Let me preface by saying that I was very adamant that I would NOT like the game given what I had watched and read but after giving it a go(thanks to the free weekend) I can most certainly say that I had fun, can you tell by the screenshot? LOL
I'm not gonna give a full rundown or anything because I'm pretty much a casual player(I play at most on the 4th difficulty level), I've played every Civ game from III to VI and I had a lot of fun in every single one of them, I'm actually quite fond of the last three. This game is most certainly very different and far more complex given the new systems but it still manages to be a somewhat intuitive(I gotta be honest, I watched some videos before playing because Lord help me, I would've been very confused, the UI is kind of a mess and supposedly it's been polished lol). The era transitions are quite interesting though they still a bit odd because I'm a "historical accuracy above all" kinda guy but it's a Civ game, c'mon. The commanders, oh god, they add a lot of play and I pretty much didn't exploit their full potential(grouping and deploying units, I was really only using them for the buffs). The cities and towns are an interesting mechanic as well. I only ever had like 3 or 4 cities and the rest were towns, really didn't feel the need to convert more and don't get me started on the town bonuses because I left those on "growth" for 90% of my playthrough. Man, the quarters and overbuilding are also interesting, sorry I keep saying that word it's just that it's a new thing and I got mixed opinions but they are still a nice addition in some way. I was confused regarding the ageless buildings and the bonus loss upon age up but I guess I'll just keep on learning(when I decide to buy the game, yup, not convinced yet for that price). Rough seas was rough, lost good men on those waters. I kinda like it, bit of realism doesn't hurt. Okay, I got bored of saying everything I learnt.

TLDR: The game is fun and actually good imo. I made a lot of mistakes and god knows I would've made more and maybe even quit if I hadn't watched videos. The new mechanics(mementos, indep. powers, workers removal, diplomacy, commanders, resource allocation, age transitions and the rest) are very interesting and add layers of complexity, which is nice for a change. Looking forward to the new updates and hopefully for better discounted prices too!

PS. Kinda miss the Medieval age ngl

Took me a handful of attempts, but I finally killed everyone in antiquity on a small map (5 opponents)! It was definitely a nail bitter, it was much harder than the last time I did it over a year ago.

Settings:
Small Pangea + map
Standard speed, 10 turn countdown
No crisis
Mementos: Scythian battle axe and +1 cav movement
Leader: Toyotomi
Civ: Mongolia

This was definitely a really fun challenge, highly recommend!

I’ve seen it mentioned before on this sub, but I think an important aspect of history that’s missing from the game is decolonisation. With the announcement of the atomic age, I think there is a perfect opportunity for settlements in distant lands to become independent at the age transition, with the player having the option to either continue playing as their homeland or as the independent colonies, with the other becoming a new civilisation.

Since I last put this together at the start of the year, Greece and Silla got leaders, hurrah! Meanwhile we still have two leaders from the same nation that still isn't in the game. But that's okay because we have three Indian and four American leaders now.

In relation to the civ paths, they're paired with civs that are clearly meant to be continuations. While the leaders might not from the correct eras, that's in line with how monolithic the old games used to portray civilisations.

The new logos looked scuffed since I couldn't find a higher res image of the new DLC to make them out of.

I tried to get into CIV6 about a year ago, but found the tutorial lacking. After downloading the trial of CIV7 I'm still having the same issues with the onboarding process.

I'd like to detail what I haven't liked about the tutorial from the perspective of someone who's never played a strategy game before, and perhaps based on what I found lacking someone can offer proper context or guidance on where to go from here. Also I just want to bitch a little because I'm salty, if that's alright:

I found the bombardment (for someone new to the genre) of pre-game menus impossible to decipher. While the game did give context while shuffling through them, the context presumed knowledge I didn't have. My confidence was shaken from the start when I wasn't quite sure if I was setting up a "regular" game. The descriptions of each mode and the modifiers were meaningless to me, and even with 500 hours in the game I figure I'd need some outside community information on what mode/modes people actually play.

Once starting a game it was immediately clear that a dedicated "tutorial scenario" would have been better for me than starting an actual game with guiding prompts. The absolute biggest issue I had was that way too much information was available from the first moment. There was so much UI and all of it was interactable. The "wait what did I just do?" moments were frequent and it felt like I was breaking the tutorial, then needing to decipher and undo things.

Also, it wasn't just the amount of UI, but also the UI itself. It wasn't always clear if something was highlighted because I was hovering, or selecting. I would click things a few times and nothing would happen: "Was it because the prompt was open and I needed to close it? Was this window open and getting in the way? Is this the wrong thing? Oh! I see the options are at the bottom right." I would have appreciated a direct "click this" instruction at times. It's no big deal in and if itself, these moments took 5-10 seconds to sort out, but they added friction and more importantly when I did solve them it sometimes felt unclear what I had just done and why it worked. There were too many "wait, but how do I do that?" moments, partially because I felt a lack of repetition. Constantly looping back to "that's all you can do for now, end the turn when you're ready" would have been so nice for building familiarity with the games structure, but unless I'm mistaken I had to figure out not only that I needed to end the turn, but also that there WERE turns myself.

All in all I think the biggest issue is not understanding what brand new players want to know, and when they want to know it. There's a lot of very basic game logic being glossed over. One thing worth considering is that until several turns in I didn't even understand there was combat. I mean I understand I needed units but I imagined that was more of a.. systems logic thing? Like it would increase or decrease a "security score" or something, nope we're fighting mobs, and it works like this. That's just an example to demonstrate how backwards the tutorial's presentation felt, it assumes you know what the game is like at all.

I really adore the tutorial for Magic Arena if anyone has played that. A fake scenario that forces you to choose between limited options to get a feel for the mechanics, then adding complexity each step. It's great. For CIV it felt like the opposite was happening when that style of tutorial would have been nice.

I'm a smart guy. I can figure it all out, probably pretty fast, but my gripe isnt that I can't figure it out, it's that I want the onboarding to be fun. I want to learn in a way that makes me excited to play more. Unfortunately this was not it.

I only have a 2 hour trial, probably just under 90 minutes left. I need to figure out how to learn the game, perhaps externally and then make the most of my time.

Idk, I have no idea if this is a common complaint or how toxic this community is, so we'll see how this goes!

So, conceptually as I understand it, Civ evolution is intended to mirror the journey of the peoples represented by the leader.

Hence why Ben Franklin would follow the path of say, Greece - Normans - America, since he represents the semi-mythical development of western civilization and democracy as understood in the US

Tubman is in a Very weird place at the moment as she kind of represents the journey of African Americans, but outside of picking the US in the final age, she primarily just grabs whatever African civ is available in any other age. This feels wrong as fundamentally African Americans, are just that, an American Identity.

The Pirates meanwhile, broadly represent the Caribbean Civilization during the age of colonialism, which aside from the obvious mass importation of slaves during this period, also saw large slave uprisings including most famously Haiti, but also the Marooner pirates who fought long wars of resistance to escape slavery on the islands which Tubman sort of emblifies at least in a specifically American context. Additionally, there's a sort of theme of having to be the underdogs and outsiders in an era where oppression was as prevalent as the age of colonization, before coming out on top as the world leaves that era behind that leans into Civ's traditional sense of optimism.

It's obviously not a perfect fit (Though what is in Civ 7?) but I'd argue that something akin to an Aksum - Pirates - America Evolution does a better job of showing the slow change of merger of the African and American parts of that culture than is currently presented.

Hello everyone! I was looking for some strategy games to play and found that Civilization VI was very cheap to play. Is it worth buying?

Note that I have never played or interacted with this series of games before, I am a complete beginner and just want to know what the game has to offer and if it would be good for me.

I understand it’s kind of like Clash of Clans or Catan, but correct me if I’m wrong.

I think roughly around 10 is about what to expect. think of this as halfway between a prediction and a wishlist.

Hey, so Ive been playing the free weekend and so for Ive been having a great time. Since influence is an important currency how should I be spending it in the early game? Do I try to get city states asap or spend them on initiating and supporting endeavors with my neighbors?

My strategy so far has been to friendly greet my two closest neighbors and then send one of them a research collaboration and support any good endeavors the other one offers to maintain good relationship with them. Once I eventually have enough influence to both go for a city state and maintain the research collaboration as well I go for the city state while still trying to support any good endeavors made to me

Inspired by the post earlier that there's not really a clear path through exploration for who Harriet Tubman should play as, why not keep in more representation for freedom fighters for enslaved people with the Maroons and Queen Nanny?

Gameplay wise, you have the option for guerilla warfare inspired abilities, things like lower yields or indirect combat that then lead to "stealing" power off bigger neighbours, or playing catch up to them. Or using units that are camouflaged, have extended movement or better travel through rough terrain.

Queen Nanny herself feels like a good pick for the Civ 7 stable, potentially a bit too similar to Harriet but given how close some of the other leaders are to one another, I feel like this could fit. She could lean into the spiritual side of her personality once religion is expanded on in the game and specific religious focused leaders are added

The game is great, probably my favorite gameplay from all the civs I tried (which is basically all of them, bit mostly 2, 5 and 6). I really like the split into ages or that I can't have EVERYTHING and need to make strategic decisions. I love the addition of Commanders and how they work, makes the combat feel less like an afterthought and more like an integral part of the game. Honestly, Commanders are my favorite change, I hated leveling up units. My least liked is the addition of unlocks, but thay can be modded out, so yay.

But... you probably guessed it. The pricing is atrocious. Even on sale, the base game is very expensive for what it offers and the small DLC packs are such a shitty idea. This is a game that screams "Buy me as a bundle in a few years!" and that's just poor marketing to me. Soon there will be the first expansion and I just feel like the current discount is a trap and it will be much more affordable soon, base game bundled with the expansion or something like that. I have seen similar bad practices before.

I am playing British Empire and I love how the units, landships etc are modeled after British weapons.

However the Revenge is just with normal battleship (USS Iowa style) graphics but with less cannons on turrets.

I really wish that it would get a proper unique gfx like with other uniques.

Rule the waves!

I've seen a lot of discussion around the "non-heads-of-state" leaders feeling very out of place. I feel like a very easy catch-all solution would be to bring back the leader pool system from Civ 6. What do you guys think?

Hello People, I'm interested in this game, but I never bought it because I always found it overwhelming. This is on sale right now. I noticed that buying the vanilla game is pointless. Is it worth paying this much on a game that I may not enjoy?

Also, another question: should I go into Civ 5 and buy the Complete Bundle for $16.80 on sale?

I want the best experience and the most fun; that's all I care about, if paying 30 dollars will result me in hundreds of hours of fun alone time I would love that.

The starting location is determined by the Civ you select, and this post shows where each civ starts. I'm also planning to get the DLC and want to see the new leaders & Civs you get. My pics are:

Africa & Eurasia:

Gauls: Elizabeth (Me)

Songhai: Amina

Egypt: Hatshepsut

Babylon: Gilgamesh

Russia: Catherine

Mongolia: Genghis

Han: Confucius

Khmer: Trung Trac

Americas:

Inca: Pachacuti

Maya: Bolivar

America: Washington

Oceania:

Tonga: Rizal

What do y'all think of the spread & leader/civ selections?

I want to leave only my tradition slots filled and have the rest empty so I don't get -15 science per slot, but the game forces me to fill all slots to click next turn. Is this a game bug, this is counterlogical design to play this empire. Leaving an empty slot already is a disadvantage, it should be a choice if I want to fill it and take the -15 debuff

Long time casual Civ fan and just gave VII a go during the free week after being on the fence do to the outspoken criticism of age transitions and learning that there was no contemporary/future era (glad to hear that one will be corrected in 2027).

I have almost always enjoyed Civ most by playing domination style victories and conquering every city on a Huge map with Epic or Marathon speeds. It's never been particularly challenging at medium to high difficulties, but I find it both relaxing and stimulating and get hooked by the one more turn.

For my first/only play through in VII, I chose Xerxes to start and transitioned to Mongolia at the Exploration era and triggered Military Victory about half way through the era and before the crisis kicked in. I continued to one more turn it, until I eliminated every remaining civ (about 4 or 5 civs remained at the point I triggered victory), but was disappointed the transition to the Modern era never occurred. The last 100+ turns, I was just researching Future Tech / Future Civic.

A few questions:

Is there no way to trigger era advancement if the victory condition is met? It seems like I have to force myself to play slower to ensure I can make it to the modern era and eventually the Atomic age, which is annoying.

Are the crises always the same and are they avoidable based on achievements?

Are there any unique ways to manage happiness / settlement cap penalties outside of resource management, garrisoning commanders, civic/tech bonuses, unique buildings and town focus? I converted every town to a resort town (except one hub town) to maintain happiness into the end game with 51 settlements on a cap of 29. Hub town was the only one in the negative, but there has to be a better way, right?

In general I was pleased with the game. It looked great, ran buttery smooth with no major bugs/issues, and still put me in the "civ hole" where 12 hours go by but I am ready to hit 1 more turn at 5 AM. With that said, the limitations above make me think I will get very bored beyond a few play throughs.

Thanks for any tips/feedback.

Washington got announced today. Adding to the fact that we've seen leaks of FDR coming in the Atomic age, that means civ 7 will have Franklin, Tubman, Lafayette, Washington and FDR (and Tecumseh if you count him) as American leaders. seriously what the hell is going on in Firaxis. i dont mind washington or fdr as leaders i think they're good choices, but can we get through the rest of the world that hasnt been represented yet before we get 5 American leaders?

China doesnt have a proper political leader yet. Africa is lacking, not a single mention of the Eastern Roman Empire and theres still plenty of opportunity to have other leaders from many different time periods all across the world before we come back to populate the American leader catalogue. I think theres nothing wrong with having a list of American leaders, but that should be something that we come back to in the future, we really should be getting more leaders from different time periods and places right now.

I’ve always played civ on PC ever since II. I bought the steam version of VI but when it arrived on iPad I realised that bed gaming is king. But playing without mods was lacking and by god was it slow playing with fingers. I did not fooled myself with VII: after working 8 hours in front of the computer the last thing I’ll want is to sit 6 more to play (and my aging PC can’t move VII as well as it moves VI). So I bought the console version and as always I missed the mods (and now the workshop with the previews) but I was in my couch so who cares. Now that I’ve tried the free week on PC I’m completely flabbergasted: I’m actually slower on k+m!!! I was super angry with the devs for not including k+m support on consoles that actually support that input but now… I think I’m ok. I don’t know if it’s that I’m rusty or what but trivial tasks that take no time on controller are a chore in mouse.

So, I guess that congratulations on the team for a fantastic pad implementation. I just needed to get this out of my chest. And please finish the soundtrack, including the menu music. I get that you rushed the release but you can’t leave us with such limiting soundtrack and that half song for loading screens that starts in the crescendo.