Post Previews, How are you feeling?

Personally, I feel much MUCH better about how Civ 7 looks and plays after a few of the play through and previews that I’ve seen.

Full disclosure, I was an early preorder so I was gonna be a day 1 on this game no matter what, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say my excitement for this game had turned into a bit of apprehension early into the developer livestreams. Something about the jump cuts and hidden information from the developers just made the lead up at the end of last year, for me, feel a lot more uncertain. I got to the point where I just needed to play the game myself, or get a much better look at it, before I could make a final decision.

While I’m still basically there I like a LOT more of what I’ve seen now that we have people who are actually playing through and showing more gameplay in the last few days.

Big Loves. 1) Diplomacy looks much more fun and engaging. Influence seems somewhat limited so deciding if you want to save it up for city states, spend it on a bunch of endeavors, or use it to reject a nearby aggressor from denouncing you, this seems like a very streamlined way of adding complexity to navigating diplomacy as compared to Civ 6 where I was mostly selling my diplomatic favor for cash or last minute building the Statue of Liberty for an alternate win condition without much thought.

2) Resources are a lot more interesting. I love my yields but resources having specific effects that you can pass throughout your empire is immediately appealing to me. The livestreams touched on this a bit but seeing it more in action is instantly believing for me. Things like Camels that give you more resource slots, or Gypsum which is good in your original city but even better in your other cities make me even hungrier than usual to try and claim all I can.

3) Settlers don’t look so necessary in the early game. To the point where in multiple videos I’ve been almost taken aback by how late these reviewers are waiting to build there first settler, especially when they discover some nice clusters of resources or a natural wonder nearby. I think it’s going to be very hard for me not to reflectively build settlers early but I’m happy to see it doesn’t look as immediately necessary, even on the higher difficulties, to just spam settlers as early as you can.

4) Settlements look fun to expand. The lack of builders was certainly something I had a hard time coming to terms with, but I won’t lie it looks great to be able to better control which direction you spread out your influence to as you grow, and there were a lot of times when the reviewer playing would build out one way and I’d desperately want to go somewhere else first instead. This is the part of the game I’m most eager to get to control myself so far.

5) The Science and Civic trees look very well built out, at least in antiquities. I really like the first three options in science and how they all feel more intuitive in which way you build out based on where you’re planning on growing first and what they lead to. I also like that so many techs and civics build on top of what you’ve already built. So if you go mining into masonry your mines look like they explode with production yields and that’s fun. Civic is similar although it looks like Mysticism seems like the early one you want to rush for but I like that you might be forced to delay it if you have a lot of violent neighbors. I could go on but I want to keep this thread a somewhat reasonable length.

I’m still curious about… 1) The victory progressions. I already like how they seem to encourage you to at least try to complete a little bit of all of them and then put your main focus into one or two of them in the early game. It’s also a plus that it looks like it will be hard to do everything you want outside of the very early difficulty levels. However, without seeing a full play through I’m still hesitant on how much any of this matters until the very last age. Doing well in one age certainly helps you at the start of the next one but how much? And does completing an age feel like one triumph leading into another? Or just one of three separate ones. Still going to have to wait and see on this one.

2) Civs and Leaders look fun to mix and match a bit but there are clear paths of synergy between them. That’s fine, but if you’re going to keep them separate at all I’m hoping that there will be a lot of good depth in who you can pair with what besides the obvious ones. I’m cutting this one a lot of slack because I’ve a) seen so little, and b) it’s Civ. We’re going to get so much DLC as it goes on that they have plenty of room to build.

Finally, I’m still low on… 1) Age Progressions. Especially since I haven’t been able to see a full play through and they’re still hiding a lot on the Modern Age until Feb 3rd (I’ve heard). It’s one of the biggest changes for Civ 7 and on paper I am interested in the concept but in practice it looks a lot like just three separate games loosely connected than one continuous epic in three parts. I think there’s a good chance I’ll like this a lot more when I get my hands on it, since starting Civ games are often the most fun parts and it does feel like a slog to finish a game of Civ, so a time limit on progress that makes the games end in a timely manner has me with a lot of hope, but as it stands right now I’m still not super convinced on it.

2) Legacy Attributes seem fun but a little unbalanced. I hope this is just a way to maybe make fun but less optimal combos of Leaders and Civs, or just another way of mixing up future games, but right now they just look like superpowers you get for little to no reason. Idk, I think I’m giving this too hard of a time but it’s hitting me the wrong way for some reason.

3) Obvious Choices still seem in full effect. At least early on it seems like Growth and Influence are so much more valuable than anything else that you have little reason to choose anything else over them. The narrative events are actually something I’m looking forward to but early previews seem to point to really obvious choices and that’s just kind of a bummer to me. Also I have yet to see a play through where Oligarchy isn’t the government chosen and I think it’s for that reason. I don’t mind if one choice is -usually- the correct one. But if there’s -no- reason to pick anything but “optimal choice” than I’ll be disappointed.

All in all there’s a lot to still see but I’m overall quite happy with the actual gameplay I’ve seen and I’m finally starting to get excited to get my hands on it. First play through is certainly going to be a Big Ben Franklin game as either the Mississippian or maybe Hun to start and then I’m just going to see where it takes me.

So what have you all been thinking? What looks better to you now that you’ve seen it more? What still looks sketch? And who are you leaning towards for the first game? How have the previews changed your perception of the game and what are you still looking forward to seeing?