A couple minutes in and it's just... so blatantly unfinished, especially by Civ standards. The UI is total slop, everything looks super janky, the resource icons are like stock images from 1998. There is no discernible aspect of care put into the game, and that's something I never expected from Firaxis. Comparing this unfinished mess to the Civ VI release is night and day. Civ VII needs a complete visual overhaul of the UI at minimum to even begin to warrant the atrocious $70 price tag. Sid Meier personally spit in my mouth and spanked my bottom with this game's release and I did not consent.

My first impression is generally positive as the new mechanics make for a fresh experience. However, whoever designed the UI deserves to be tried in The Hague.

As a loyal Civ fanatic since Civ I, my advice to Firaxis Games is to fire everyone who worked on this game and start on Civ 8.

As a player of the series for over 30 years now (I started on the multiplayer build of Civ 1 - CivNet, in the early 90s - and have played every version, even that train wreck console port, Revolution, extensively), Civ 7 is... such an absolute fail, I can't even really begin to put into words how badly 2K/Firaxis missed the mark here. LITERALLY the catchphrase of the ENTIRE franchise has always been "One. More. Turn." YOU CAN'T ONE MORE TURN IN CIV 7 - When a victory condition is reached (which is a convoluted nightmare mess of nonsense to reach now) THE GAME HARD ENDS. The Civilopeida - once the absolute hallmark of in-game aids in the industry - is now nothing more than a useless historical data entry. Guys, if I wanted what you put in the Civilopedia, I'd have gone to WIKIPEDIA... I need to know what the C-pedia has always told us... how does affect the GAME, in real-game terms, not what it does in the real world. The UI is nearly useless. There's no detailed city information to tell us how much of "X" is needed to progress "Y". There's raw data for food, production, income, happiness... like there's always been... but there's nothing to tell me how many foods I need to make my next population. There's nothing to tell me where these new utility buildings can and can't be placed... or if there's a certain technology I need to research to clear a spot for them (like the game USED to tell you, in clear and open terms). The visuals are... absolutely stunning. Every pixel is gorgeous... and completely overwhelms the units and buildings that make up the actual USABLE portion of the game. You quite literally cannot see the forest for the trees. Your units get visually lost in the undergrowth of the map. Your settlement buildings are muted and indistinct and there's no visual cues to tell you what does what, or how much F/P/I/H you're getting. Probably my biggest gripe, that COULD have MAYBE addressed a lot of this is this - Civ 6 was a pretty major rebuilding of the game's core concepts and actions, and the game was shipped with a full playable tutorial that walked you through the many changes that were made to how Civ had always operated up that point. You could play that tutorial as many or as few times as you wanted/needed to be comfortable with these changes before starting your "real game". Civ 7... is a complete, 100% rebuild of the game - literally every concept of the game's mechanics as they have previously operated has been majorly or completely altered. In and of itself right there, it doesn't even FEEL like Civilization... however, at least SOME of that severe dissonance could have been alleviated had they simply DONE THE SAME THING THEY DID LAST TIME. Give us a in' tutorial when you completely re-write the game, guys... I've seen a number of posts that are saying the game was released half-assed and in Alpha/Beta stage simply so that the powers that be could charge for DLCs to bring it up to the expected standard... and, while I would HOPE I'm never THAT cynical about the gaming industry, as a whole... the bottom line is that this game doesn't FEEL like a finished game. Or, if this IS the finished product that the developers wanted to show the world... every last one of them should quit their jobs and go find something else to do that they're actually good at... because video game development and deployment is NOT in their skill set... at all.1

Civilization VII is what happens when a strategy game has an identity crisis — and then makes you suffer for it. I've been playing Civ since the days when units looked like stick figures and diplomacy meant getting surprise-nuked by Gandhi. I’ve loved them all. Even the weird ones. But Civ VII? This is the first time I’ve felt gaslit by a Civ game. Let’s start with the identity mechanic — every time you enter a new era, you have to pick a new civilization. Yes, you start as Greece and end up as the USA. Why? Who knows. Your immortal leader doesn’t change — so enjoy being Catherine the Great, Eternal President of America, as you guide your mismatched civ through centuries of historical whiplash. Meanwhile, the AI is doing the same thing. One turn you're at peace with Maya, the next you're being invaded by Japan-Maya-Germany or something equally cursed, still led by Hammurabi who apparently has tenure. It’s like watching a game of Civilization get hijacked by a random history name generator. And don’t worry, progression still sucks! Every time you advance to a new era, the game PUNISHES you. You lose gold. You lose units. It’s like the developers thought you were having too much fun and decided to nerf your birthday. "Congrats on reaching the Renaissance! Now hand over your army and go bankrupt." Cities and towns are now two different things — for some reason? You have to “promote” towns into cities using rare resources. Until then, they're basically settlements with abandonment issues. The system is unclear, unfun, and feels like they tried to reinvent Civ VI’s district system but gave up halfway through and left it in the group project Google Doc. The UI? Imagine playing Civilization through a fax machine. Information is buried under five layers of menus, the icons look like budget app logos, and nothing is where you think it is. Accessibility? Nope. Clarity? Nope. Joy? Also nope. And oh, diplomacy. Remember when leaders had personality? That’s gone. Now they’re lifeless avatars with the emotional range of a tax form. The agendas are either baffling or nonexistent. Catherine denounced me for “not being trustworthy” while she had 12 spies in my capital. Okay, Karen. The whole game feels like a Civ-themed cosplay where the player has to do all the emotional labour. It’s shallow. It’s buggy. It’s joyless. It punishes you for doing well, confuses you when you try to play smart, and rewards you for clicking buttons with the enthusiasm of a goldfish in a maze. TL;DR: Started as Greece Became Egypt Then Rome Now I’m the USA Still being led by Catherine the Great Just got robbed by an era transition Lost all my gold Maya-Japan just nuked me Where's Pericles when you need him? Hiding by the rivers of Babylon? 2/10 would not recommend

My disappointment is immeasurable and my decade is ruined. While originally this review topped 20K character count, Steam caps reviews to 8K. Many points were cut for brevity, especially comparisons to Humankind. It's kind of heart-breaking actually. If there's a franchise I associate with quality it's Civilization. The problems are not isolated to any individual part of the game and if I have identified them in such numbers and with such depth in as little as 50 hours in a grand strategy game, something is very wrong. Playing through the Antiquity era it was clear to me this game was not ready. The content was there but the game was embarrassingly unfinished. By the end of my first Antiquity era, I thought the game could be saved. By Modern, I was unsure. Now I know. First, the good. The music is sublime, it's of such quality as to engender pride in humanity. I found it more arresting than any OST I've heard this year, and maybe any of the previous Civ games on release. It has kept me sane through this game's tribulations as my companion. Featuring a more traditional style graphically compared to Civ 6, your empire hums along in astonishing detail, particularly in the later eras. The fractal-like layouts of your urban tiles, with their structures unique to each of the game's pantheon of cultures is a sight to behold. Army Commanders echo Civ 4 and provide deeper military strategy. …and that's it I'm afraid. I did not particularly like Humankind as a package, but many of its experiments were successful in isolation. Shockingly, almost everything Civ 7 poaches from Humankind emerges as a shallow imitation. I could not believe how unimaginative and simple the narrative events were. In Humankind, most of them tell a story of some kind, no matter how brief, and many are multi-part choice chains which lead to interesting consequences. In Civ 7 these choices are overwhelmingly bland, all but a select few lack the aforementioned chain of consequences entirely, instead most are a one time "do you want gold or happiness" or equivalent. To make this worse, the yields they do offer are poorly balanced, sometimes in the extreme. This imbalance exists between the events as well, for some reason you can get successive, ostensibly identical, events i.e. do you want happiness or gold, but the amounts given will be drastically different (think nearly an order of magnitude). I would understand if I had done an elaborate event chain and at the end received a large reward for a good result, but these are both spontaneous, single instance events. I maintain that this is Humankind's best feature, and it's delivered so ineptly by the de facto custodians of the genre here. While I think many decisions taken early in development doomed Civ 7 from the outset the UI will have come later, being iterated until it shipped. What we can infer from this is that Civ 7 was released staggeringly early. The UI is appalling. In your first run the game bombards you with pop-ups, yet useful information is inaccessible or often downright missing. Many critical mechanics are not taught or explained anywhere in the game and the Civlopedia isn't nearly informative enough. I also discovered some Civlopedia entries are visible only in certain ages, making planning needlessly difficult. If screenshots could be included in a Steam review, this diatribe would be, overwhelming, images of UI with red circles around them and expletives drawn on top. I refuse to believe that this is purely incompetence. Poor UI elements in Civ is nothing new, but what we got here takes the cake and I believe this, more than anything else, is a sign that much more time was needed. UI can be made good, the game's systems probably can't. An abbreviated list of problems which I did not have the character count to expand on: - Unit variety is tiny. 1-2 units per type each era which then upgrade to higher tier version of themselves. No name or design change - You can't liberate cities - No tile swapping between cities - War weariness is not affected by killing enemy units - The game can end in the modern era at 100% age progress instead of waiting for a victory condition à la Humankind. Boring and unfulfilling. Like reaching a score victory 10 turns before the climax of the game - Permanence of warehouse buildings. By the Modern age, antiquity warehouses have so few rural tiles left for them to give yields to. They take up space, which by Modern is at a premium, and do almost nothing for you. You should be able to replace them with the newer version if you want to - Religion tied to one age then gone forever - Age transitions trash any sense of unit organisation or long term border tension - You can mix and match your leaders and civ but not how you play the game due to the rigid legacy paths, a reverse from previous games - You cannot generate treasure fleets from inland cities, even if they are connected to your trade network by another coastal city (patched) - Voiced age transitions try to give an overview of your last age, but only highlight which legacy path you followed most/first in a single sentence, they possess no intimacy. Similarly, ending sequences are flat with no sense of achievement or grandeur - Factories' railroad requirement prevents construction in distant land cities - All my Steam screenshots are corrupted psychedelic trips for this game only - Repeatable projects must now be reselected every few turns - Wonder animations downgraded from Civ 6 - Resources moving between ages ruins city planning. Once urbanised, a tile cannot be made rural even between ages so time you spent planning your cities' adjacency is frequently wasted, but you still have to do it because it might not be wasted - The visual design of buildings is great however, it's all very static, no movement or animations unlike Civ 6 I was foolish to believe that Firaxis would be able to do what Amplitude could not. Foolish to think it were possible at all. The age and civ transitions have proved viciously divisive, but I will make myself clear: I believe these to be abject failures. I do not think the proponents of these mechanics have thought them through or played with them enough. Arrogant, yes, but I believe it. The age structure undermines the promise of a Civ game: the satisfaction of building an empire from the dirt, reaching ever higher towards the stars. One empire to stand the test of time. Civ switching strips immersion and removes one of the most interesting balance dynamics in Civ: timed bonuses. In previous games, some civs would be more powerful at different stages of the game, for example they may receive a unique building or unit at one part of the tech tree. For very powerful bonuses, this incentivised survival over greed until you reached your bonuses promoting dynamism and, consequently, replayability. This kind of grand strategy created opportunities both for that civ and their opponents, who must decide how best to deal with a neighbour who may soon be a great threat. With civ switching, this is impossible as civs must be equally relevant in their age since they will be gone once it's over; a great recipe for a stale meta. The transitions are abrupt, with poorly paced cut offs. The end of most ages are spent trying to delay era progress in an attempt to get more legacy path bonuses. Sandbagging is antithetical to civ and is not fun. Speaking of antitheticality, legacy paths are incompatible with the sandbox nature of civ. They are linear thiefs of diverse gameplay. Even the announcer is only okay, her sterile delivery markedly worse than the, in my opinion, serviceable Sean Bean, and worlds away from the GOAT William Morgan Sheppard R.I.P. Civilization 7 exists in a franchise old enough to be a part of the history it exists to tell. It may go down in that history as the first mainline game not to stand the test of time, and deservedly so.

EDIT:

Devs had stated that multiples fixes and updates will be done in March-April, this includes DLC of 2 new leaders and 4 Civs, features such as One More Turn, new wonders, map generation similar to Civ 6, research queuing, rework to victory conditions for culture, quick move, auto explore, bigger maps and more. (bigger maps could be a bit later). In addition to fixes to the UI, polishing the game, and stuff like the Atomic era coming later at some point. Mod support and Steam workshop has been confirmed in the works. Thanks Firaxis for doing an effort to make the game even better!

This information is public in the roadmap in the update section, available in library for all those that bought the game and the store page. Having played Civ 6 for almost 100 hours and 3 matches of CIV 7, I feel it is a good time to write my thoughts on it. Yes, you can give me the clown award, I like the game, power to me with the points (or don't, I don't care) but I love the game! Civ 7 has problems, particularly with the UI (which they said they are working to improve and is an easy fix) and it suffers from a few bugs/glitches, but in my experience, my games ran with 0 issues both locally and in multiplayer. So why do I like Civ 7? Because combat and unit movement is way better than Civ 6, units can now form armies with a commander and the commander can use special skills to empower units. I love the animations of watching some spearmen duking it out with a massive elephant or soldiers pushing each other/getting sent flying in the air when defeated. The game looks beautiful, the wonders are majestic, the water is nice, everything is pretty. Likewise, leaders and diplomacy feel so much better! I know World Congress is gone, I cry...but having diplomacy where leaders can get +3 to strengthen their units or research faster is interesting. The influence system allows you to choose between empowering yourself or other civs, befriending city-states, recruiting units from the city-states or even justifying your wars. Is such an open system that it compels you to think about your choices. Compelling is the word I would use for the game. Gone are the days when OP leaders dominated the game, pick Abraham Lincon, pick Hamirabi (or whatever his name is) pick Victoria Steam Age, nah. Now all leaders are powerful and I thank the civ system for it. People hate it but come on, having leaders plus civs that you can mix gives up endless replayability combinations to try! With the leveling system, there is also a reason to try different leaders to get mementos! The game begs the player to explore and try new stuff, as where Civ 6 was "Are you role-playing with this weakling leader or are you meta-gaming cause all you care is about winning?". Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Civ 6, I just love Civ 7 more. Lastly...closing points. Hmm....free cities make the early game super interactive with their aggression, barbarians are gone but they were dumb. Free cities feel like an actual threat to your empire in early eras due to raids and other leaders influencing them to go against you. A lot of the issues Civ 7 has are fixable with updates and I have faith that Firaxis will do so. All Civs sucked at the start and 7 is no different, so is all a matter of time. No Snowballing also makes the game more enjoyable, you can still get a lead or fall behind, but you can't go "I have a tank and you don't gg." Which is something that ruined Civ 6 for me personally. Civ 7 is not Civ 6, and that is FINE! If I want a game like Civ 6, I just go play Civ 6. I like the new direction Civ 7 is taking, and I hope in time Firaxis will dominate this new integration and make the game better! The AI is also smarter and does some good plays here and there. Get it now if you want to see a game evolve and change, say things like "Back in the day, it was like this!" or if you want to try the game! Otherwise, you can wait for a more complete version with sales. Rumor has it Atomic Era will come to the game!

If you enjoyed the review, please follow my curator! StarsDeck.

Undervalued game, it's light-years ahead of it's current release. Firaxis should have charged $300 at a minimum for the base edition. I will be refunding until Firaxis raises the price.

I rarely write reviews for any reason, I'm too lazy. But I find it extremely paramount to write on this one. I've been playing Civ for about 20 years, it was one of the first video games I was ever exposed to. As an experienced player, I can say that a lot of the changes in here are super interesting and have a lot of potential. The city growth and town mechanics are neat, the new independent settlements rework establishes a refreshing take on the city-state and barbarian dynamics of previous releases, army formations and combat are streamlined in a reasonable way (as opposed to how other things are streamlined), leader diplomacy is a lot more satisfying and sensible, and I really love how all pending tasks and actions are shown as icons in the turn wheel at the bottom and you can select any one of them without defaulting to the primary one the game has selected for you. The game looks visually decent and the sound design and music feels nostalgic and well done. In general a lot of intriguing overhauls and changes make it clear that there is something here. But this thing is more than rough, more than I remember any other Civ release being. The UI is terrible. I can't find any of the information that's relevant to my gameplay ever. Notifications are both annoying to click through and simultaneously disappear without any reason. Tactility and telegraphing normally communicated through sounds, camera adjustments, and musical cues are either missing or have regressed into some sort of minimalist alternative. In general, I have to agree with most criticisms on this game, that it feels console-first and hardly geared towards the PC user-base, which I had imagined is the primary user-base. This is not to mention the whole 2K account integration is so annoying and the fact that elements of the game seem to be barred from access until you've done the whole integration process is just a really terrible precedent. Crucial, BASIC things are COMPLETELY missing. You can't automate explorers. A lot of key command either don't exist anymore or are completely hidden to the player and you just have to try old combinations that you remember from other games. YOU CAN'T QUEUE YOUR TECH TREE AT ALL. There's no quick movement / combat. All advanced options to customize the map, start parameters, and overall game rules are just COMPLETELY gone. Customizations of all kinds are gone. I haven't found a way to rename cities, units, or anything like that. So many things about this game are a step back. You are actively PUNISHED for doing well, as with each age/era so much of the stuff you've worked hard to develop is removed, exchanged, or nerfed in some way. So much of the tech tree feels useless, as you're basically able to work tiles and gain resources without much strategy involved at all. There are so few penalties or consequences for making decisions, you can essentially just spam every option, production, and purchase whenever you feel like and you'll still be an unstoppable force at least against the AI. The amount and variety of Civs at launch is LAUGHABLE. Narrations are delegated to being very short blurbs with almost no intrigue whatsoever, while simultaneously introducing UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENES to a 4X which makes absolutely ZERO sense. The victory conditions for each age aren't necessarily confusing, but they feel so unnecessary and different from the core advancement principles that Civ has tended to build itself on for years, in a way that feels remarkably counterintuitive. One of my biggest points of contention I have with this game is the Leader/Civilization dynamic. You are locked into choosing a leader and civilization SEPARATELY. This means you can choose completely non-historic combinations of things. In my current playthrough, I did the first of three ages (the Antiquity age) as Harriet Tubman ... of the Aksum. Once the Antiquity age ends, and you enter the age of Exploration, you have to change what civilization you are AGAIN. The best option for my playstyle so far as I could tell was choosing the MAJAPAHIT? This makes no sense. There is a novelty to it, sure, and I could see some fun gameplay ideas happening as a result of these discrepancies. But being locked into HAVING to do something like this is more than just immersion breaking. It's weird at BEST, and completely messes up everything otherwise. Having to adjust to completely new civ bonuses and contexts with EVERY ADVANCING AGE just feels even more and more punishing for no reason. There is SOMETHING here. The environments look great, the game feels less cartoonish like Civ VI attempted to be, and there are exciting mechanics and ideas here worth exploring in the long-term. But calling this "unfinished" is generous. Core features are missing and so much backwards regression has been taken. It's not impossible to play, but it's frustrating and barely feels like a Civ game. I am absolutely of the belief that a game HAS to be great without any mods whatsoever, that mods should be delegated to the roles of personal preferences and experimentation. I won't say "wait for mods". I would say wait for this game to be decent, because it's not.

Intro

After playing for over 50 hours, I’ve discovered many interesting details. I’m a developer with 15+ years of experience and a long-time fan of the Civilization series since its first version.

Pros:

- The game is genuinely fun to play. Many mechanics resemble *Humankind*, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. - The graphics are great. It’s clear that the team working on the models actually cared about making them look good, and they succeeded. Part of the enjoyment comes from zooming in and admiring the unique cities that take shape. - The music and sound design, just like in previous entries, are top-tier. The atmosphere is immersive, and this is one of those rare cases where you turn off your own music just to listen to the game’s soundtrack.

Cons:

- The game is blatantly unfinished. Extremely unfinished. Essentially, the developers are asking you to pay for the privilege of being their beta tester. - Bugs are everywhere, and they’re so obvious that it’s hard to believe they weren’t noticed. The question is: why weren’t they fixed? - Constant misclicks. The game has a delay when switching to the next unit, so if you click too fast, the cursor doesn’t keep up, and units (especially settlers at sea in the second era) end up in the wrong place. - Everyone criticizes the UI, and while I personally find it tolerable, I do have questions—who thought dynamic disappearing buttons were a good idea? In every other game, if a button exists, it’s always visible, just enabled or disabled. But here, in the unit management window, buttons vanish completely. - It feels like testers put in a 6/10 effort on the first era, 4/10 on the second era, and didn’t even bother testing the third. Because it was simply unplayable due to bugs. To reach the Golden Age, half the conditions don’t register. Triggers fail, points don’t get awarded for scientific progress, and basic mechanics just break. This isn’t about balance or victory conditions—this is about fundamental programming mistakes that weren’t caught by testers, ignored by release managers, and shipped as is. That’s unacceptable. The developers released this game with an enormous amount of goodwill from the community and high expectations. But this isn’t a small indie studio with five programmers. This is a massive company with the resources to hire the best talent in the industry. They had the ability to run 2-3 months of closed beta testing and fix these issues. But they didn’t. Instead, they released a €100 game and immediately announced a €30 expansion. I understand—it’s business. But your business depends on an army of loyal fans. After 100+ hours, I don’t feel like buying the expansion, nor do I feel like playing this game again for at least another 2-3 years. Because it’s unfinished. And because I regret wasting my time, only to reach the end of a multiplayer session with friends and feel no sense of victory—because throughout the entire game, every single number was calculated incorrectly. Science, culture, money, points—every currency in the game is fundamentally broken. Don’t waste your time just to be disappointed by an unfinished product. Wait 2-3 years so you don’t end up paying for another mediocre cash grab.

P.S.There’s an entire genre of YouTube videos titled *"How to make a Civilization clone."* A message to the developers: please watch them. I spent 50 hours on your game—spend 100 hours figuring out what went wrong. Teenagers in Eastern European schools make better strategy games as homework assignments, and they turn out more professional than this.

I've played every Civilization game in the series (with the exception of the first Civ) and this captures all the addictive qualities of earlier games. The developers clearly put a lot of thought into the new features they added and the ones they streamlined or cleared out. Things that I really appreciate is that each civilization feels much more unique with unique buildings, wonders, and culture research. I like the diplomacy system a lot more in this and feel it is much more coherent on how to keep friends in the 2nd and 3rd act when attacking other civs. The graphics are a big improvement and I think the wonder completion scenes are the best since Civ 2. The music is top notch and will just get better as they expand more cultures into the game. I like how the transition from each act introduces new game concepts and lets others fade into history. Now don't get me wrong the game is by not means perfect and I know some things will get sorted out in the next months and other things are just not design decisions I would make. The AI seems improved slightly from Civ 6, but so far I'm still seeing a lot of haphazard attacking and defending. The "crisis" finishing off each age could use some more challenge and impact on the gameplay. At the time of my review, there's also many things I've found that are incomplete texts, missing graphics, placeholders, hidden hotkeys, and UI annoyances which unfortunately seems to be in every major game at launch these days, but none are at a level at a point where I want to stop playing, alas work is calling and Valentines day next Friday, so one more turn will have to wait until later....

I have about 60 hours into this game, and I am having a great time with it, despite some of the annoying aspects of the interface. I'm currently in my 70s, and have played every Civilization game since Civ II. I therefore came to Civilization 7 expecting it to be significantly different from Civilization 6 (because every new Civ game has been very different from the previous one). I have never been a "power player"--I think the only Deity-level games I've won have been by accident, and there were maybe two of them. So this is a summary for those sorts of players. Civilization 7 is complicated in a way that I particularly like. Mixing and matching leader abilities, civilization abilities, and mementos and figuring out the "best" pairings for my play style is fun, especially with so many of them. Changing my play style to get to the end of an Age more or less intact is another thing I love about this game. I also really like the way the leaders develop differently--and have to be played differently--depending on what attributes they earn during a particular game. I expect to get a lot of years of enjoyment out of this. I am a bit unhappy about the forced ending of the three ages--being able to keep on going for "just one more turn" is one of the things I've enjoyed in other Civ games, and I'm disappointed that it wasn't included in this one. What I'd really like is a "player's choice" button, where you could keep playing whatever age you were without moving on ever, or continue to move from Antiquity to Exploration to Modern as per the current design. I haven't made it to the end of the Modern age yet, so I don't know if they still have Giant Death Robots, but I kind of hope so... Some aspects of the user interface are mildly annoying, and I'm still figuring out where some of the information I want is hidden. I consider these mild annoyances and part of learning the new game, but I can see that they would really bother players who prefer a more intense gaming style. And yes, I will probably buy the DLC when it starts coming out.

I'm literally devastated. Y'all are being way too easy on this game, blaming the UI more than anything else. This game... where do I even begin? I've played every single Civilization game since the very first one, all the way back in '91 when I was 10 years old, to include all offshoots like Call to Power, and even Alpha Centauri. I wasn't truly captivated until Civ II - to this day, a high watermark of the series. After that game, though... every single Civ title has lost *something*. A little bit of magic. A little piece of life. A little thing that gave the game personality, quirk or majesty. Whether it be the throne room you used to upgrade to your liking, or the video clips pulled from antiquity to tell you how important, how special, how cherished or how unique each wonder was, or the vocal artists singing their hearts out during that title music, or the stories players created - a la bloodthirsty Ghandi setting off a thousand nukes - these were our stories, we told ourselves, as we held our civ's hand through the eons, from man's earliest accomplishments in the Stone Age, to man's future accomplishments landing on Mars. This game is a hollow husk. A dead echo of the games I've spent my whole life loving. Retribution is impossible, there's no saving it, no coming back. This newest iteration has lost every single part of the Civ I've loved since I was a child. From the dead faces of the cringe-inducing leaders who incomprehensibly lead any historic civ out there, to the giant time skip over all the important early-man years, to the unforgivable, forced ditching of your chosen Civ at each age, to the loss of workers which, despite being tedious, represented the last bastion of customization and optimization players had over our cultures, to the city building limits?! How is this even possible? Games like this thrive on each player creating their own strategy, taking the reins and guiding their game across the ages - but now we just get one way to play: The way Civ 7's new creative director decided he wants us to play. This is on you, Ed Beach. You should know that players hate the direction you took our beloved game. We hate your ideas, we hate your influence, and we hope you don't go anywhere near Civ 8, when it comes out 10 years from now. But this is also on you, Sid. Did you forget what made your games so special? Did you forget that we loved you for decades? Under your tutelage, Civilization is a microcosm for the entire experience of what it is to be human! And you've forgotten that in pursuit of... well, I can only guess. Because this is also on 2K. We know there are more leaders than this. We know there are more ages. But I'm going to take a WILD guess and predict the future here: More ages for $$. More leaders for $$. More civilizations for $$. More wonders for $$. More gameplay for $$. Sid, you've sold your soul to greed, and I hope you read this someday and know that you've not only let me down - but you've let at least 48% of the gamers who've worshiped your talent for almost 35 years. Shame on you, and shame on everyone involved for putting out this lifeless, soul-sucking, rushed cash-grab absolutely vacuous in its existence, without an ounce of love baked in. Shame on you.

Overall

Aesthetically, Civ7 is the best visual Civ game, hands down. There are major improvements over prior Civ games in terms of micromanagement fatigue and a majority, though not all, of the cornerstone changes in Civ7 are series-defining improvements.

Disclaimers

Some key aspects about my perspective: - I have several thousand hours across multiple Civ games - I only play Deity - I don't play multiplayer - I believe mods are essential to every Civ game Ok, let's break Civ7 down a bit more:

Good

- Commanders: I can't imagine Civ without them anymore. They make combat genuinely fun and simple, even if unit-swapping seems a bit like cheating. The AI could use improvement with Commanders. - Towns Infrastructure: Praise Sid, no more build-queues to nowhere. This refreshingly simple change is exactly the right solution to a wide Civ game like this. - Terrain changes: The new terrain mechanics (Rough, Vegetated, inter-tile rivers, navigable rivers, etc.) are a new essential to the Civ franchise. The other Civ games' basic elements seem cartoonishly simple in comparison now. Vanilla map generation could use major improvements, but the framework to Civ7 is head-and-shoulders above all other Civ games. And, of course, modders are already fixing this. - Age victories: Encourages, not forces, you to play Civ in a realistic way. This is a massive improvement over Civ6's Age scoring, though a bit two-dimensional in presentation.

Bad

(See below for my fix suggestions) - Age Transitions: These are too manufactured/forced, they're not seamless, they're disruptive to the game flow, and they don't allow major in-game activities to conclude organically. Big miss here. - Intermixing Civs/Leaders: The intent to majorly evolve each Civ over the Ages is good and very welcome, but that does not necessitate re-Civ'ing every Age. Firaxis used a sledgehammer on this one and it's jarring. - Settlement Limits: This is a great idea masked by a bad mechanic. Civ7 is best played wide, hence the need to limit player expansion. However, a SetLim is an arbitrary value that acts more as a FunLim. - Mementos: Maybe these survived multiple stages of design cycles, but they're not serving to make the game better. These shouldn't be on the plate of a sustaining team of developers amid their other priority projects. Right now, they're just ensuring that I get nearly all of the map-drops for huge early advantages and an unbalanced leg-up on Suzerainties. Delete them entirely.

Polarizing

- No workers: I do not miss workers at all-- they were always gimmicks to be exploited, especially in Civ5; but, it's a big change for long-time Civ players. - Districts: I adore Civ7's districts, I think they make the game beautiful and unique with a set of districts for each situation. That said, I tend to skip a majority of districts because they enter the game far too late. That's lame. - All of my Deity games end before aircraft become relevant. That's a missed opportunity, but I'm also happy to avoid the late-game fatigue. This is clearly low-hanging fruit for future expansions. - Diplomacy is stupid-good and it's a problem (version 1.2.0). In every Deity game that I'm not rampaging my influence to the negatives, I easily get 80%+ Suzerainty on the map. With the free-Tech bonus, that's a balance problem. Otherwise, it's a very cool and fun mechanic that adds a lot of variety to each game. Night-and-day improvement compared to Civ5.

Other Common Topics

- Religion: I never cared for Religion in Civ games. It's never been done especially well. Religion is so unremarkable and uninteresting in Civ7 that it seems inevitable to get a dedicated DLC. I'm indifferent to it for now. - UI: Mod your game like every other serious Civ player. There are already a plethora of fantastic UI mods out there on CivFanatics. In a sense, I'm grateful the vanilla UI is so bad because it makes the modder's job easier - AI: Civ7 needs much more aggressive AI-- I get away with murder (literally) far too often. The AI is too skittish when it should be trying to wipe me off the map for offending it. - No Ghandi?!: Personally, I'm happy we don't have Ghandi yet because WMDs are not relevant in this state of the game.

Suggestions for Improvement

- Age Transitions: The conclusion of an Age should not be driven by Age victory conditions except in the final Age. Instead, they should be tied to a major ongoing in-game event. I.e. X-wars need to end, X-wonders need to be finished, X-Civ-specific-crisis needs to be "overcome", straightforward turn limit, etc. Ultimately, the Age-ending events should be international in nature, not domestic as they currently are. At the very least, the crisis should not be triggered by a percentage of Age completion and they should not all be the same length. - Intermixing Civs/Leaders: I'll address this from the vantage point that the game is what it is and can't be entirely reconstructed to suit my preferences-- Each Civ should have it's own specific challenges in its Age, requiring that Civ to overcome their historical collapse, whether brief or extended in its historical context. Overcoming collapse rewards the Leader with bonuses that wane in usefulness over the next Age. - Settlement Limits: The controlling variable should have been simple Happiness, not indirectly Happiness via SetLim. The calculation should have been based on a scale of Happiness penalties per number of Settlements, where increases to SetLim are replaced by a tiered Happiness bonus in each Settlement. Mechanically, it would be no different than the current game, except the player is interacting more directly with the chiefly important variable. It would be more fun and engaging this way. - Mementos: These should be replaced by a set of 1 Attribute point for each Leader specialty, plus 1 or 2 Wildcard points.

Comparing the Hex Civs

- Civ5: Civ5, I thought was too formulaic, even if a deeper game for now. There's a quality of character to Civ5 that Civ7 has not recaptured. I will probably not feel nostalgic for Civ7 when the next one comes out, but I'll always remember the late nights with Civ5. In Civ7, each Civ should have more of its own real history, good and bad, baked into its Age. An easy change could be to the Leader interactions. Civ5 did a great job presenting culture through Leader interactions, both visually and sonically. - Civ6: Civ6, on the other hand, is totally dead to me now. Civ6's micromanagement, excessive forward planning, and myriad of vestigial game mechanics are glaringly bad against Civ7. I may never boot Civ6 again.

Final Thoughts

Civ7 is a mess of ideas in varying stages of completeness; some so good, modded Civ5 is hard to go back to, and others so questionable that I wonder if this game was hampered by executive committee. At any rate, Civ7 still turned out to be a really good Civ game with a lot of room for expansion and improvement. A quick tip for other long-time Civ players out there: Try starting fully Random. I know in prior Civ games, especially Civ6, pre-planning and mapping everything out for your preset modded map was common. I tried to do that with Civ7 and it wasn't scratching the itch for me. Instead, go in blind and make it up as you go-- no game plan! This has been a lot more fun for me and has multiplied the replayability. Every game since has had its own unique seminal moments, usually through warfare, that make it memorable. Civ7, more than other Civ games, rewards opportunism.

I feel a bit mixed about Civ 7. I'm more of a role-player, city/realm builder type of player rather than a min-max, super optimized player. In short, it feels very much like an early access game, in that it is lacking a layer of polish that you would expect from a flagship strategy franchise. - The UI is buggy and inconsistent, and is clearly designed in a way for there to be minimal changes between the PC release and the console release. in theory this is fine, I love that console players can play Civ at release with PC players, but there needed to be more divergence between the two, rather than flattening everything for the benefit of the console release. It's difficult to find information, some menu elements are inexplicably large and others are small, and it's all a bit bland looking. - I'm still unsure about about the severing of Civs and leaders. I liked it in Humankind just fine, but there's something incongruent about it in Civ. This is strictly personal preference, I love that they tried something new, I can appreciate the gameplay problems they were trying to resolve with this change, and I am sure I will eventually grow to enjoy it (once more civs are added -- there's not enough on release) but for right now, as again a primarily roleplaying player, I feel like my immersion is broken by the Civ changing. I also kind of wish there was an option to keep your civ through different eras, like in Humankind. - I love their design philosophy of history built in layers, but I feel like this could go farther. I wish there were more visible remnants of your old civilization. When you age up, your cities and towns are all visually converted to their new style, except your unique distrcits/buildings/whatever. It would be cool if some stayed in the old style, in your older cities. - Lots of minor aesthetic quibbles. I feel like the color palettes of the leaders need some help -- some are quite visually pleasant to look at and others are super drab or their legibility is an issue. Civ 6 launched with some ugly civ colors, and they eventually fixed it, so hopeful these will be improved over time. Not to keep comparing this to Humankind, which I think is a fun but flawed game, but that game has such a strong and striking visual identity, and I wish Civ had copied more of that. I know some of this is taste, and also many people probably don't care, but I really liked the style/colors they landed on with 6, and I hope this will be tweaked. So much pale yellow and brown. Yuck. - The DLC strategy appears to be quite scummy. I'm not upset that Britain was held out versus other civs, don't really care specifically about that, but I do think the game needed to launch with more options. I know that between leader choices, plus each Era having different civs, that in theory there are so many possible combos that it's not as big of a deal that the roster is so small. On the one hand I agree with that, there are lots of combos, but on the other it's a bit weird to be loading up a new game and having such a minimal amount of options to choose between - just feels weird. - It feels like the information age was meant to be in the game and it's just ... not. Very strange. On the one hand, I hope they add it (in a free update), but on the other, I don't know what you do for civs, since the era also sort of seems encompassed by the modern era generally. - Why can't my scout auto-explore?? :( As for what I am enjoying: - I love that they tried several new things, even if they are not totally full-baked ideas just yet. In particular, I do like that each Era is distinct, I think this was a great innovation. - I love that the map is more visually interesting than 6. I didn't mind the saturation and style of 6 at all, but the map itself was so flat and boring compared to 5. I do wish the map generation logic was a little more tuned for believability rather than gameplay balance - it seems slightly better in 7, whereas in 6 it felt like I was spawning 2 tiles from snow to the north and 2 tiles to the desert in the south, and it was fairly immersion breaking. - I love that each civ seems to have pretty visually unique units that match their culture. The cities look great, even though they may not be super legible. - Combat seems to me to be improved, and I like the commander system here. - I wasn't sure about removing builders going in, but it's a change I really like. - The game has reduced micromanagement in many areas, which is great.

As a long-time fan of the Civilization series, I was eagerly anticipating the release of Sid Meier's Civilization VII. After spending several hours with the game, I have mixed feelings. The Good: Innovative Features: The new Era Shifts system adds depth, allowing civilizations to evolve in response to technological and cultural advancements. The dynamic Diplomacy System offers more complex interactions with other leaders, making alliances and negotiations feel more meaningful. Visuals and Sound: The game looks visually decent, and the sound design and music feel nostalgic and well done. Each civilization feels distinct, from lush jungles to sprawling deserts, and everything in between. The improved art style feels like a perfect balance between realism and the series’ trademark charm. The Not-So-Good: User Interface (UI): The UI is extremely poorly implemented on PC and is weirdly slightly blurry. Resources on the map are hard to spot, and the icons for pretty much everything look bad. Notifications are both annoying to click through and simultaneously disappear without any reason. Tactility and telegraphing normally communicated through sounds, camera adjustments, and musical cues are either missing or have regressed into some sort of minimalist alternative. In general, I have to agree with most criticisms on this game, that it feels console-first and hardly geared towards the PC user-base. Missing Features: Crucial, basic things are completely missing. You can't automate explorers. A lot of key commands either don't exist anymore or are completely hidden to the player, and you just have to try old combinations that you remember from other games. You can't queue your tech tree at all. There's no quick movement/combat. All advanced options to customize the map, start parameters, and overall game rules are just completely gone. Performance: On the Steam Deck, the game is mostly fine. The touchscreen functionality simplifies control inputs, though some functions were occasionally unresponsive and could be confused with bugs or misinterpretation of actions by the game's UI. The small screen sometimes led to losing track of units, which could be problematic during critical moments. While loading times were longer than desired, overall performance was steady, and graphics were visually pleasing, including the new fog of war system. Final Thoughts: Sid Meier's Civilization VII introduces some exciting new features and maintains the series' charm. However, the UI issues and missing features are significant drawbacks. I'm hopeful that Firaxis will address these concerns in future updates. For now, I recommend waiting for patches before diving in. Pros: Innovative features like Era Shifts and dynamic diplomacy. Visually appealing with a nostalgic soundtrack. Cons: Poorly implemented UI on PC. Missing key features from previous installments. Performance issues on certain platforms.

Update after 14 hours: I have now tried a few saves in a few different settings and key points I enjoy are: -Age Transition. I didn't think i would like it- but transitioning from Rome to Normans with castles and Knights felt natural and thematic -Commanders. These guys are great. They make war feel a lot more intuitive. I love unloading them in a defensive line at a city gates. -Diplomacy. The new system of making Diplomacy a currency really helps with the strategy of deciding where you want to spend your points. On friends, foes or maybe even city states. -Graphics. I like the detail on the new units. The clouds floating above the map are a nice touch, -Music. Great soundtrack. Brings you into the vibe of Civ. -New Civ Trees. The Civ trees that are unique to each civ are a nice touch. I like this. It makes it feel like civ choice is more impactful. I am now running on Linux Native and it seems to be a bit smoother than via proton. My saves moved over easily. Original review: This reminds me of Civ 5. It abandons many systems from 6 I did not care for such as loyalty and governors. The addition of Commanders makes forming , maintaining and moving armies nicer than it ever has been. The graphics and animations of the leaders are a step up from 6. The new soundtrack is very good. I just finished my first war and wiped out another Civ. The happiness mechanics from 5 make a return and now my Civ is rioting. Peak Civ. I am running this on Linux under Proton (not native) and it runs very smoothly and has not crashed for me once.

After 200+ hours I have a good feel for the game and its time to write a review (my first review on steam!). Graphics: (+) Very nice overall. You can create some really cool looking cities, towns, and landscapes. Very nice looking detailed units and building textures. (-) Pillaging/razing cities looks lame and its not intense enough imo. Too much detail was added to certain buildings for example showing small fountains that are hard to see unless zoomed in, but then little effort was put into cities burning. This could have been done on purpose due to system specs/performance, but it is one of my observations that I dont like. (-) Disasters are meh looking, small, and lack intensity. Also happening too often (volcanoes erupting or floods happening every three turns?). (-) Battle animations seem to stop after hitting end turn. I really like the animations, but on next turn everything seems to halt. What was once a big battle has suddenly stopped... (-) Civs appear to lack flags and emblems especially on units. You get more of a feeling of red versus blue rather than civ 1 versus civ 2. Some colours are really hard to distinguish. Sound: (+) music is good and sounds as if it adapts with the civ that you play. Excellent battle sound effects. (-) the battle sound effects seem to dampen in the background over time. With the music set down to low and sound effects all the way up, the battle sounds go very quiet to a point where war feels not as intense. Civs & Leaders: (+) There are quite a few civs and leaders to choose from for the different ages and they all differ somewhat in play styles. Some of the leaders were done well (Xerxes imo ... the military one). While transitioning between ages, there are enough civs to make a historical connection (not 100% though, but with DLCs the gaps will be filled). (-) I am not a fan of leaders leading civs that are not historically linked - it gives off a strange feeling in game and I cannot connect with a civilization (ex: if HT can lead Rome .... weird ... time to restart). I tend to pick the civs I go against only often to be disappointed later with their automatic choice at the next age (I want Napoleon to go Rome-Norman-France, but he chooses something bizarre, which doesn't feel right). My thought on this was that it was a poor attempt by the company to add diversity to the gameplay meanwhile butchering/at the cost of immersion. AI: (+) the AI works "ok" and personally on Sovereign difficulty I find it a decent setting. (-) AI is easy to manipulate. It is very predictable especially if you pay attention to the leader traits. Higher difficulty setting doesn't make AI smarter, but rather gives them more resources. AI settling across the map without strategy is a problem, but this apparently will be fixed soon. Legacies: (+) good idea if they were implemented properly. They can be fun and add purpose to each game / curve balls. (-) legacies feel enforced and remove the sandbox experience. Forcing "exploration" in exploration age is tedious, repetitive, and flat out boring. Expansion in the original continent/area is not rewarded and forces you to "explore" to the new world only to find nothing exciting. Other: (+ & -) One of my most fun things to do is plan out cities and I do this with a pen and paper since the UI is ... well ... I think you all read enough comments about it. I figured out how the system works and have been building cities quite well. Obviously there is no UI to really help you do this hence the positive and negative.... (---) Several minuses to maps. I cannot stand the maps in this game. They are balanced, predictable, and boring. This is by far my major negative. No pure tundra areas, or desert, or mountain areas. its a splash of them all everywhere, almost evenly distributed for all civs. This really hurts replay-ability. It is supposed to be fixed next patch and I hope they do a good job as this is a really big game changer for me. "Explore the new world in the exploration age only to find the same land evenly distributed" YAWN. Not every single shore on the map has to have a beach like in Cancun, Mexico. (-) Age transitions are not all that smooth. I personally don't mind the age transitions and like the idea (civ7 did it better than Humankind), but you do feel at times as if something that you built is suddenly gone and you are are asked to repeat again in the new age (units disappearing, wars ending, lack of historical connections). (+ & -) Battles are better than previous civ games, but I still think battles in Humankind were a bit better due to terrain/positioning. The leaders in civ 7 add a bit more depth to battles, but regardless battles tend to be too quick and easy. I think that units do too much damage and usually its the same battle strategy of having your 2-3 units focus on one to kill it quickly and then rinse and repeat (forget those battle animations as there is no chance to see them). Leaders only gain experience through battles. It doesnt feel worth it to spec them in another skill tree aside from aiding battles since you need to fight to gain experience! do these devs even play this game to notice this? (-) Resources feel useless. In Humankind, if you wanted to build cavalry you needed a horse resource (makes sense right?). I love this idea and concept as it required you to think about where to settle your towns or conquer others for resources, or as a last option to trade for them. Civ 7 resources are completely a joke and have no meaning aside from earning legacy points. The +1 damage for (choose your unit here) is lazy and stupid. If I recall correctly, this is to be fixed down the road.... (-) The game is too pricey for the quality in what was released. I think that I got my moneys worth since I spent 200+ hours on it and with the deluxe version I think that I am covered for probably the next 1-2 months :P, but I can see that many people will be upset with the quality of the game for what you pay for. (-) Another negative is the lack of innovation. The overall concept of the game was taken from Humankind, and although done better, the game play is rather dull. The legacy points system is very linear, forced, predictable, easy to manipulate, and repetitive, which imo also makes the game feel more like a mobile game and completely "dumbed down". The sandbox gameplay is non-existent. (-) Ill stop here with a last negative. The company planned DLCs knowing the issues with the release....The game was stripped of basic features implemented in previous versions of Civ games, but deemed by management as acceptable to release only to fix them later via patches or paid DLCs. I can accept bugs in a new game, but dirty and shady sales tactics leave a bad taste in my mouth... (no comment on multiplayer as I did not try it) OVERALL: the game is fun. I would strongly recommend this game on sale. This game will get much better with time, but there are currently many issues and we will mostly likely all have to pay a lot of money going forward to get a stable and balanced product. The current formula/foundation of the game is cool, but there is a lot of work to be done to make it enjoyable and re-playable. If you made it this far, cheers for reading my review. On a final note, I am happy with the current status of reviews/ratings of the game as I feel they are very accurate. IMO this game is a 6/10, but for shady sales tactics and disrespect to its customers it loses points, so its a negative review from me.

TLDR: Bare bones shouldn't have been released in its current form needed more time to add basic features, ESPECIALLY for this egregious price. Mechanics are fine and change is necessary and will always divide the community at the start (civ 5 to 6), this isnt my problem. My problem is there is 0 customisation to the game your about to play, I can't change resource distribution, change my map size beyond 3 types (really...) or even pick something as basic as a f***ing map... really theres no variety in map choice. Don't even get me started on no quick combat or quick movement, makes the game feel clunky... let alone this awful UI. Game needed another 3 months to add these basic features, anyone who uses the excuse 'early access' for the exclusion of the most basic features is deluded. I haven't even mentioned some game play flaws as largely I expect these with an early access same with the bugs and crashing that does occasionally accompany this game. 4/10 Edit 1: Just won on 20fps with a 4080 might I add (Late game performance is utter S**t) and there isn't even the famous 'One More Turn...' button, incredibly disappointed again

I have close to 100 hours in civilization 7 so I think it time I deliver my review. Now to start this off I am having fun with this game obviously. However I 100% understand the concerns of the people who are upset. I think this game came out too early. It needs at least 2-3 more months of polish and QoL fixes.But when I see why the game is released the way it is, I will not blame the devs. I honestly think they care about this game and really they did put their heart into it. The different culture units are nice, the animations are great, the music is good, etc etc. I think we all know what the problem here is and it’s the publisher 2K. So I am going to get right to it and just be upfront and talk about the fun topic. I'm talking to you 2K in part 1, 2, 4, and 6. You want to fix this review mess and want to restore the faith that so many people lost with this product? Here is what you have got to do and you're not going to like it. But trust me when I say you will see more profit with a happy player base then an upset player base. Other than fixing the UI issues and some QoL stuff we are missing like more maps, auto explore, one more turn, etc, and etc. 1. Release Crossroads of the World Collection and Right to Rule Collection for free for all owners of the game as FLC in an update. 2 Add some very important leaders that we are missing as FLC. Gandhi and Genghis Khan come to mind for this. 3. Add the ability to remain the same civ each era. This is not an easy fix as so many assume it is. It can be done but I believe it is going to take the devs some time to find a proper solution to please mostly everyone that has an issue with this. I don’t think adding a legacy mode where you only get your civ bonus in a certain era is the answer though. 4.For people that brought the deluxe and founders edition give them the Oct DLC for free. I am assuming we are getting the 4th era the “Atomic Era” around that time. 5. Clean up the era transition a bit with some QoL and some additional options for players that can enable or disable wars ending and armies teleporting and disbanding if you don't have room for them all when you get to a new era. 6. DO NOT, and I repeat DO NOT, release leader and civ bundle with a $30 price tag. With 2 leaders, 4 civs, and 4 natural wonders at most I and I am sure many others are willing to spend is $10-$15 max. Don’t make those dlc worth almost half the price of the base game. If 2K and the Devs did all that then I am almost 100% sure most of you reading this would be happy. Clearly not everyone will be, but we don’t live in a world where you can please everyone. Now for the Devs a few more things of note. 1. Please add some more voice lines for the leaders. Hearing them mumble and grr when I interact with them is very off. I want to hear when England is back about me being “interested in a trade agreement with England.”. Don’t kill the meme pls. 2. I talk a little bit about the era system above but I do think we need a grace period once the era hits 100%. Like 5 or 15 more turns. Maybe make it a setting too? 3. I know not many have mentioned this yet but I strongly feel ageless buildings that have an improved version of itself in the next era should just be built over the weaker version of said building if you have it already built in said city. There is one reason I want this and it is because towards the end game I have so many tiles in my cities that are urban and barely any rural tiles (unless I have a lot of water tiles), but a lot of these ageless building buff rural tiles. It is a strange design choice to me. 4. Religion needs some more work. It feels off. We can only get a pantheon and use said pantheon in the first era, then we get to the second era and unlock religion, which we then lose when we get to the third era. Need work. 5. There might need to be some general adjustments to how fast players score era points. Some of the exploration era games are ending in turn 56-57 which is just a bit fast. Though I notice the issue in the modern age too. 6. I would like the option to have a custom difficulty mode that I can hand pick what bonus the AI gets. I don’t really like personally giving the AI units bonus damage for example. 7. Rework the settling to close to a capital relationship modifier. Really it strange at times. I had a game where my second city was like 5 hexes away from my capital and all the AI had this opinion modifier….like what? Just rework it slightly. 8. I would like to see razing not add war support to all my current wars and future wars in that current era. Instead give the player that I am razing the city some war support for our current war. I am done now. Ill give this a yes for recommendation but should be in the middle of yes and no. Just consider some of the things I mentioned 2K.

The user interface, especially things like the tech tree is absolute trash, even the labels of tiles or cities are awfully designed. Core mechanics seem decent enough.

Look - the fundamental changes in Civ 7 are fine. These games need to innovate and change in order to evolve. It was the way with 4 to 3, 5 to 4, 6 to 5 and so it is here, and that is absolutely fine. The game plays alright from my 20 minutes as of writing. However.... The negatives that should *never* be sacrificed are: - UI for PC. It is unfortunately very poor here and feels ported over from console in the worst way possible. Why do I have to cycle through each individual map type in game selection instead of being able to see a list of details? Civ 6 had this aced? Firaxis, this is a huge step backwards here. Let alone navigating through the settings menu... It's atrocious. Why can I not choose my own resolution UI scale? I play on Ultrawide - I should be able to scale everything down by roughly 20%. - Narrow selection of Map types to choose from - literally 3 or 4. And the biggest map size you can go is... Standard. Really, Standard? That's where you chose to put the limit? Based on those two items below I am pretty close to refunding and getting the sea legs on. I think KCD2 deserves the money here more than Civ. Edit: The Developer response is somewhat reassuring. However it doesn't change the fact that at this price point it feels like a kick in the nuts. @CivGame I hope that the UI changes for PC are fast tracked extremely fast. Thank you for responding. I appreciate the discourse some of us have been having here in the comments, but to the morons that can't see past the 0.4 hours: the UI Is the main form of "game-interaction". If the UI is not on the same level or better than it's predecessors or competitors in the market, then it is a no go from me. I have made this decision extremely fast because I have exposed myself to various games that do it well, Stellaris, CK3, Total War, Zomboid, Civ 5 and 6 etc. There are other games that I can and will play until this gets addressed.

this game is absolutely fantastic with just one fatal flaw: Im not able to rename cities and i personally believe it is my god given right to rename a captured city "poopy fart" to shame them

Like all masterpieces, this game is simply not appreciated in it's time. Allow me to explain why this game is a true masterpiece. Upon starting the game you are greeted with a (future Oscar winning) cut-scene. Allow me to set the scene - a nondescript Asian farmer is working a primitive plough led by an ox. As he works he stumbles across a magic sword located three inches under the ground. We know the sword is magic because despite being in the top-soil it has somehow eluded the farmer literally every other time he ploughed this field until now. He holds the sword up in the air, and at that point I couldn't control myself, I stood up and screamed at my computer "GAME, I MUST KNOW! WHAT IS THE BACK STORY OF THIS SWORD?" and let me tell you - Firaxis did not disapoint. The sword was on a boat used to cut a rope, it was on a horse being ridden by a guy who then traded it for gold, then it became a rifle for some reason. After this beautiful montage the game hits you with possibly the biggest plot twist in Civ history ---SPOILER ALERT--- the Man, wasn't living in the past, but was actually living in the future!... Unbelievable.. Just... Wow, Christopher Nolan take a seat we have a new master at the helm. Now, onto the game itself, the Interface is a work of art. Firaxis have - amazingly, made the interface both larger and more obtrusive, whilst containing way less relevant information than previous games. Bravo! The game knows exactly what you want, and it's not stupid shit like yields, or statistics, who needs that? that shit is for nerds, you're not a nerd are you? Gone are the horrible tool tips from Civ 6 that were unobtrusive and also voice acted. Massive un-closable text windows located smack bang in the middle of your screen are the new meta. The minimise button has also had a revolutionary rework - and this is truly groundbreaking - clicking the button changes the text to say CLICK TO OPEN whilst not actually minimising anything! the window remains smack bang in the middle of your screen, Bravo! All the familiar leaders are back, Everyone from Ibn Battutat to Jose Rizal to Harriat Tubman, household names that we all know and cherish. They've also added not one, but two Napoleons and two Xerxes (Is the plural for Xerxes Xerxii?) Renaming cities has been upgraded by removing the ability to do it. Renaming a city is whitewashing history and everyone who did it was undoubtedly Alt-Right. The Dev's have chosen not to include team-game Multiplayer, clearly this is a reflection of our capitalist society where no two nations ever work together. A true masterpiece, truly worthy of being $20 more than every other AA games.

If you love the Civilization series, buy this game—but keep in mind that it’s still in its alpha stage. Pros: ✅ New game systems like the removal of workers, evolving your civilization through the ages, commanders, etc. ✅ A better combat system. It still needs adjustments, but warmongers will be happy. ✅ Simpler and more effective diplomacy. ✅ Don't want to deal with barbarians? Use influence to ally with them, pay them to attack other civilizations, or even buy their cities. ✅ The graphics are a feast for the eyes. Cons: ❌ Too many bugs. The worst one I encountered: I was playing on LAN with my girlfriend. We started a new game, played for hours, advanced to the next age—then suddenly, her game state reverted to a previous save from an entirely different game we played yesterday. The AI and I were progressing normally, but she had yesterday’s leader and everything else from that session, as if her past game had merged with our brand-new one. There was no fix, and it wasted hours of gameplay. We had to restart. ❌ The worst UI I’ve ever seen in a Civ game. Nothing is clear, and nothing is explained properly—especially when making decisions. You have to experiment and learn through trial and error, making informed tactical choices only in future playthroughs. Even basic interactions, like clicking on a city to manage it, cause UI elements to overlap or disappear. The city name itself vanishes. Texts and design elements overlap, making everything a mess. ❌ Awful color choices. When expanding your city, the tiles you want to select appear in a dull gray, making it difficult to make tactical decisions. ❌ NO FAST MOVEMENT / FIGHT OPTION ❌ NO HOT SEAT OPTION ❌ NO Auto-Exploration option for scouts! ❌ This game is unfinished. ❌ Did I mention the UI will drive you mad? Final Thoughts: Buy this game only if you’re willing to wait for fixes, truly love the Civilization series, and can tolerate the bugs for now. But if you ask me, this price is WAY too high for a AAA game in such an unfinished state—with this many bugs and a terrible UI design. Note to Developers: We are not your free beta testers. We are consumers and we're paying for this game to have fun. Boosting up your game and building up hype over social media won't save you from your bad decisions. Fix this game, this is your last chance for your brand. Bad release, even for other civilization standards.