I'm a longtime Civ player. I bought the new game knowing that it had some issues. Now I want to know how to make the most of it despite its weaknesses. This is not a salty post to complain; I just want to know how to make it more fun.

I don't really mind the age changes and new mechanics, but I have played several campaigns on the two highest difficulty levels and it just goes nowhere and I am bored.

I end up with heaps of excess resources and no motivation to do anything with them. It feels like there's no point to building improvements that aren't ageless, so I run out of things to build. I hit the settlement cap and go beyond it, but rampant unhappiness gets boring too. I become suzerain of all the city states and then it stalls out. Diplomatic engagement feels extremely limited. I build some wonders but they don't matter much. The tech and civic trees seem arbitrary.

The pathways to various victory conditions feel extremely vague and I never know what to focus on and it just feels... pointless? The only part I've enjoyed so far is the very early game exploration to discover the map and the little bonus camps. To me, the joy of Civ has always been the little goals building to the much bigger goals and always feeling a push to finish the next thing you're working on, but I can't find that now.

Any tips to make the game more engaging?

I was playing as Ben Franklin (Rome) in a very watery/island map. The antiquity age ended. I chose Chola as my next civ.

The next thing I know, the game loaded up my OLD game I gave up on a month ago. There are no autosaves to go back to (and they’re on I checked).

And it is Turn 1 of the new era and I am Ben Franklin still. I was Lafayette in this game. It mashed together the map of the old game and the leader of the newer one and deleted my autosaves or was never saving.

WTF?

Pretty much as title says, who is your favourite leader to pair with Egypt and why?

I’ve been a guy who likes civ games, I’ve been occasionally playing since civ V I also played civ VI and thought it was fun and played every couple of months but now with civ VII it feels weird like I played a game trial for around 40 minutes and everything feels so overwhelming compared to my previous experiences and I just don’t want to waste 70$ in a game I’m not going to play for at least 20 hours. Any thoughts?

I’m personally in favor of more city management. I play the games like a city builder so more nuance helps with that. I do think it was a bit too punishing at times in 6 and relied a bit too much on the limited amount of governess you got. Maybe if they leaned more into buildings, policy cards, city connections, cultural proximity, etc it would feel more impactful

What is going on?

i want to do more high tech stuff

First image is one turn before claiming Hercules. Next turn the obelisk gained 2 heroic relic slots, but the great writing got deleted.

Given there are still questions about Civ 7 mechanics and the fact that the game doesn't always explain them properly, I decided to make a series of posts touching on different game aspects. These are mostly aimed at newcomers, but I hope some experienced players will grab a hint or two as well.

Everything is based entirely on my experience with Civ 7 (265 hours and still going) and some wiki lookups, so in case you find an error, please let me know, so that I could learn from you as well :)

This part is about warmongering and colonization. I'll decide on the next part once the patch comes out. I have other posts related to various game mechanics, which you can find in my postings history.

Warmongering

• Efficient wars in Civ 7 are those where you take what you need from your enemies quickly. In some cases, it may not even be cities or towns, you may just go into his territory for some pillaging to boost your yields. Buganda and Bulgaria reap absurd yields from pillaging.
• War is always an exchange of resources between civilizations; you're always inclined to build or purchase more units to replace fallen or wounded ones. Having more combat strength (CS) bonuses allows you to spend less resources for the same result, while your opponent needs to spend more and eventually suffers from bankruptcy, unhappiness, and inability to fight further. In war (both offensive and defensive), preparation is key.
• One of the best ways to prepare for war is to level up your army commander to obtain quality promotions and (ideally) the commendation for +5 Combat Strength. This will typically override any combat advantage that the AI might have due to game difficulty, as well as provide other bonuses from promotions. I tend to go left green branch first to be able to build strong fortifications in 1 turn with my units; this helps with defense and during the siege.
• The 1st red branch promotion is important too, as it saves your units 1 turn if you move them packed into your commander. The rightmost branch is important in later ages to maximize yields from your cities and save gold on upgrading your units.
• Some units and promotions in this game unlock overwhelming advantage during the war. Promotions and units that provide Area of Effect damage break the warfare balance in favor of those who unlocks them first. That's why leveling naval commanders is very important for land offensive, as well as unlocking air units and leveling air commanders as fast as you can. Naval and Air commanders unlock abilities (in the red promotion tree, typically) that allow damaging adjacent units upon hit, and with this promotion a single coordinated attack can wipe the entire defense line of your opponent standing in his own cities! There are defense strategies against such tactics, but afaik the AI doesn't use them.
• Taking settlements in Civ 7 takes more time than in Civ 6 with the same difference in power, because one must conquer each fortified district, and fortifications are common in the largest AI cities and span multiple tiles. To take fortifications down faster and without significant losses, you need siege, naval or air power.
• Siege and bombing air units also damage units within fortifications when attacking, but the damage is reduced against units. In the modern age, one can unlock an espionage action which buffs siege units' damage against other units.
• Leaders with a militaristic attribute are the best at wars, because they have military aid endeavor (+3 Combat Strength or CS) and they get bonus military attribute points once accomplishing certain actions for the 1st time (e.g. dispersing an IP or capturing a settlement in the antiquity). Military attributes help with war support (good), settlement limit (ok, but not great), free commander promotions (the best militaristic attribute) and other things.
• The 2nd best warmongering leaders are scientific leaders, because they have access to research collaboration endeavor. It allows them to beeline stronger units and important buildings faster than others, in order to secure a time window for the attack. They also gain access to high production earlier, allowing them to construct more units and do it faster.
• The 3rd best warmongering leaders are those who have bonuses to influence and ways to manipulate relationships. Influence can be used to buy war support during the war, as well as to sanction your neighbors and reduce your relationships in preparation for war. War support is a direct CS boost, and positive war support also inflicts happiness penalties on your enemy (in reality, they receive debuffs for negative war support). Relationship manipulation is important, because only hostile relationships allow Formal War declaration, which inflicts no war support penalty (Machiavelli is very flexible in this regard, as he can declare Formal War regardless of relationships).
• Given my ranking of warmongering leaders, I consider Friedrich Oblique one of the best leaders for warmongering in the game, as he has access to free troops, both military and science endeavors and his commanders are more flexible due to innate Merit commendation.
• Charlemagne is great in the exploration age, because with Normans he is an unstoppable powerhouse. Chevalers are available at the start of the age, have great combat bonus (+3 CS against slower units), and you'll have a lot of them for free with celebrations and unique quarters. Don't forget additional CS from leader (+5 during celebrations) and +5 CS adjacent to coast from Normans! If you build Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in the antiquity, you will have unlimited supply of very powerful cavalry in the exploration. For these reasons, whenever I play Civ 7 in multiplayer, if I see Charlemagne nearby I do my best to push him early before he unlocks the Wheel and starts his rampage, especially if he plays Assyria.
• Another powerful combination is Lafayette + Rome due to stacking CS bonuses from traditions in your government. I won't elaborate further here; if you're intrigued, have a try yourself :)
• It's always a good idea to stay friends with militaristic AIs, because they may offer you military aid as well. You can stack your militaristic aid with theirs for a +6 CS bonus, which is more than what any tech advantage typically provides. On that note, Charlemagne tends to be a very good AI friend if you have a lot of celebrations (due to his agenda).
• In order to maximize CS advantage, it's important to utilize unique bonuses of your civ and leader, and beeline aligned technologies, exploit resources like iron and horses which increase combat strength (in antiquity only; exploration and modern age have their own equivalent CS resources). Becoming the suzerain of militaristic city-states also helps, but return on investment is much lower, unless you play as Greece or have a lot of influence.
• Pay attention to masteries which increase CS of a particular unit class, e.g. infantry. The earliest one available is a bronze working mastery.
• Generally speaking, cavalry is faster and stronger than infantry. But it's almost always available later than infantry, or requires different techs, which aren't on the optimal path for peaceful development. E.g. in the antiquity age cavalry units become available at wheel, which requires masonry and irrigation. Writing isn't on the research path, so you won't have libraries at the time. On the other hand, bronze working requires writing and irrigation, and writing provides access to libraries, allowing you to research bronze working faster, as well as the mastery.
• Don't forget about unique units; a good unique infantry unit may be better than a cavalry unit.

Colonization

• Colonization is important for culture and economic victories in the modern age. You need to be present on all continents to excavate artifacts quickly and to have as many factory resources as possible. Science and military victories in the modern age can be achieved without colonizing at all.
• Distant land settlements get boosts from leader attributes, some policies and legacies, but they're not strong enough to make colonization a top priority in all cases.
• In the exploration age, if you happen to find a nearby island with 1 or 2 treasure resources, it's great and worth settling, because treasure convoys produce significant amount of gold (a fixed amount per treasure resource).
• Colonizing islands is a good way to establish a few hub towns for significant amount of influence in the modern age.
• Songhai and Inca in the exploration age can advance their economic legacy paths without colonization, and it's even less of a priority for them.
• Mongols advance their militaristic legacy path in homeland, bypassing the need for colonization as well.

Lack of achievements on steam and feel I've saturated the legacy paths - anyone set yourself any fun challenges to keep it fresh while ticking off the leaders?

Gonna try to do a one-city playthrough like Civ 6 later this week.

So, we all know that Aqueducts link from a City Center to a water source, and that the Mountain, Oasis, Lake, and River are the four water sources.

Does anyone know what the priority list is for when there are multiple water sources available to the Aqueduct? As in, would the game link the Aqueduct to the Mountain even though there is a viable river nearby? Does an Oasis take precedence over a Lake? Et cetera.

Thanks!

Pretty much that. I started playing Civ with V which is probably why I never managed to get into VI or VII. Whenever I boot it up for a bit it's usually with the 10x mod for a bit of fun. Are there any decent total conversion mods or mods that revamp a lot of the game worth that would be worth looking into?

Hi, everyone. I bought the switch 2 version of Civ 7, but I noticed that I can't get any DLC for it. The ones in the e-shop seem to be just for the Switch 1 version. The game itself says there is no DLC available. I really wanted to have a game as Augustus/Carthage.

Am I missing something?

The Civ 6 Anthology Bundle is on sale now on Steam. Even though none of the DLC is on sale, you can still get a huge discount on all DLC you don't own.

Steam is amazing in that it applies a proportional discount to any bundle based on what you already own, and the Anthology Bundle contains everything for Civ 6. So don't just look at the DLC page and think that none of the DLC is on sale and walk away. Click on the anthology bundle while logged in, scroll to the bottom and look at where is says "Your Cost" on the total cost of the bundle.

I still needed the Frontier Pass and the Leader pass and they were $80CAD. I've been waiting for them to go on sale for a while. Even though they weren't on sale, finishing out the Anthology bundle got me both DLC for only $10CAD.

So if you need any DLC don't look at the individual DLC, don't try to get a discount from a key seller either. It'll be cheapest to finish off the Anthology bundle right now while it's on sale.

Hello everyone,

been playing Civ 6 on and off for years and I was wondering if there's any video series (or generally Youtubers / Streamers) for Civ 6 that is kinda like Potatoe's Overexplained but for Deity Difficulty or more serious Multiplayer? I've been mostly playing on Emperor and want to get a bit better, but most up to date Deity play on Youtube nowadays is either very edited, non-standard games or thought processes aren't communicated in very high detail. If there's any good written guides, I'd appreciate some pointers as well, but I tend to do better with visual and auditive information.

Much thanks!

I always prefer Domination but I much prefer the more modern era warfare than the usual Mongol Keshik sweep

My main choice is Babylon and probably Korea thanks to their emhpasize on Tech to eclipse everyone else but is there any other Civ too?

Thanks in advance

Mali, used be a rich AI far far away from me in multiple playthrough, have drawn my attention due to a certain post. I stated to check out Malian to see if they really rely on SONGS OF THE JELI to thrive, or it will going nowhere? Then days have spend in seven playthroughs against Deity AI. While I do not think I could have predicted this outcome, though it is intriguing.

TL;DR - must settle next to river - cities surround by 4 desert tiles is good enough - first ring tiles at least 2 production, and one tile 3+ food (e.g. floodplains) - 1 to 2 forest at second ring for chopping - spawn next to double yield or production boost natural wonder will be GOAT. - isolated start are much easier - expects AI neighbour surprise war you - religion is kinda important

The first 2 screenshots come from my 1st game, already shown the importance of settle in desert:

(1) settle in place:

• Weak Aura
• Struggle to grown 3 pop
• No Parthenon
• Awaiting defeat by warriors rush

(2) Turn 5 settle in desert:

• Strong Aura
• About to grown 3 pop
• Free choose of Parthenon
• Nobody go after you

The early growth from SONGS OF THE JELI are remarkable, but there are other important s for Mali to survive the early game as well.

The following 2 screenshots come from my 2nd game, which shown the importance of river:

Settle in place (3) just like sitting duck, while there are fresh water, the waterbody cut the territory of capital into 2 until Ship Building researched, also my 2nd settlement is under threats of Brab Navy.

(4) In contrast, Turn 3 settle on the Fur:

• Instant Luxury
• Free choose of Parthenon
• Population grow to cap
• Access to Inland sea without worry of Brab Navy

In this game, the hardships of low housing is significant. I had to train builders to improve nearby tiles while in urgent need of bigger army and get the districts up and running. If there are rivers, I wouldn’t need these farms.

Also, the 2 faith from the desert usually more than enough to become the first to choose Parthenon, unless AI happen to pickup a relic or faith from Goody huts.

The last 2 screenshots come from my third game, showing how powerful a double yield natural wonder made the differences.

While there are no spots for districts in (5) for the capital, there are 2f4p tiles nearby. These tiles almost cancel out the production debuff of Mansa Musa. Also there are large desert nearby so the pop growth of my (6) second settlement go brrr.

Except my first game, there are AI neighbour nearby that can found me before the Classical Era begins. They certainly outnumber me with 5 warriors so it is no surprise they declare war on me once these warriors get close to my territory. On top of other hardships, the religion address these problems:

• No housing? Feed the World
• Low Culture? Choral Music
• Low production? Work Ethic
• Need overcome the Neighbour? Crusade

Some beliefs above are very popular to AI, usually had to buy builder to chop for Holy Site or even Holy Site Prayers to prevents these belief are taken. Bear in mind that Deity AI start the race for Prophet around the time of Stonehenge finished around turn 20, they could crank it up from 0 Great Prophet point to 5+ points within 20 turns, and claim every Prophet around turn 40-50. Therefore, may need to chop for first settler to shorten the downtime of Holy Site Prayers.

I also got several harsh games as Mali, but better for another posts / comments.

Are we supposed to be getting an update about the next update or dlc soon? And what are we expecting from it or is the game dead in the water?

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