A new Civilization 7 update is coming tomorrow, and so today we get an early look at some of the highlights including the addition of a new "quick move" functionality, the ability to rename your settlements and commanders, and of course even more UI updates and polish.
Civ 7 is doing fine, more or less, but probably not as "fine" as Firaxis and 2K Games expected: Critical reviews were good but not glowing, and the wider response from players has been iffy, culminating in a Steam user rating that's improved since its February 10 debut but still remains deeply "mixed."
Concurrent player counts also continue to lag well behind those of Civilization 6. At this moment, in fact, Civ 7's concurrent player count is even lagging behind Civilization 5, which came out 15 years ago.
To be fair, Civ 5 and Civ 6 were spectacularly good games, each pulling down a 93% review score here at PC Gamer, where we know about these things. Those are tough acts to follow no matter who you are.
Still, there's no denying that Civ 7 in its current form just doesn't seem to have the juice. The most glaring issue was, and is, Civ 7's UI, a point Firaxis acknowledged even before the game was fully live. Hotfixes followed, and of course modders got to work on the problems straight away.
The first major update, released earlier this month, made a number of changes and fixed some UI issues, but didn't deliver a full-scale overhaul, and neither will this one from the sounds of it. Being able to rename settlements is an obviously welcome change, as is the new quick move (units immediately move from hex to hex, without any transitions) and the ability to start a new game, with your lead and civilization selections maintained, with a single button. But they also feel like things that should've been there from the start—which I suppose is part of the problem.
The update will also keep your town and city panel open after you buy something so it's easier to make purchases in bulk, and a new notification will appear when one of your cities is under attack, so there's "less chance you'll be caught off guard when things are catching fire in your empire." Tooltips are also being changed up to improve "overall readability and alignment within our user interface."
The pace of Civ 7's gameplay is also being slowed: Eliminating a player in the Modern Age will no longer add progress, and the amount of age progress earned by eliminating someone in the Exploration Age has been cut in half.
"We're also going to make it tougher to blow through the modern tech and civic trees too quickly," creative director Ed Beach says in today's patch preview video. "Our costs overall have been increased by about 25%. The weighting on that is deep in those trees, so it's especially those final techs and civics you need to finish out the game, they're going to take a little bit longer."
It doesn't sound like there's any one "killer fix" in this patch, but that's probably unavoidable at this stage. The Civilization games are massive collections of systems, and when those systems just don't quite come together in a way that excites players (or at least convinces them to stop horsing around with the old games in the series), the process of untangling it all is bound to be long and unglamorous.
Which isn't to say it can't or shouldn't be done—Cyberpunk 2077 pulled it off, and I'd say Civ 7 is far more likely to be a game we look back on in a few years and marvel and how far it's come—but expectations for patch note thrills and chills should probably be tempered: It's going to take a long time and a lot of work to get Civ 7 to a Civ 6 (or Civ 5) state of being.
Civilization 7's 1.1.1 update, and the full patch notes, will go live tomorrow—that's March 25.
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