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Wednesday, March 05, 2025
Alas, poor Imago Mundi!
4 weeks after the start of advanced access of Civilization VII and 3 weeks after official release, the first DLC and content patch 1.1.0 came out yesterday. Which, by itself, is already not a good look. Having to buy a DLC 3 weeks after release to get access to a major civilization like Great Britain feels very much like being nickeled and dimed. But in this post I would like to talk about another aspect of that patch, the "rebalancing" of the mementos.
As I mentioned earlier, Civ 7 has a bit of a problem that consecutive games can feel a bit the same, even if you play with different leaders, civilizations, and focus on a different aspect. Unlike for example Millennia, the different ages in Civ 7 are always the same, and the legend points / victory conditions very much railroad you into a specific playstyle. One thing that helped with replayability was mementos. Finding a good combination of mementos with good synergy with your other powers could change the feel of the game. But mementos sure weren't balanced, and while some that were good were really very good, others were unremarkable and boring. Yesterday's patch changed that, and strived to make *all* mementos unremarkable and boring. That is not an improvement.
The patch caught me in a game where I was using the memento Imago Mundi, which increases scout view range on searching, with The Travels of Marco Polo, which gives you 50 gold for every 100 revealed tiles. I have been using Imago Mundi in combination with other mementos frequently, because while good scouting isn't game breaking, it is rather helpful in making good decisions. The All-T'oqapu Tunic memento gave another +3, as long as you were doing that search action next to a mountain. That was fun, because it allowed you to scout the shortest paths to the second continent already during the antiquity age. Now both of these mementos have been nerfed to death, and the combination of Imago Mundi and All-T'oqapu Tunic together now only gives as much view range as Imago Mundi was giving all by itself before. The Eagle Banner memento now gives a +2% bonus instead of +5% Science for Great Works. On the other side, while some mementos were improved, they still weren't improved enough to be actually interesting.
A perfectly balanced game is perfectly boring. Civilization is mostly a single-player game (and Civ 7 multiplayer features are lacking), so players having fun with unbalanced combinations of abilities is part of the appeal, not something that needs to be patched out. I find patch notes that mostly contain nerfs to be very disappointing. The devs said that the mementos had to be nerfed because they were "overshadowing leader and civ abilities". Which is a problem, if your monetization strategy is DLCs that sell new leaders and civilizations. Next up, DLCs that nerf all free mementos, and hide powerful mementos behind a paywall.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:26 AM Permanent Link
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Civs 1-5 I spent a great deal of time setting up the hardest possible difficultys and then using the failings of the AI and game engine against it.
The 1.1.0 patch has me quite worried, because I'm not sure they have thought through the full impact and optics of their actions. By nerfing the mementos, they are lowering the desirability of the meta progression. I'm much less likely to keep playing in order to level up leaders and civs if the rewards are so trivial. And if I'm not playing, I'm not buying DLCs.
Second, they made almost no improvements to the UI, despite there being some good examples of mods on civfanatics that they could have leveraged. That heavily supports your "mobile/console-first" hypothesis. Until they realize that there can't be "one UI to rule them all", the string of bad Steam reviews will continue, because the pain of the UI is like a toothache - tolerable in small doses but grinds you down over time.
On the plus side, apparently they have hired Sukritact, who's been one of the best modders in Civ 6 and done more improvements to the Civ 7 UI than all of Firaxis.
I really hope they can pull off a recovery, but time and good will are fading quickly.
Second, they made almost no improvements to the UI, despite there being some good examples of mods on civfanatics that they could have leveraged. That heavily supports your "mobile/console-first" hypothesis. Until they realize that there can't be "one UI to rule them all", the string of bad Steam reviews will continue, because the pain of the UI is like a toothache - tolerable in small doses but grinds you down over time.
On the plus side, apparently they have hired Sukritact, who's been one of the best modders in Civ 6 and done more improvements to the Civ 7 UI than all of Firaxis.
I really hope they can pull off a recovery, but time and good will are fading quickly.
I was just reading that the reason for the limited map sizes was the limitations of consoles. So design decisions are being dictated by the Nintendo Switch. To quote the KFC meme, "My Disappointment Is Immeasurable And My Day Is Ruined."
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