I originally had high hopes for this game. I loved Humankind, so I had was excited at the proposed innovations devs were describing in the leadup to the release. However, they have fallen far, far short of my expectations, and their behavior post-release has me skeptical that I can even trust them to release quality (if potentially misguided) games in the future.
As it turns out, the dev's "vision" for the game broke what's been good about Civ for decades while also failing to deliver what they intended to achieve in the process. Now they're spending years scrambling to implement baseline, genre-standard functionality (maps larger than "medium", auto-scout, the ability to trade anything but cities, readable UI, etc.) while also painstakingly undoing "the vision" in a a misguided attempt to deliver on an acceptable Civ experience. The irony is that taking this approach is only failing to reach the bar while also removing anything unique about the game.
Youtubers make videos every ~6 months about "whether Civ 7 is good yet" (every one I've seen has said "no"), but it won't ever be. The game was dead in the drawing room the moment the lead designer decided he'd implement the inability to snowball (ie, the periodic removal of military units, and resetting of city progress and tech trees) as a core mechanic to the game. Now it's just a matter of waiting out enough insultingly-overpriced DLC ($30 for a handful of civs, leaders, and wonders?!) for Firaxis to get the message that it's time to move on to Civ 8. Maybe they'll remember what players enjoy about their games and what a reasonable price point are by then.
