When I first read the reviews of Civilization VII, I wasn’t surprised that they were not great. Everyone has a favourite Civ game, and all the others are always worse because they aren’t your favourite. I’ve been playing Civ and interacting with fans of the series for long enough to know how this cycle works, a new one comes out, people complain, and end up still enjoying it down the road.
This time though, feels different. Going into this review in that headspace, I expected to find things I wouldn’t like, but assumed that like anything they would grow on me over time or I would learn to appreciate what they were trying to do. That hasn’t happened. This time, I’m on board with the negativity towards this entry in the series. For lack of a better word, Civ 7 is just, boring.
Let’s start from the beginning to add a little context. You start off by selecting a leader, each of which has various benefits and unique abilities. You’re able to unlock new ‘mementos’ over time which increase the effectiveness of a leader. You then select a civilisation to start playing as. That’s right, this time leaders aren’t directly connected to a civilisation. There are some limitations, around historic links and such, but through gameplay you can pretty much mix and match each civilisation with each leader to create unique combinations.
It’s not the worst mechanic, and as an afficionado for the Age of Wonders series, having some flexibility over your paths isn’t too bad. It does somewhat weaken the difference between each faction though, as you can’t really master a specific faction anymore due to the options available. Before I talk about the general mechanics, I have to get on to the biggest one – and it’s the one which has caused the most controversy – the ‘Ages’ system.
After a set number of turns, or after certain conditions have been met, you progress from one age to the next. This is a bit like how era’s worked in previous games, though this time it’s quite different. You start in the antiquities age, before moving on to the Exploration age and finishing at the Modern age. Each age soft-resets your game. You lose most of your units, trade routes, relations with independent city states, etc.
You then pick a new civilisation to play as which is more accurate to that age of history. You unlock them through completing various conditions during the previous age, for instance filling in over eight resource slots grants you access to the ‘Ming’ civilisation. There are also a handful which connect to your ruler more directly. This mechanic, is what breaks the gameplay loop for a lot of players and is something I cannot get on board with.
Due to this mechanic, it essentially makes each age a game of its own. Building up a massive army in antiquity is essentially pointless, unless you aim to use it in antiquity, since you’ll lose it when the ages change. Racing forward with scientific advancements to gain massive advantages in late-game doesn’t work because the tech tree resets too. You do unlock a few legacy traits and advantages for the next age depending on how well you played the previous one, but essentially it puts everyone back to an even footing. You retain your cities, but most of the buildings are pointless now and need to be overbuilt into newer versions.
This is the biggest problem with Civilization VII and I’m not sure it’s one they can fix. There are some other niggles I have, around how combat works, some of the menus not showing much, that sort of thing. However all of those bits can be sorted in patches or expanded with DLC. But the ages mechanic is absolutely core to the gameplay loop of Civ 7. Without this mechanic, the game basically wouldn’t work, everything revolves around it. They really would have no way of simply changing this, the only thing I can think of is they hastily add a new ‘classic’ game mode which goes back to the old style, but I’m not sure if they are willing to admit defeat that easily.
In terms of the general gameplay mechanics though, they all work fairly well. You settle new cities like you used too, this time there are no builders – each tile can hold a building which you build from your city directly, including province improvements. Urban tiles can hold multiple buildings, and rural ones have more specific improvements related to that terrain. When your city grows a population, that is when you are able to build on a rural tile which expands the city range, or add a specialist to an existing one. Placing buildings is key as most have some kind of bonus to other buildings depending what they are situated alongside.
Exploration is pretty much the same it always was, you send out scouts and they reveal the map and find things. There are independent city states, which you can befriend using ‘influence’ a currency specific to diplomatic activities. You can trade with other civilisations via trade routes, use espionage to hinder them, and work on projects together which give various bonuses. Combat is more revolved around commanders now, which give benefits to the troops around them, but hasn’t evolved significantly from previous entries.
In terms of completing a game, you have to progress through the ages and gain victory with Culture, Military, Science or Economic. Each age you progress down a ‘legacy’ path, which has various objectives to complete to further you down that victory route. For example, to gain a culture victory, you have to build a number of wonders, uncover artifacts and present them in a museum, etc. Because these are tied to each age, it does feel like the game pushes you down one of the paths early on and expects you to stick with it, it doesn’t feel like there’s much room for adaption.
The presentation of the game is great, the graphics are really nice, the UI is sleek, and the music is as epic as it’s always been. Unfortunately, I just don’t think I can recommend this one. The culmination of the ages system means you tend to focus inwards in the antiquity and exploration ages, only looking outwards in the modern age. By that point, your cities are so large and you probably have so many of them, that the game becomes a bit of a clicking simulator, you click to expand each tile, click on a miscellaneous building, click on some technology. You are just clicking through to end the turn and get to the victory that you’re going for, you’re not really playing the game or engaging with the world anymore.
It doesn’t feel like there’s the strategy element anymore, you don’t conjure up grand plans for how you want your civilisation to progress early on, you simply think about which victory path you want to go down, and just build and research according to that specific path. You want a culture victory, just build culture buildings and culture units. Science victory, science buildings, rinse and repeat. It’s lost the magic I’m afraid. For once, I agree with people – this is a big step back for the series. It’s the best looking one yet, but it’s the worst game of civilisation.
You can purchase Civilization VII on Steam here.
