To be fair, it should be said that after the first issue Sid Meier's Civilization 7 Opinions were rather divided. I don't think anyone would argue that this was the best Civ game ever. At least no one in their right mind would. But for a broader perspective, it’s enough to look my review of VG247 compared to the sentence here on Eurogamer. Upon release, the two opinions were divided by two stars and different worlds. Some thought the game had a fundamental problem: it was too boring. Another thought the basic version was creaky but a solid enough foundation for the next generation of Civ.
Honestly I can't remember main civilization The first issue was a failure. My understanding is that they are always a little confusing at first due to the sheer breadth and depth that these games offer. The goal of the initial release of Civ is to provide new techniques that can be repeated for years to come. The result was usually one of the best games of all time…eventually. Six months after the changes, Civilization 7 has already begun to undergo significant transformation thanks to a diligent and persistent cycle of patches and updates from the development team Firaxis.
Over the past two weeks, the game has received its most significant update. Called Tides of Power, it is, as the title suggests, about the oceans. In Civ 7, everything related to the sea has been revised – from combat on the high seas to the status of coastal settlements. Even the landscape of the randomly generated maps has been adjusted with the addition of new types of resources scattered along the coast and new terrain linking land to sea, and new buildings and units have been added to encourage players to explore the ocean more.
Of course, there are plenty of other changes not related to water. The balance of everything has been revised. The AI ​​has been improved and fixed. Improved UI and user experience on both keyboard, mouse and controller. The list goes on; in truth, it's part of a continuous and rather herculean cycle of updates from Firaxis. to resolve user problems and complaints.
It's working slowly but surely. Civ 7, as you know, came out on “Mostly negative' user reviews on Steam. For over six months, Firaxis crawled on its belly over broken glass to get the game to Mixed. Firaxis is doing what it can with free updates – and even this Tides of Power update, which is technically paid DLC, has been made temporarily “free now, forever” until the New Year – so even if you don't plan on playing Nowyou should get it now while it's free.
Anyway. That's all the context. I'm mainly here to write that I'm really enjoying the new playthrough of Civilization 7 thanks to the new naval mechanics and the new leader – the pirate king Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. Here he is in all his glory, his beard hissing from the burning wicks. As a pirate, Teach fits most closely with the economic and militaristic branches of Civ 7's gameplay, which in itself is a quirk for me since those are the two ways I'm usually least likely to play.
Teach's main ability is that his naval units can enter the lands of other civilizations and even attack them without the need to formally declare war. This means you can go after other civilizations through piracy and pillage, and here's my favorite part: when you defeat another naval unit, you actually capture it rather than destroy it. Thus, with the help of Teach it is very easy to inflate your fleet, but the cost of maintaining all naval units in gold is also higher for him than for any other civilization, which gives some balance in the form of the threat of bankruptcy. It's essentially an evolution of what was already there with Pirate Civilization, but it's a satisfying one.
I especially enjoyed Teach in the Age of Exploration, which combines his natural abilities with those of a real pirate civilization. This civilization cannot train settlers, so it must rely on capturing them from other civilizations. Or, later in the same era, using a band of pirates to found new cities – but only from the sea, meaning that any new city founded from that point on would have to be right on the coastline. This in turn combines synergistically with his focus on naval units – and you can see how this will all come together satisfactorily.
Combined with the other changes in the Naval Update, this all makes Teach pretty damn fun and completely unique. These are the leaders I think where Civ 7 shines. Yes, Gandhi's absence still feels like a betrayal and a travesty, but the concept of Civ 7 instead using less common and lesser-known representatives who can fuel unique and esoteric gameplay mechanics is clearly conceptually rich. If you're looking for a British leader, Ada Lovelace and Edward Teach are in many ways more interesting than the monarch.
All of these changes point to an overall shift in Civ 7, where there has clearly been a serious effort to improve Age of Exploration in the mid-game. It's clear that the developers want to create an incentive for this in-game era to more closely resemble the new global race for land and resources that we've seen in the real world, which in turn fuels difficult diplomatic decisions and military conflicts.
I have to say, I really like it. These are the moments when I see the real potential of Civilization 7, and also where the game has room to evolve into something special and unique from its predecessors. At the same time, the shortcomings of this version of Civ, whose design was clearly driven primarily by the desire to have a “single version” of the game, identical across all platforms – from powerful PCs to consoles and mobile devices – become more obvious the more familiar I become with the game and its systems.
In particular, the separation of Civilization and Leader remains a stumbling block. There are still eras. The changes to the “transition” from one era to the next have definitely improved this element of the game, but it's still a little annoying that each era is essentially a separate “game” that you move in and out of, and events taking place in just three eras where there could have been as many as nine in past games still don't feel “right.”
Basically, there is still a lot to improve. It's been years of work by the Firaxis team, but in saying that, I understand and remember that it's no different from any other Civ game since 1996. Civilization 2 – these have always been “live” games – only now we've moved from an era of infrequent large expansion packs to an era of smaller but more frequent DLC updates. Having seen Firaxis' efforts in these first six months, I'm convinced that Civ 7 will indeed eventually “get there.” And as my piracy days have shown, there is still plenty of fun to be had along the way.
