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GERMANY : A defeated nation that managed to rise again and become Europe’s economic leader.

Since it has been mentioned that the game will feature goods/commodities, the German automotive industry should certainly have a place in it.

Since I might be one of the few players who appreciate the current religion system (still having PTSD from apostles fighting for 50 turns or not gaining that last prophet when you planned a religion game) I wanted to put together a mini-guide.

The first and most important thing to note is that religion in 7 is not a win condition and not a super-spreader-thingy. It is not about converting everything, a bottomless investment justified because it is a win condition, but something you have to take the opportunity cost / investment-return ratio into consideration.

Religion offers relics, which help advance the cultural victory, and bonus yields (or other boni), which are always nice. Even if you do not want to maximize your relic count, you might want to look into the other boni.

Gaining relics:

A good no fuss option for gaining relics is 2 per capital. Easy to do, and a solid 10+ relics. It synergies well with conquest (you can convert the new capital). City states will probably yield some more relics, but you have to go for them, before they are incorporated or killed. Wonders are also nice, depending on how many you plan on taking and if there is a very dominant player.

If you plan on investing into relics, go for their wonders as well. Rila Monastery is currently doable (even on Deity), and the gold per relic wonder is really nice to have and not very contested, even good if you just plan on converting some capitals.

With the right wonders, leaders, attributes and dedications, you can have very nice yields on relics. If you plan for a culture victory, go get them all ;)

Selecting yields/ boni

This is the more interesting part, because independent of your approach to relics, you can maximize your yields – and should consider the cost and timing of those yields. And this part is very different from religion in 6:

-        No need to convert everything means, you want to get maximum yields with the least amount of missionaries (or a medium amount fitting your build).

-        Hence, most of the +4 beliefs are inefficient. It doesn’t even matter if it is for your own or foreign settlements. They will be great if you convert a ton, but investment-return wise, they are very mediocre. Why? You have to spend too many charges for a meagre +4

-        Charge-wise efficient and easy to hold are more focus beliefs: Great are the (3 (gold, culture, science)x4) per wonder and natural wonder tile (8x3) beliefs. An example: If you convert a capital with 4 wonders from antiquity (not counting new ones), you gain 3x4x4 = 12 culture + 12 science + 12 gold – with 1-2 charges. That is a way faster and better return of your investment than those +4. Furthermore, it is easy to check and you can (re)do it with a spy-action. The natural wonder belief is a bit more map dependent, but it can be great, if you plan on a quick return and not building missionaries the rest of the game.

-        Next great options are per biome beliefs. I had a wonderful Amina game where I conquered the desert and plains, having many AI settlements in tropical. 1 converted settlement with 5-10 tiles yields up to 20 science.

-        The influence +2 and +1 per settlement is not bad, but I prefer the other options.

Further boni (not so important):

-        The naval and embarked movement belief is an interesting quality of life upgrade if you plan on going for distant lands.

-        +1 charge is nice for a cultural victory, when you plan to use some missionaries.

-        Trade conversion works often well with capital relics, but can be quite limited by your trade range.

-         +1 war support might be useful.

-        Extra slots can free up gold for temple purchases, however, temple-towns aren’t expensive and have 3 slots. But you will end up wasting the happiness on your relics.

-        I forgot the others. This belief is mostly situational.

Policies: If you have cities (and you should have at least 1) – you should try to squeeze in Reformation. The two social policies are always (!) giving great yields, again way better than any super-spreading shenanigans. If you have 3+ cities, playing “tall”, they are a must have +15% and worth reconverting your cities. And you should be able to track your cities well.

Government: I haven’t looked much into governments. The relic-government is nice, if I remember correctly, the influence boost is based on your cities?

Crisis: If you end up with a religious crisis, I always enjoy the unity dogma: The extra charges help to convert your lands and every settlement you wanted to convert and the happiness penalty isn’t too bad.

Final comment: Just don’t waste your production and gold by playing religion like in civ 6. Even the additional beliefs for homelands and distant lands do not seem worth the whack-a-mole game of taking over the world. I sometimes feel the completionist urge myself, but give up once it gets too tedious. I am glad they changed how religion works and I hope for some tweaks in the future, but hopefully nothing like 6, that was just tedious and often frustrating.

Hi

For the last several games I've played for (and got) culture victories from the very first turn. In the game I'm playing now I fancied a change and I'm trying to get a Military victory. I'm playing as Alexander/Greece.

My culture based games obviously have required the occasional war, but now in my current game I am making war the main theme. On my home continent, there was only me and 2 other civs. I totally destroyed the first within the first 30 turns or so, and am now turning my sights on the second. My question is this - if you are looking to completely annihilate another civ, do you go straight for their capital, thinking that once it is taken the rest will fold easily, or do you conquer a few towns first, cutting off resources/happiness etc. such that taking the capital becomes easier?

I was recently doing some speculation on what units we're gonna see in AoT, because that sort of thing activates my neurons and I want to see what other people think we could be getting.

As a baseline, we have a timespan of post-WW2 to near-future, corresponding to roughly to 1950-2050. Given that units come in three tiers, it seems safe to assume that T1 will be Cold War era, T2 will be what was Information Age in past games, and T3 will be straight up speculative future.

Going from what I think is least interesting to most interesting:

Heavy Naval

??? > Missile Cruiser > ???

The Missile Cruiser is 100% returning and I think making it the T2 is sensical, but it could be T1 though. Ships in general are pretty difficult to get creative with. You could have something Arsenal Gear-esque for T3?

Light Naval

??? > ??? > ???

Likewise, distinguishing a T1 Atomic Light Naval unit from the T3 Modern Destroyer is really hard. It could get the "heavy" treatment as per the Heavy Archer or Heavy Bomber in T1 maybe? And T2 could be something like the cancelled Zumwalt? Or a littoral combat ship? Options are pretty scant here.

Submarine

Attack Sub > Nuclear Sub > ???

And to round out the naval units, here's a basic T1 pick, a completely expected T2 pick, and no ideas for T3.

Siege

Rocket Artillery > ??? > Mecha Artillery (?)

Rocket Artillery feels like a shoo-in, but the issue is that it has limited design space for upgrades, especially if it's T1. Heavy Rocket Artillery is really lame. Mecha Artillery is a pipe dream of mine for sure but it'd be pretty cool as the future variant.

Fighter & Bomber

Jet > Stealth > Space (?)

Pretty obvious picks for T1/2. I could see a space fighter or suborbital bomber as the T3, but what would be interesting is if they have the T2s upgrade into the same T3 to reflect bombers being supplanted by fighter-bombers in most roles in the modern day.

Cavalry

Main Battle Tank > Modern Armor > Laser Tank (?)

I'd be very surprised if the tank in the teaser isn't the T3 (Laser Tank is a bad name though), and Modern Armor is consistent as the T2. An MBT feels like a strong guess for the T1, as a midpoint between a WW2 Tank and Modern Armor, although it might just be the 'Heavy' designation again.

Infantry

Assault > Mechanized > Battlesuit

Assault Infantry are in the teaser, and Mechanized are always the late game infantry. I think a power armor type unit feels good for T3, as it fits the infantry role well, although it's a bit awkward upgrading from guys to a vehicle and then back to guys. There's a chance that Mechanized is the T3 I suppose, but it doesn't leave much space for T2.

Ground Attack

Helicopter > Gunship > VTOL(?)

This is a bit speculative but I really think this is going to be the Ground Attack unit. It's a role commonly filled by helicopters and if it weren't, helicopters don't fit into any other unit trees. Leaving helicopters out would feel odd, especially in a Cold War era. It's not impossible we get something like an A-10 Warthog but it's hard to see an upgrade path for that.

Ranged

??? > ??? > ???

The ranged line is weird not due to lack of options but too many. A Machine Gun is the most common option, but besides the ever-present 'Heavy', it's very hard to come up with an interesting 3 tiers. Bazookas have been done in the past, and T3 Modern is an AT Gun, so something anti-tank related could work. A particle cannon or something funky like that could be the T3 for either.

But then consider that, if Firaxis were to get more realistic, something drone related could happen. That in turn raises questions of large drones ex. a Predator or small drones ex. quadcopters with human operators. So, many possibilities.

Thanks for reading my spiel, hope you got something out of it.

Why would I overbuild on this tile (2 Specialists) but take a -10 -12 negative yield over the tile on the left (no overbuilding) for 10 Science but -2,-4?

Unless the faction/leader/policies gives a kickback or reward for the overbuilding and specialist use, which can’t be seen from this build page?

I see a lot of commentary to the tune of "Why the Hell did the devs care so much that people weren't finishing games due to snowballing and late game slog, it was fine to snowball" and "why did they copy Humankind's most hated mechanic of civ switching," and I'd like to address those people with an explanation and a solution that might work for you.

People have apparently forgotten that there was a survey given out after Civ VI did its full run that asked players to identify the biggest problems with the game and the biggest successes. The results showed, and I agreed, that the biggest problems were the fact that very early in the game you could snowball to the point that you knew victory was inevitable and the late game became a slog of hitting next turn until victory, and that late game civs were strictly inferior to early game civs. It also found that, at least among Civ VI players, districts were popular, allowing cities to engage with the map more directly.

So the devs tried to fix these problems and build on these strengths in Civ VII:

• Civ switching allowed all Civs to be in their apex at all times, fixing the "late game vs early game civ" problem, and they felt that they could do it better than Humankind (personally I feel they did, but only after Syncretism and Time-Tested Civs were introduced, allowing people the choice - forcing Civ switching on a player base not used to it was a mistake).
• The Ages system was intended to both limit snowballing and give each stage of the game unique circumstances that would echo the initial feeling of expansion in the early game, and that was why mechanics like Distant Lands were so emphasized. Personally I feel this was a mix of success and new problems, as it made each stage unique and returned some of the new game feeling, but made the game feel disjointed and forced certain mechanics, such as distant lands, on players who didn't enjoy them, and didn't fully address the snowball problem completely - I still find if I am ahead in the Antiquity Age, it is hard to lose by Modern, although for me there is still enough engagement to consistently finish games.
• In terms of building on the district system, they expanded on this heavily. It created a richer system with more flexibility than Civ VI, but resulted in too much urban sprawl and confusion for some players, and reduced the clean parse-ability that Civ VI had.

I feel like these changes alienated as many players as they engaged, and that and the rough, unfinished state of the game on launch resulted in the hate train and mixed reviews that the game has suffered from ever since.

Some people, like me, found that it solved the issues, at least in part, for them. I played many, many hours of Civ VI, but never finished a game due to late game slog, and I struggled to choose late game Civs. It seems to me like most of the people who enjoy Civ VII are either new players who came in with no expectations, or veterans that were in my boat.

I found something that really seems to work for players who have felt uncomfortable with the new systems and turned off by them. Try playing on a slow game speed, like Epic or Marathon, or for some folks Standard with Long age length.

I find that most of the people who struggle with the game play on high speeds, where the game feels disrupted and like three minigames in a trenchcoat. On slow speeds, it feels like three full but connected games of Civ and the mechanics feel WAY better.

I exclusively play on Epic or Marathon now, and hugely enjoy the game, and the vast majority of people uncomfortable with mechanics that I have suggested this to have improved their opinion after trying slower game speeds - so if you are struggling, give it a try.

I don’t mind the regroup. I love the idea of starting the tech and civic trees over as a new Civ. I love the different music themes, and I love all the diverse ways to play and the different gameplay mechanics getting their chunk of time to shine. HOWEVER, the way it absolutely sucks the life and momentum out of your settlements is absolutely brutal and frankly, anti-fun. If you have buildings in Antiquity you’re pretty much fucked while all the deity ai are significantly less impacted. It is so damn lame to see every stat get absolutely wrecked and population growth halted to an insane number of turns. You can be leading in science in Antiquity and every other civ can jump ahead of you on turn one in Exploration. Fuck that so hard. Games should be designed that you want to keep playing, not punish you twice a game and test your patience/joy in wanting to even continue. Just needed to vent

I naturally expand a lot and spam click tons of buildings leading me to either Military or Economic victory every time… I can’t ever get my yields up to win culture or Science victory, and always lag behind the AI in wonders…

It seems like all of my games end somewhere between 1800 and 1850 unless I aggressively try to kill every other civ.

Additionally, after the updates, I'm finding it impossible to win with a Science Victory because a Culture Victory is so easy that I end up winning accidentally. Maybe I could handicap myself by not gathering artifacts and antiquities, but that doesn't feel fun.

I have spent absurd amounts of hours on V and VII, but for some reason I never got stuck into VI (19,6h on Steam!) I remember we tried out the base game when it came out, but very quickly switched back to V as it felt thin/incomplete at launch. I bought Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm at some point, but never got around to it. I don’t necessarily need additional leaders, civs, wonders etc. but if there are some that are really good or something missing that affects game mechanics in any way that’d be great to know.

Not for everyone, but I think it looks nice when the units aren't comically big.

Playing a Modern game with Prussia and my civic tree is maxed with them and I get to Railroads and its just a normal railroad?

Does this not exist anymore? Is it a bug?

Or does it just use the standard Railroad?

If it does use that standard Railroad thats kind of lame.

Just a question for perhaps those with more Civ experience.

I've played 5, 6, and 7 and the level of intricacies have increased but chief among them seems to be yield bloat.

Was reading critiques on Specialists in 7 as well as comments concerning how some Wonders feel a lot weaker and wonder where do people stand on the focus on cultivating high yield tiles?

I know that by Modern Age, I just randomly select specialist tiles.

Plus, there are some weirdly strong and weirdly undercooked policies that sort of feel like yields are sort of a grey area.

Looking for the best way to speed up the game in multiplayer.

I'm currently thinking that a Renaissance start should massively speed up the game while not losing much. The biggest loss is that most civ's UA is stronger in earlier eras. The good stuff is that religion is still enabled and ideologies require a few techs first.

I hate quick speed because it makes wars horrible so I want to keep standard speed. The one other issue is that most time is spent in late game wars, so these settings don't address that issue.

Is this the best I can do or are there better settings for quicker multiplayer matches?

The description implies that I should have support, but it's showing -6, -1, and -2, and I'm suffering the effects of war weariness. I have three alliances, so in no universe should I have -6 weariness. Is this a bug? It's absurdly punitive to the point where the game is really no longer playable.

Has anyone discovered this Memento duplication exploit yet?

I found this exploit in a video. Does anyone know how to make the most of it?

Video:

https://youtu.be/Edy4D61KQz4?is=Iu4PI3GHegRhYjfY

Not a single shot fired. 100% pacifist run as Eleanor. I was flipping cities like pancakes.

Seriously, the visuals and sound still have a special place in my heart. What do you miss most about it?

You turned Gilgamesh against me, you forced his hand to decimate my lands, my people, all because I had no business for you to profit from

TL;DR it's too easy to win a military victory even if there are civs in the game that could literally wipe you off the map if they wanted to

Since I started playing on Immortal I've had three games, lost the first one, and won the second and third the exact same way.

I started as a peaceful civ, avoiding any conflict for the first two ages. In the modern age, in game 2 i went for economic victory, in game 3 for cultural. Both times I won a military victory.

My main problem with it is: both of the times what happened was that some weaker civ declared war on me, I won the war and went above and beyond, conquering all the land I could basically. Both times I won a military victory on winning conditions change, but the thing is, both these times there were at least a couple of other civs on the gar that could have absolutely obliterated me.

The win wasn't realistic at all, which is not a game difficulty problem. Switching to Diety would make it harder, but the game is hard enough, I struggle to win any other type of victory in Immortal. The frustrating thing is the fact that the win is unrealistic.

And I'm not exaggerating, these other civs had planes and all sorts of stuff that I had no access to yet. On game 3 I even tried declaring war on one after winning the game and my army got cleared easily.

What I propose is: non-allied civs should have a way bigger inclination in declaring war on you if you're in the military victory countdown, or close to it. That way, the winner would be the one who actually is superior on a military level. Then it would also make sense to have a longer countdown but that's another thing

What do you think?

Neighbour stole a settler from an honor neighbour instantly and without discussion and the topic finally comes up for discussion 30 turns later.
Theres some disagreement from either sides, but ultimately i think both perspectives were valid. The settle would be very close to the other guy and it will significantly harm his honor neighbour at little initial cost.
However to the Streamer POV he had very little options with a liberty neighbour and the same player who stole the settler previously making wild demands for their most northern settle.

TLDR; When you play long ass games with people the drama is always juicy.
Personally the interpersonal drama and diplomacy of CIV 5 is why i have 4000 hours over the last 15 years.
Noobwhispering people into fighting/fearing others. Backstab betrayals & 3 year feuds that started over banana tiles.
This game is ridiculous and beautiful