Octopus Overlords

Well, if you're going for a miltary victory, and Isabella's settlements are generating a lot of wealth (and railroad tycoon points) while her military is weak, then the ending sort of writes itself.

For anyone considering getting this on a console, I’m playing on a PS5 and it’s been pretty good so far. While I definitely miss a keyboard and mouse for this game, and have made mistakes because I was using a controller, it all largely works. I think if they get the UI issues fixed it should be a really seamless experience on consoles. The main issue is that they are prioritizing patches on the pc. They are up to patch 1.0.3 but console players are still on patch 1.0.1.

The thing works really well on the PS Portal too. A portable Civ game is turning out to be pretty dangerous.

msteelers wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2025 9:41 am The main issue is that they are prioritizing patches on the pc. They are up to patch 1.0.3 but console players are still on patch 1.0.1.

The Steam version is "1.0.1 patch 3" so I'd guess that the features are not all that different. The notes for patch 3 state that these are things they can fix quickly, so if the console patches are lagging, it's probably due to the additional certification requirements before they can be released rather than because Firaxis is prioritizing PC over other platforms.

Finished my first game this morning in an anticlimax. Hatshepsut going into the modern era as Mughal I quickly got the factories going and got to 500 point and needed to build the world fair. Which as the Mughal civics give, buy wonders with gold, I got to 500 point and next turn finished the game by buying the wonder. End game wonders probably shouldn't be buyable for gold (only 10,000 gold too).

Now to do game 2.

Things I miss (and probably already mentioned), is when a city finished production of something and you go to the city, it doesn't tell you what it just finished.
Explorers stacks, there were stacks of 5-6 going around for one civ, and then sitting on an artifact and not excavating it, so I could walk in with my one explorer and dig it up.
I miss being able to dam and stop floods and i didn't think i would, but i miss the electricity supply from 6.

Still, has strong one more turn effect with me.

Stefan Stirzaker wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2025 11:37 pm Things I miss (and probably already mentioned), is when a city finished production of something and you go to the city, it doesn't tell you what it just finished.

Completely agree. It’s just dumb. They’re missing a chance to give you a little adrenaline spike: “oh hey, I just built …” and instead you’re left wondering, “huh, I wonder what I was building here before”.

Explorers stacks, there were stacks of 5-6 going around for one civ, and then sitting on an artifact and not excavating it, so I could walk in with my one explorer and dig it up.

The claim on CivFanatics seems to be that every country with an explorer at a given dig site that starts digging before the first explorer digs out an artifact each get their own artifact. I don’t know if it makes logical sense, although I suppose if it’s a big dig site (say a major battle or an ancient city), there probably are multiple artifacts present.

I miss being able to dam and stop floods and i didn't think i would, but i miss the electricity supply from 6.

Completely forgot about dams until you mentioned it. Yeah, dams to prevent all that flooding even in Modern Age sure would be nice.

Still, has strong one more turn effect with me.

Same. I have some complaints, but overall I am quite enjoying my time with the game. Also fortunately most of the complaints can be fixed. I think overall the basic game design is very solid.

Stefan Stirzaker wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2025 11:37 pm I miss being able to dam and stop floods and i didn't think i would, but i miss the electricity supply from 6.

Gods yes. Especially since, for whatever reason, it seems on my PC the flooding sound effect is cranked way the hell up.

Even the wife mentioned it and said that hers isn't nearly that loud.

Playing on PS5 and struggling to access many of the menus/reports I’m pretty sure are in here.

For example, how do I get to a city details screen showing me what’s been built in the city? How about a summary screen showing what all my cities are currently working on?

These seem like basics, but I can’t find them.

When you're looking at the build/buy screen for one of your settlements, there's an icon up top, on the left side that looks like a sheet of paper. Clicking that opens a window on the right side of the screen, and the middle tab there will display a list of all the buildings and improvements in the settlement.



I don't recall there being a production summary showing what you're building in all your cities, but maybe I just missed it.

Max Peck wrote: Tue Feb 18, 2025 5:25 pm When you're looking at the build/buy screen for one of your settlements, there's an icon up top, on the left side that looks like a sheet of paper. Clicking that opens a window on the right side of the screen, and the middle tab there will display a list of all the buildings and improvements in the settlement.



I don't recall there being a production summary showing what you're building in all your cities, but maybe I just missed it.

Thank you! That is incredibly helpful.

Some of the UI design decisions here are really suspect. Even when I was looking for that - I could barely tell it was selected. The shading/highlighting is so subtle, it’s really easy to miss.

For sure - the UI is terrible. This absolutely needed more work before it was released. But despite the UI I'm definitely having fun with it.

gbasden wrote: Tue Feb 18, 2025 6:50 pm For sure - the UI is terrible. This absolutely needed more work before it was released. But despite the UI I'm definitely having fun with it.

Same here!

Here’s another one for you: On PS5, the search feature of the Civilopedia appears totally broken. You can search for stuff and the game returns results, but there appears to be no way to actually select the results.

Kurth wrote: Tue Feb 18, 2025 7:31 pm Here’s another one for you: On PS5, the search feature of the Civilopedia appears totally broken. You can search for stuff and the game returns results, but there appears to be no way to actually select the results.

This one has been apparently patched on the PC (for PC users using controllers). But we’re stuck without it (I’m on Xbox). From 1.0.1 Patch 3 notes:

Addressed an issue that some players reported experiencing with navigating the Civilopedia search results with a controller

Firaxis says we’ll see a Console patch in early March.

I hear you on the missing features. If you haven’t seen it, right-d-pad will bring up a list of all cities along with their money, production, science, happiness outputs and a list of units. No current production and not clickable, so a lot less useful than it could be.

Kurth wrote: Tue Feb 18, 2025 7:17 pm

gbasden wrote: Tue Feb 18, 2025 6:50 pm For sure - the UI is terrible. This absolutely needed more work before it was released. But despite the UI I'm definitely having fun with it.

Same here!

Same!

Any ability to see a summary of your military? Like what units do I own? Feels like that menu must exist somewhere, but where?

Sorry for spamming g so many questions. I’ve been googling all this stuff, but not finding any good answers.

Kurth wrote: Wed Feb 19, 2025 1:20 am Any ability to see a summary of your military? Like what units do I own? Feels like that menu must exist somewhere, but where?

Sorry for spamming g so many questions. I’ve been googling all this stuff, but not finding any good answers.

The same screen that shows your income/expenses includes a summary of what you're spending on military units, showing how many of each unit type that you have. There is no UI for actually managing the units, though.

As much as I’m enjoying Civ 7, I do feel like I’m fighting the UI at every step. I don’t get it: Did Firaxis fire everyone who made the prior games?

I’m completely down with trying new concepts (ages, towns, city building, etc.), but it’s almost like they forgot how to provide the player with a basic user interface. It’s great to have a deep, complex game like Civ 7 where there are tons of decisions for the player to make, but if you don’t provide the information the player needs to make those decisions . . . It leads to a very frustrating experience.

Basic UI stuff that has always been in a Civ game is strangely missing:
- Where’s my summary screen showing what all my cities are currently building?
- Where do I see what a city last built? It takes many, many turns sometimes to complete an build, and when it’s done, you have know way of knowing what you just built. There’s no announcement. There’s no notice on the production screen. Just an alert that you need to build something else in that city.
- Where’s the war summary screen showing you units killed/lost?
- Where’s the screen telling me about my current forces? Like, how many of each unit?
- Where’s the screen showing war weariness and what’s impacting it?

It feels like this list could go on and on, and I just don’t understand it. This feels like it has the makings of a great Civ game. I think some of the substantive changes to game mechanics may end up being really cool. But the terrible UI is killing me right now.

Some UI mods already out, in this collection:

These Civ 7 PC mods come courtesy of the CivFanatics community, which has jumped the gun on Steam Workshop integration and Nexus Mods listings with myriad options to try out. Keep in mind that, as with any modding, your save games can break. It's generally rare, but I can't go any further without telling you to be wary when doing any game modding. Here are the four best Civ 7 mods (so far) that you should try first.
1. Sukritact's Simple UI Adjustments

More here.

Firaxis has already issued a patch to address a few of the complaints about the UI and I suspect there will be more coming, but in the meantime you might check out Sukritact's Simple UI Adjustments. I haven't tried it myself yet, but it's got nothing but 5-star ratings in the forums. Here's a quick rundown on its features:

Diplomacy with other Civs and IPs can now be initiated by clicking on the city banner (provided you have met them).
Plot Yield icons are smaller on tiles that are not improved/worked
Tooltips are enhanced.
The default improvement is now shown on unimproved tiles.
All Constructibles now display their icon.
Wonders receive a large fancy icon with description.
Buildings now note if they are damaged or in-progress or ageless.

Those UI mods look great . . . for PC players! I'm playing on my PS5, however, so it looks like I'll have to wait for the promised March console patch.

In other news, I finished up my first Age of Antiquity, completing the golden age for science and coming very close in military, economics and culture. I was confused and thought that the age transition happened as soon as you hit any golden age, but now I realize that isn't what triggers the end of an age (still not clear what does). On transition, I went from Ben Franklin of the Romans to Ben Franklin of the Normans. The age transition was really interesting, and seeing it actually happen made much more clear how the legacy paths work and what I should be aiming to accomplish in Antiquity.

Now, do I move on to the Exploration age, or save this game and restart with a different leader in Antiquity again? Decisions, decisions.

As I understand it, there are a certain number of turns in each Age. Certain actions advance the clock, reducing the number of turns left. Depending on what has gone on so far, achieving the last goal for a track might bring the age to an end or if other milestones haven't been hit it might not.

I ended up winning a game in the Exploration age because Harriet Tubman forced my hand.
She declared war on me (holy crap is she aggressive!! I haven't had a game yet with her in it where she didn't start a war) and the other Civs joined her which made it everybody against me.

It was a poor decision on their part to ally themselves with Harriet as they only had two settlements each and were easy pickings. Harriet held out longer and tried several times to initiate a peace treaty but well, you sowed the wind, so to speak.

gbasden wrote: Thu Feb 20, 2025 2:41 pm As I understand it, there are a certain number of turns in each Age. Certain actions advance the clock, reducing the number of turns left. Depending on what has gone on so far, achieving the last goal for a track might bring the age to an end or if other milestones haven't been hit it might not.

Yes that’s exactly right. If you check the Age Percentage number in the top-left (on the trophy icon), if you’re playing on standard speed, you will get two turns for every one percentage of age progress. So assuming no one advances any of the Military, Culture, Science, or Economic Age Victory Conditions, you will get 200 turns at standard speed (if you create the fastest “online speed” game it advances 1% per turn, so 100 turns for an era).

However, advances on the various Age Victory Conditions also advance age progress. You can see these marked at the bottom of each Victory Conditions tracker. These are the points on the victory trackers at which you get benefit points you can take to the next age. The first Civ to hit any one of the specific victory milestones will advance the tracker. Other Civs reaching a milestone someone else has already reached do not advance the Age Percentage (although they will receive any benefits associated with that progress point).

Also if you completely wipe out an enemy that also advances the age progress considerably (IIRC 15%). I believe taking out their capital is fine, but completely wiping them off the map triggers age progress.

IIRC at 70% time Crisis events start hitting and they worsen as you get closer to 100%.

ydejin wrote: Thu Feb 20, 2025 5:30 pm

gbasden wrote: Thu Feb 20, 2025 2:41 pm As I understand it, there are a certain number of turns in each Age. Certain actions advance the clock, reducing the number of turns left. Depending on what has gone on so far, achieving the last goal for a track might bring the age to an end or if other milestones haven't been hit it might not.

Yes that’s exactly right. If you check the Age Percentage number in the top-left (on the trophy icon), if you’re playing on standard speed, you will get two turns for every one percentage of age progress. So assuming no one advances any of the Military, Culture, Science, or Economic Age Victory Conditions, you will get 200 turns at standard speed (if you create the fastest “online speed” game it advances 1% per turn, so 100 turns for an era).

However, advances on the various Age Victory Conditions also advance age progress. You can see these marked at the bottom of each Victory Conditions tracker. These are the points on the victory trackers at which you get benefit points you can take to the next age. The first Civ to hit any one of the specific victory milestones will advance the tracker. Other Civs reaching a milestone someone else has already reached do not advance the Age Percentage (although they will receive any benefits associated with that progress point).

Also if you completely wipe out an enemy that also advances the age progress considerably (IIRC 15%). I believe taking out their capital is fine, but completely wiping them off the map triggers age progress.

IIRC at 70% time Crisis events start hitting and they worsen as you get closer to 100%.

Hmm. In my first, in-progress game, I just got to the first Age transition around turn 184 (187 maybe?) and chose my new empire of the 4 that were unlocked (been playing as Xerxes) and just saved and shut down last night. Will finally get a chance to look at an Age transition when next I fire it up.

This thread keeps reinforcing my decision to wait a few months for some substantial patching and modding.

I bumbled blindly through the opening game of Humankind, then read a beginner's guide and watched some videos and tried again. Knowing what I was doing did not improve the experience, so I'm not going back to that.

I've barely got 1,000 hours into Stellaris so I'll hang out there in the interim.

With all it's flaws (bad UI, lack of QoL bells and whistles), I really do enjoy the game when I'm playing it. For now, the one-more-turn vibe is really strong, but that might largely be due to being focused on learning the game.

Kraken wrote:This thread keeps reinforcing my decision to wait a few months for some substantial patching and modding.

I bumbled blindly through the opening game of Humankind, then read a beginner's guide and watched some videos and tried again. Knowing what I was doing did not improve the experience, so I'm not going back to that.

I've barely got 1,000 hours into Stellaris so I'll hang out there in the interim.

Barely

Max Peck wrote: Thu Feb 20, 2025 11:16 pm With all it's flaws (bad UI, lack of QoL bells and whistles), I really do enjoy the game when I'm playing it. For now, the one-more-turn vibe is really strong, but that might largely be due to being focused on learning the game.

Same, but I have found that it’s hard for me to actually play. Every time I get started, I get stumped with a gameplay mechanic question I start googling for answers to (the Civilopedia is beyond useless 99% of the time). For example, I was just faced with a narrative decision where one choice would have given me 50 science and the other 50 food. I’m going for a science victory, so I’ve been maxing out on science stuff wherever possible. But I’m one turn away from completing the next tech, so my decision here is totally dependent on whether excess science rolls over to the next tech or not. I looked for an answer to that for a good 20 minutes and saw some weak suggestions that maybe it did roll over. So I went for it. And it does not appear to have rolled over.

I’m sure all this stuff will get figured out over time. But the late adopters are sure going to owe the early adopters who slogged through this to find these answers!

Grrraaawwwwghh!

I don't know if it's been mentioned already but how friggin' hard would be to put a bit of code in there that if I'm clicking and dragging the map, DON'T FUCKING JUMP if I happen to drag over the mini-map!

Every damn time, I'll be moving the map around just to see how/where things are going and I'll accidentally cross over the mini-map and WHAM! I'm somewhere on the other side of the map.

If I click inside the mini-map and THEN drag, sure, fine, whatever, but if I click OUTSIDE the mini-map and then cross the border over the damn thing, just ignore it and keep dragging the map where I'm at!

Not an issue for us console luddites.

But here’s one: What’s with Roman Legions? They appear as both the Roman unique Antiquity Tier 2 infantry unlocked at Bronze Working AND as the Roman unique Antiquity Tier 3 infantry unlocked at Iron Working. That can’t be right, can it? I spent a bunch of gold upgrading my Bronze Working Legions to Iron Working Legions and . . . No impact whatsoever. Bug?

Also, on base PS5, I’m experiencing more crashes in Exploration Age than I did in Antiquities. It’s tolerable now (one or two reloads required per long gaming session), but I’ve got a nagging concern this is going to be more and more of a problem as the game expands through the Modern Age.

Finally, warts and all (and there are many), I’m full-on addicted to this game like I haven’t been to a Civ game since playing Civ 1 on my iMac freshman year in college. I started playing around 9:00 Friday night, and before I knew it, it was 3:30 AM. Last night, I vowed to be in bed by midnight, and I still over shot that by a little over an hour and a half (but I just uncovered distant lands!!!!).

Kurth wrote: Sun Feb 23, 2025 12:49 pm But here’s one: What’s with Roman Legions? They appear as both the Roman unique Antiquity Tier 2 infantry unlocked at Bronze Working AND as the Roman unique Antiquity Tier 3 infantry unlocked at Iron Working. That can’t be right, can it? I spent a bunch of gold upgrading my Bronze Working Legions to Iron Working Legions and . . . No impact whatsoever. Bug?

You should be getting a +5 strength improvement for each tier of improvement. Also you’ll get an extra chevron at the bottom of the unit icon indicating it’s improve status.

You can also upgrade existing units for gold as you unlock the higher tiers for them.

Kurth wrote: Tue Feb 18, 2025 7:17 pm

gbasden wrote: Tue Feb 18, 2025 6:50 pm For sure - the UI is terrible. This absolutely needed more work before it was released. But despite the UI I'm definitely having fun with it.

Same here!

For real, this UI is not friendly at all. I spent way too long just searching for out to put units on alert and see what cities have going on. Bring on the mods! Agreed, even with the confusing UI I am still having a lot of fun so far.

The next update for *Civilization VII*, Update 1.1.0, is coming on **March 4, 2025**, and will be deployed across PC & console. Cross-play between PC and consoles will be re-enabled with the deployment of this update. Please note: Update 1.1.0 release timing may differ on Nintendo Switch.

**Update 1.1.0** includes a number of updates based on community suggestions and feedback. A full list of update notes will be shared on release, but some notable callouts of what you can expect include the following:

* New Natural Wonder to discover: Bermuda Triangle (free to all players)
* Additional UI adjustments, polish, and addressing of reported issues
* Significant changes to the Modern Age's Cultural Legacy Path and Victory; AI leaders will also be better at completing a Cultural Victory (so expect fewer Explorer Unit stacks!)
* Now able to convert Holy Cities in the Exploration Age. Note that when players create their own Missionary Units, they will always follow the player’s chosen Religion
* Naval Units will be able to disperse Coastal Independent Powers
* Balance pass on several Mementos
* Refinements to the Army Unpacking action
* Addressing reported issues with multiplayer and adding friends with a 2K Account
* For console players: all prior updates from Update 1.0.1 Patches 1, 2, and 3 will be implemented, in addition to the items noted above

And plans for second late March patch.

**Update 1.1.1 Coming March 25**

The March 4 update is the first of many future major releases coming to *Civilization VII*. The next major update after that, **Update 1.1.1, is slated for March 25** (subject to change)**.** Here’s a sneak peek at some of what’s planned for that update:

* Additional UI improvements and refinements; specifics will be shared later with the Update 1.1.1 Notes
* *Note: Ongoing improvements to the User Interface continues to be a top priority for the development team. The updates being introduced on March 25 are just one part of a much larger plan that aims to improve the UI over the next several months.*
* Scouting and Settling improvements for AI, including less aggressive “forward” settling by AI
* Adding Quick Move functionality
* Adding the ability to customize the names of Commanders and Cities
* Renaming the existing maps to be "Start Position: Balanced," which will be the default Start Position setting for multiplayer games
* Adding a new Start Position of "Standard," where the landforms on maps are less predictable, closer to how map generation works in *Civ VI*
* Adding an optional Restart button that rerolls the player’s map generation now that these less predictable start positions are possible
* New Natural Wonder: Mount Everest (free to all players)

https://civilization.2k.com/civ-vii/new ... in-feb-27/

ydejin wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 4:43 pm

* New Natural Wonder to discover: Bermuda Triangle (free to all players)

Point of order: There is nothing "natural" about the "Bermuda Triangle." They should have gone with the Sargasso Sea -- that is at least an actual natural feature.

Saw nothing on that page to indicate whether the update will break saved games...

...I'm only 54 turns into the Exploration Age in my first game!

Max Peck wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 4:59 pm

ydejin wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 4:43 pm

* New Natural Wonder to discover: Bermuda Triangle (free to all players)

Point of order: There is nothing "natural" about the "Bermuda Triangle." They should have gone with the Sargasso Sea -- that is at least an actual natural feature.

100% agree. I think Bermuda Triangle is a very annoying addition.

Pyperkub wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 5:02 pm Saw nothing on that page to indicate whether the update will break saved games...

...I'm only 54 turns into the Exploration Age in my first game!

The only thing I can see that looks potentially breaking is changes to the Modern Age Culture Victory conditions.

FWIW you get Leader and Game XP progress at the end of each age. So you could finish up Exploration Age and then wait for the patch to see if it breaks thing.

If you’re on Steam (I’m on console personally) they did put up a rollback patch to allow Steam players to play with console players (since we didn’t get the last several patches yet), so there’s a good chance they’ll do the same to let people finish their current game. I think Paradox often does this.

I'm glad they laid that out. Looks like they'll reach a sufficient level of polish for me to buy it in April.

I ran into a bizarre Exploration Age glitch today. I have a quest to "Score 2 Treasure Fleet Points from a single Treasure Fleet." The problem is that I have settlements that produce treasure fleets in denominations of 1, 3 and 4 points, however it looks like the quest will only succeed with 2-point fleets, so the 3- and 4-point fleets don't count. Because my colonies are too bountiful, I guess.

I also found out that completing the economic legacies in the ancient and exploration ages is worth the effort, because they give you a legacy option to keep all your cities instead of having them revert back to towns.

Wow.
To Kraken's point.... Looking at that road map - it would look like they know full well that the game has trash UI and little polish. Every single stage of the roadmap has that listed as continued work.


Also, I've not completed a modern age game, but the April update seems to include a "one more turn" option. I've not read this yet, but I assume the game (currently) forces you to just top playing once a modern age hits a goal, which is odd for them to have forced on players.

Correct, there is no option to continue playing past the modern age victory (I presume that is the one-more-turn thing in the roadmap). It just ends abruptly, without even any real end-of-game summary.

I'm starting to believe there was a lot more brain-drain from Firaxis over the last few years than I realized. The core gameplay loop in Civ 7 is solid and engaging, but the UIX is so lacking that in some respects it feels like a first effort from a studio with no experience. That apparent lack of experience calls into question the whole presumption that Firaxis will fix and polish everything, because I have to wonder to what extent Firaxis 2025 is the same Firaxis that has done so in the previous iterations of the franchise.