Sid Meier's Civilization VII Official Gameplay Showcase Airs Later This Month

I don't envy devs trying to makes new games in a series like this. I have a felling this game will be universally hated unless it is completely different from the pervious games while also being the exact same as the previous games

@HeadPirate It's no.7, and there were six before it. Did the previous games experience what you're describing?

@Paper_Yoshi From what I've heard, it wasn't just Switch...other console versions had issues with the game as well. What irritates me is that everyone knew...and yet they refused to fix the game via updates...

Civ for me have always been PC games. Since I'm getting a new PC soon, I'll be picking this up on Steam, most probably. I have never missed a Civ game and while VI was good, I still think I preferred V.

I agree with @HeadPirate, it's going to be hard to create new experiences within the boundaries of what Civ is. But the same can be said for Assassin's Creed and all other series with numerous sequels/prequels. I mean you can't really change sport games too much either.

@Lightsiyd

They didn't release today. I get what you're saying, but no one complained that Pokémon Gold was too much like Ruby, or that Ruby betrayed the "true fans" by changing too much. There wasn't really anywhere to complain, even if you thought that. That doesn't mean newer releases are not facing that problem.

1, 2 and 3 were released to a small fan bases at a time where all people really wanted was the same game updated for modern PCs. Civ 2 added things like ... mouse support(1). That's the time period we are talking about.

4 was the first modern release, and the first to bring a more general audience into the game. It innovated, and the "true fans" hated it, but that wasn't a problem because new fans vastly outnumbered them

5 and 6 were the only releases where this problem was really relevant. Did they surfer from it? Yeah, pretty much. Dispute rave reviews, both faced heavy criticism from "fans" that they had changed too much, while also facing criticism they were the exact same game. It wasn't until the expansions added back most of the features people though were missing and streamlined gameplay to be more like the previous games that people started to accept them.

And that was 2016. Compare the discourse around Pokémon Sun/Moon with the discourse around Scarlet and Violet, and I think that gives us an idea of what to expect when this comes out.

1 - Just to pre-emt the guy who's going to "WeLL ActUaLLy" me ... The windows release of Civ 1, which came 2 years after the DOS release, did support mouse use. My point is just that things were a lot different when that was game changing innovation.

@Pillowpants

I think Civ also faces the additional challenge of being the "simple" 4X game. It's identity is based around a lack of complexity and it's straight forward gameplay, coming from it's start as a board game. It's the 4X you play when you don't want to think too much, but also don't want to turn your brain completely off.

So that puts even more constrains on them when it comes to what they can innovate. If they add additional systems or up the complexity ... well, now your directly competing with Paradox games and the "Endless" series. If they keep things simple, how do you make the game meaningfully different?

I think this is why it's taken them so long. It's an extremely talented team and if anyone can crack the code, I'm sure it's them. But like I said ... I don't envy them in that herculean task.

I played Civ 6 on iPad and found it in many ways good, but the AI is terrible and ruined the game for me once I realised.
Also the harder difficulty settings buffing the AI units is very cheap and not a good way to add difficulty.