Sid Meier’s Civilization VII Review – Unnatural Disaster
Has anyone seen Sid Meier lately? I can’t remember the last time he gave an interview, made an appearance, or even peeped something, gaming-related or not. In his absence, his minions at Firaxis had ruined his life’s work, making Sid Meier’s Civilization VII by far the worst entry in a decades-long 4X series. Did Sid have anything to say about it? His first and last name is in the title, I presume he would be compelled to at least try the game before signing off the release documents. The entire mess is smelling suspiciously like The Spahn’s Movie Ranch sequence in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. You know, the one where Brad Pitt inquires about the owner, his old acquaintance, now confined to bed and manipulated by leeching hippies. I’m not drawing any parallels, but I’m pretty much drawing parallels. Where is Sid? He most certainly doesn’t dwell inside a Golden Throne. If that were the case, the entire gaming universe would benefit from his Astronomican.
Borrowing from Humankind
So, what’s wrong with Sid Meier’s Civilization VII? Simply put, everything, across the board, is inferior to the previous game. Seventh is devoid of content and charm, it has dumbed-down crucial mechanics, but its greatest sin is drawing inspiration from the lesser clones of Civilization. Above all, Humankind, from which it borrowed the insane concept of changing the civ after the age transition.
You see, in Civilization VII, leaders and civs are separate, so you can have Augustus leading Rome from antiquity. Or Greece. Or, idk, someone else. But if you stick with historical flavor, you’ll be unpleasantly surprised when you reach exploration age, the second out of three. There you’ll be asked to pick some other civ, with different units, bonuses, and flavor, presumably, because of the historical process that saw empires evolving into something else. This ain’t optional and you can’t disable it in options or avoid it in any way.
Age transitions happen to everyone at the same time, which is a counter-argument to (presumed) drive to be historically accurate. Now everyone gets the almost equal benefit of progress, which is insane. I want my planes to strafe their cavalry while I laugh colonially, I don’t want equal outcomes for everyone. After all, this is an ancient Civ staple, almost a canon at this point. Why mess with it? I forgot to mention the arbitrary and very much artificial crisis at the end of each age. There, you will be press-ganged to pick several debuffs that work like anti-civics, penalizing you in the aspect of your choosing. You can, for example, pick a -5 happiness in conquered towns and completely offset the concept of crisis if you play as a peaceful civ.
Streamlined Growth and Other Sins
The next thing Civ VII took from Humankind is the concept of outpost, or in this case, town. It’s the default, lesser version of the city, where you can build stuff by spending money. You can specialize towns for food production or something else, or you can pay a hefty sum to convert them into cities. Either way, they count toward your settlement number, so you can’t spam towns to reap cheap benefits and control territory. In short, they are almost pointless.
Coming up is “streamlined” growth. Civilization VII doesn’t have workers who you can direct to work the tiles. Now, it happens automatically, as each new tile gets instant farms/mines, etc, depending on the type. Gee, thanks for treating me as an idiot, game. This approach deprives you of customization, and more importantly, of certain emergency actions. For example, if you are building a wonder, and your competitor starts to catch up with you with the same project, you can’t cut down the nearby forest and achieve a production boost. Roads between cities also appear from thin air and don’t even require merchants like in Civ VI.
So, developers gave us the automation no one asked for but took away some other useful automation. I’m speaking about scouts, who can’t auto-explore anymore. You’ll need to direct them manually at all times, which is a major step back from previous games. Again, it’s inexplicable why they removed this simple convenience.
Cardboard Cutouts
My next gripe lies in the personality sphere. Or rather, the lack of it. Your competitors are boring placeholder people, sharing the same dull AI, devoid of any flavor or zing. They won’t comment on your misdeeds as before, won’t complain about your troops on their borders, or pester you for salt and horses. They won’t gloat, tease you, or wave the angry fist at you. Occasionally, some will ask for a beneficial treaty regarding science or the military, and that’s it. Oh, and they will pounce on you if you are much weaker, depending, ofc, on the difficulty level. The war never feels personal in Civilization VII, not one tiny bit.
Dealing with them requires Influence, a new resource. It is also needed for befriending the barbarians. Oh, I’m sorry, “Independants”. The good old barbarians are now fused with city-states, creating independants. You can befriend or raze them. I’m sorry, “displace” them. This walking-on-eggshells lingo is truly getting on the nerves. “Barbarian” and “destruction” are not hate words, they are just words that Civ games used for decades, without apocalyptic consequences. Dear devs, please read the room and patch out the woke bulshittery the first chance you get. Read the world, rather. It changed overnight, so embrace the new zeitgeist, and drop the fake concerns. Pretty please.
Future DLC to the Rescue?
Lingo aside, the independents mechanic is very much simplified compared to Civilization VI. They won’t give you any quests, for example. The same goes for the religion. Gone are the glorious cleric and prophet duels of Civ VI, and now, not even the cities passively spread the religion. It feels like a placeholder, waiting for some future update. One of those will hopefully bring back the United Nations. Now, I didn’t like how were they implemented before, but to gut the concept in its entirety feels stupid. Or greedy, as they probably wish to sell it to you in the future DLC.
At least warfare feels good. The new concept beefs up the generals and admirals, allowing them to get XP and pick up new combat or logistic talents. Both commanding categories spread bonuses to nearby troops, enabling them to perform synchronized attacks, ignore obstacles, and so on. They are, therefore, much more worthy of preserving than before. But that segment alone is simply not enough to save Civilization VII. The previous game, even without paid expansions, is vastly superior in most elements. And you can get it majorly discounted if you shop around digital outlets for a bit. So, avoid Civilization VII for now and probably for a long time to come.
Highs
- Warfare is still OK, and the new emphasis on the commanders is a good idea.
Lows
- Dumbed down and stripped of flavor across the board.
- The game heavily borrows the major concepts from lesser competitors.
- Competing AI leaders lack personality.
- Visually cluttered. Bad interface.
- More expensive and poorer content-wise on launch compared to Civ VI.
