Sid Meier’s Civilization VII

[Unagi]

I started a new game with Tecumseh and I REALLY like him. I love Native American history anyway, and he fits my playstyle to a tee - militaristic and special ranged units. He also benefits from allying with independent states, which is an aspect of the game I ignored in my first playthroughs. Now I'm actively pursuing them, which has taught me a lot about how they work.

Nicaakiyakoolaakwe FTW!

[Exodor]

I abandoned my first game because I wasn't able to find a distant land settlement and was falling way behind militarily. But I didn't mind all that much since I had learned a lot since my first playthrough and wanted to retool my strategy anyway.

I abandoned my first game with Rome because it was still early and I had made a ton of mistakes. I started over on the easiest difficulty and just hit the Exploration era after steamrolling the AI. I'm thinking of starting over with the default difficulty just to get something of a challenge.

At least with Civ7 you get leader progress if you complete the first age so starting over isn't a total waste of time.

[Brian]

Game just crashed on me while transitioning from Ancient to Exploration age.
Will see where I end up on the restart.

[Max Peck]

This is a really long video, but I found it super helpful. This guy goes through almost every aspect of the game while actually playing and explaining why he's doing what he's doing. A lot of it may be a bit basic to Civ veterans, but the video is well indexed so you can jump around to the subjects that interest you. I thought he did a great job explaining the new features in Civ7 and how they work, as well as providing general strategy tips. He answered a lot of questions I had about how towns and cities work, how assigning resources works, how town specialization works, etc.

Just in case I'm not the only one that wants to "play along" with the video, the seeds for his game are:
Game: -746768429
Map: -746768428

[baelthazar]

For the first time, after almost 5 years, I tested positive for COVID. So my family banished me to my office, where I spent the entire day playing Civ VII. I was able to finish one game and start a new one. Here are my thoughts:

• This takes one of the best things I loved about Humankind and does it better, IMHO. I really enjoyed choosing a new civilization that was more accurate to the age that you were in, rather than assuming the ancient Babylonians would have survived for 3000 years of history. It also means you get some new stuff and new strategies. I also liked how the leaders were separate from the civilizations. I took particular glee in playing as Lafayette, leading the Americans while I was allied with Benjamin Franklin (accurate) leading the Hawaiians.

• This one is going to be controversial, but I also like the soft "reset" of having old age buildings become obsolete and your cities go back to towns. Let's face it, the modern age of Civ was always the worst age as the end game became a slog of just hitting "next turn" to complete the space project or to overcome the culture of your enemies. Now at least each age feels like you have some activity as you customize your towns, upgrade some to cities, and chart your path forward. I could see how some people will hate this, but I tended to enjoy the variety.

• I am not as scandalized by the UI as most of the people doing Steam reviews seem to be. It seems fine to me - I am not having trouble finding the information I need. That said, I am not the type of person that min-maxes every single building placement to ensure a perfect engine. There may be room for improvement but it is workable now. That said, it is more comparable to Civilization Revolutions (made to specifically work for consoles, like this one) and I can see the PC gamers angry at this.

• The age quests and legacies are fun and allow you to achieve victory in flexible ways. I had a few bugs in mine (and there are several unfixed bugs I found), but overall it worked well and incentivized focusing on one big thing while also doing a few smaller things.

• The AI seems dumb. I was playing at a lower difficulty (your tutorial game just sort of dumps you into a Small map at a lower level. Still, at higher level they also seem a bit passive. I got war declared on me a few times and they expand well, but their actions are not particularly broadcast so it is hard to know if they are working effectively towards the goals of the age.

• Bugs bugs bugs. I had Roman legions killed but the sprite stayed on the map, cities telling me they were building a fighter when they were really building the space victory project, crashes to desktop between ages, and other just random things. They have some bug squashing to do.

• There is a certain lack of clarity and maybe a slight lack of personality. For example, I could see people saying that the game is "simple" because it borrows the tile claiming and urban sector seen in Zephon and Endless Legend. But, if you dig deeper, you have "warehouse" tiles (the ones claimed but not built on) that give adjacency bonus to certain buildings (like granaries). This isn't explained well. You also have certain civs (like the Mississippians) with buildings that you can build on top of warehouse tiles (normally that switches them to urban tiles and kills their bonuses) which augment them. Again, it's not always as clear when you first play and the tutorial sort of leaves that out (you have to read tooltips). Other key things are also left out - like in the age of exploration saying "resources will generate treasure fleets" but you have to search to figure out which ones (for me, it was sugar). I assume there is a unique resource on each continent that serves as that, but it isn't clear. Or in modern age, when it says "generate railroad points" - well how and how many do I generate per turn? No clue. This all needs some clarity.

[wonderpug]

I'm probably going to watch that youtube tutorial soon, but in the meantime...

Can someone give me a tl;dr summary of how to decide if/when to turn a town into a city? And how I know what a good city/town ratio would be? Is it just a matter of how much micromanagement I do or don't want to have?

[Lassr]

I'm probably going to watch that youtube tutorial soon, but in the meantime...

Can someone give me a tl;dr summary of how to decide if/when to turn a town into a city? And how I know what a good city/town ratio would be? Is it just a matter of how much micromanagement I do or don't want to have?

I'm trying to grasp this also. The one thing I determined is if you have the funds to spare then upgrade. As a town you have to pay gold for everything, when it is a city then you can use your production instead of gold. Right now I am not earning as much gold per turn as I was in Civ 6, so gold is more of a luxury, and it can get expensive to pay to build everything in a town. Cost 400 to 750 gold to upgrade to city, and buying everything was costing well into the 1000s of gold.

I'll add that towns are good at just producing materials and gold, if you do not want to upgrade the buildings too much, you can use the towns as just revenue and material producers,

[YellowKing]

All production on Towns is converted to gold, and Towns can't produce anything - you can only buy units and buildings on them.

So the way I've generally been playing is keeping everything towns in the early game because the gold revenue stream can get substantial once you have a few Towns settled. Once I hit a point where my gold income is no longer as big a concern and I need to be able to produce at another location, I'll consider converting it. Also, counterintuitively the bigger the town, the cheaper it is to convert, so it behooves you to wait until the town is substantially grown before converting it.

As an example, in my Tecumseh session, I managed to get a Town settled far west of my initial city. I'm going for a Militaristic victory, so I wanted that town to be a front to be able to hit a hostile independent state nearby as well as surround my *cough* "ally" Isabella. As a Town, however, I can only spend gold to create military units there, which is not cost effective. So once it grew sufficiently large and I had gathered all the resources on it in range, I converted it to a City and started pumping out an army.

Likewise, if you were going for a Cultural or Science victory, you may want to convert one to be able to pump out buildings supporting that initiative. I don't know that there's a perfect ratio - I think in general you want to keep them Towns until you have a specific need for them to start producing.

There are also Town focuses that open up when you reach a certain size. That makes the Town stop converting production to gold, but it also provides an ongoing persistent benefit. For example, there is a farming focus that increases food production, mining focus that increases mine output, etc. I haven't messed with Town focuses all that much yet so I'm not 100% comfortable what the best strategy is with those.

You don't want to convert all your Towns to Cities, as you'll absolutely kill your gold income (I learned that the hard way).

[Lassr]

All production on Towns is converted to gold, and Towns can't produce anything - you can only buy units and buildings on them.

Guess I have not paid close enough attention, but is 100% of extra production (not use by town to survive) of food, mines, horses, etc, turned to gold? I was thinking excess was shipped to cities to use.

I'm thinking back to Civ 6 where materials like Aluminum were rare and if you had one city with aluminum it was shared by all cities.

Edit: I just realized when you say production, you are talking about the hammer icons, not the natural resources. I had a brain fart...

[raydude]

All production on Towns is converted to gold, and Towns can't produce anything - you can only buy units and buildings on them.

Guess I have not paid close enough attention, but is 100% of extra production (not use by town to survive) of food, mines, horses, etc, turned to gold? I was thinking excess was shipped to cities to use.

I'm thinking back to Civ 6 where materials like Aluminum were rare and if you had one city with aluminum it was shared by all cities.

From the Ultimate Beginner's Guide youtube video (above), in the "Cities Vs. Towns" section he shows in the UI for a town that it produces 9 production but those are all converted into 10 gold. The extra +1 gold is from a town hex tile that produces 1 gold. From this I'm assuming it's 100% of excess production.

I was also reading somewhere else that in later ages town basically become breadbaskets for cities - especially if most of the city hex tiles have been converted into urban tiles. Makes sense (think NYC getting its food from neighboring towns), but I'm not at that point yet, so I don't know if that's for all towns or towns that have been specialized into being food producing towns.

[msteelers]

How do you retire? I didn’t see that as an option. I also think I ran into a bug as I won a cultural victory with Augustus but didn’t receive any XP and there are several challenges that I definitely would have triggered but didn’t get credit for.

[ydejin]

How do you retire? I didn’t see that as an option. I also think I ran into a bug as I won a cultural victory with Augustus but didn’t receive any XP and there are several challenges that I definitely would have triggered but didn’t get credit for.

On the Xbox (and AFAICT on PC as well) “Retire” is hidden behind the “More Options” button on the main menu as is somewhat annoyingly the “Quick Save” button. I assume on PC there’s just a quick save hot key, but on the Xbox, you have to go to the menu, then d-pad over to the “Show More Options” and then d-pad down to the “Quick Save”, so it’s anything but quick.

[Brian]

Game just crashed on me while transitioning from Ancient to Exploration age.
Will see where I end up on the restart.

Restarted at the last turn before the transition.
Went on to complete a military victory, wiping out everybody on the map.

I tend to start most games with the mindset that I'm going to go for a science victory only to have some tyrant starting some shit and then I pivot to, "Oh, it's gonna be THAT kind of game, eh?"

[jztemple2]

I'm still on the fence, especially with Firaxis stating how many community feature requests they are intending to implement. However, I do have a question, can a player select an option that will require ALL players (including the AI) to go for only certain types of victory conditions? For instance, can I set a starting condition that limits all players to only a Conquest victory?

[Torfish]

I play really slow. Still on my first game and about 50% through the second age (Exploration). I've stayed away from tips and guides. Wanted to go in as blind as possible. Reading everything carefully. I'm about 10 hours in.

Antiquity Age: Seems like the main objective here is to get your 4 settlements spread across as much land as possible. Take as much land over as you can. Survival is also kinda tough with the Independents roaming around. I had multiple battles and even lost one of my own settlements to them. I had two cities and two settlements by the end of the age. Took me 170ish turns in this age. Wondering if that is normal? Also wondering if all the civs go into the Age transition at the same time. Looks like they do.

Exploration Age: Fun transition! The first 20 or so turns are fun in figuring out what is what in the new age. Thing get interesting with exploring the deep ocean, discovering new civs, and finding new land to settle on. I'm also battling one of the civs on my continent. Looks like it is going to take another 170 or so turns to get through to the next age. I'm having more fun in this age than the first one.

Overall thoughts so far: Very good! There's a lot to learn and a lot to ween off from my Civ 6 brain. For example, you can have multiple buildings on the same hex. Armies seem to be streamline with helping move multiple units around the map. I'm still getting the hang of how Urbans work. Religion seems very streamlined vs Civ 6. I can't say yet if that is a good thing. I love how Influence-Diplomacy works. Trading with Civs are much easier. There are lots of bugs, but I've yet to have one crash on the PC. The bugs are annoying but not game breaking. The pop-up menus need reworked. Seems like there's information not given to you like in Civ 6. Some weird quirks in battle animations need to be fixed. Probably my biggest gripe is how the game manages units that I want stationary. I always have to cycle through them every single turn. Annoying as heck.

I was disappointed at the start of my game. I did not get to select any of the normal game option parameters... map type, number of civs, AND DIFFICULTY mode! Are those things unlocked options?

[Baroquen]

I took me about 100 turns each in my two eras of first (and only) game. I'm curious how long it will take when I try a different type of victory condition.

And it looks like you're right about starting options. I was thinking that the game dropped me into my first round with some kind of "first-timer/tutorial' mode. But I just booted up and the only options you get are leader and age. That sucks. I bet that will eventually change but for the moment that's all there is.

[Unagi]

Probably my biggest gripe is how the game manages units that I want stationary. I always have to cycle through them every single turn. Annoying as heck.

Not sure if you missed it, but there is a little menu (small arrow pointing left) on the unit's control, where you can see a few hidden commands. There is sleep, sleep until healed, something else...

[Torfish]

Yeah, whoever thought of taking away all the cool parameters to setup a new game was drunk. I'm sure that will change if those options are not at least unlockable. They shouldn't even been locked.

[Torfish]

Probably my biggest gripe is how the game manages units that I want stationary. I always have to cycle through them every single turn. Annoying as heck.

Not sure if you missed it, but there is a little menu (small arrow pointing left) on the unit's control, where you can see a few hidden commands. There is sleep, sleep until healed, something else...

Thanks! I was hoping I missed something in the UI.

[YellowKing]

I’m not sure what you guys are talking about re: lack of customization options on a New Game. I’ve gotten difficulty and map options every time. Are you on PC or console?

Here's what I get after choosing Leader, Starting Age, and Civilization. In addition to the options below, Advanced Options gives you the ability to customize the AI Civs, lower disaster intensity, and change Age Length as well as seed the map.

[Max Peck]

I made some progress today and am currently well into the Exploration age, progessing from Rome to Normandy. I opted for a military dark age, reducing my holdings to my original capital but gaining 3 full armies (3 x calvary + 1 siege each). This had me running at a deficit, but embarking on a campaign of conquest got the budge under control. At present, I've swept away all competition on my continent and have my sights set on the Distant Lands.

The one annoyance I've run into today has been multiple crashes to desktop, but the autosave means that I haven't lost significant progress.

[Exodor]

I’m not sure what you guys are talking about re: lack of customization options on a New Game. I’ve gotten difficulty and map options every time. Are you on PC or console?

In previous games there were a lot more map options and larger maps were available. You could also fine-tune things like the abundance of resources, quality of starting locations and a whole bunch of other factors.

In Civ7 there are like 5 map options and the maps seem pretty samey. I'm hopeful they will provide more options or it will be mod-able.

[Max Peck]

Is there a way to see a list of all your units? I have a settler en route to a location, and I want to change the destination to something more suitable, but I can't find the unit and don't see any way to pull up any sort of overall unit view. I don't know if that's because there isn't one, or if I just can't find how to get to it.

[Brian]

I will say these new age transitions made me a little bit late for work today.

Usually when it's time for me to leave I'll just hit "save" and quit.
This morning it was, "well, only six more turns until the end of the age so I might as well wrap this up."

Which took another ten minutes or so.

Shakes fist at Sid Meier.

[baelthazar]

I’m not sure what you guys are talking about re: lack of customization options on a New Game. I’ve gotten difficulty and map options every time. Are you on PC or console?

In previous games there were a lot more map options and larger maps were available. You could also fine-tune things like the abundance of resources, quality of starting locations and a whole bunch of other factors.

In Civ7 there are like 5 map options and the maps seem pretty samey. I'm hopeful they will provide more options or it will be mod-able.

I also think the first game you play removes this option (at least I swear it did for me) and dumps you into a "Small map" learning game.

[ydejin]

New Patch for PC Players only. I assume this is because of the longer Console approval process. Lots of good changes listed, but not much UI stuff.

[ydejin]

Is there a way to see a list of all your units? I have a settler en route to a location, and I want to change the destination to something more suitable, but I can't find the unit and don't see any way to pull up any sort of overall unit view. I don't know if that's because there isn't one, or if I just can't find how to get to it.

Yes and no. There’s a list of all the units you have, but it’s not clickable so it won’t help you jump to a particular units location. I wouldn’t say it’s completely useless (I have used it before on multiple occasions to get an idea of what I’ve got on the board), but it’s a heck of a lot less useful than it could be.

It’s the same list as the one that shows all your cities and their yields. List of units is right below the city list. I’m not quite sure how to get to it on PC, but for Xbox it’s right-D-pad.

Another way to find your unit, which is also annoying, but should be doable is to cycle through all your units. On console if you have a unit selected, right and left bumper buttons will cycle through all your units including ones that are asleep. I’d imagine there’s a PC equivalent, but don’t know what it is.

[ydejin]

I’m not sure what you guys are talking about re: lack of customization options on a New Game. I’ve gotten difficulty and map options every time. Are you on PC or console?

In previous games there were a lot more map options and larger maps were available. You could also fine-tune things like the abundance of resources, quality of starting locations and a whole bunch of other factors.

In Civ7 there are like 5 map options and the maps seem pretty samey. I'm hopeful they will provide more options or it will be mod-able.

I also think the first game you play removes this option (at least I swear it did for me) and dumps you into a "Small map" learning game.

Yes, that’s the way I remember it too. I was actually planning to play on fast speed, since I got a big work project on going, and wanted to be able to get a full game in over the weekend. I didn’t see any options and instead immediately got thrown into the default settings game. But I stuck with it. Currently somewhere in the middle of Exploration Age.

[Max Peck]

Another way to find your unit, which is also annoying, but should be doable is to cycle through all your units. On console if you have a unit selected, right and left bumper buttons will cycle through all your units including ones that are asleep. I’d imagine there’s a PC equivalent, but don’t know what it is.

I didn't see way to cycle through units. I'm not sure if that's because there's a UI element that didn't jump out at me or if it's done via a hotkey. I'll check again the next time I fire it up.

[YellowKing]

One tip the tutorial video gave is to remap the next unit button to the "back" button on your mouse (I think default is Enter, so I never used it). Along with the default Space for skip turn, it makes cycling through unit turns MUCH faster.

[Max Peck]

One tip the tutorial video gave is to remap the next unit button to the "back" button on your mouse (I think default is Enter, so I never used it). Along with the default Space for skip turn, it makes cycling through unit turns MUCH faster.

The game defines the function as "Next turn" rather than "Next unit" so I haven't been using it because I thought it would end the turn.

Unfortunately it doesn't do what I need because it cycles through the units awaiting orders, but it won't skip to my settler because it is already following orders.

[Max Peck]

Yes and no. There’s a list of all the units you have, but it’s not clickable so it won’t help you jump to a particular units location. I wouldn’t say it’s completely useless (I have used it before on multiple occasions to get an idea of what I’ve got on the board), but it’s a heck of a lot less useful than it could be.

It’s the same list as the one that shows all your cities and their yields. List of units is right below the city list. I’m not quite sure how to get to it on PC, but for Xbox it’s right-D-pad.

I think I found that, but it's actually intended to show unit expenses, listing how many I have of each unit type and how much gold I'm spending to maintain them.

[ydejin]

Yes and no. There’s a list of all the units you have, but it’s not clickable so it won’t help you jump to a particular units location. I wouldn’t say it’s completely useless (I have used it before on multiple occasions to get an idea of what I’ve got on the board), but it’s a heck of a lot less useful than it could be.

It’s the same list as the one that shows all your cities and their yields. List of units is right below the city list. I’m not quite sure how to get to it on PC, but for Xbox it’s right-D-pad.

I think I found that, but it's actually intended to show unit expenses, listing how many I have of each unit type and how much gold I'm spending to maintain them.

Yep, that’s what I was referring to. Not useful in your situation, but in terms of “does Civ7 have a unit list” the answer is sort of yes. I think it is somewhat useful to keep track of what your balance of units looks like.

[wonderpug]

I'm enjoying the game, but right now my biggest complaint is combat involving my own units happening off-screen when it happens on computer turns. I often have no idea I've lost a scout, or that one of my armies has been attacked. The start-of-turn notifications list doesn't even give a summary of your units that got destroyed.

[Max Peck]

I'm enjoying the game, but right now my biggest complaint is combat involving my own units happening off-screen when it happens on computer turns. I often have no idea I've lost a scout, or that one of my armies has been attacked. The start-of-turn notifications list doesn't even give a summary of your units that got destroyed.

There should be a notification in that stack of icons that pop up on the left side of the screen, just above the command dohickie. One of my scout units just sacrificed themselves to provide an example. If you click on the icon, it will zoom the map to where the unit was lost.



Edit: Sorry, I meant the socialist side of the screen.

[Unagi]

(that's the right side of the screen)

[Brian]

[msteelers]

I’m also not a fan of the combat that happens off screen. I miss seeing all of the units moving across the map. I know that would be a nightmare in later ages, but at least let me see when my units are being attacked. I’ve had multiple scouts that have been damaged and I have no idea why.

[gbasden]

The carryover XP and leader XP is interesting, but it's mostly bland cosmetics so far.

The leader XP unlocks mementos, which can be super powerful bonuses. Definitely not just cosmetics.

[Pyperkub]

It's so weird that today is the official launch, despite seeing so many people playing it so far.

I usually bounce off of Civ games, preferring other 4x games, but I've been having a tougher time not buying this one, even tho I've never really gotten into any other Civ game. The "Shiny!" buzz has been loud for this one, even with a lot of the advance users' complaints. It feels like I've weathered the first launch week, when in fact it only launched today!