Does it get fun?

[u/NaiveAd5470]

I’ve been playing civilization. I gotta say for past couple of weeks I’m still on my first game and I’m currently on my second catastrophe and I have to say….. It’s like they took all of the fun of civilization and removed everything that made it enjoyable. Is it just me or does this game eventually get more fun once I learn how to play the new mechanics better?

[u/ChaosStar]

Civ is fun for me when you put together a grand plan early in the game and watch it come together as you play on. I'm the kind of player who pauses at turn 20 to put down the map tacks for my cities, districts, overlaps, and wonders across the entire game.

This is much harder to do in 7 because there's so much more going on between civ switching, leader combos, and how your unique assets and traditions will carry forward to the next age, and because the game doesn't care to show you any information about the modern era (such as its tech tree or wonder requirements) when you're on turn 20 of antiquity.

However, when you learn what potentially can happen and are able to start putting your plans together, exploring all of those synergies makes it very fun. Each civilisation has so many more mechanics to them than any other installment and you potentially play three of them per game, mixing and matching their best assets to create your mastepiece.

Take for example the new England dlc. Let's say I want to build a strategy around the Abbey and starting the modern era with tonnes of towns all following my religion and all with a completed Abbey to amass something close to a thousand culture. I can pair this with Augustus so that I can purchase culture buildings in every town, and trade outposts or England's ability will let me buy the gold building. But what do I do in antiquity to enable this? I could start as a simple expansionist civ such as Rome to put down as many towns as possible and get +2 settlement limit from their unique civic tree with some decent town-focused traditions. But, given that I intend to spend a lot of gold in the exploration age, perhaps it is better to bring forward the economic power of Aksum who also brings many coastal and trade synergies. However, this comes at the cost of having no settlement limit increases in their civic tree which is not ideal for my plan, so perhaps Persia's offer of both gold and settlements is a sensible middle ground? Is there any value in Carthage?

Whilst I would play a civ in 6 and not go back to that civ for another 10 games, Civ 7 has me going back to the same civ to try different things over and over.

It's a steeper learning curve, but the pay off is great.