When Civilization VI released, it was criticized by many as being a "do-over of Civ V." It was, indeed, a much more iterative release than many other Civ games have been, taking the concept of "un-stacking" units that was pioneered by Civ V, and expanding that to include un-stacking of cities. Then it threw in some iterative changes to many other core systems that had been introduced in Civ V, such as city states, religion, trade routes, and archaeology (to varying degrees of success). The end result is that Civ VI felt very familiar to anyone who had played Civ V.
That is absolutely not the case with Civilization VII, which enters life in a much more competitive market, and may have felt pressured to do things different. Civilization isn't the only dog in the yard anymore, when it comes to historic 4-x strategy gaming. For the first time in the series' history, it has real competitors in the form of Amplitude's Humankind, Microsoft's Ara: History Untold, Paradox's Millennia, and others. In fact, Civ VII seems to have taken many design cues from these competitors, and there definitely seems to be a lot of convergent design.
For example, Civilization VII borrows the idea of changing cultures between the different eras, which was introduced by Humankind. It divides the game up into 3 distinct Ages, similar to how Ara divides its gameplay up into 3 Acts. And all of Humankind, Millennia, Ara, and Civ VII feature units that stack together into armies. And that says nothing about all the "live service"-inspired systems that have been added, such as cumulative progression rewards for each leader, profile badges, and so forth. These all represent pretty dramatic departures from what Civ V and Civ VI were doing, and I'm not sure if I like the way that these creative choices have affected this version of Civilization.
3 ages of history
The division of the game into 3 Ages is probably going to be the most controversial change, since it fundamentally changes the way that the game is played.
Civilization VII is not designed as a single, seamless trek through alternate human history. Instead, it is basically divided up into 3 smaller, more focused games, each with their own distinct gameplay mechanics and goals. I couldn't find any statements from 2K or Firaxis that the ages were implemented in order to better facilitate multiplayer, but that seems to be the consensus among the game media. Many articles (from GameRant, The Gamer, and others) highlight how each of the ages can be played as a stand-alone multiplayer game that is much shorter than a traditional game of Civ, thus resulting in more mutliplayer sessions that actually go to a proper resolution, rather than everyone simply stopping because it's 3 in the morning.
This is great for players who do want to be able to complete a game, and reach a proper ending within a single afternoon. It's less good for players who do want a full, Civilization game. Put simply, the Ages create hard stops and resets at pre-determined points in the game, which hurts the sense of continuity when playing a full game.
The game is divided into 3 ages, with hard resets in between each age.
An age might just end when I'm in the middle of doing something, or with there still being things that I wanted to accomplish. Maybe I wanted to settle another city, or capture another player's city, or annex a city state, or build a wonder? Nope. Can't. The age just ends, and the game kicks me back out to a loading screen before advancing straight to the start of the next era, which may skip decades or centuries on the in-game calendar.
Yes, the game does warn the player that the age will be ending soon, but there is no explicit counter telling you how many turns are left in an age (the way there was with Civ VI's eras in the Rise & Fall expansion). Since many gameplay actions (like annexing a city state or building a wonder) take time, the lack of an explicit "age is ending" turn countdown means it's hard to judge just how early you need to start working on that action in order to get it done before the age advances. Having a 10 or 20-turn countdown (depending on the game length) after the age-transition criteria have been met, could go a long way towards fixing this particular frustration.
To make matters worse, the next Age may result in an actual regression of your empire, and some annoying micro-management to get everything back the way it was. Cities can revert back to towns, some infrastructure can disappear, units can disappear or move across the map, social policies go away, all your trade routes go away, and the available resources can be different. This can lead to a period in which you have to re-establish your basic economic infrastructure, re-unlocking Merchants in the tech tree, sending out trade routes, and re-distributing your resources. You may also have to move all your units around to put them back into the armies that you want them to be in.
In the meantime, your economy and happiness can potentially tank, and it might take some time to get all your numbers back in the black.
The benefit of the Age reset, is that the reset can help to maintain some parity among the different players, and puts them back on a more level playing field. Civs who may have been on their way to running away with the game may have some of that snowballing momentum stalled by the age resets, and trailing civs will be given an opportunity to catch back up. This is especially true with tech and civic progress, since each Age has its own distinct tech and civic trees, and every civ has to restart on the new trees at the start of each new Age.
Of course, if some civs have way more cities than other civs, or they carried over much larger armies into the new Age, then it won't take long for them to jump back out ahead.
European ages
The overall flow of the game's ages, the goals for completing each age, and crises that conclude each age, feel even more Euro-centric than in previous iterations of Civ. Some objectives, like creating trade routes and accumulating resources, or conquering other civilizations, are generic enough. But others are very distinctly "western". Objectives like building the Great Library, colonizing overseas, sending "Treasure Fleets" from overseas colonies back to your homeland, building an industrial railway network, and winning the space race, all feel very "European".
The Ages are clearly based on a Euro-centric view of history.
The crises that act as a "big boss" for each age also seem to be the most heavily inspired by European history. Crises like "barbarians at the gates", the Black Death, and Crusades all feel distinctly European, and even the flavor text of the other crises gives off European history vibes (at least, they did to me).
Surprisingly, despite the inclusion of natural disasters, none of the end of Age crises involve empires collapsing due to extreme natural disasters. You won't see drought or blight create an empire-wide famine. Massive volcanic eruptions won't bury multiple cities in ash. Nor will there be crippling earthquakes or tsunamis.
I think this is a bit unfortunate, because natural disasters feel more like a fair test of your empire's resilience than having your happiness arbitrarily penalized, or triggering arbitrary revolts, in an other-wise well-managed and stable empire. This would be especially true if the game went out of its way to signpost that an extreme natural disaster is something that is likely to happen. Narrative events highlighting repeated series of increasingly-severe earthquakes could, for example, be a not-so-subtle hint that "the big one" is inevitable, and that players should plan accordingly.
I was also surprised that the final (modern) Age does not have any crises to act as the "final boss" for the game. This means that, despite natural disasters being ported over from Civilization VI's Gathering Storm expansion, climate change and global warming are not included in Civ VII at all. Though, to be fair, the game does kind of just end in the mid 20th century, before global climate change really started to become an actual problem.
There are weather disasters, and crises at the end of each Age, but no climate change?
This brings up the next big issue with the Ages, which is that it doesn't feel like there's enough of them. The game basically ends after World War II, with the invention of hydrogen bombs or the launching of Sputnik being among the final victory conditions. So there is no proper "nuclear" or "information" age. No nuclear power plants, no solar or wind farms, no United Nations, no interstate highways, no moon landing, no personal computers, no internet, no mission to Mars.
Similarly, the Iron Age feels very under-developed and anachronistic. The Age transition between Antiquity and Exploration kind of skips the Medieval period, going straight from the Bronze-Age collapse to crossing oceans and building overseas colonies. Yes, there are Medieval techs and civics, but they are kind of wedged in between early Age of Sail concepts. This means that you're exploring the oceans at the same time that you're founding Medieval religions, establishing feudal societies, and creating iron-based militaries.
As such, I think an "Information Age" or "Future Age" expansion seems like a no-brainer. I also wouldn't be surprised to see an expansion that adds a proper Medieval Age or Iron Age between Antiquity and Exploration, and which pushes the Exploration Age out to cover more of the Napoleonic period (and hopefully bring piracy back to the game), in order to fill in the gaps between Exploration and Modern. That would create a total of 5 ages, which seems like a reasonable number. And hopefully the objectives and systems of the Medieval and Exploration Ages could be made a bit less Euro-centric.
There isn't a proper Medieval Age, and the game just ends after World War II.
Civs through the ages
Individual civilizations are also tied to specific Ages. You can no longer start a new game as the United States of America in 5000 BCE, nor take classical Maya into the space age. This allows each civilization to be much more focused, with relatively simple abilities and uniques. Gone are the paragraph-long civ or leader abilities that annoyed me in Civ VI, since the civilizations' design no longer has to accommodate both ancient gameplay, modern gameplay, and everything in between.
Each civilization feels a lot more distinct, with civilizations all having multiple unique units or districts, and even their own small, unique civic trees. These civic trees unlock some of the civilization's more exotic unique units or buildings, and can also provide early access to certain wonders that are linked to that specific civilization's real-life history. Sometimes, this makes little-to-no difference, but other times, this unique civic tree can give a particular civ a huge advantage toward acquiring their specific wonder before anybody else. For example, the Monk's Mound wonder is normally unlocked by one of the last civics on the Antiquity civics tree, but the Mississippian civilization can unlock it by completing one of their first 2 unique civics, and its associated "mastery" civic. So while these wonders are not necessarily civilization-specific unique wonders, each civilization is given priority access to a wonder that it is known for.
Civs have unique Civic trees, which unlock their uniques, and provide early access to some wonders.
No sub-humans
Civilization VII finally does something that I've been wanting the series to do for a long time, which is to completely remove the concept of "barbarians". Instead of having barbarians that are treated like sub-human animals who are incapable of being reasoned with, continents will include a handful of Independent Powers. These can start out friendly or hostile towards civilizations, and can be conquered or befriended. If befriended, they graduate to city states, and can grant bonus abilities, special unique units, or unique districts to their suzerain civilization.
The idea seems like an iteration of the "Barbarian Clans" optional game mode that was added by Civilization VI's "New Frontiers" pseudo-expansion season pass. Unfortunately, the new Independent Powers and city states lack the uniqueness and personality of their Civ VI city state and clan forebears. As far as I've seen, they don't build their unique districts or units, nor do they behave differently based on their type. The diplomatic actions with them are highly limited, and are locked entirely behind becoming their suzerain. And if they are destroyed, new ones do not spawn to take their place until the transition to a new Age. They are just much less dynamic and interesting.
Barbarians have been removed and completely replaced by Independent Powers.
Give with one hand, take with the other
There's other small design changes that I really like. Though they often come with their own caveats.
In principle, I like the idea that cities build all the districts and rural improvements in the tiles that they own. This simplifies the exploitation of terrain and eliminates the need for a worker unit. But it also means that we are completely incapable of developing land that is in our sphere of influence, but which is outside the actual range of our cities. Is there a 1-tile gap between the workable radii of your cities? Did valuable resources (such as oil or coal) happen to spawn in those locations? Well too bad, you cannot claim that territory and access those resources!
On the topic of resources, I really like how resources are traded by created trade routes, instead of by diplomatic deals. The downside is that now there's nothing to demand from other players in exchange for a peace deal. The only thing you can trade is cities. There's no resource-trading, no gold-trading, no tech-trading, no great work trading.
"Move your troops from our border" has been replaced with a promise not to attack.
Diplomacy, in general is another radically changed feature from previous games, and it's much more unilateral. I like the addition of Influence as a diplomatic currency that allows the player to perform diplomatic actions with other civs. I also really like how the "move your troops from our border" interaction has been replaced with a promise to not attack the other civ, such that you're still allowed to keep your own troops on the border.
But now, diplomatic deals are all on-going endeavors that one civ proposes, and the other civ can either accept, spend their own Influence to join in, or spend Influence to reject. This leads to the amusing fact that you can diplomatically reject other civs' denouncements of you. This seems silly, but it does give a strong power to diplomatic civilizations who have a lot of Influence, but might not have a very strong military.
New dive bombers create a genuine
rock-paper-scissors relationship for air units.
I also like the introduction of a dive bomber class of air units to supplement the traditional pair of fighters and bombers. Having a third air unit class now creates a proper rock-paper-scissors relationship. Bombers deal heavy damage to cities, dive bombers are used for attacking units, and fighters act as interceptors to defend against the other 2 types of planes.
Unfortunately naval warfare is sorely lacking in variety. All naval units are melee units with the extra ability to do ranged bombardments of cities or land units, and there's usually one 1 or 2 types of naval unit available. In Antiquity, Galleys upgrade to Quadriremes. There's no Biremes or Triremes or other ranged units. In the Exploration Age, Cogs upgrade to Carracks, which upgrade to Galleons, and there are no Frigates, Ships of the Line, Privateers, or Caravels. Going into the Modern Age, Cruisers upgrade to Destroyers, and Dreadnoughts upgrade to Battleships. There are also Submarines and Aircraft Carriers, but there is no dedicated anti-sub class.
The end result is that every fleet basically just has 4 copies of 1 unit type in them. Carriers can't be placed in fleets, and there's no point in putting a sub in a fleet, since it would cancel out the sub's invisibility. And since Battleships are so much more powerful than Destroyers, and Destroyers aren't necessary for revealing or blocking Submarines, you might as well just put 4 Battleships in all your fleets.
The lack of any sort of privateer unit, and the lack of barbarians sailing the oceans of the Exploration Age, means that there's actually little-to-no threat to your Treasure Fleets unless you're in open warfare with other civs. So while aerial warfare seems improved over previous versions of Civ, naval warfare has suffered tremendously, and the entire naval experience just feels bland and incomplete. It's a real shame too, because the addition of navigable rivers has the potential to make naval warfare so much more viable and engaging, but Civ VII just completely drops the ball in this regard.
In contrast to air warfare, naval warfare feels under-developed.
Also, despite having navigable rivers now (which is a long-overdue change), there is no Viking civilization in the game to take advantage of them and raid foreign cities. Major bummer.
Definitely not a Civ VI do-over!
I don't think anyone is going to be confusing Civ VII for Civ VI, or calling it "a Civ VI do-over" or "Civ 6.5". Civilization VII really does feel like a completely new game. In fact, in some ways, it doesn't even feel like a "Sid Meier's Civilization" game anymore -- almost like it could be another studio's attempt at the same formula. It is much more goal-oriented, it lacks the continuous free-form play of older titles, there's no resource trading in diplomacy, no workers, no managing citizens to optimize yields, and no Gandhi.
Civ VII makes many bold choices, and certainly takes a lot of risks. It does this all in the name of stream-lining the game and making the mid and late-game as meaningful to play as the early-game. As is common with such an experimental release, some of it pays off, but a lot of it doesn't. The more goal-oriented design means that there's less down-time, and there's always something to do.
It doesn't help that the game is dragged down by a horrendously un-informative U.I. that often fails to explain basic information to the player. Even basic stuff like "which difficulty level is the 'normal' difficulty, and which are the 'easy' and 'hard' difficulties?" is not provided. So which difficulty level should I even be playing at? It defaults to "Governor", but that is the 2nd easiest of 6 difficulty levels. So is that an "easy" difficulty? I don't know, because there' no explanation of what changes in each difficulty. Worse yet, this game changes the names of all the difficulty levels, so I can't even just play the same difficulty I was playing in Civ VI.
Which difficulty level is the "medium" difficulty?
There are certainly ideas here that I like. But the game's "live service" nature, and the focus on shorter games for multiplayer make me feel like I'm just not the primary audience for this version of Civilization. Ironically, I don't think that any of the people who I know in the Civ multiplayer community are going to be enthusiastic about these design changes either. Maybe I'm not the primary audience for Civ VII, or maybe Civ VII is out of touch with its primary audience. I'm not sure which is the case, and it will likely take a long time to find out. Previous Civ games have had lackluster releases, and were saved by their expansions. Maybe Civ VII has the same destiny?