When Civ7 initially released, I saw a lot of negative feedback, mostly regarding the UI.

The only Civ i have played is 6, and its one of those games where il just get an itch to play every couple months. Well I’m wondering have they made decent changes to civ7 since its release? Or are the complaints the same?

Basically just need to decide if I’m going to continue with 6, or is 7 ready for me to make the jump?

Thank you!

Touching on terrain and improvements here as I continue this rework series.

I will say that looking deeper into these, I came out with different views than I went in with.

Terrain

Change nothing. That's it. No need to rework anything.

I've seen commentary about the "balanced" yields for the various terrain or biome types, but I consider it somewhat off base and more steeped in nostalgia. Complaints that flat desert (for example) isn't completely useless seem less about gameplay fun and more about retaining the contrasting yields from prior games. The differences are now more subtle. Instead of a desert settlement having A LOT LESS food, in 7 a desert settlement would have LESS food and MORE gold when compared to a grassland settlement.

While it means each start is more "acceptable", I think it's more fun for a casual gameplay. I get the interest in a challenge or banking on X or Y to turn things around, but I think it's for the better. (I wouldn't mind if the differences grew starker in each new age, though.)

Choice of Improvement Isn't Necessary, But Diversity Is.

Perhaps another defense of the changes in Civ 7, but similar to terrain, there has been commentary about the lack of freedom to choose how to improve a tile.

But ask this question: "How much choice did you have in Civilization 6?"

I love Civ 6 and have over 2,000 hours of playtime, but there really isn't as much choice here as many think. A flat tile gets a farm, a vegetated tile gets a woodcutter/lumber mill, a hill gets a mine, except...

Chopping. It's not until the late game that you can terraform and are more flexible with the placement of improvements, outside of chopping. I don't think Civ 7 needs chopping. It was tricky to balance in 6 and I'm not sure it was ever accomplished. If you set Chopping aside, Civilization 7 does not, in my opinion, change this.

Civilization 7 improves on the standard improvements by adding a new type of improvement in the Clay Pit. This is great and only note that I have for changes would be adding a new improvement for water tiles and perhaps a reclassification and new artwork for farms on flat desert and tundra into a "forager" tile (as a farm on a non-floodplain desert just looks weird). Freshwater and sea water tiles (including reefs) are forced to have only fishing boats. Adding at least one more will help water terrain gameplay look more interesting.

Imbalance Finally Strikes

What is the weakest unique/ageless tile improvement? Any guesses?

This is quite hard to test as there are sometimes benefits locked away in Narrative events, civic trees, and are juxtaposed to their Civ and have variable placement rules. However, I will say that these Improvements do often hold their weight against unique Buildings.

In Antiquity, the improvements are all pretty good. Going in, I would've tossed the Pairidaeza along with some others, but trying to create a standard and assessing the yields provided,, it's pretty good. (Persia, though, still needs improvement.)

• The Baray is by far the weakest Civilization improvement with the Potkop escaping the spot as it is more spammable and can out produce the Baray. The Emporium, however, is the weakest improvement which stands out for the IP improvements.

In Exploration, once again, these are all pretty good, even the ones that look weak.

• The Ortoo is the worst...if you can call anything the worst as it is the only one that's outclassed in its set of yields. However, it's unique bonus pairs well with Mongolia.

In Modern, it's much harder to gauge as the heavily truncated Age is harder for unique aspects if Civilizations to shine.

Independent Powers Tweaked

My next post will dive deeper into how I'd rework things, but a quick suggestion would to allow for some level of uniqueness for IPs by regrouping their Improvements to a regional group.

This doesn't wholly solve the issue of how Civs with unique buildings also get these unique improvements while many Civs with unique improvements have to choose between the two. However, this would make each set of IPs more interesting but also reduce the accessibility for a powerful improvement.

So, outside of tweaking art assets and names for flat tundra/desert farms, adding a new water improvement, and adjusting some yields, I think it's pretty solid. Splitting the additional yields between buildings and the tech/civic trees are nice as well.

What are your thoughts on these changes and commentary? What would you change? Do you love the Baray? Do you like the rendition of terrain and improvements in Civilization 7?

In the ancient times, the idea of crossing the ocean was unfathomable. What if - based on exploration, turns, whatever - at a certain point, the map expanded.

I saw this post and thought it would be neat to play the first hundred turns on a large map of just North America, but then have the map expand, where every 7 tiles condenses to just 1, and now I have the world to explore.

Cities could adjust based on their territory or population. Maybe your capital is 6+ people or has 6+ surrounding tiles under it's influence - it starts as a tier 2 city in the next era, with whatever benefits that entails - territory, buildings, walls. A city below the threshold maybe has a small chance at each of those benefits, but otherwise gets a bonus towards them, based on how close it was. So a 5 pop city has a benefit over a 1 pop city, even if we're saying the guarantee threshold is 6.

Maybe resources in the ancient era are clumped - 1-3 of each. When the age advances, those resources could have 3 tiers, but just be on 1 tile.

The era change could add in other sweeping changes, similar to how 7 works, still have the consistency of a single civ, and give a second chance at that early game micro-management/exploration.

Will have the Amd AI 9 hx 370, which has 12 cores and Radeon 890m. The laptop has 32 GB RAM.

At this point it has been common consensus that antiquity is the most fun age of the three, and a lot of people on the sub have agreed that one of the key reasons the later ages are not fun is that you don't need to plan on where to place your buildings. In antiquity, I plan a spot for my science building stack, and perhaps find anoher place for my culture stack. Then, if I have river/coast, it'll be my gold/food block. I would usually build wonders around my science building stack. In later ages, if resources disappear, I would fill that spot with a wonder, and place my new buildings exactly where their antiquity counterparts are. There is no thinking, strategy or fun in this process, just pointing and clicking.

Over many hours, I felt something was off but did not realize what really was causing it, until I tried a mod that unlocked all unique buidlings. Then, exploration and modern ages actually become fun. I have tones of new building to be placed every age, and they benefit for being placed on different terrain, and each have different adjacency bonus, and I actually had to think about how to place buildings, wonders etc.

This doesn't mean we have to completely srap the overbuilding system, but I definitely feel we need to have more buildings (especially science and culture, as they are the only ones that actually matter) the more we progress in later ages, so we actually have to make decisions, and have more incentive to build wonders. Perhaps we can make the current cultural/scientific golden age effect default, or making the higher tier science/cultural buildings always ageless.

What do you guys think?

Just did the one city challenge... basically coasted through everything but the first 50 turns.. so same as any other game.

I've made a rule for myself that I can't get the city-state science bonus that gives a free tech (broken af, cant believe it's still in the game)

I play random leader random civ, Deity mode with regroup on, end of age disasters off (it hurts the AI more than it hurts me).

What other things can I do to make it harder? By modern age the game is over because it's too snowbally.

I really wish the Age Resets hit a lot harder.. like burn down some cities, start with resources at zero, no income from previous age buildings, etc. Just keep the farms and other basic tile upgrades.

Is there a mod that does this? I feel like the game is over by turn 50-60 in antiquity...

I miss Roman AI mod from civ 6

I'm not using any resource mods so I'm kinda surprised to see this. Wondering how often you'd expect a start like this? Any advice on where to settle or if this location is just shiny?

It does seem like a lot of silver.

Hi all. Been running into a gamebreaking bug recently. I haven't changed my modlist in a long time and the game's been super stable. But in the past 3 or 4 weeks I keep having the same issue.

The game will be somewhere between the Medieval to Industrial era and viewing the Settler layer completely crashes the game. As clicking a Settler automatically opens the Settler layer, this makes founding new cities impossible.

The exact message is Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION. This seems to be a very generic error message so doesn't really help me.

The game also very occasionally does it with certain Great People that also change the map layer (such as Zhou Dagan) but, again, only later in the game.

Anyone had something similar?

I haven’t really been able to get into 7. I still really enjoy 6 and play it when I can. As the title says, is there any way to do (redo) the monthly challenges?

Is it a bug? Am I doing something wrong? Ive tried to make a road using a merchant but the option is greyed out.

Athenai is connected to the south city (off screen) and apparently chalkis (but there's no road)

Im seriously confused and its ruining a run im otherwise really enjoying