Sid Meier's Civilization VII

Civ VII is a mediocre 4X game. It is also an absolutely terrible Civilization game. It is worse than III (which was cack, but at least in a "Oh, no, bad luck, you've played the entire game on a bit of the map with no access to oil and rubber so now you're getting kerbstomped" way). Civ VII is bad in a "This isn't Civ and it is also *incredibly* tedious kind of way. I deliberately didn't buy it when it came out because I don't play Civ to change my Civ a bunch of times - but then Test of Time mode came out, and it was on sale, so I tried it. It is full of micromanagement (and, yeah, you *could* spend ages tweaking wheat:shield ratios in Civ II but you didn't *have* to. Here, you have to. You're constantly choosing how a city will expand, where to build this or that... and none of it matters because twice per game, the stupid game goes "Yeah, that city you built, all this stuff is obsolete, go overbuild it." "Development of gunpowder renders all barracks obsolete, existing barracks sold for $250" I could live with; "Haha, new age! Everything resets your tech and culture advantage" is just... it's pointless. It guts the strategy. And I can see exactly why they did it - it's to push this ongoing drift Civ has had ever since IV, to make each civilization a special unique snowflake with its own Building and Leader and Unit. Because then people will buy extra civs and leaders as DLC. But what you will not end up doing is clicking "Just one more turn". Frankly, you will spend a long, long, long time clicking "Next Turn" and waiting for something to happen while the game *grinds* by. It's not just that it's absurdly micromanagey, it's that it is simultaneously incredibly fiddly and also incredibly dull. The advisors are garbage and will pop up giving hints at complete random, with no regard to what you're doing, the diplomacy system has been ganked into a complete smorgasboard of nonsense that also includes espionage (but, like, abysmal espionage, *dull* espionage), and the religion system which IMO has no place in a Civ game and has never once worked right since they introduced it is now somehow worse than ever. Oh, and to win a science victory you don't even go anywhere. You launch a satelite and then (you guessed it) click "next turn" a bunch. Big whoop. (I and II got that right, at least, letting you build smaller crafts with massive engines you could actually RACE the other civ if they launched first). The goodie huts now give you cutsey little narrative events like you're playing the Sims, though, so I guess that's nice. And they look different. Like, not "they aren't a pixel brown hut with a yellow roof," I meant there's different *styles* of goodie hut. Some are tents, some are caves. This adds absolutely nothing, but someone has spent a lot of time making them pretty instead of adding depth: this is something of a theme here. Don't. Just don't bother. Even if you love Civ. Even if you still play I or II. Hell, even if you'd honest to god say VI was the best entry in the series - I've been playing this franchise since 1990 and I have never before felt so massively *bored* by what a Civ game does. It isn't a Civ game in the sense that it hands you a settler and a world and a set of victory conditions and says "this world is yours - go nuts, see what your people can do". For me, that was the hallmark of a CIv game. It gave you *possibility*, and a sense of progress - you moved along the Tech tree, you got better, you upgraded units (or left obsolete ones on the map but in huge quantities, or because you were focused on a wonder - and wonders were rare and special. Seven per age, back in my day, because that's how many wonders of the world there were...). But Civ VII has decided that model isn't any good and what you need to do is focus not on the grand development of your civilisation but nursemaiding every city, expanding glacially slowly, and playing not how you want, or to the strategy that seems best at the time, but playing how your civ is designed to be played. It doesn't say "go nuts". Instead it never shuts up; it says "here's a world, here's your civilisation's special abilities, here's the age you're in, here are the objectives. Go. Do the objectives. No! Don't explore the world yet! You can only explore THIS bit of the world! You can't go to other contients yet it isn't the right time, how dare you! Also grow this city. Now say precisely where this building goes. And research this civic. And what benefit do you want from your We Love The ____ Day? And should the city dig a hole or catch a fish now? Do you want a farmers market with the civ next door? Don't forget to build a granary - do you want it here or there? Oh! Time for a new age! Scrap that, who do you want to be today? It's the Exploration Age now, go build a new city! Do you want it to did a hole or grow some wine? What benefit do you want from your We Love the ___ Day?" It's not a Civ game. It's a machine designed to sell DLC to create "variety" in playstyles, and I genuinely think they made the core game deliberately boring because I can't see why else anyone would buy the DLC. And the ages make no sense - there are three (just like there used to be in Civ I... but they're mandatory. Everyone is in them at once, and they're also HUGE so the modern era starts with a 74 gun ship of the line as your big naval unit and ends with a battleship instead of a SotL but they all sit in the same "era" because each era exists to give each DLC-friendly Unique Civilisation a Unique Era to be good in. The whole game screams "built around bolt-ons" and that sucks. Fantastic Worlds was an incredible expansion for Civ II but they didn't design Civ II to support the bonus disk. They built it to be fun. Genuinely, even buying it on sale, gutted. But on the plus side, I've got a copy of DOSbox and my old Civ II CD somewhere. There was a game that's stood the test of time.

I've played Civilization since CIV 2, have 7000 hours in CIV VI, and 700 in CIV VII. I've stuck it out - really tried every Civ and Leader, every playstyle. This game's maps are weak, even with update 1.4.1. Every game seems the same - indistinguishable continents, nothing to differentiate one place to build over another or one civ over another - just a unending series of minigames, micromanagement, and change for change's sake. I find myself bored after 50 turns and in the rare case where the game keeps my interest - the age ends and the game essentially restarts. This is NOT CIVILIZATION. This is a sad attempt to steal console players attention at the expense of their core audience and to try to "revitalize" CIV by throwing away everything that made it CIV. If you want to play something like this, Humankind did it first and better. If you want to play minigames, I hear Super Mario Party is pretty cool. If you want to play CIV, buy CIV VI at a discount. This game just lacks whatever carried this franchise for the last 30 years. And the worst part is the constant money grabs. Most of the new game mechanics seem to exist only to drive DLC sales. "Let's release an unfinished, poorly thought out game for $70. Would you like to pay for more civilizations? What if one is a pirate?!?" I am incredibly sad that this is the direction Firaxis has gone - it would have been better, I think to just let the franchise die a slow death than to strangle it in front of our eyes. This game reminds me of Master of Orion 3, in that it was pretty to look at, boring to play, and nothing like either predecessor - effectively killing the franchise.

CIV7 I have played every Civ game since CivI I'm that old. Everyone has their favourite version. Alas VII is not mine. It starts promisingly. There are different civs that you can pair with different Leaders – an excellent idea offering hundreds of potential combinations. Then the learning begins – fair enough, there are always rules to learn and strategies to adopt. The graphics are very detailed and very pretty, but it is difficult to see what is going on. You learn to let the AI choose your pathing. It's more efficient, but quite easy to miss a goody hut (tent/shrine/wreck/whatever) Your initial city grows and you learn to expand towards resources/competitors. You meet independent states – both friendly and hostile. As has always been the case, your initial choices are between scouts, soldiers, and buildings, and when to create settlers. You must balance food, good old hammers, happiness and a mechanic called Influence. This, you learn, is important when dealing with Independent States and other Empires. It's a good idea, in general. So like all previous iterations you do the 4X thing your own way but mainly be being a murderous stomping basterd. Hurrah – the Stack of Doom is back (sorta) You can load troops of all sorts into a Commander unit. He (or she) then marches towards enemy lands, disgorges the troops and gives all of them some kind of bonus. Success in battle earns XP which you can spend on more bonuses. Excellent mechanic (once you are used to it. The AI does not seem to understand how to use Commanders. They wander around unprotected and are easily picked off) Hint:- always use the individual “unload” button to pick exactly where to land – using the Commander “Unload everyone” button is a disaster. Once you have mastered the art of Commanding (land and sea) battles are usually going to go your way. Taking a city is not difficult but here we get to my first HATE. There is a settlement limit to your empire. Every city or town you own contributes to that limit. If you exceed it, you suffer a severe happiness penalty. If you attack an enemy city and take it, you can keep it or raze it. Razing a settlement gives you a severe Influence penalty. You can see what they are trying to do here. Anyway, fast forward a bit and then you get into “Crisis” mode which is just a load of silly stuff to deal with which hinders everyone's progress. Luckily you can turn it off. After that you get to my second HATE The Age ends and you enter a new Age, You lose excess gold and influence. Everybody's units are magically upgraded. You get the chance to manage a new culture if you want. It is UTTERLY stupid and unrealistic. Bonuses disappear, The government changes. Luckily your Commanders retain their promotions. This Age change happens twice. The second time is even worse. I cannot see the reason for this mechanic. It is not historically accurate. Why? WHY? Aggression has been hit heavily in C7 what with war weariness penalties and such but during the Second Age (and only this age) there is an answer:- you can absolutely blat any competing Empire with Commanders full of privateers. You can upgrade them, you can speed them up, you can rule the seas. You can even prevent my third HATE: AI settler spamming. We seem to have regressed. V6 was not so bad but now in times of peace AI settlers wriggle like worms into every possible space. It is both ugly and leads to an unrealistic political geography. I haven't found an answer except for the privateer bomb. There seems to be no religous or cultural counter – none that I can find. Then the Age ends and all your lovely fast plundering privateers which made you XP and bucketfuls of gold are suddenly plodding Ships-of-the-Line which are CRAP and not allowed to sink neutral settlers who are, like wasps after jam sandwiches, searching for the most annoying place to park on your lands they can possibly find! MY final HATE is Modern Age boredom. It seems pretty crucial to get railway stations and factories but they cost a fortune. Why are they so expensive compared to everything else? In my present game I simply parked every military unit, put them to sleep, and pressed the “enter” button again and again. This si not fun. I don't even know what railways look like as I had won by now in my previous game (at an easy level I should say) Some final shots – religious warfare- have I missed something?; treasure fleets – what the heck is GDP? It is not explained; factory goods – why are they there when you can't use them? The Resource allocation screen is seriously flawed by the way – positively alpha level coding; the price – I bought this at 50% discount and it still seems too much.

Bring back Civ V

Welp, its been over a year. Still bad, and already over 100EUR of "Extra" content they cut from the game to sell you piecemeal. If you haven't played civ, go play 6. If you played every Civ and are gonna buy it anyways, just get base game, you'll get bored before you need DLC. Combat is an improvement though.

Не сподобалась. Ціна велика, а в порівнянні з попередньою частиною змін дуже мало і тупі заскріптовані противники. Української мови немає теж великий мінус.

Be warned, this game is still underdeveloped, will exploit your wallet and break your heart. I cannot in good conscience recommend this game. If you're reading this, I'm sure you're familiar with the timeline. In February 2025, Civ7 launched in a "Beta" state if you're being generous. Over the past 1.5 years, they've made updates attempting to appease players who were already upset with the game. They've released more DLC as a way to recover their reputation and their shareholders' wallet dips. Meanwhile the Religion systems are underdeveloped, AIs are wooden and unable to trade fully. Countless other existing features beloved in previous games were sidelined in an effort to shove overpriced content down players' throats. In June 2026 for the "Brush and Blade" collection, they're releasing HALF of a DLC for $30. The collection comes with two leaders, two civilizations now and two more later. The civs are overpowered and feel unbalanced intentionally as a reward for people who coughed up the $30 for the privilege to play unfinished DLC. Civ6's 2018 and 2019 full expansions cost the same amount, added entirely new systems, civs and mechanics. Firaxis will happily charge you full price for half the content, change the systems underneath you and still release an unpolished, unfinished game. Don't be a sucker and don't absolve them of their mismanagement and bad practices. The community didn't force them to release an unfinished game, 2K did. The community didn't demand a release of unfinished DLC on an "IOU", Firaxis and 2k did. The game isn't being cherished, it's become an exploitation engine, attempting to siphon as much money as possible with the least amount of effort making their game "Stand the Test of Time". The only thing that will continue to last is the bad taste in our mouths from playing an undercooked game that has had its spirit extracted from it, its reputation destroyed and its potential smothered. I have 550+ hours of this game at time of writing, and I don't regret any time and effort I've played. I write this as a warning. Don't be a sucker like me.

I have lost all faith in the Civ franchise. This is absolute garbage. I wish I could take back the time I have lost as well as the money for the damn thing. I wouldn't even know where to begin with a negative review so I will just say this. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS GAME. I WILL NEVER SPEND ANOTHER DIME OR SECOND ON THIS FRANCHISE. I WAS A FAN FOR 20+ YEARS.

Please do not buy this game. I have played Civ since I was a kid, this is the worst. Would not waste your money it's a drag to play. One more turn is no more.