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Friday, June 12, 2026
Civilization uncanny valley
So I wanted to try out Civilization VII after the Test of Time update, which was supposed to reboot the game. But as I hadn't played it for over a year, that turned out to be a rather weird experience. I fell into a sort of uncanny valley, where some things were familiar enough for me to make me think that I knew the game, while others had either changed or I had forgotten, so that they felt strange and off.
While I managed to play the same civilization over the ages, that actually was never really my problem with Civ 7, and I had enjoyed other 4X games in which you didn't stay the same for the whole game. My problem with Civ 7 rather was that the second age, exploration, feels very scripted and sameish to me, regardless with which civilization or civilizations I play it. It is just the tech tree that allows you the exploration, and the whole reward structure is designed to push you into that exploration.
So between the uncanny unfamiliarity with the game and feeling that I was still following the same scripted gameplay, I stopped half way through the age of exploration and gave up. For me this wasn't the patch that fixed all of Civ 7's problems and made me come back. And when I see the concurrent player numbers, it seems that the rest of the world feels the same. After a short peak Civ 7 is back to have far fewer players than Civ 6.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:42 PM Permanent Link
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I'm the author of the "Civ VII Post-Mortem: Crafting a redemption arc" and I completely agree with your assessment. Civ-switching was never the primary issue. Instead there were specific decisions around player Agency, leader/civ Balance, and system Complexity that have ended up restricting the variety of game play, resulting in a "samey" feel to all of the playthroughs.
Agency has been somewhat improved with the Test of Time update and the removal of the Legacy Path, but people are realizing that the secondary systems such as trade, religion, and city-state relationships have been oversimplified to the detriment of the game. In previous versions, those simple (but not simplistic) systems could interact with each other in many ways, creating emergent game play that felt unique with each play through.
But Civ VII turns those systems into discrete mini-games with little or no interaction between systems. In Civ 6, trade routes spread religion, boost tourism, interact with diplomacy via improved relations and diplomatic visibility, sometimes interact with city states via quests or policies, can be used internally to promote growth, and many leaders have modifiers that apply to trade. So in Civ 6 this one simple minigame directly interacts with 6 different game systems, while in Civ 7 it interacts with 1, maybe 2 if you include "improve trade relations."
Until some of the systemic interactions are restored, people will get tired of playing after 3-5 games and Civ VII won't have the longevity we're hoping for.
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Agency has been somewhat improved with the Test of Time update and the removal of the Legacy Path, but people are realizing that the secondary systems such as trade, religion, and city-state relationships have been oversimplified to the detriment of the game. In previous versions, those simple (but not simplistic) systems could interact with each other in many ways, creating emergent game play that felt unique with each play through.
But Civ VII turns those systems into discrete mini-games with little or no interaction between systems. In Civ 6, trade routes spread religion, boost tourism, interact with diplomacy via improved relations and diplomatic visibility, sometimes interact with city states via quests or policies, can be used internally to promote growth, and many leaders have modifiers that apply to trade. So in Civ 6 this one simple minigame directly interacts with 6 different game systems, while in Civ 7 it interacts with 1, maybe 2 if you include "improve trade relations."
Until some of the systemic interactions are restored, people will get tired of playing after 3-5 games and Civ VII won't have the longevity we're hoping for.
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