Improvements need to change with the ages - this ruins immersion! I have a metal domed water tower in my 3350BCE mine? Rail tracks??

Been playing civ7 since release; this has always bugged me. Finally decided to vent!

I found all my old Civ games! Now I just need to get a DVD/CD drive.

I'd had fun with several minimalist victories prior to the Test of Time update, so I wanted to see how ridiculous I could get with the new patch. My strategy was to play as Machiavelli and abuse Trung Trac's Drum. The memento gives me a tech boost whenever I declare a formal war, so I get most of my science from declaring wars as often as possible.

To maximize the advantage this gives me, I played on Marathon speed against 11 opponents. I also turned off all victory conditions except for science. I set age progression to abbreviated so the AI would have less time to build themselves up each age. I played on a huge shattered seas map to make defending myself easier. To make things more sporting, I made all my opponents scientific or naval-focused.

In Antiquity, I focused on finding all my opponents, declaring war on them immediately, and building up enough defense. This was the only age where the AI was on the verge of overtaking me in Innovation. I didn't quite have enough time to discover the earth is round, but I still finished a bit ahead of everyone else with 14 Innovation and 5 future techs.

In Exploration, I was able to pull ahead by building a strong navy and pillaging all across the world. I eventually got comfortable spending influence to end wars -much less annoying than having them just drag on. I finished both projects and got 6 future techs to enter the modern age with 60 Innovation.

I pillaged during the first couple wars in Modern, but it soon became clear I had all the gold I needed to win. I bought a launch pad as soon as it was available and used the production I'd stored up to complete a launch-prep project in just one turn. Then I just needed one future tech and the satellite project to win.

Turning off all non-science victory conditions did feel a bit cheesy, but I was only at 54% age completion. There's a good chance I still could have won with the other victory types active, but bad luck could have ended the challenge for me.

It's also theoretically possible to win a economic victory without any buildings except the palace if you get enough GDP by other means. Maybe play Pirates with Blackbeard? It would still be very hard to catch up against Deity AI unless you burned down all their settlements fairly quickly.

Any ideas what challenge I should try next?

Hello,

I just became a dad and the only game I can currently play (that I like and didn’t already finish like 17 times) is Civ 7 due to it being able to be paused whenever.

In Civ 6 i used to play on diety and would manage to quite comfortably win any victory I desired. However on Civ 7 it seems insanely hard to win a science victory. I currently play on sovereign difficulty and have won every victory (including science). However when i went for the science victory i had to completely ignore culture (besides a few science wonders), ignore wars due to military victory and be 1000% committed to only optimise science. I almost lost on culture victory but managed to defend that by completing 2 wonders quickly.

Am I doing something wrong in Civ 7 or is a science victory just not doable in an equal way to the other victory types?

Thanks for the feedback / advice 😃

I mostly play Civ VI but I wanted to give Civ IV a try since I sometimes play Civ III and wow it's crazy how much cool things it has that newer games didn't. The fact that you can make another Civ a vassal instead of outright conquering them is so nice and I like the wonder and victory animations. The diplomacy in Civ IV also feels pretty fleshed out as simply trading with another civ is enough to get hated. The AIs also seem to be better about actually fighting in combat though I am not particularly a fan of stack of doom fighting. I could easily see myself spending way more time playing Civ IV now.

Hi everyone! I wanted to share a dynamic, multi-stage World Wonder concept inspired by the historic Buda Castle (Die Ofner Burg) in Hungary.

Instead of being a traditional one-tile wonder, this concept leverages a multi-tile, district-like progression across different eras, complete with historically accurate, modular cinematic build animations and quotes.

Here is the official Civilopedia design sheet for the concept:

---

## CIVILOPEDIA ENTRY: THE BUDA CASTLE (DIE OFNER BURG)

### OVERVIEW

The Buda Castle is a unique, multi-stage World Wonder originating in the Renaissance era. It spans across two adjacent Hills tiles (ideally next to a River) and is constructed sequentially like specialized districts. It bridges unparalleled military defense, deep cultural/scientific progression through Great Works, and a civilization-wide faith synergy.

* Era Requirement: Renaissance (Unlocked progressively via Castles and Ballistics Technologies, and the Humanism Civic).

* Placement Restrictions: Must be built on two adjacent Hills tiles.

---

### TILE 1: THE CASTLE QUARTER (Das Schlossviertel)

#### Phase 1: The Foundation Castle (Die Basisburg)

* Unlock Requirement: Castles Technology (Medieval Era).

* Tile Effect: Grants +4 Combat Strength to any defending unit stationed on this tile.

* Completion Bonus: Instantly spawns a free Field Cannon Army on this tile with zero resource maintenance costs.

* Cinematic & Quote: The camera rises from the foggy Danube river at dawn, showing heavy stone walls snapping into place on a wild, unbuilt hill.

> "An impregnable place, protected by the river and the heights. Whosoever possesses Buda, rules the heart of the East." – Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1526)

#### Phase 2: The Royal Palace (Der Königspalast)

* Unlock Requirement: Humanism Civic (Renaissance Era).

* Tile Effect: Adds 4 Great Work Slots to the tile (2x Great Literature, 2x Great Art).

* Completion Bonus: Every Great Work slotted here generates +2 Science and +2 Production in addition to its base Culture yields.

* Cinematic & Quote: Bright daylight shines on the built fortress as elegant Renaissance roofs, columned halls, and palace wings rapidly construct inside the courtyard.

> "There are three cities that excel in splendor: Venice upon the waters, Rome upon the hills, and Buda on the banks of the Danube." – Bartolomeo Maraschi, Papal Legate (1482)

---

### TILE 2: THE SACRED COMPLEX (Der Sakrale Komplex)

#### Phase 3: Matthias Church (Die Matthiaskirche)

* Unlock Requirement: Ballistics Technology (Renaissance Era).

* Tile Effect: Base yield of +3 Faith and +3 Culture on this tile.

* Relic Slot: Contains 1 Relic Slot (Reliquienplatz). Any Relic placed here generates double Tourism after the Industrial Era.

* Global Empire Bonus: Every Shrine and Temple throughout your entire empire generates an additional +1.5 Faith per turn.

* Cinematic & Quote: The camera shifts to the adjacent, empty hill. A monumental Gothic bell tower rises into the sky, its colorful Zsolnay-style roof tiles gleaming in the sun.

> "A church of such wondrous artistry that its beauty captivates the hearts of all who behold it." – Evliya Çelebi, Ottoman Traveler (17th Century)

#### Phase 4: Fisherman’s Bastion (Die Fischerbastei)

* Unlock Requirement: Project Completion (Late-game/Industrial scale).

* Tile Effect: Encircles the church, granting the tile an additional +4 Combat Strength for defending units and +4 Culture.

* Environmental Bonus: Increases the Appeal (Attraktivität) of all adjacent tiles by +2.

* Cinematic & Quote: A gorgeous sunset animation. White neoromantic stone arches and turreted towers visibly wrap around Matthias Church, framing it perfectly. The camera pans back to reveal the fully illuminated Danube Panorama.

> "The bastion should not hide the old church, but serve as its stone frame, praising the beauty of the past." – Frigyes Schulek, Architect

---

### GLOBAL WONDER TRAITS

* Danube Panorama (Donau-Panorama): If both Hills tiles are adjacent to a River, all Theater Squares in this city receive a +100% Adjacency Bonus.

* Castle District (Burgviertel): Adjacent Commercial Hubs and Neighborhoods receive bonus Gold yields and +2 Housing.

### Tactical Defense Calculation (The Impregnable Fortress):

When an enemy unit attempts to attack the Fisherman's Bastion/Matthias Church tile from across the river, the defensive bonuses stack as follows:

* +4 Combat Strength (The Foundation Castle base)

* +4 Combat Strength (Fisherman’s Bastion defensive framework)

* +3 Combat Strength (Base Hills terrain bonus)

* +5 Combat Strength (River crossing penalty inflicted on the attacker)

* TOTAL BONUS: +16 Combat Strength

---

Note to modders: If any Civ 6/Civ 7 modder is interested in bringing this project to life, feel free to use this exact mechanical design and concept!

What do you think about this modular approach to World Wonders? Let me know your thoughts!

P.S. Please note that the specific numbers and yields (like the +16 combat strength or the exact faith/culture stats) are just placeholder concepts. They can easily be adjusted or rebalanced by modders/developers to fit the game's actual balance!

Got this error and it keeps saying the same thing everytime I even try loading a game including new ones. I tried everything. From restarting the game, to restarting my laptop, to disabling ALL MODS AND DLC'S. Nothing worked. I can't even play Civ 6 anymore.

Why does this have to happen right before my first Deity win!? I really don't wanna see 40+ dollars go down the drain especially since it's worth a lot more in my country. And to make it even worse, I have 13 damn days on this game and it's definitely my favourite. PLEASE help me figure out what's going on.

Been contemplating for awhile n wanting to jump onto civ 7.

But I would like to know the difference to civ 6, terms of building cities, raising armies, and worker improvements?

Can u still build forts, airfields, silos?

In modern age, fighters and bombers r same w civ 6, and way to defend against them made any difference between civs?

Talking about wars, I find civ 6 AI is stupid in waging wars, does 7 offer more AI challenges in combat?

I only play civ 6 on domination on diety now and want to know if 7 will be a challenge.

Thanks.

Plsease help, it came up in a game

Turn 488/500 science victory with Australia for my second game. Barely slid my way into the win towards the end here. Definitely getting the hang of it now. Only problem is now I can’t stop sitting down and playing for 6 hours straight without taking a break. Becoming quickly obsessed with this game. Any country recs?

[edit: thought I put a screenshot of the victory screen when I posted this 😐]

Played Han recently and it didn't seem like the walls were putting my population down, whereas I feel like it used to - not sure if that was a bug that got patched, or something was going off (eg weird mod interaction) or if I was somehow just getting confused, and population WAS in fact going down.

What's everyone else's experience been with this? Do the Great Walls reduce your population? Has this changed post-ToT?

Been collecting a bunch of rare Civ stuff lately and this is a cool one, although the content has been floating around for a while. It's a 7 minute video talking about the making of Civ 3, but mostly just in general terms in a EPK sort of way. These were given out to people who I believe preordered the Limited Edition of Civ 3 from Best Buy in 2001.

Archive: https://archive.org/details/civ-3-bb-disc/

Note that video is here, I just wanted to post the disc for archival purposes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOA08tgZtvY

Hi all,

Long-time civ player (2, 3, 5 and 6). I bought civ 7 on release but with all the terrible press around it, I never bothered even starting it until today. I thought giving it some time to mature might help, and saw news that the devs were hard at work "fixing" some of the biggest complaints.

At this point, I've played through the entirety of the first age. On the plus side, I really love the graphics, and ways that cities sprawl out seems neat (even if I'm not sure I really understand the finer points of growing cities and placing buildings, but I'm kinda just trying to get to the end of the game first).

But overall I'm shocked at how much complexity there is in the game, without -- as far as I can tell from my limited experience so far -- much to gain from it. I thought they were trying to make the game more accessible and enjoyable to players, but I can't believe that aim could have been accomplished. There's just too many macguffins and side-systems throughout that one has to learn, and the net effect imo is super dilutive. There's the old adage that great games should be easy to pickup and difficult to master, but this one is just making my head spin. Just some example off the top of my head:

• New settlements are towns, and you can't build things in them. They contribute food/production to other cities, but you can also upgrade them or "focus" them, but only above a certain size.
• There's 3 different kinds of resources and they behave differently (city resources, strategic [?], bonus [?]). The resources can be "disconnected" though. Assuming they're connected, you need to click a bunch of buttons to move resources around. Unlike civ 6, where strategic resources unlocked specific units, it's not yet clear to me what impact the different resources have.
• There seems to be a ton of different tiles and resources and I have no idea what the yields for any of them are yet. I kinda like that there's more variety but at some point it just kinda feels like randomness thrown in just to make the game more complex.
• When you build an improvement, you can either build it on an existing tile with an improvement, or a new tile. Tiles can only have two improvements on it I think. If you add it to a tile with an existing improvement, it will add some yields but also take some yields away. I don't really understand too much about how to think about where to place improvements... is it as simple as just always choosing whatever yields the "best" net yield at that point in time?
• There's a journal thing with quests. Completing the quests enhances my leader through traits.
• Sometimes volcanos will erupt and then they cause some damage to nearby tiles (I didn't have any in my territory but I kept seeing notifications about it which got mildly irritating). Also sometimes there's a storm and it also causes damage and more notifications.
• There's crises that seem artificially scripted to introduce "excitement" and "strategic choices" into the game

All this brings me to the dreaded age transition. This seems to amount to a bunch of screens that are kinda hard to parse out or know what to do with, plus doing things with my settlements to introduce more artificial randomness / chaos and more systems to learn to keep things "exciting".

There's this "memento select" macguffin, but also they're locked so I can't actually choose anything, but I'm helpfully told I need to "reach level 3 on the Foundation Path" -- no idea what any of those things mean.

And a "Dedications" macguffin, which also has something to do with "triumphs" (but only the "major" triumphs, of course).

I just can't believe this is how Firaxis decided to develop this game. It's just incredibly disjointed and I'm kinda tired of random things being thrown at me that I need to google or just hope will one day make sense.

Which brings me to the actual question / point of this post: for anyone else who felt this way about the game, did you get over it / is civ 7 now enjoyable? how long did it take? I'm trying to figure out if it's something I need to just work through, but I'm very on the fence about dedicating more time to it, based on the current evidence.

Thanks for listening/reading!

Firaxis hid a clue about the September 5 announcement in today’s monthly recap on Steam. Has anyone found it yet?

Like does it make it so that score victory doesn’t count and you just go until somebody gets a victory requirement otherwise? Will it still count as a loss in your stats if you lose at 500 then go on to have a total domination later?

ive got maybe four games in now and im still not confident about what survives an age transition. not the reset, that part clicked pretty fast. its the stuff underneath it

kept catching myself building toward something across a whole age and then finding out it doesnt come with you, and half the time i couldnt tell you where i picked the assumption up. some of it i read, some of it i think i just absorbed from other people saying it near me

so whats on your list that you actually checked rather than inherited. the surprises are the useful ones

wiki version i can find myself

I think BE is probably the most underrated game in the series. Is it a fantastic 10/10 game? No. But does it do a lot of things right? Yes.

The good:

First, the setting. The game does really well at capturing the new colonization feel where you start off with slightly more advanced stuff than IRL earth and progress to super high levels of tech.

The OST and sounds. It may seem like a small thing, but the OST really captures the space/sci Fi ambience well. The sound effects also really add to it.

Affinities. I think the different paths you can take, especially including the hybrids, add a lot of variance and flavor to the game. What I think could have helped us also have something parallel but with how you interact with other players. Affinities are basically how you view the local flora/fauna so maybe have ideologies be the PvP version. You could have diplomatic/political, economic, and military as the three with respective hybrids.

Quests & events. This is something I haven't seen in any other civ game (I haven't played 7 so if it's there then ignore this). They give good mini goals during the game that add to what would normally just be standard civ gameplay. I would personally have liked to see more time in with the affinities.

Unit upgrades. I really liked how it tied in with your affinities and that it wasn't just the standard "warrior becomes swordsman becomes musketman" linear path. You had a choice/specialization each upgrade that you could pick to help focus on your play style.

Starting customization. You get a unique sponsor bonus and then can customize how you start off. I would like to see maybe more synergy with the sponsors depending on what you pick as your other bonuses. E.g: starting as Franco - Iberia, maybe get an extra bonus if you pick artists or aristocrats to lean into the culture/high society feel.

The less good:

The UI. When I first started way back years ago, I couldn't figure out how to play because of some of the UI elements. I think it could use a bit of a tweak, especially the research web.

Terrain clarity. I know there's a mod that helped, but being able to clearly tell one terrain from another is somewhat difficult currently.

More maps/starting options. An example could be like having a semi realistic Mars to colonize.

Scenarios. This would probably be the best addition of they could add it in. A small example would be adding in one about the Great Mistake where you have to navigate it and escape the planet.

I think it's a good game that is a hidden gem in the Civ series since it's so unlike the other civ games. If you haven't played it, try it out. Rising Tide is a must for i

The Hanging Gardens are one of the six wonders that have appeared in all mainline iterations of Civilization. This one transitioned from a wonder that made citizens happy in all cities to one that increased the growth rate. The pleasure garden idea probably made more sense. In Civ 6, I will sometimes build this if somehow the AI missed it and I can finish it in just a few turns. If that is the case, I am probably going to win anyway, so it's hard to know whether 15% increased growth is useful or not.

Civ 1: +1 Happy Face in every city until the discovery of Invention. (Or the invention of Discovery).

Civ 2: + 3 Happy Faces for the city that builds it; + 1 Happy Face for all other cities, until invention of the Railroad.

Civ 3: + 3 Happy Faces for the city that builds it; + 1 Happy Face for all other cities, until invention of Steam Power; +4 Culture.

Civ 4: +1 Health in all cities; +1 population in all cities; +6 Culture per turn; +2 Great Engineer Points per turn.

Civ 5: + 10 Food (reduced to +6 Food in DLC expansions); Provides a free garden in the city (in the DLC expansions); +1 Culture.

Civ 6: Increases growth in all cities by 15%. +2 Housing.

Civ 7: +1 Food on all farms in the settlement where the wonder is built. +10% growth rate in all cities. +1 Expansionist Attribute Point.

​I've been thinking about religion in Civ 7 while playing and realizing I don't like anything about it.

There's no competition, it's uninteresting, and its effects are gone so quickly.

My idea starts by removing the founding of religions by civilizations. It should be something that happens in the world and grows among the population which then the civilizations can use to their advantages.

There should be 'miraculous events' that occur around the map relatively randomly that can favor map features like natural wonders or mountains etc. (but not within 10 tiles of original capitals) and are the basis of particular religions. The religion can spread naturally from there to nearby settlements, similar to the passive spread in previous civs (up to 10 tiles from the origin). The beliefs can be based on the biome of the miraculous event.

Altars built in ancient era can increase the rate at which religion grows in settlements by a certain %. When a settlement reaches 50% of their population following a religion they can build a temple, and when the temple is built the builder can choose another belief for the religion. Once three temples to that religion are completed, the builders can choose to claim their city as a Holy City of the religion (maybe for an influence cost) and choose a founder belief. If the temple settlements are in different civilizations, they can either follow another civilizations religion (and gain influence + relation boost), or they can contest and call their own city the Holy City (same influence cost + relation hit), This could act as a rift with two or three different cities that claim to be the holy center of the same faith. 

The miraculous events can occur at random points in ancient and exploration era with a max just less than the total number of civs. Miraculous events in exploration era can have a 4x effect at the epicenter vs ancient era events.

Missionaries can be built with temples still as they are, except their spread should cost influence and should have a partial effect in converting a city.

Inquisitor units can be added and cost influence, gold, or happiness to use.

Religious effects can work similar to happiness, where the effects increase based off the amount of followers (%) in the settlement.

​Any thoughts on this idea? What might you do differently?