Sid Meier's Civilization® VII Reviews

I've been a Civilization fan since the original CIV and couldn't wait to play CIV VII. Unfortunately... I'm deeply disappointed. The developers clearly poured their hearts into the graphics, but all that detail ironically turns the game into a confusing mess. It doesn't help that they skimped on the UI - no handy maps or tables to guide you, no alerts about what's happening in your cities. You can't even tell at a glance what you're building! Civilization was always about crafting your strategy both in the details and the big picture. That magic is completely gone. Instead, we're left with what many reviewers rightly call a game that should never have been released in this state - especially not to die-hard fans. Only my love for Civilization stops me from calling it worthless. The religion and trade systems have been stripped to the bone. The game's depth seems to have shifted... but to where exactly? I'm honestly at a loss. Once again, I'm thoroughly disappointed and would advise potential buyers to wait about six months or so before taking the plunge. _______________ I kept playing after posting my first review, purely out of disbelief that the developers could have messed up this badly. But sadly, it's true. Civilization isn't what it used to be, and I wonder if it will ever recapture that first love. Another reviewer put it well: the PC/Mac version has clearly made concessions to mobile platforms. And that's a terrible choice.** The game completely lacks depth. The trade, diplomatic, and faith systems are mere shadows of their former selves. If they want to make this work, they need another six months of development. The choice to use three Ages severely limits gameplay freedom. There are few meaningful choices, creating a rather one-dimensional path. The fact that buildings become useless means you don't even bother building them anymore. The only thing the game provides good information about is natural disasters - ironically the least relevant feature. In the Middle Age, I had epidemics in my city but received no notification and had no idea what to do when I accidentally noticed it. The absence of England and the Netherlands in the game is a flagrant denial of history. To summarize: the game leads to boredom, is extremely unclear with game information, and offers virtually no freedom of choice. In that sense, it's an extremely expensive Pacman. Some suggestions for the developers: * Provide more choices and freedom in Age transitions. In construction, improvements, and stop with the Towns and Cities distinction. Just stick to Cities * Show how much a District currently yields, not just its potential output when built * Provide zoomable overviews for each aspect: city, trade, diplomacy, and military. Where are my units, what am I building where, who am I trading with... * Show what I've already built when it's time to build something new...

The Civilization franchise is my favorite game franchise of all time, hands down. I am 41 years old and have played every single edition for hundreds or thousand of hours since I was just a kid. I was extremely excited for a new Civ game's release, I've been looking forward to it for months, but this is a bit of a letdown. Let me say, I don't hate it. I appreciate the attempt at introducing some new features to make the game richer and to try and tackle the "snowballing" effect that leads to the endgame being way too easy. The graphics are cool, but they are a little buggy and it is hard to know what is going on between your turns. The UI isn't as bad as some say, but it isn't great and has some weird minor bugs in it. The ages thing is choppy and anti-climatic. A crisis happens, you try to deal with it, it isn't meant to be solved, then suddenly the era ends and you are a different civilization with different units and all of your upgrades are lost. The year skips hundreds of years into the future and you're a new civilization. Each age feels like you started a new game, which could be a very cool way to handle the "snowballing" issue in 4X games, but as it stands now it just chops the game up. The game is also severely shortened. I like playing huge maps with the speed on marathon. This feels more like a game for a phone than the expansive Civ games of the past. There is no time for a domination victory and you can't "take over the world" anymore due to the time constraints and a settlement limit. When the modern era ends, the game just ends and that is that. Winners are displayed, very little stats as there were in the past. They've eliminated the workers and engineers, but the new mechanics are pretty cool. I paid for the Founder's Edition, wanting to support the franchise and hoping for the most full-featured experience possible. Unfortunately, it feels like a simplified version of Civ made for a smart phone that is still in beta testing. It lacks the depth, the granular control, the epic centuries-long wars, and the feeling that you are building a grand empire. It is fun to play, but it needs a lot of work. Firaxis can most definitely salvage the game with some major updates and make it into the best Civ game yet. My only fear is that in doing so, we are going to have to buy a series of expansions that add features the game should have had to begin with. I may change my review later but at the moment, I cannot recommend the game for this price. I really hope that they turn this around and honestly regret buying the Founder's Edition. I suggest waiting and seeing how the updates go, they do have some planned, before dropping the cash on even the standard edition.

I generally liked the game, the problem is it feels so incomplete and so predatory with the DLC that i feel obligated to make a Thumbs down review. i´m pretty sure all the announced extra content was ready for launch and they just decided to be greedy, it does not help that there are some bugs that kinda ruin the experience and that a 4th age seems to be missing. I enjoyed things like the new age system, but I feel so dissapointed with the amount of content in the base game considering it´s price, that I wish I was able to ask for a refund, I suposse a lot of people wish that too. To the people that are still wondering to buy it, don´t make the same mistake as us, THE BETA TESTERS (without being paid, instead, we are the ones who paid).

Game is not finished, base game is overpriced, DLCs are overpriced. Wait for the game to be 50% off.

Thank you for all the hard work devs - Civilization VII will be a wonderful game with improvement. I have played three full games with different leaders and civilizations each time. Advice for first game: Fractal map, standard size/speed. Sovereign or Viceroy difficulty. - Towns contribute food yield to connected cities and their production is added to their gold income. - Build specialists early in Antiquity, they can only be added to urban city tiles and require techs to increase density. Placing outside of city center will help with Exploration age science objective. - Check civilization choice requirements for next age in Player Unlocks menu - upper left corner of UI. - Carefully read all four objectives at the start of each age. - Build plenty of military commanders to ease micromanagement and for more tactical enjoyment. Pros: - Interesting variety of civilizations with unique buildings, architecture, and units. - Each civilization has its own civics tech tree that adds needed flavor. - Three ages ~100 turns each makes multiplayer and shorter games feel complete. - Antiquity age is engaging and has reasonable goals for each focus. - Military commanders make combat more enjoyable and ease micromanagement. - New music is good - I hope they add an option to include the classics e.g. Baba Yetu (Civ IV) and the golden Civ III tracks. - Interesting implementation of a leader system which allows *optional* new bonuses and flavor to be unlocked as you win/get achievements with individual leaders. Cons: - No information given at the end of each era with points/timeline/map/victory conditions or any notion of who "won" the era aside from getting the Steam achievements. Huge disappointment as seeing the stats, minimap, victory information, and event log after a long game was one of the most rewarding parts of ending the game. - Endgame is a slog, all four focuses are not fully executed and it is clear that they had to ship an incomplete set of mechanics for the modern age: ^ Economic victory in Modern age is not engaging, simply building a rail station and factory in each settlement and assign single resource with meaningless effect. ^ Science victory in Modern consists of building 3 projects that have no map presence, visuals, or effects aside from the icon in the build queue. ^ Cultural victory in Modern is a soulless micro-intensive race to move non-interactive units to sites around the map and collect them after getting the requisite tech. Idea is bad and execution is even worse. ^ Military victory is also bizzare, you can make and use nuclear weapons but win by completing "Operation Ivy" demonstrating superior nuclear power? Bizzare choice that reflects the unfinished state of Modern era. - Military combat has some improvements to reduce the one unit per tile issue however the combat system is still not as satisfying as Civ V, Humankind, or AoW 4.

There's something fundamentally wrong with this game. I've had fun playing so far, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what feels wrong overall until just now. Because it's not like it isn't fully developed piece, I has plenty of thought out mechanics. I think what real kills the enjoyment is that the sense of permanence barely exists in playthroughs, which is supposed to be the calling card of "building an empire that will withstand the test of time". -I could immerse myself in the culture of my civ, but what's the point? It'll change next era. -I could build up my cities to be immense centers of culture and power, but what's the point? The buildings will become all but useless next era and I have to do it all over again -I could build massive armies and go out to conquer, but what's the point? I can't win until Modern Era and theres a hard cap on settlements no matter how many resources I throw at it. -I could delve into the making the most of what a given era has to offer, but what's the point? There's an unavoidable crisis at the end of each one that isn't meant to be solved, you just suck it up. I could go on but you should get the idea at this point. "One more turn" means the anticipation your efforts pay off with something even greater, not just to have it taken away or reset arbitrarily.

Let me go over some of the positive things in this game. 1. The good: general gameplay and graphics are solid! a. City and Town management provides strategic depth without the tedium of too much micromanagment. b. New Commanders provide a lot of cool customization options for your army, and allow them to move around troops more efficiently. Troop management was always a pain on the hex grid. Now combat is actually way more fun. c. Environments are gorgeous. Units looks good too. d. Navigable riviers! Proper natural canals you can send your boats down. 2. The neutral? a. Hills are gone. not sure if I missed them but now it's just plains and mountains. There are navigable rivers though, which are interesting. b. Now your leaders level up when you use them, and you get gameplay enhancing abilities. There's 10 levels for all 40-something leaders in base game. It would take an absurd amount of time to unlock them all. Clearly influenced by mobile games and other games with piecemeal reward systems. 3. The bad: The Age Progression system, UI, Civilopedia, micro-rewards, predictable outcomes a. The UI is really bad. I know Firaxis is hard at work changing this, and mods will help as well. Lack of critical information that would help you make decisions such as improvement detains when hovering over tiles or yields. Tons of missing info from Civilopedia, which looks like copy-pasted dumped plain text. Clearly a rushed job. b. The Age system. Now, the game is broken up into 3 Ages. Each with its own tech and culture tree. In each Age you are rushing towards progressing smaller goals like establishing trade routes, finding relics, building wonders, capturing cities. Accumulate points! Then, when a lot of civs have accumulated many points, you fill up a progression bar and the Age is over. All your cities buildings are destroyed except 'Ageless' ones. You automatically learn everything in the previous tech tree. This means as an Age approaches its end, you will be only building Wonders and Ageless buildings. If you had any other goals, there's no point pursuing them. So, micro-rewards. Since you are so focused now on Accumulating Points!, you're no longer focused on long term goals or strategy. If you accumulate more points, you get to spend them at the beginning of the next Age for extra bonuses. You also swap to a new Civ to play, and have to rebuild your old cities and towns. Everyone starts over on a new tech tree, learns everything from the past. c. Predicable outcomes. The second Age is Exploration. Get on out there and explore the new continent, which is conveniently separated from your starting one, and always has the last couple AIs on it! You've got new mini-goals to achieve. Get out there and do your new mini-quests and Accumulate those Points again! d. Then just as everything is about to end, get abruptly transitioned to a new Modern Age where you'll have a new Civ, get to spend your Points! for those Bonuses! and now you can achieve your victory goal. That's right, you can't achieve victory until this Age. TLDR: I guess the Age system is not for me. No longer do you have grand strategy, but a series of mini-quests, like a bunch of tournament rounds or some other analogy, each with abrupt and weird transition and new goals. I personally prefer to have some continuity, and not be restricted by mini-tech trees and resets. These resets make it hard to get a good cohesive strategy going throughout the entire game, and in fact the game seems to reward you for focusing on all of the mini-goals (Legacy Paths), which are the exact same goals every single game. Finish the goals, collect points. it's like an RPG now I guess, or a rogue-lite? In the past games, you could theoretically win whenever you want, and were rewarded for efficiently building and expanding. Now, you'll never get ocean travel until Exploratory Age, and you'll never meet the Civs hiding out. You'll never win before you get to Modern Age, because only then do you get your win conditions. Games feel more predictable and less exciting, split up into chunks, stuffed with mini-quests. If that sounds good to you, then I guess you'll like Civ 7. But the gameplay improvements can't make up for the awful framework that it exists in. It feels empty, boring even. And that makes me sad, because I have NO CLUE how they can fix these kinds of issues with an expansion or a patch. It's just fundamentally bad to me.

35 hours played and I have completed a full play through. I chose to not recommend the game. Here are my issues: 1) There's been numerous complaints about the age change. I'm also not a fan, but I can accept that design choice. But I do have a complaint about the limits on what my 2nd and 3rd age civs are. If you are going to force me to change civs, don't restrict me to only 2-4 civs to choose from at each age. 2) UI is terrible about making unit identification easy for the player. Independent cities all being the same color was a terrible decision. And running 3 different "yellow" player characters was a terrible decision. 3) The "improvements" to QoL aren't there. Supposedly having towns instead of cities makes for less work and thus faster turns. But in my Civ 5 and 6 games, I generally only own 5 or 6 cities unless I'm playing warlord and conquering all my opponents cities. But here I have 20 towns and cities, all which grow, and have to have buildings purchased, etc. Yes, you can turn off their growth and give them a mission to limit the popups, but then they are no longer growing and you aren't claiming more territory (more on this below). Managing 20+ towns and cities is tedious. 4) Map sizes are too small. You start with only half the map usable in the Antiquity Age. With 4 players on what amounts to a "small" map from Civ6, you are on top of your opponents within a couple dozen turns. Then in the Exploration Age, when you open up the 2nd half the map, you find that its already mostly explored and occupied because that's where the other 4 players were on their "small" map during the prior age. But the worst part is that the ocean separating the "old" from the "new" world turns out to be 2 hexes wide. I literally had borders of my cities touching between continents. Not much of an ocean. And this builds into my biggest issue: 5) This game should be called Settlerzation. It is, in effect, a race to build as many settlements on the map as fast as possible before all the land is sucked up. With 8 opponents, each with 10-20 settlements, you will reach the modern age with well over 100 towns and cities on the map, and no open territory (not even over the oceans). This leads to other issues. You can't have open borders without either being at war or in an alliance with the other player. So a few well placed cities on the bridge islands between the two continents can effectively blockade most (if not all) player movement between those continents. This is why its a race to own the land (and sea) because if you don't, then you will get locked out. More minor issues: 1) Resources in the first and second ages are fine. They make sense. Trade route range is weird to figure out, but for the most part, if you have a resource, you can slot its advantage in one of your towns. However, come the modern age, 80% of your resources (the ones that gave you bonuses for the past 200 turns of the prior ages) are suddenly only beneficial if you have a railroad and factory, which is about 5 researches deep. So suddenly you've got 2 dozen resources (remember, you have 10-20 towns at this point) and most are completely unusable. Then once you can use them, you get 1 factory per town/city, which manages 1 resource. I had 30+ resources that were completely unusable, even while having cities with multiple open resource slots, simply because most of the maps resources are "factory" resources. 2) Religion is a joke in this game. It doesn't exist in Antiquity. Its an integral part of the exploration age. Then its completely irrelevant in the Modern Age. But worse, there is no defense mechanism. Send your missionary to town. Spread religion on city then on rural square. City is now converted. If an opponent sends one to your home city, your's can be converted just as easy. Is there an inquisitor or something to defend your own cities religion? Nope. Just summon another missionary and reconvert your own cities as needed. And as noted, once the Age ends, you'll never look at religion again. 3) There are a number of other nuisance items (like planes not being in the unit turn rotation and having to be selected manually each turn to trigger and use). Troop movement on the map is beyond slow. Lack of map customizations. Too much emphasis on adjacency bonuses for buildings which makes early age "agelesss" buildings actually work as a penalty in future ages unless you careful plan each building location from the start. I expect you'll see strategy guides talking about 'honeycombing' their city layouts with their Wonders to maximize stats. Speaking of Wonders, the build cut scenes look like they belong in a game from 2005, not 2025. In the end, I've played it through, and there's certainly bones to work with, but the game feels like something that's gonna sit mostly unplayed in my Steam inventory (like an Old World or Humankind) as opposed to something I'm gonna cycle back into on a regular basis and pile up hundreds of hours played (like I have with Civ5, Civ6, Stellaris, and other top end 4X games).

This game literally just ends in the 1940's. No option to keep playing, no real feeling of satisfaction other than a screen saying "Victory". Its like they got halfway through it and just decided "lets save the rest for DLC" and shipped it. To be clear, this game feels extremely incomplete, especially considering the size of it's predecessors and the huge price tag. Coupled with a ton of visual bugs, units models showing where they're not actually located, a HORRIBLE UI in a lot of the game, and a just an overall feeling of lacking, I can't recommend this game. I've had hundreds of hours in previous CIV games and was extremely excited for this, but I am super disappointed.

I've played every Civ since the first one. This game has the chance be great - maybe in a few months with updates and mods, but right now, it's not great. It has some fatal flaws. The game doesn't lack features - it is FULL of mechanics and depth - but the game is set up in such a way that prevents you from fully enjoying all these mechanics and depth. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE POSITIVES: 1) The city growth system is really smart and fun. I absolutely love how they removed workers and changed it into a system where you pick tiles to improve when your city grows. Same with specialists - they are very powerful and important additions to the city. I overall really like the quarters system. 2) Commanders are cool and very powerful. Units are no longer upgraded but their air, land, or fleet commanders are. This adds a very powerful unit that can "load" units into it for transport and also provides buffs. The commanders are very powerful and carry over through ages, so they add a new unit that is important to protect through the whole game. Fantastic. 3) Related to both combat and the growth mechanic is how cities are captured. Now, you have to capture not just the city center but also all urban quarters of the city to capture it. This is a really interesting idea because you can now imagine massive armies fighting through mega-cities. Imagine a city with quarters on both sides of a river. Your army capture the city on one side, but the river gives the defender a line of defense. Interesting dilemma that adds a lot of depth. 4) The town/city dynamic is SUCH A SMART IDEA - I can now build settlements without making them full cities if I want to just control certain resources, chokepoints, etc. And the towns can be used to support cities by specialization that spreads their food, science, production, etc to the full fledged cities. I am loving this mechanic because it lets you mix and match playing tall and wide. You can play tall in a few key cities and have your "wide" empire of towns support the cities. 5) Definitely has the "one more turn..." feel!! 6) The AI used air power!! The AI seems perfectly serviceable. Definitely not perfect but absolutely playable and a reasonable base to build on. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE NEGATIVES: 1) This is HUGE. Any Civ game that doesn't let me play an infinite number of turns isn't a Civ game. The game just ends at the end of the modern age. No one more turn option. This is a deal breaker for me. Whatever else, please fix this! 2) The ages system is clearly meant to make it so the human player can't just win by the renaissance or whatever. They want to perhaps handicap the human player to an extent so the whole game is engaging. And there's some merit to this. I am finding the late game enjoyable in a way because it's challenging. BUT - THIS IS HUGE - the system is so abrupt that you're not playing a whole Civ game. You're playing three separate mini-games that are connected by the cities you own. I simply can't believe FIraxis chose to do this, but for example - your military units CHANGE LOCATION when an age transitions. So if you're in a war, too bad - units move. You can't research techs from an age after the transition to the next or choose to finish a prior age wonder. This is a flaw that really affects the gameplay. 3) I agree that the UI is barebones. And there are small annoyances - for example, if the AI offers me a city, I can't look at the map to see where it is because if I close the negotiation screen, it counts as rejecting the offer. There is just an overall lack of information, and things feel like a blackbox. 4 The modern age ends with battleships and tanks. I am guessing they're adding more ages/units with future DLCs, but the game doesn't really run to the present. No helicopters, missile destroyers, etc 5) Overbuilding seems cool - but how do I know what I'm losing? It's not clear what the effects of removing prior age buildings is. 6) Pacing seems a bit off. I am going to play a game with extended age length to see if that helps. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NEUTRAL - these are things where I am withholding judgement for now and these could be positives or negatives long-term: 1) Leader attributes, ideology, civics, religion - these mechanics feel... incomplete? I cannot articulate my issues here. There's depth here (the leader attributes have a lot of impact for example) but I'm having a hard time immersing myself in them. Religion is extremely barebones. I put this as neutral because it could just be me and it's likely these will be expanded in the future. 2) No great people? This feels very incomplete, and the mechanic it's replaced with is really unclear (I was playing China and this mechanic basically disappeared after ancient age??). Again, this could be a me problem. 3) Trade...this grants you powerful resources that give yields. I think I like this but ... there's no trade screen unless I have a merchant, so I can't see my trade overview? Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so, and it goes back to the UI not giving enough info. Also, no companies! You have factories, but they don't function like companies as far as I can tell but I'll need to play more with it. I hope companies come back. 4) There is now no more resource requirement to build certain units. For example, everyone can build tanks - but if you own oil, your tanks add attack points. I am unsure how I feel about this. I really like the strategic dilemma of needing to capture resources in Civ VI to build a modern army/buildings, so I do miss that part. I can see the arguments for and against, so I put this in neutral. Maybe the effects of owning the resource need to be more powerful/impactful? So owning oil would make your tanks much better, not just a little better, and owning rubber makes them even better. 5) The decoupling of the leader and civilization means I am playing a game where Confucius is currently leading the United States of America in the Modern Age. I go back and forth on this mechanic. I have no problem with the idea of a culture "evolving" from an ancient one to modern (i.e., Norman to French) - but the total decoupling of the leader from the Civ does take out some historical immersion. Overall I think this is a mechanic the community just needs to play more with to get a sense of. I am holding judgement right now. But it's not a dealbreaker from me, and I could imagine enjoying the game with this mechanic remaining the same. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Overall, I bought the $140 ($130 plus $10 tax) Founders Edition because it's Civ and I always buy the full version of Civ - but this isn't quite the game I was hoping for. It has a lot of potential to grow, and the city growth mechanics (where workers are removed) and city/town dichotomy are fantastic changes that Firaxis should be applauded for. And the combat changes - the commanders and the idea of all city quarters needing to be captured - add so much depth. And that's a theme of the game - it DOES have depth. This isn't a game without features - it has SO many features. The problem is you can't fully enjoy them because of the abrupt age transitions and the inability to play endlessly (no "just one more turn..."). I personally think the best solution to this problem would be to let the player decide when to move to the next age - for example, let's say I want to build a few more treasure fleets in the exploration age before moving to the modern. Why does the game force me into the modern age - why can't I stay in the exploration and leave at my pace? Firaxis, you have a fantastic base of a game with so many features and so much depth! Now please let me play it at my pace without railroading me through the ages!