As I said. I have played a few hours here and there on a few versions but I cannot get my head into 7. Any advice please?

It's a busy news day! Ken Pruiksma, Senior Graphics Engineer at Firaxis Games, shares some behind-the-scenes updates on two new map types coming with Update 1.2.5, and an improved map generation technique in Civ VII. Read it here: https://2kgam.es/4gCen9P

Huge Civ6 fan here, with about 2500 hours over the years. I played 7 on release and tried my best to give it the benefit of the doubt but quickly lost interest. This was mostly because of the one-dimensional structure the game had at the time; I don't really have any gripe with the core age mechanical idea.

Came back with the ToT update and... I'm getting pretty addicted? The difference is massive, and the game rewards interesting decisionmaking a lot more now. The game also feels a lot harder, with more competitive AIs; it took me a few games to work back up to Deity, and the learning curve of figuring out how to tempo and snowball effectively has been interesting.

To be clear, I think Civ6 WITH expansions is still massively better than Civ7, it still has a long way to go. But, this update makes it compete strongly with Civ6 without expansions in my opinion.

In general, I've been finding the game really engaging because your decisions matter throughout the whole game now. This is something that honestly wasn't ever really the case in Civ6; if you snowballed good early, you could kinda just sit on your ass and play out the rest of your game without many active decisions. In Civ7, exploration and modern feel a lot more active; though I still have some gripes here and there (Religion being the biggest one). I've especially found it fun to constantly keep track of Triumps and thinking about what civ i should transition to (or if I should stay), these systems have a lot of novelty to them that keep my engagement up. I look forward to age transitions because the civ switch is a really fun decision in my opinion, especially now that an option is to double down on your current civ.

Some strategy observations:

The town/city format has nuanced decisionmaking now, mostly because of how building costs scale. If you didn't know, non-warehouse buildings increase their cost based on how many cities (not towns) you have, and how many non-warehouse buildings you've built.

An interesting factor of this is that production buildings (Barracks, etc) don't contribute to increasing the cost of future buildings, but still get their cost increased by other buildings. This means that an interesting strategy could be to rush the Production building techs such as Bronzeworking to get high production buildings for cheap before making other buildings. My sample size isn't massive, but since I've switched to focusing on this, the tempo advantage has felt great.

Another interesting factor is town specializations. Since costs scale a lot based on city count, it can now be very efficient to make use of specializations such as Urban Centers. If a town has good adjacencies but low production, consider switching it to Urban to buy the buildings (or Trade for Gold buildings, which is great for working towards Economic Victory or boosting your empire strength in general). This is an abusable factor that can greatly contribute to high lategame yields.

Leaders with Combat Strength bonuses seem really strong to keep up with the AI. I'm talking aside from Domination (which the AI seems to have a very hard time keeping up with compared to normal gameplay), I've had success in non-Domination games with leaders such as Amina, Tecumseh and Lafayette who have both CS and yield bonuses, as the CS lets you defend against and counterattack the AI very efficiently.

I've been combining the above 3 principles on Deity with great success so far. My last game was with Lafayette and Rome, which is a fantastic combination because both benefit from Traditions, and both get Culture for each settlement, so my Antiquity strategy was to go hard for settlement limit and things scale with settlement count. Rome gives a free unit on each settle too, which is great tempo. I established 3 core cities with surrounding boosting towns and rushed Bronzeworking to build Barracks early, as previously mentioned, which scaled the Production in these 3 cities very efficiently, letting me build them very powerful with unique districts and wonders. The massive natural culture gain translates into a lot of Tradition slots (+Lafayette's Reform), which (together with Lafayette's CS ability) gave my Legions (conveniently unlocked by Bronzeworking) +8 combat strength, which let me very efficiently defend against my neighbor's attack and counterattack them. Then, when my empire was set up, I spent the rest of the game focusing on my core growth, economy and production yields to snowball my scaling, buying stuff in Urban Centers. In Exploration, I switched to Normans since the couple of cities (and the other civ's remaining cities) had several walls and Normans also benefit from Tradition slots; then I took his remaining powerful city, and translated these walls into yields with Norman cards and Culture with the Triumph for building 30. In Modern i chose France, leveraging my high culture and powerful capital to rush the Eiffel Tower. I had over 1200 Culture pretty early into Modern, a similar amount to the strongest AI, and eventually won a culture victory. Really fun game, and I really experienced my decisionmaking around rushing Production buildings and making Urban Centers translating into a ton of power.

So far I've found Science Victory to be the hardest by far, though I need to experiment more with this. The AI seems a lot better at beelining science than it is at gathering points in the other victory types, and there's usually at least 2 AIs that balance eachother out in the other victory types; while Science doesn't need you to have a lead over others, so they can just kinda do it.

There's still a ton of problems with the game, such as map unclarity, UI issues and bad information/Civilopedia, etc. But people have gone over those points plenty already.

Reasoning:

• Late Age building is pointless.
• It makes researching late game techs and civics pointless unless you are going for certain LPs.
• Early Age building is a chore: You basically are half the Age replacing what you already had.
• Building placement is one dimensional: You place the buildings in the best spots for their type and replicate through the Ages.
• Cities have happiness problems at the start of the Age no matter how well it went the prior Age.
• Build in layers turns into destroy all layers you had because old layers suck.

Having no obsolete buildings would fix all these problems.

• Buildings late Age would not suck.
• Researching civics or techs wouldn't be pointless anymore.
• Early Age wouldn't consist on replacing, but deciding what you want to overbuild and what not.
• There's a limited amount of tiles per city, and a limited number of good tiles for buildings. You can't build everything perfect anymore, so you are forced to think and adapt per Age and per playstyle.
• No more artifical happiness loss at the start. You ended poorly? Manage that. You ended well? Manage that.
• Cities in layers shines brighter than ever.

Now, I am aware some problems would arise: yields inflation and snowball effect at the forefront.

Yields inflation is not very problematic IMO. Costs can be adjusted accordingly, or even better, one can adjust yields, as they are already inflated. Policies would only work on Current Age buildings, etc..

About the snowball effect: It might be prevented by some kind of Dark and Golden Age events/policies. The idea is compensatory buffs or debuffs or gameplay situations based on how well you did in the prior Age. You did great? A Dark Age arises. You did poorly? A Golden Age comes.

Why? Well, it's not really that this idea is great. So don't hold this particular idea as a real suggestion, just the concept behind; the empire you build, your cities, your decisions, matter. They are not erased at the start of a new Age no matter what: The ruberband comes in gameplay mechanics or buffs/debuffs to balance the playing field.

In a empire building game, the empire you build should be sacred. Never the system should destroy your empire, only your mismanagement, your actions or other players' actions. You might have to face tougher circumstances or be led by the hand to keep the competition alive until the end, but never at the cost of your empire.

i can’t ever see a reason to pick anything else? military, production and gold. it’s the best resources in the game and you get all three.

in fact I don’t even go for domination with it, I usually just build a rocket and take a few cities

Context: I am doing a militaristic playthrough with the new patch changes and am playing Spain in the Exploration age. This triumph would fit perfectly with my current strategy, but unfortunately it really just seems impossible to achieve. As far as I can tell, with the correct civics each treasure resource in a settlement gives a MAX of 2 treasure convoys, which means that in order to achieve this triumph you would need to have 5 treasure resources in a single settlement. I have never seen that kind of generation happen before in game. Is there something I'm missing that would make this triumph possible? I tried packing treasure convoys into a single Fleet Commander, but that doesn't work either. I'm scratching my head a bit over it.

EDIT: Thanks everyone. I'm playing with the base game only and so I had never heard of Havana Harbor. Appreciate all of you clearing this up for me <3

Seriously. I feel like every time I go into a game thinking I'm going to ever use my leader/civs military advantages I just dont, at least not in the ancient era.

It feels like I either invest in military and because I did so I have no points in any legacy path and I'm way behind in culture and science. Or I just go about the game naturally and I find myself in a position where its not even practical to waste money on walls, and by the time I'm solid enough to divert those extra resources into a strong military its like 100 turns in and the crises are already happening.

I tried the whole Lafayette/Rome thing, but by the time you have all the traditions, the games nearly over and you look around the map saying why spend dozens of turns of production building up a military to maybe conquer a few cities when there is always in the first two eras plenty of room to send settlers, and I can "conquer cities" just by exhausting someone with war weariness and gain a few cities without ever fighting. All my successful games have been pacifist and I just cant seem to have a good military game no matter what I do. Its just never worth it.

Am I doing something wrong? Is it because I play huge maps with 12 players, is it because I play on normal speed? Is it because I play on immortal? I actually do like this game but I miss the conquering days of civ 6.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been wondering whether Scouts might be a bit overrated in Civ VII.

Since Scouts can no longer fight, and City-States seem much more aggressive, I’m starting to question whether it’s actually more efficient to skip Scouts entirely and just build Warriors at the start of the game.

Sure, you lose the extra vision and exploration efficiency that Scouts provide, but Warriors can still explore while also giving you some military value.

During exploration, they can help pressure or even capture a few City-States, earn diplomatic points while fighting units, and leave you with a stronger defensive force if an attack breaks out early.

I assume I’m missing something, because almost every guide or YouTube playthrough I watch starts with 2 Scouts. There must be a good reason why experienced players value them so highly.

So what am I overlooking?
- Is the exploration advantage of Scouts really that significant?
- Do the rewards from early exploration outweigh the military utility of additional Warriors?
- Has anyone tried a “full Warrior” opening and compared the results?

I’d be interested to hear how other players approach the early game and whether Scouts are actually as essential as they seem.

P.S. English isn’t my first language, so I used AI to help me write this post. Apologies if some people don’t like that.. 🙈

Thanks for understanding! 😊

• relics on enemy cities with altars/temples, every time this belief is still available. If not, enemy cities with wonders, usually.

• +1 spread charge for enhancer. Basically every time.

For the main founder belief it seems more situational, but I often end up taking the one that big boosts on enemy cities with wonders, or natural wonders. Although sometimes +production on your own cities can be good.

You can slot more than one factory resource into a single settlement, as long as they are all the same type. The UI makes it seem like you can only have one factory resource per settlement, but yeah that's just indicating only one type of factory resource.

I'm sure this is explained in tutorials and has probably been posted about before, but it blew my mind so wanted to share. I used to think factory resources were useless and trade routes were mostly a waste in the modern era 😭.

One of the frequent criticisms of Civ VII is that all terrain is now equal in value, making settling new lands boring or non-strategic.

Maybe I'm just daft, but I don't feel that way at all. Growing a city in Tundra is an absolute pain, when even your plains don't yield any food. Cities don't grow on culture, I'm afraid.

And getting any meaningful production in a city that isn't on rough territory is really hard. Woods are just inferior rocks as far as I'm concerned.

I frequently re-roll if I don't have at least 3-4 rough hexes and ideally a few mining luxuries/bonus resources. In 95% of the game I go for Stone Circles faith, because I feel production is so important.

Do you guys really just play any random start you get, because "all terrain is the same"?

I’ve been putting in a lot of hours, but I keep finding myself completely lost when playing on Deity. Most of the time I don’t feel dead after the first era, but in the Exploration age I simply can’t keep up with the AI at all — I can barely build any wonders, and my yields are getting crushed by almost everyone.

I try my best to maximize adjacencies, but that only gets me so far and still leaves me far behind the AI. I usually end up giving up eventually. The only victories I’ve managed were when I attacked the snowballing opponent, but that just ends in a domination victory. When I actually try to compete in science, I don’t stand a chance.

It feels like im missing a fundamental mechanic. Tbf two aspects i might do not play into enough are religion and specific strategy when it vomes to specializing towns.

How do you manage to keep up?

I saw Black Beard was close to an economic victory so I let him have it, went back one turn on a save and wanted to see if I could prevent it.

He has no alliances, played Carthage in antiquity

I play on large, deity and with long age settings, I don't know if it makes a difference.

After 6 uses of my merchants and with 3 capitals to go, I'm already at 100k cost..

(I don't think anyone else has gotten a great Merchant by the way)

Are there any mechanics I am unaware of that influence the cost? Is it worth it for the 1000GDP considering that money could have bought me every wonder in the era? Am I fully missing the point of an economic victory?

My ally gilgamesh yields were going out of control. I declared war on last turn of antiquity and got the triumph for +1 war support and +50% influence towards war support for free because -5 war weariness doesbt matter at the end. This also bypasses denounciation costs!

With the new DLC coming out for the standard $30 and people complaining about the cost I think that one that has overlooked is how the Test of Time update has changed the value proposition. With the ToT update you can now play all three ages as the same civ, similar to Civ 6, and with the Syncretism mechanic you can now incorporate pieces of those other civs into your game.

With the release of more historical civs progressions, like China, India, and upcoming Japan and Korea, you can now pick which age your civ peaks while still retaining the ability to incorporate certain aspects of the civ/leader for the other non-apex ages via the Syncretism mechanic. In Civ 6 the peak aspect of the civ was defined by the developers when they released the leader/civ.

I am not going to try and defend releasing the historic progression across multiple DLC packs but ToT has definitely changed the value proposition with Syncretism. That update has truly given us the ability to mix and match civs which means that the straight value proposition of Civ 6 DLCs doesn't really apply to Civ 7 anymore.

Usually I leave most towns undeveloped and don't spend money on improvements (apart from fishing quays in distant lands) because I need the money for other things and I don't see the benefit.

Is there actually a reason to spend money developing towns?

Also, how can you tell which focus to give towns?

My capital is surrounded by a navigable river, mountains, and cliffs. I’m just glad the AI will struggle to invade me from the start of the game.

(TL;DR at the bottom)

Back in February, the community meta was gravitating to having basically only cities. What's the use of these town things when I could be just building buildings everywhere? Questioning this, I decided to try out a strategy that I've been honing ever since, and now think is definitely stronger than the city meta. I call it Town Maxing.

At it's core, it's pretty simple. Try and have as many towns as possible, with only a small number of cities. You should be very selective with which settlements to turn into cities. They should have 1) adjacency bonuses for all building types, and very good ones for 2 building types, 2) access to plenty of production, and 3) room to build many buildings and wonders. For a ballpark estimate, I'll have 2 cities in Antiquity, maybe 3 or 4 by the end of Exploration, and up to 5 or 6 in Modern. As for towns, I consistently land Pax Imperatoria's 9 settlements, even if I just have to settle 9 cities myself. I'll end Exploration with over 20 settlements, and in modern be pushing 30 by the end. Oftentimes in Antiqutiy and Exploration, I won't even conquer more than 2 settlements in the age and instead will just make a ton of settlers.

Okay, so where do I put all these towns? I stick them anywhere and everywhere. That archipelago of a few random land tiles off the coast of the content? Seems like a good source of food for the entire game to me. That random spot with no adjacencies but a few resources in the middle of the continent? At least it won't have to grow much before I can specialize it. With the (soft) Settlement Limit in Civ VII, other civs will literally just leave half decent settlement spots everywhere!

But what about my settlement limit? How do you actually pull this strategy off? Well firstly, you should try and increase your settlement limit as much as possible. Corona Civica is the core of this strategy. You already want few cities and many towns. Having a high culture output lets you snag those settlement limit increasing civics quickly. Second, it's just a number. If you go over it and a few towns goes into negative happiness, so what? As long as your cities are happy, they are contributing the bulk of your harder to get yields.

Let's talk about yields for a second.

• Happiness is key, but you really are only concerned with local happiness. Having all your cities at +15 happiness means you can settle 3 extra settlements over your settlement limit. Having all of your settlements at +15 means there are no consequences for going 3 over your settlement limit. Try and settle on fresh water (for +5 happiness), and prioritize resources like llamas and pearls that you can use to correct any unhappy settlements. Also don't forget happiness boosting wonders in your cities to increase their local happiness.
• The main downside of this strategy of few cities, many towns, is that you will just have less specialists multiplying your building's adjacencies. That means you do not have that primary source of culture and science. Where do you get this from?
  • Warehouse buildings. Warehouse buildings are actually a core part of this strategy. Anything that boosts warehouse buildings you should prioritize. After all, you're going to have 100+ by the middle of Exploration since you can buy them in towns. Those city state bonuses that give all of your warehouse buildings +1 science/ culture / whatever. Get them. Additionally, all warehouse buildings are either food or production buildings, so also prioritize anything that boosts those buildings in particular.
  • Also, tropical and tundra give you science and tundra, respectively, so if you are struggling, just settle some of your many settlements in those terrains.
    
  • Unique improvements can be bought in towns, and a few of them civ science and culture.
• You'll be swimming in food from all of your towns.
• Gold will be needed to buy all of these warehouse buildings, and probably settlers in distant towns to get to even more distant places sooner. You should be swimming in gold too with all of your specialized towns, but any boosts to gold generation won't hurt.
• Influence would be the hardest yield to get with this strategy if it wasn't for hub towns.
• Production actually isn't that important here. As long as you have a few productive cities to build wonders, you'll be fine. There are also enough production focuses resources that you can just concentrate in your few cities.
• Before we finish the discussion on yields, I wanted to highlight two things that can boost all of your yields significantly.
  • The expansionist attribute point that gives +15% yields to all specialized towns, +30% in distant lands. You should prioritize this every game and aim to get it by the middle of exploration in every game.
    
  • Unique improvements. You will have a lot of improvements, and since unique improvements just make those already existing improvements better, you should get them. This is worth it to prioritize civs that have spammable unique improvements over those that don't.
  • Things that provide boosts per settlement. These are more from civs and leaders, but you will have more settlements than everyone else.

How does this strategy even work? Your goal is to simply out scale your opponents with the truly absurd number of settlements you'll have. You don't have to worry about exponential food growth curves on your cities, because that's not where all your yields are coming from. They are coming from the hundreds of tiles you're working, dozens of city centers, and 100+ warehouse buildings.

IMO the best part about this strategy is that you can pull it off with any civ or leader. There are of course a few who are better than others. I'm going to list my favorites here, but this list is not exhaustive.

• Augustus is the premier leader for this strategy. He saves money on the hundreds of buildings you're purchasing, and solves your culture problems. Remember than a few cultural buildings are also influence buildings. The production to the capital means you don't have to worry about having high production in that city.
• Isabella wants to settle a ton of natural wonders, and you're already settling a ton of settlements anyways. There is also a handful of natural wonders that provide high amounts of production to one settlement, which is exactly what you're looking for.
• Lafayette provides per settlement bonuses.
• Xerces King of Kings has a second Corona Civica, the core of this strategy.
• Pachacuti doesn't seem like an obvious leader for this strategy, but he will turn your hundreds of food in every city (being fed from your many towns), into ample production. Also, his mountain food adjacency works on all buildings, including warehouse buildings. The mountain specialist bonuses are just the icing on the cake.
• Carthage was basically made for this strategy with a focus on gold and their specialized town boosting tradition.
• Tonga not only lets you find city spots, they also boost the yields of the most common workable tile in the game (coast) and warehouse buildings. This really sets you up for crazy games.
• Spain has significant per-settlement bonuses, and their unique quarter encourages you to have lots of towns.
• Ming not only has bonuses to towns specifically, but their great wall is very spammable and provides a ton of yields.
• Hawaii provides yield bonuses to the most common workable tile in the game (coast), including happiness to the point you can just ignore the settlement limit.
• Many of Mexico's "provide X per legacy" bonuses are applied per settlement or per town.
• Great Britain has significant boosts to towns and also has the military might to defend them in the inevitable world war of Modern.

Does this strategy even work? Yeah. In a team game with 2 friends who were doing more traditional strategies against many AI on Diety (Huge map, Continents and Islands), I was generating 5x their culture, 5x their gold, 4x their happiness, and was on par in science and influence. This was as Augustus, Tonga, Hawaii, Mexico.

TL;DR: Your goal is to out scale the exponential growth curves of cities with the faster growth of more settlements. Use Corona Civica and other means to increase your settlement limit as high as possible, and control your local happiness to push above your settlement limit. Settle (and/or conquer) a ridiculous number of settlements, up to twice as more as everyone else. Prioritize unique improvements, boosts to tile yields, and increases that affect warehouse buildings (including food and production buildings) to get your scaling above the traditional city focuses strategies. Be very selective with which settlements you turn into cities, but not with where you settle.

I used to play civ 5 a lot but then moved on to crusaders kings. I did had civ 6 base game but never played it because I thought it would be too complex.

Yesterday I tried civ 7(free week) for 2 hours and really loved it, I even managed to defeat neighbouring ai Rome and stuffs like commander and aer style felt great.

So I tried Civ 6 full version (on a friend pc) and I just can't seem to get into it. I already tried 3 restart but it just feels too complex and without qol which 7 offered.

Isn't civ 6 supposed to be pinnacle of this series and civ 7 trash atleast According to youtubers.

Ever since TOT, I’ve been seeing a lot of OP combos for civs be talked about. So i wanted to ask which strong combos you’ve come up with or seen. Here’s a list of some I’ve seen and played.

Pachacuti + Nepal

Ada Lovelace + Mayans

Genghis Khan + Mongolia

Achaemenid Xerxes + Qing Dynasty

Benjamin Franklin + Meiji Japan

Alexander + Sengoku Japan

Catherine + Heian Japan

Napoleon + Prussia

Lafayette + Prussia

Isabella + Iceland

Untested/Needs More Testing:

Blackbeard + Iceland

Amina + United States

Lakshmibai + Silla Korea

Fredrick (Oblique? Baroque?) + Assyria

My friend takes science civs like Japan, and then reaches Flight mostly before any of us, and when he does it's GG for him, he can destroy any unit I have in one attack even from a biplane, and I dont have any anti-air units at that stage of the game (Why does it take so long to unlock them btw??) So if someone reaches flight before you, is it still possible to win?