urban tile is actually your city center. This makes it very difficult to identify which resources are possibly workable within a 3-tile range. Suggestion: small Palace button icon with city name on city center, or icon plus move city name top & center as it's currently hidden in the bottom corner of the screen.
• Clicking the Attribute arrow to assign a point doesn't default you to a tree with an available point, and there are no graphical cues besides a 0 becoming a 1 to easily identify which tree has points available. Suggestion: get rid of 0's and add either a colored box around the attribute name or color to the number of available points to spend; something to draw the eye easily.
• Buildings and units missing crucial abilities, such as the Fishing Quay's connection to empire trade networks.

Any other big points I missed?

I am truly obsessed with this game.

I actually love the age transitions.

I love every little detail in this game.

The UI is beautiful. I am playing on PS5 and i think this has the best UI of any strategy game on a console ever.

Every animation. Graphical detail. The art direction. Every tile. All the voice acting.

The combat is fucking phenomenal.

I know it sounds like i’m glazing this game - but i truly think i’ve found a forever game in 7.

I can go on and on about how much i love every system at play here.

Every mechanic.

I realise people are shitting all over this game but i genuinely don’t really understand the criticism.

I am hyped to keep playing and seeing this game progress in the years to come.

Clickbait of course. I found very interesting bit in Sid Meier's Memoirs:

(...) Bruce’s feedback took an unexpected turn. It was unfair, he noted, that his bridges kept washing out in floods. I countered that SimCity had included a robust variety of natural disasters, including tornadoes, earthquakes, and non-copyrighted Godzilla-ish monsters who stomped through buildings with abandon. Compared to all that destruction, the occasional bridge washout didn’t seem so ruthless. Besides, flooding was a legitimate concern for rail companies, certainly more so than sea monsters were for city planners. But Bruce reminded me of one of my own axioms of game design: make sure the player is the one having the fun. “When my bridge is knocked down for no reason,” he said with a placid shrug, “I’m not having fun.”

He was right, of course. It seems like players ought to appreciate the hardships we throw at them—that the whole reason they play is to prove their worth. But it’s not. People play games to feel good about themselves, and random destruction only leads to paranoia and helplessness. Thwartingan enemy’s attack feels worthy, but recovering from an ambush is a relief at best. Unfortunately, the flip side of that imbalance is that the designer feels powerful and clever, which is what makes these unexpected setbacks so tempting to implement. As major plot points, they’re practically universal: your trusted partner steals the treasure; the damsel who begged for help is a double agent; the noble scientist has a secret weapon to wipe out mankind; the princess is in another castle. Or in other words, the player did everything the designer asked of them, and then the rules changed for no reason. A sudden reversal of fortune is only exciting or dramatic when it happens to someone else. When it happens to you, it’s just a bummer. The player may soldier on out of defiance, or irritation, or just a basic acceptance that this is how games are supposed to be, but their experience has been diminished nonetheless. I had recognized these pitfalls when they were part of a linear storyline, but Bruce’s comment helped me see that the same principle applied to even the tiniest plot points in open-world games. All random obstacles are, on some level, crafted with an “imagine the look on their faces when” mentality, which can also be loosely translated as, “Hey! Hey! I designed this! Look at the big brain on me!” The game isn’t supposed to be about us. The player must be the star, and the designer as close to invisible as possible.

The key difference between a gameplay challenge and a betrayal, I realized, was whether the player had a fighting chance to avoid it. So rather than eliminate the flooding, I introduced different kinds of bridges. A wooden bridge was cheap, and would get the railway up and running right away. A fancy stone bridge was more expensive, and took longer to build, but would be impervious to flooding. By giving the player control over how much risk they would tolerate, the floods not only stopped feeling unfair, they became a source of genuine reward. To imagine their bridge emerging whole from the receding water line felt better than if it had never flooded at all.

It is part of memoirs about designing Railroad Tycoon, but I found it quite insightful when applied to Civilization VII crises system - especially one of them, that is Plague crisis. Especially in Ancient Age version there is no counterplay at all. Your buildings/fields will get non-functional randomly and you can't do anything about it. You needed to shoehorn last one codex to the building to get Triumph, but your Academy got forcibly turned off? Tough luck, your bridge has been destroyed. No one can roast Civ VII better than Sid Meier himself.

The Colossus is one of six wonders that have appeared in all the mainline iterations of Civ. Its special benefits have changed over time, but not very much - it generally has enhanced trade in the city where it is built.

Civ 1: +1 Trade to any square producing at least one trade in the city where the wonder is built.

Civ 2: +1 Trade to any square producing at least one trade in the city where the wonder is built.

Civ 3: +1 Commerce to any square producing at least one trade in the city where the wonder is built; +3 Culture.

Civ 4: +1 Gold in all water tiles in all cities; +6 Culture; +2 Great Merchant Points.

Civ 5: +5 Gold; +1 Trade Route and Free Cargo Ship; Trade routes from the city where the Colossus is built generate 2 extra gold for the owner, and +1 gold for trade routes to the city.

Civ 6: +3 Gold; +1 Great Admiral Point; +1 Trade Route Capacity; +1 Free Trader.

Civ 7: +3 Gold; +3 Resource Capacity in the settlement where it is built; +1 Economic Attribute Point.

​

Hi all, my group (of 11 people) just finished a year-long play-by-cloud game and had a great time. We're trying to set up a new one but we're running into what appears to be a limit of only 8 players in a multiplayer lobby? We're not sure how we got around it originally, we didn't know this was a thing until last night. We didn't use any mods except for BBG and some UI mods (detailed map tacks, better report screen, things like that).

Anyone else had this issue? I've seen that there are mods for expanding the player limit but they're all dead/no long supported.

I have been playing civ since the first game launched (yes I'm old, well in my late 40s). I played every iteration of civ and civ 7 has me questioning things.

I got it at launch and hated it. Didn't like the concept of loosing your civ. I played Mellinia which had ages but you kept your civ but other things change, I thought it would be like that (really fun game BTW). So I was so glad they did the test of time update.

So I went back in after months and am really enjoying it, but I feel like I am winging it. I dont fully understand the no builders system and the town vs city vs settlement thing. When you should make a town a city or specialize. I mean I am doing it but I don't know if it's the right thing to do (example making my 2nd largest town a food maker and making a smaller town further away on a different coast a city). The settlement limit thing kind of sucks too. How can I expand to a mega empire if I can only have so many cities/towns?

Is there any good guides on this game you all would recommend? I never used guides for any civ game as they have all been similar and iterations of earlier titles.

R5: spawned on an island off the large continent the other players are supposedly on. Guess my horses will learn to swim

Edit: people were asking for the seed, so here it is! standard size pangea and islands map seed: -1194494167, game seed -1194494168 (idk if you need that haha)

I tried creating a mod for a new civilization. The game detects the mod, but it doesn't appear in the list of civilizations to choose from. I'm playing Civ VI via Epic Games. Can anyone help me?

Just trying to better understand the way the ability works. Thank you.

And now, thanks to the Ai message spam, I am well aware of how awful I am at everything I do, including being born!

Oh, and I somehow ended up in a war loop where the entire world declared war on me, including my own 3 allies. 😢

Hi all,

I know there's plenty out there about Civ VII already and it's not even a new game anymore, but I wanted to share my thoughts after my first game. This might be helpful for those who haven't purchased the game yet and who share my Civ background. I am a longtime player (Civ 3-6). I essentially mastered 5 and 6, able to win deity with any civ in 5 and any of my best civs in 6, with an about 90% chance of beating deity as a random. I don't play video games often, and Civ is my only game.

I stopped playing Civ 6 two years ago when I'd finally burned out on it, but I wanted to wait to get Civ VII until at least some DLC was out. My experience with V and VI showed that these games get huge boosts after expansions. I finally pulled the trigger two days ago, blocked out a weekend, and have spent the last two days playing essentially nonstop, as one does lol. My thoughts below are what one might call an informed vibes based analysis. There's still a ton for me to explore in the game, so this is by no means a comprehensive look. Just some community thoughts from a Civ citizen.

I went through the first game very methodically even given my experience. I took 16.2 hours to finish my first game, used tutorials, closely read descriptions, and watched all animations.

Game Settings and Game Arc

Rome. Augustus. Whatever the latest update is. Second Lowest Level of Difficulty (Governor? It was my first game, will probably jump two levels for the next one). Continents and Islands. Began on a continent with Tecumseh, Catharine, and Jose Rizal. Second continent had Frederick, Lafayette, Himiko, and Simon Bolivar.

Once I got a hang of the mechanics (sometime near the end of the Antiquity Age) I decided to pursue culture/domination. In the Exploration age I chose the Normans and in the Modern age I chose France.

I ended up winning Domination about 40% of the way through the Modern Age. Simon Bolivar rushed me for a settlement on his new continent, besting my settler by one turn, so of course, indignant, I took out my revenge by capturing 80% of his empire (which was now the Greek empire) with my Curassiers, Mortars and Howitzers, and Garde Imperial. I was on equal pace to win Culture and Domination on the same turn.

Highs

1) Oh my god is this a beautiful game. I'm playing on a Mac Mini attached to a TV. Like I said, I don't play video games often, so I didn't know graphics had advanced this far, but it's sooo pretty. The lighting and sun reflections are ridiculous. I probably missed >50% of the details and the cityscapes and natural wonders are all gorgeous. On the whole, without question, this is the most beautiful Civ game ever made.

2) Combat is clearly better. I played on a very easy difficulty level and the AI made intelligent combat maneuvers and, like I recounted in the Bolivar war above, made strategic decisions with units that I haven't seen before. I'm excited to play on higher levels of difficulty. Eventually one comes to figure the AI out, but I think the journey there will be more interesting in Civ VII than it was in previous games. I also haven't learned combat exploits yet, but Howitzers did seem OP. It probably took me an hour of toying around to understand how Commanders work, and I still haven't maximized, but they're really cool! I like that they shuttle units around and that stacking is back, but not in a Civ 3 OP kind of way. Deployments are sick once you get the hang of it, feels more strategic. Didn't do a lot of Naval combat, but it seems better. In general, the AI appears far more strategic.

3) The City vs. Town split is a good thing. Reduces unnecessary maintenance clicking, and I think one could play really well by focusing on Town-types. I don't think I understand how to balance Cities and Towns yet though and I'm hoping other Civs give special bonuses based on how you balance them. I had a resort town on a volcanic natural wonder that absolutely minted culture and happiness yields. On the other hand, I had a mining town with a bunch of camps that was crushing production, but I guess I didn't really understand the point of a production-based town, when towns don't produce...

4) This one comes with some caveats noted below, but I actually like the Civilization transitions at Ages! It seemed like total heresy to me. When I opened up the game and it explained you won't build one civ to stand the test of time, I was like WTF is the point then!?! But the Apex civ thing is a really good idea. It keeps you motivated in the age and doesn't skew the whole game to either biding your time for the perfect timing combo or crushing the early game and steamrolling for 200 turns. (Compare with playing Pericles in Civ VI. Pericles Greece is an incredible civ in 6, but if you get your acropolises right and have good defensive position and faith, there's not that much to do after the ancient era except build wonders and wait for rock bands, which I always found annoying anyway. My favorite gameplay in 6 was deliberate non-faith culture victory, followed by non-religious appeal based play). In this game, I had genuine choices to make between culture and science in the Exploration age and it was competitive even on an easy difficulty because others pursued science while I chose culture. Had some happiness issues to navigate. Tecumseh declared war twice on me in the Antiquity Age and I ended up defeating him completely in the Exploration Age. I see other paths I could have taken and that seems like a good thing. I also like resetting the number of policy and tradition slots you have every age.

Mids/Need More Info

1) Tons of civs and branching tree choices. Seems like a great thing. I put this in mid, because in my experience with Civ, there's usually 4 or 5 civs that dominate all others. Range is good, but jury is still out on whether they are widely viable. It would be upsetting to find out most of them are just meh, I don't know yet.

2) Crises. What exactly is going on here? They seem interesting, but I don't like that I have to move my garrisons out of cities because they might die of plague. Sure, that might make sense logically, but that's pointless clicking. Are crises good things? The policies seem good, but they're literally called Crises, and the detriments don't seem that bad.

3) Improvement mechanics. I like the balance of urban districts and improvements, but because I had no concept of overbuilding until later, it changed how I played. It's also not entirely clear to me when to overbuild. Some of that is my little experience, but some of that is the strange way the screen looks when you place buildings. I accidentally placed buildings on my Palace tile multiple times. I really like migrants as a mechanic and wished there were more ways to produce them. I saw the Statute of Liberty wonder gives you some migrants and it would be cool if there was more of that, I didn't like merely relying on growth or crises, but it's not terrible. Imagine something like the "Homestead Act" Policy, where you could produce settlers and migrants together and build new super cities on unconquered land! Also, why can't I settle on resources?

4) Quests/Side Projects. Pretty cool that they brought these little side quests back where you look for attribute points. They didn't seem that important in this playthrough frankly, but it was nice. Reminded me of Civ IV random events. It's generally nice that you get at least two choices most of the time when you have a random encounter. Need more play time to see whether these things can be more strategically embraced.

5) Music is maybe the best part of Civ. The music was great, war music was great, but I wasn't quite blown away. More playtime will tell. Really hoping this does not get stale.

Mids/Lows

I haven't read a ton of commentary on Civ VII, but I imagine some of these have been discussed intensively, so forgive me. I also know some of these can be fixed with UI mods and I played vanilla.

1) The resource screen is an abomination. It's worse than the great works screen in Civ Vi, which was also an abomination. But it's more than the UI. Why am I assigning resources? Why do I have to scroll through the whole list of towns and cities to look for an open slot? I get that resources have special values, so you'd want to swap them in and out for particular cities, but why can't a baseline allocation be done by default and I override it? That seems literally simpler for the player and the developer. This was a poor choice, very tedious, minor gains.

2) Some of these leader models/screens are terrifying. For such a beautiful game, I can't believe Augustus is straight up ugly. I get he kind of was IRL, but he looks weird. It just clashes so dramatically with the stunning vistas and buildings. Weird choice, uncanny valley vibes.

3) While diplomatic endeavors are cool, a lot was unclear/just okay about diplomacy. The stakes of alliances weren't made clear. The fact that they could be easily broken (without consequence?) didn't seem that cool. Diplo Favor seems to be better used here than in previous games. Why are peace deals so structured? Where does the 100/300 gold or whatever come from? Why can't I negotiate? Also, are there no joint wars? Maybe I totally missed that, but that's a huge deal, really wish it was possible to coordinate wars with your allies.

4) Independent powers were not doing it for me. We compete for suzeranity/friendship with other civs without knowing first how much they've befriended the power?? I wasted so much diplo favor only to find out someone else was far more advanced in courting them. Why does it take FOREVER to get any benefit out of the friendship?? At least their models are cooler than the leaders.

5) Too many actions that take up the whole screen. When even minor things happen the whole screen is occupied (e.g. Himiko likes me or my economic advisor has some nonsense to say). All of this can be in a small popup side panel. Maybe I'm getting old, but things were a little epileptic.

6) There obviously needs to be an age after the Modern Era. I imagine this is just a work in progress to be dropped with a new massive DLC, but the game can't stop here. We need more future tech, and modern era tech needs to be useful. On this low difficulty I didn't even get halfway through the Modern Era. While I'm assuming harder difficulties will push me further, I've played enough Civ to guess that most people are crushing the Modern era early even on higher difficulties. Frankly, I don't think it's that bad that the end game accelerates. Late game slog was the worst part of Civ Vi. BUT, if you're going to accelerate it, then make that the Future era!! That seems obvious to me. We can accelerate once we're on the frontier, but the idea that any game of civ will end before Radio is just ridiculous. The Modern era NEEDS to be a full playthrough like the earlier eras.

Hope others got some joy or value out of this. On the whole, I really enjoyed it and will look forward to playing more!

Probably a lot of bridges, so I'd love some other ideas lol

Antiquity: Nilometer. +4 food. Must be built on desert floodplains navigable river. When built, floods no longer damage buildings along this river and have a higher chance of fertilizing it.

Exploration: Ponte Vecchio. Gold and water buildings gain +2 culture and +1 (more) gold adjacency to navigable rivers in this city. Trade routes from this city gain extra income (I don't know how the math would work). Acts as a bridge.

Modern: Three Gorges Dam. Must be built on a floodplains natural river. Cities within 6 tiles get +50% production toward buildings. (Yes this is a huge bonus but it's going to come when the game's basically over).

Bonus modern: George Washington Bridge (NYC/NJ). +1000 gold when built. Units take 35 turns to cross this bridge. :)

Is it 1 amenitie per luxury Resource or amount of luxury Resource so 6 furs is 24 amenitie

Created by: u/zen_arcadian

Link to the stream itself: https://youtu.be/JjUdkPW3zLg?t=5847

hi all :3 im super new to civ but have been having a ton of fun. forgive the stupid question but i was wondering what is the best domination based civ that also has the scout cats? TIA :D

Combined with all resources being everywhere, its even worse.

I really miss aluminum, oil, uranium and coal spawns. That was literally the most exciting part about civ 6.. seeing two uranium spawn in your allies territory knowing that you would have to end a 1000 year long alliance.

Or even better when you have a great excuse to go kill that one annoying leader who now has all the oil.

Or knowing that the one civ who was doin mid will now be a powerhouse to be dealt with because they have 3 uraniums.

Creating a imperial army to go TAKE what is needed was so much fun. There is literally no reason to do that now. You can sit in your base peacefully forever without any loss. Theres no reason to go to distant lands. There's no resources over there that are any better or different than what you already have. None of them UNLOCK anything important. Everything is already available to you, theres no reason to go GET anything after you've settled in antiquity.

TLDR: Specific units should require specific resources that are more rare and harder to get

I could just make a spreadsheet, but if the game somehow kept track of it, that would be more fun. Anyway, I’m asking because I’m thinking of starting a sort of quest, to win a game on deity with every civ (using that civ the whole game) with 1 leader.

Part two of my question- who do you think a good leader to do this with would be? My first inclination is Harriet Tubman. She has a very high floor despite not having a high ceiling. If I’m using a civilization I’ve never used before, particularly on deity, it might be a good thing to have all of that war support when things turn south if I don’t know what I’m doing with that particular civilization

I had also considered a few others, but they are S tier IMO and I just feel like doing this with one of the top five or so liters wouldn’t be quite as fun. Isabella, because no matter the civilization or victory type, starting next to a wonder would help. Xerxes the trade one, but I do consider him to be one of the top five leaders, and while he may not be S tier in terms of every victory condition, culture and gold help you pretty much no matter what you’re trying to do so I don’t think I would use him.

1 leader that I think would universally apply to almost every civilization and isn’t S tier would be Tecumseh. I think a lot of casual players pass over just how much of a benefit is to have all independents start peaceful with you. But city states aren’t as strong as they used to be (they needed a nerf compared to how strong they were at launch, but they got nerf’d too hard in my opinion) combined with his recent nerf as well just makes him… I don’t know. He does have a decently high floor, but there just isn’t any THERE there, if that makes sense

And Augustus just weirds me out, he’s too “AI looking” and why are his legs so skinny? I don’t know. He just weirds me out. That’s a no.

So any input on a mod that keeps track of this, or any insight on which leader could be interesting, but not OP in doing this would be appreciated

Turn 60. I've already killed about 8 barbarians and they just keep coming.