Civilization III is proving to be a truly amazing game. Persia attempted to attack me once again, this time with ICBMs. My previous war with them had put so much pollution onto the planet that the sun image was red and my environmental efforts were going nowhere. Recently planted forests were becoming grassland as the planet became filled with nuclear radiation. However, peace was far away and the war had to continue.
I had a peace treaty with the Persians while the Koreans barely managed to hang on with their own treaty. The Persians simply had too many tanks and I lacked oil and aluminum to have an armored army to counter the Persians. As a result, I relied heavily on TOW infantry and huge amounts of artillery located across the mountain passes to slow them. I then used tactical nukes onto the capital of Persepolis and other major cities multiple times to cut the empire from resources and luxuries. However, they kept sending tanks and mechanized infantry into the area around Tokyo and Osaka; I had to make peace as I was basically in a stalemate and move to peacetime economy so that my cities could get new infrastructure in order to compete with the Persians.
However, I didn’t have all the time I needed to prepare for war with Persia. I was building ICBMs to counter their military. I also ordered my city governors to build a huge air force, a part of our military which wasn’t a factor in the previous war. The main issue was always the tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Persia had tons of such machines. I had only recently built a city on top of an oil deposit in order to start building huge amounts of bombers and jet airplanes to counter this huge, mechanized army. However, no matter how well bulit ones plans are, only experience manages to tell us the truth or show the durability of our ideas.
The attack began without warning on China.
In Civilization III, the AI is very aggressive in comparison to the later versions. Some of this is what it has to work with. The game is simpler in a sense than the games that came out later. It is not a game that the AI has a hard time understanding the rules. Under the hood, however, the game is similar to Civ 7 except in the Hexes and some of the rules. The hexes in my opinion messed up the Civilization series. Squares were just easier for the AI to handle.
The result is that the AI is competent in a war and is an actual threat. In strategic thinking, the AI in this 2001 game is still behind the human but it is clear that they were planning to attack me with nukes for some time. I was in their way for domination of the globe and I was ready for their attacks.
Beijing, once again, was hit but my SDI system was able to defend the nation from attacks. As a result, my workers would not have as many duties at repairing the radiation and damage that was caused by the ICBMs.
This is actually the only time I have seen the SDI small wonder in action.
This is why I love Civilization III. You get to run a nation in the late game, and it is truly wonderous. This why Civilization VII was able to reach its heights.
Civilization III is much better than Civilization VII in spite of it being almost 25 years old at this point and it shows clearly in the interface.
I was playing a stream of Civilization III on Twitch and it is simply a much better game when navigating through the game. When you look at the above screenshot, you can clearly see everything that is happening on the map. The map is clean and understandable. There are not as many bells and whistles as in the later games, but it is functional and stylish. This is what many developers seem to forget about today, they are only able to create beautiful games not functional games that actually you want to enjoy.
The interface in every Civilization game is telling a story in a game that is all about the macro perspective. There is no first-person perspective to show you how the cities look so the Civilization games rely heavily on the interface in the game to tell you what is happening.
The meat and potatoes of games is just as important as the garnish or seasoning. Instead of focusing on what works, the people behind Civilization VII spent their time on myopic questions such as whether people are completing their games.
Civilization games are sandboxes, and we should let some people have some bruises.
Overoptimizing every game is why Civilization VII is behind in player counts and not considered to be a game that people want to play or even talk about.
Civilization III shows that aged wine is sometimes better than the new stuff out of the vinery and when it comes to software, that is even more likely in this age.
It is quite clear now that Civilization VII is going to be dark age of the Civilization franchise. Considering how successful it has been over the past 30 years, the stumbling of Civilization VII probably hurts the franchise more now than if it had happened with the earlier sequels.
Civilization as a franchise has been seen as a titan in its own genre. However, there is always a time where a franchise ends up unable to balance innovation with a respect for people who spent hours playing and the vibrant modding scene that helped breathe life into these games. The obsession with optimizing gameplay is one of the reasons why the AAA gaming space is in decline and independent companies are being handed the torch by customers who want quality games that are not just content on a screen.
Civilization III always felt more like a Civ game than any of the games after Civ IV. In this screenshot above you can see how the game tried to simulate diplomacy has having more than just leaders speak at each other. The foreign advisor gave very useful information about military strength, cultural strength and resources available for sale.
The early Civilization games were more than just painting a map. They were about building a civilization with warts and all.
In the 1990s, due to the genre being smaller and more niche, gamers could be more forgiving of errors. However, the genre has many more casual fans who paradoxically want more sophistication in games but not too much. Firaxis has a great issue here. They either cut budgets and focus on a smaller audience or increase budgets to AAA levels and end up alienating the hardcore fanbase that keeps the games vibrant and profitable beyond the initial releases.
As the cost of making games increases, there is more of a need for game companies to sell out to the mainstream.
The mainstream is not really interested in highbrow games and really only tolerate them if they are worth their interest at the start. The hardcore fans are willing to stay with a game and even improve it if it is not meeting their expectations.
However, there comes a breaking point where hardcore fans are unwilling to accept mediocrity passing off as excellence.
Civilization VII proves true the axiom; beauty is only skin deep. The woman above in the screenshot is probably too well dressed for an Ancient Japanese woman in the Jomon era but Civilization VII’s developers spent more time with aesthetics rather than making a functional game. A game is not a Tech Demo, which is mainly about the aesthetics. It is something to be used actively by the player not just looked at like a painting on a wall in my opinion.
Civilization VII was basically ignoring the hardcore fans in favor of going after the casual fans. This explains why Firaxis was wasting their time with making a VR version of Civilization VII when they haven’t even improved the gameplay in the PC version of the game.
Meta’s Quest 3 is not a piece of hardware made for Civilization VII. Whatever version of Civilization VII they have for the Quest 3, it is a novelty item just like the Power Glove and the Virtua Boy for the Nintendo. There is no reason for why the game is on this platform especially so soon after the release of the game in February.
Why Civilization VI is surpassing Civilization VII on Steam?
There is a simple reason why the game is doing so poorly on Steam. It isn’t a worthy successor to the sixth game. Having the name “Civilization” on the title isn’t enough to sell a game now. You need to earn the respect of the gamers who made Civilization what it is. The man who played a Civilization II for so many years is the type of player who keeps games that came out that early in public consciousness.
Who is going to be playing a 15 year old game of Civilization VII? The movement away from sandbox gameplay is one of the reasons why people are not staying with this game.
The sixth game had its issues, but it had its fanbase that was willing to support it. Civilization VI peaked at about 160,000 players when it came out. In comparison, Civilization VII was only able to get about slightly above 84,000 players. Civilization VII was also being surpassed by Civilization VI numbers quickly after its release.
Civilization VI released in October 2016. It still the most popular and successful of all the Civilization games. I show you this screenshot of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon wonder to emphasize how this game in spite of its flaws was well made.
Civilization V and Civilization V were similar enough to synergize with one another. Civilization VII, in its pursuit of being different to distract from its own quality issues, is simply not appealing to enough new fans for it to stand on its own.
Civilization VI has been pretty strong in its player count since the release of Civ 7. It has been hovering around 30,000 players on the weekends. Civilization VII has basically disappeared from the grouping of top games. For such a heavyweight as the Civilization franchise, not being in the top games is a cause for concern. The Civilization games have been dominating the charts for many years and yet it seems to have run out of creative juices. The emergence of some competitors such as Humankind and Millenia.
The company who made Civilization VII has to understand that the standards are not the same. Instead of attempting to meet the challenge, they decided to hide the game under glossy advertising and music.
As much as Firaxis may want to spend their time thinking otherwise, Civilization VII is not doing so well right now. This is the time for bold action not doubling down on what is not working right now.
Why is Civilization VI better than Civilization VII?
In my opinion, Civilization VI’s Trajan vs Civilization VII’s Augustus is a clear sign of how quality was declining with the most recent release.
The answer is quite simple. Civilization VI is focused on making the fans happy rather than making a game which is only seen to prop up the company. Civilization VII seems like a game that was made for people who dislike Civilization games and that was an error in the how they were approaching the development of this game.
We should not have an issue with people not finishing their games. That should be the main interest of someone making a sequel to one of the most beloved franchises in gaming history. They should focus on making the game fun, not focusing on problems that on the player not the person making the game.
Civilization VII’s problem: Not letting people not finish a game
Sometimes allowing a game to not be finished are the stories that are worth telling about it.
Civilization II famously had a player who spent years playing a game where it became engulfed in war and conflict. This was a game that was released in the PlayStation One era and yet it was still captivating many people. Unlike Civilization VII, I believe that many of the previous Civilization games, will continue to get praise in the years to come.
Civilization VII represents the dark age of a once great series.
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