I have some concerns about Civilization 7

[@CapProGames]

I don't really have any major concerns about Civ 7. This is Firaxis and, while the launch of each game is easily the worst point out of each entry in the series, every game that they have made has only gotten better with time through updates and DLCs. It'll be refreshing to play a new Civ game with new mechanics and gameplay elements and I am really excited for it.

[@Baravarx]

itll be a DLC like everything else offered in the founders i would imagine

[@dannyagogo]

I sympathize with the exploration aspect. Rome and China were aware of each other. The Silk Road existed. But I get that this is a game, not real history LOL Does VanBradley's crush on Paul Mescal make him even more endearing? YES

[@ankhuri1353]

I'm hoping they put an option in to randomize the policy card you slot in during the crisis. That would make it feel more ... I don’t know ... "crisisy".

[@jonmorris5053]

"Cheating" A.I. has always been a big negative for me. Whether it was in Halo Wars and their extra units, The Division and their bullet sponge shotgunners, or Civ and the bonuses the A.I. gets. When I want a harder game, I'd like the A.I to think more tactically, which would mean you as the player have to think more tactically as well. An example from Civ that has bugged me for eternity is the crap cities the A.I will settle. Near a river? Let's just put the city two tiles away so there's no fresh water, and no aqueduct potential. I personally just find it aggravating as a player to deal with "stupid" A.I that get a handicap just to make a difficulty spike when they still male bad decisions.

[@Bannerlordfor]

Well to be fair AI will ALWAYS need cheats. They can range from small to major though. There are good ways in which an AI cheats, and bad ways. Good ways are when it still feels like the AI is playing the same game, but some bonuses to even out with a human brain. Bad AI cheats make it feel like the AI is playing an entirely different game. Civ so far has had bad AI cheats.

[@siggi3061]

​@@Bannerlordfori don't think AI will ALWAYS need cheat. My hope is that recent AI advancements will also have a positive influence with civ 7 AI.

[@jonmorris5053]

I'm not so sure about them always needing cheats. I feel it really depends on how much depth the game has, and how far A.I progresses, and what it has access to. For example, If you could take what a chess A.I are doing these days and then apply that in terms of other gaming A.I., at a higher depth of game play (like district adjacency or setting patterns) things could be a lot different. You as a player have access to all of your memories and experiences of what has worked in past games you've played, and if that knowledge could apply to this situation (think fps games, if you've played a few, most control scemes are similar enough that from your experiences with others, you naturally have an easier time). A.I has to start from scratch every single time with nothing to go on from past experiences (at least in civ). If there was a database of every game of Civ 6 played and the A.I could use that database to make decisions and predictions about what was going on right now, I feel we could see a huge improvement to A.I gameplay. Now whether that's considered "cheating" or not, I'm of the opinion that's it's not, but I could easily see arguments for the latter.

[@Bannerlordfor]

@@siggi3061 you overestimate the advancements and underestimate the processing power required

[@sportzak5886]

Re: your first concern, pretty sure they said that the DLC will be available for separate purchase later when it's live. So I don't think people will miss out on them if they dont get them by the end of February

[@DevonLawler-z9e]

100% feel you on the issue with the distant lands. I was a bit worried when they announced this mechanic and after the exploration age review I'm even more worried. Speaking as someone who doesn't typically focus on aggressive expansion when I play Civ (totally understand others do), I tend to focus on building up culture and science and try and get along with my neighbors in civ. Some of the Exploration Gameplay mechanics seem to kind of lock us into a European version of colonialism with the "distant lands", where we kind of have to build a transoceanic empire in order to just complete the economic victory path. This seems like it is naturally putting us into conflict with the civilizations in the distant lands that seem to be intentionally weakened for some reason. I feel similarly about the religion mechanics. It seems like you need to be aggressively expanding your religion in order to get any benefits here. I tended to not do that in Civ 6 because it pissed off my neighbors and I instead focused more on using my religion to augment my internal culture and development. This is also prioritizing a more myopic view of world religions. Yes, religions like Christianity, Islam and Buddhism did expand greatly in these periods, but Judaism and Hinduism developed more internally and didn't necessarily have a large proselytizing force. As it stands right now, three of the victory paths they mentioned (Economic, Culture, and Military) seem to follow this expansionist path. I feel like the dev team should adjust some of the gameplay mechanics so that we don't necessarily need to create a transoceanic empire or force our religion on other civs (again, fine if other players like to play this way). Perhaps generating treasure fleets through some sort of diplomacy mechanic with the civs in the distant lands? Currently, I'm just feeling a bit uncomfortable with how the distant lands is set up (Christopher Columbus is literally a character in this game😬). Sorry for the long post, but these are just some of my thoughts about the Exploration Age.

[@mervekarabork3047]

Agreed and furthermore if expanding your empire is that important, we should be able to start that whenever we can. Waiting for exploration era and then expanding with all of the other civs will make it brutal and unbalanced as VB pointed out. It feels like this set up gives too much power to rng and not much to the player/player’s skill. But I guess we have to wait and see how it plays out.

[@lmoelleb]

Would be nice if they exposed the AI as an interface for modders - would be interesting what the community could come up with, specifically hooking actual AI libraries up to it.

[@MouseDestruction]

Sure there are a few things you could worry about, but don't forget when civ 6 came out it was hilariously janky. Scythia building 200 horsemen and then having no gold the rest of the game, but as a human player you could sell those horsemen for 250g each or something. Science was op, religion was nearly useless. But it did bring some cool things too, i like how they unpacked the cities into districts for instance. And a DLC or 2 later its much improved.

[@kristoph17]

I'm honestly looking forward to the Exploration age, there was really never a reason to have ships in the previous Civ games (most of the time), now it matters and I'm excited for it.

[@saintsfan39475]

I'm so unsure about Civ 7 that I'm not going to buy it until I watch you, potato and ursa play the game for a while to see the what, where, when and how's. I know it's still a Civ game but it's so vastly different that I just want to make sure it's all I want it to be. Also, I hate the price, it's steep.

[@aguy6641]

The AI is a big issue I went back to civ 5 because many civ 6 leaders weren't even upgrading their troops. The swapping leaders thing seems ridiculous but maybe I don't understand it correctly. I also like to play with 12 countries online with friends and 8 seems low to us.

[@lrkfam]

What's needed is a Civ open source rewrite

[@willzulu8844]

I think there is a misconception, multiple civs can still be placed on different continent, the stream clearly showed Chinese ships going towards the continent the devs were playing on. The fundamental difference is that the era transition is the same for everyone so everyone gets celestial navigation at the same time. Annoying because I like to rush exploration as a strategic advantage but if you’re playing on a map with multiple land masses, you’ll be spread out

[@Bannerlordfor]

I also really don't have a good opinion on how exploration is tied to an age. On top what you mentioned about monopolizing resources, I very much dislike when they railroad you into doing things a certain way. Same reason I disliked era score in civ 6. It is weird to me, especially since they say the game is about making your own journey, yet they add these bottleneck/railroady mechanics. Kinda defeats the whole "make your own destiny" thing...

[@Zimionz]

Regarding AI, that's what's worrying me too. The AI could not build and deploy a navy in civ6. And most civs would not even attempt to settle a new continent.That wasn't such a big deal. But in civ7 naval gameplay and colonization will be of utmost importance, particularly in the exploration age. Will the AI be smart enough to build a navy and protect their treasure fleets? Given that it's pretty much the same dev team for civ7 that has made civ 6, I have serious doubts...

[@2gtomkins]

Only one of the Exploration Age legacy paths depends on returning treasure fleets back from the Distant Lands. You can skip that path and go to town on the other three.

[@brianhall8030]

Way back in the day I was a beta tester on the original Diablo. (We are in the credits as the Ring of 1000, by the way. My name's there if you want to fact check. =) ) I remember vividly that once the NDA lifted on the beta testers, I said on a message board I was worried about replayability. I just didn't see in the beta testing that there might be enough to keep your interest. I was wrong. There's no telling how many hours I've logged in the Diablo franchise. That's just to say that we don't have enough to know yet. I share some of your concerns, but I'm going to wait until I get my paws on it to make any real calls. Not calling you out, not saying you're wrong - just saying there's insufficient data.

[@torbjrnpreusschou9030]

Yes! The exploration age has me concerned as well. I worry about not being able to explore freely from the start, basically.

[@Phlebas]

Just on that last point about seeing the same civs over and over again, I just realized that was one of the reasons Beyond Earth seemed to lack replayability. In the meantime, with Civ 6, there are Civs that I still have never played after thousands of hours (I always select random), and it's always a delight to see a rival civ that I don't normally see (my last game had Abraham Lincoln in it; that was probably the second time I had ever encountered him). I might have misunderstood how exploration works in Civ 7. I didn't realize that all Civs started in an "Old World" and that the "New World" would be uninhabited by major civs. That seems wrong to me. Yes, I get that it's kind of ahistorical for civs who have never had direct or indirect contact with each other to independently invent gunpowder and the printing press, but I feel it's even weirder to play civs that were historically victims of colonialism in a game that, by design, seems to make you emulate European colonial powers. It's like the game is trying to have it both ways - diversity in representation but with a very eurocentric historical narrative.

[@maxcap6071]

The age system looks interesting, but I feel like the age of exploration crams too long a time period into a single era. From the Spain game we saw, you go out and begin exploring the rest of the map around the same time when you should just be entering the medieval period. I worry it will feel too much like a renaissance/early modern simulation and neglect the medieval feel. Maybe they'll be separated into different ages in a DLC, but we'll probably get a future age before since it's easier to implement and won't require dividing civs already in the game. I'm also still not very enthused about the civ swapping mechanic. It has the potential to be super interesting, and it is from a gameplay point of view, but I think the game is too liberal with which civs you can swap to. Rome to Spain makes a lot of sense, but some civs don't feel like they have a clear tree. Since it's looking like Byzantium isn't in the game, Greece doesn't have a clear successor yet. I'd prefer if they took an approach of making unique versions of each civilization for each era rather than swapping between them, like they're doing for China and Japan. Some civs could share options, like Rome and Greece both being able to become Byzantium, but overall I'd prefer a much more linear system. If they wanted to spice it up, they could add alternate history paths for civilizations, like a modern age rome civ or a medieval continuation of Ancient Egypt. More of a wish, We could have something really cool with "new world" civilizations like America and Mexico where they can be formed in the modern age and are very strong, but can only be formed from your colonies in the new continent and your home continent settlements continue as AI. Colonial revolutions could be a cool crisis at the end of the exploration and modern periods, and the AI could have new civs sprout from them in an organic way.

[@rdm3990]

My main concern about the age transition is that religion should be founded in late Antiquity age, not earlier, not later. It's weird to have a Mauryan civ without Buddhism.

[@jaredkrol3739]

The more I find out about the distant lands thing the more I dislike it. Feels like the most railroaded Civ decision in a long time

[@theAndyMead]

I agree. Since the first release offers the monetization stuff has worried me. Not the price of the game. Come on, Civ is probably the cheapest non-free to play game when looked at by a per hour played cost out there. But, yeah, the personas. It bothered me so much that when the first reddit threads and creator interviews happened, my questions were all related to mod support. If Civ 7 is going to have limited time paywalled personas with different game then free workshop mods have to be restricted in some way. Putting cosmetics or "hats" behind a paywall? Go for it. I love my Scout Cats in Civ 6, but if I had to pay for them, I wouldn't have them. Cosmetics are a personal choice. I have purchased - and don't regret - cosmetics for a Dota 2 hero that I used to main. But that was my choice, and it didn't affect gameplay. If Firaxis is going to paywall any mechanics I agree with you - it's going to create player discontent. FOMO getting people to buy the Founders Package is fine - except for the folks that discover Civ 7 next summer after the personas are no longer available. That's how you piss off your new players.

[@lrkfam]

Soooo. No pangea map?

[@SirTayluh]

My concern is moreso with Denuvo, that's the only real stickler for me. I am on the fence on the changes to the game, but trust them enough to try it, but no game is worth malware.

[@Vesp3r1987]

About the 2 leader personas i think its more in the line of "FE owners will get them and later we will put them in some dlc.... unknown when"

[@estebanjvidal]

My take is it will happen something akin to the Aztecs in civ 6 launch. So they were only initiially available as a pre-purchase so basically it was worse, since you could not get them once it launched. But later it was added for free on anyone owning the game. Hopefully is that. Maybe included with DLC but would love if its added to base game later. It makes little business sense the personas would be available as purchase separately and stop selling them so soon AFTER launch unless it will be added via another way.

[@mervekarabork3047]

I don’t really like how they handled the era transitions at all, from what I’ve seen. I hope it feels different while playing.

[@gymlife408]

I just can’t imagine civilization without builders .

[@rickwilson2643]

Are you forgetting that the Aztecs in Civ VI were initially only available to those who preordered the game?

[@homeig-2234]

I hate the whole idea of personas in general, its lazy. Big agree on the AI as well, after spending many hours on CIV 6 you can pretty much predict what they will do in advance and how the game will play out, and when you loose its usually at the start and you feel cheated because of the bonuses

[@benhardacre588]

I just wish the Civ content creators had this lvl of passion for the console players when we missed out for the longest time on the last batch of C6 personas. While watching PC players making content on them. Your voices platforms would’ve helped a lot to fast track them being ported but most were silent on our plight. At least ppl have the choice to pre order or not. Console players had no such luxury. Thank you for your content VB. You’re still my #1. (Potato #2 & my first I ever came across Saxy Gamer @ #3)

[@OldDadGamer]

Having game stuff lock behind you got pay us money on release is BS.

[@mathgod3015]

People want this game to fail so bad ( not talking about Brad )

[@gopackgo1412]

Welcome to 2K

[@CowboyBepop]

Montezuma was pre order online for a long time. It is not new for civ games to have time locked content

[@PedroOliveira-ic3cv]

Once thing thou.. all the players are gonna start in one continent? That kind sucks.. for me the joy of exploration resides in finding new land and new civs..

[@finnmccoy5376]

Bro, it's crises 😂

[@russell7995]

Not waiting for Civ VII unfortunately. Loved Civ VI and yours and others' videos and playing the game is still FUN. When I saw the new way leaders interact in Civ VII they lost me. When I saw the various advance/deluxe/exclusive/whatever nonsense in ADVANCE sales marketing they really lost me. Then I learn that they force me to adopt a new civ with each 'era' or whatever they call it. So much for choosing WHO to play and WHAT map to lay on. Sorry, but Civ VII will have to undergo some major surgery to get me to have another look.

[@RZakelis]

Fall of Western Rome was a consequence of barbarian invasion.Yes, barbarians is a big crises.

[@sphaera2520]

Arguably the Bronze Age collapse was also due to a similar set of circumstances. I also don’t think the crises cards need to be directly associated with the crises. They can also represent other internal struggles your empire has to deal with on top of the external barbarian pressure. Government is corrupt so production is slower and more expensive. Series of bad weather and poor crop yields results in pop decline and massive happiness debuff. Etc.

[@RZakelis]

@sphaera2520 Yes, they were referred as a sea people.

[@luckydrag7273]

​@@RZakelis yesn't, add in corruption, infighting, over expand and most importantly they militarized themself to death that killed their economy.

[@VanBradley]

Oh for sure! Barbarians being a crisis wasn’t what caught my eye at all, it was more that it didn’t seem like the way it was implemented was overly threatening. It didn’t seem like the barbs were actually causing any issues, just being a little annoying really Again happy to be wrong about this though

[@MaxHardcore-p7t]

It would have collapsed regardless. So much infighting

[@jdevo8181]

Between the maps, narrative elements and forced crises it seems like there won't be a lot of variety between games.

[@MaxHardcore-p7t]

VanDadley at it again ❤

[@roberthiland7824]

I haven't watched much of the content for this. Im just so off put by the civ switching mechanic. I hated this feature in humankind, it's the main reason I stopped playing it.

[@Borasdk]

Concerns about the civ 7 i have is 1 All battles being about sniping the commanders too win making them all the same. 2 Pacing of the game is it too fast/slow what you are doing on your turns is there enough too do and depth there. 3 How much better is the AI compared too civ 6 and now much does it cheat this time. 4 UI looks bad and need improvements text is too small icons on tech tree and elsewhere could be better also, and the minimap is really bad can't see your or enemy borders on it. 5 Better balance know this is a work in progress and ongoing but must be better. 6 Multiplayer with only 5 players in the first age could be a bad idea and later ages also. 7 Better server for multiplayer that are stable. 8 More map types if there only one at the start could make games boring. 9 Is each age going too be interesting with new gameplay systems and are more people making it too the endgame this time 10 Tech tree looks small know there are 3 ages but looks like its easy too complete if science is not balance well and thats kinda bad for choices. There are probably more but these are just some i have.

[@flipneleanor7370]

Civ 6 > Civ 7. No need to purchase civ 7, I got civ 6.

[@rayrayxrp3425]

I would add the nation transition system. If i pick Egypt, i want to stay Egypt. If i pick France, i want to stay France. It is way better to keep a historic track record on nations over the people. France for exemple : the french people before were celts, than gallo-romans, than franks.... NO!! They were still gallo-romans under frankish rule. This will cause some serious issues man i loved this game and when civ 6 came out they almost ruined a whole legacy

[@futureshocked]

it'll be DLC, chill. It's what's happened with the last 2 games basically.

[@GreyyWytch]

Motion sickness from relentless body movement 🫨