Sid Meier’s Civilization VII - Gameplay Reveal Trailer

Didn't even see the UI. Effectively an in-game cinematic trailer.
Hope there's more forthcoming soon. Civ's gotten to a point where I have to know if there's enough to chew on in the vanilla game if I'm going to buy in early.
- There's a 20 minute gameplay reveal today, this is just the trailer
  
  Thank you! Looking forward to it.
- Civ 6's UI was so boring compared to 5's art deco inspired UI.

Wish it didn't require a 2k account. don't need another account to play a video game.
- It doesn't. They mentioned there would be a unique skin for Napoleon if you signed up but it didn't sound required.
  
  The steam page literally says that it requires a 3rd party account for online play (just not required for offline play). so I'm not sure if that's what you're referencing.
  
  Ah, so that's why your leader now appears when you are communicating with a different civ. They had to add this for bullshit skins monetization.
  Edit: I wonder if this will be moddable: I now wanna see Master Chief teabagging Cleopatra when I declare war
- Why would you need an account to play a single player, non cloud hosted game?
  
  Shitty publisher mandated launchers.

I look forward to maybe buying this in 5-10 years when it's on sale with dlc for a reasonable price.
- I look forward to buying this day one and playing it for 5-10 years and then buying the DLC when it's on sale for a reasonable price.
  
  I look forward to playing it in 10 years when I get a computer with the minimum requirements for a payable price
- I look forward to pirating this shortly after release day and getting the game plus all future DLC for free.

Civ 2 is still peak for me, although I did like Leonard Nimoy's contribution to Civ IV.
- The best civ is always your first.
  
  In that case it should be the original on the Amiga 500 😄, but I still prefer the improvements in Civ 2.
  
  I think that's true for everything but civ 2. It seems like everyone agrees 2 is just better
- I still play civ v with a few friends pretty much weekly. A couple times a year one of our wives and kids go out of town and we lan party from 4pm to 6am and actually finish a game!
  
  That's awesome!
- Give me more soldiers noble leader!
- IV for me. Plus that theme song....it's possibly my favorite from any song ever.

My first impressions:
I like the art style, I'll have to see about the leaders.
Gwendolyn Christie is a really good choice for the narrator.
I don't like the sound of there only being three ages, but maybe there's more to it.
Also not sure about switching civs mid-game, but being able to do things like a French Cleopatra might be fun.
Are they going to restrict this to avoid potentially offensive combos, especially in multiplayer? I'm thinking of things like using real-world colonizers for leaders of places they occupied (like an English ruler in charge of India and stuff like that.) At the very least it seems like they're inviting trouble unnecessarily.
The prices are completely bonkers, nearly $170 CAD for the Founders Edition! This is gonna be the first Civ game in a long time that I don't pick up on launch day.
- Isn't civ a game about colonisation? If the stuff you described is offending to some, the whole game already is to them.
  
  No, you're thinking about Sid Meier's Colonization
- I don't like the sound of there only being three ages, but maybe there's more to it.
  I thought the same thing. I'm guessing more will be added via DLC?
  Which is a scummy move tbh
  
  From what I’ve heard, the ages are going to be much longer and more game-changing that Civ 6 eras. Like age of exploration unlocking new parts of the world and new era appropriate civs to play with.
- I would bet that there will be a new space age era added on as a DLC
  The ages concern me most though - what progress carries across? Are you going to be going full land grab because your infrastructure resets etc?

This looks like the live stream of the gameplay reveal, starting now:
https://www.twitch.tv/firaxisgames
- Highlights as I remember them from the live stream:
  Play progresses through 3 ages: Antiquity, Exploration, Modern
  Continue as a different civ when starting each new age
  Map expands with each new age
  Leader choice is separate from civ choice
  Districts
  Christopher Tin soundtrack
  Gwendoline Christie narration
  February 2025 release
  Edit: Here's the rerun:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc3_EO6Bj2M&t=5406s
  
  Also noted :
  Navigable rivers
  terrain has cliffs
  armies seems to be condensed, with generals leading them. Fighting looks to be constant in some way? (or that's just the render for the trailer)
  cities seem to expand much more
  the leaders looks to have some stats which can be improved
  
  Sounds similar to Humankind. Which is nice cus I like that game.
  
  Play progresses through 3 ages: Antiquity, Exploration, Modern
  Anyone want to bet there would be more ages after DLCs are released?
  I'm guessing Industrial and Information ages added before and after Modern age, respectively.
  
  Interested how the map expansion will work in multiplayer.
  Concerned about the era resets.
  I like what they appear to have taken from humankind (eras, leader swaps, outposts/yowns, map elevation?) and old world (tile improvements culture bomb)
  Also concerned about how the maps seemed to just be cities, no gradual domestication of the world with farms, mines etc.

I'm a bit torn. On one hand it seems like a step back from the Civ 6 cartoon garbage. On the other hand the ground textures still look like blurry paint vomit. It's kinda weird because the foliage and mountains / rocks seem to be in a higher resolution and much more detailed. I guess it might be WIP and a remnant from Civ 6. The unit sizes also seem gargantuan? I guess that part would not be as hard to fix via mods but that was already a compatibility nightmare before, especially when the mod authors quit.
So, graphically it might be a buyable Civ game again, but... Picking a new civ or mismatching leaders makes me worry though, because that sounds awfully familiar to another game that had a similar terrible feature. The Aztecs turning into France while being led by some Japanese dude just does not feel right.
The FOMO unlocks to bait you into signing up AND buying the cartoon shit are a hard pass for me though. Selling that as a "thank you" is nothing but insolent.
- TIL some people play Civ games for the graphics.
  
  Not graphics, art style. It's a valid critique and not snobbery.
  
  No, you got it backwards. I don't play obnoxious eye cancer games that cause me migraines and look ridiculous. When you go from Civ V with diversified & smaller units that shows basically big armies, to some World of Warcraft-esque eye bleeding mobile game like art style that shows units as a single big cartoon unit, then that's just not what I want from a game like this.
- Oh ffs what is it with people thinking it looks like a cartoon. As for scale, that's every 4x game.
  
  Are you seriously claiming Civ 6 does not have a cartoon art style..? And no, Civ V had a much better unit scale & diversity, especially with certain mods.
- From what I saw of the gameplay is that civilizations are sorta locked on a path, but you get a choice of similar civilisations. Unless you play in the style of a different civ and unlock certain milestones you could unlock other paths. At least from what I understand.
  
  I honestly could not really tell. The UI did not give me a whole lot of information there.

they took features from humankind and added them in for some reason
- I like Humankind.
  I like the civ switch since you can change you priorities each age. Also I like having a leader I actually like with a civ I like.
  Let's me do what I want to do the entire campaign instead of having to be stick with some stuff I don't like just to play with the things I do like.
  I'm terrible at these games so I can't speak to balance and strategy and stuff. I use lots of auto stuff or relying on suggested choices from advisors lol.

At 15:05 it isn't clear what is meant by a "full campaign", but it does sound like you can set up games to be only one age. I hope so, as I am skeptical about swapping civilizations. It was actually the primary thing that put me off Humankind, rather than a selling point. Resetting not only your Civ's identity but also the world's resources, map size, and the tech tree is concerning. If one age isn't an option, I am sure mods will save us at least.
Mod support and multiplayer are huge interests for dedicated fans, so hopefully we will get more information soon. VI improved a lot from V, so I expect it will be good.
I prefer the new graphics to Civ VI's overall, but I don't want to say it actually tops V until I've played it myself. A few screens seemed visually unfinshed. Story events, navigable rivers, leader skill trees, and the calamities at the end of ages seem intriguing at least. No mention of a world congress, hopefully they have a better system in mind than VI's.
Still curious about culture progression. They didn't show a card system like VI, so that at least makes me hopeful. Ideally I would like a permanent unlock/upgrade tree and a way to temporarily boost something at a cost in another system, like edicts in Stellaris.
Looks like districts and wonders still take a tile to build, but now other buildings do too? Cities sprawl out a lot, and are diverse within. Perhaps we will be able to build duplicate buildings that were previously one per city, especially since they mentioned city specializations. It also seems like workers/builders might be attached to a particular city rather than movable units.
Overall, I'm a bit less excited and more worried. There were a lot of changes from V to VI that I was disappointed with from the onset and honestly they did not grow on me.
- At 15:05 it isn't clear...
  Did we watch different videos? Because the one I see linked is only two minutes long.
  
  They must be referring to the full stream, maybe this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc3_EO6Bj2M

I found it a bit awkward that pretty much everyone talking about these world cultures was white.