From what I've seen, Civ 7 is trying too hard to be Humankind. I don't really want try it.

Nope. Paradox and EA are the same.

It may have not caused that much panic, but Amplitude consistently put out interesting ideas and enhancements to the Civ-likes in their games, so no wonder Firaxis might use these as templates and negate any unique features their competition might have over them. Plus, the Civ genre has to move in some way, anyway.

Isn't this the rule with every civ launch? They're all somewhat half-baked on launch (although 7 admittedly looks quite a bit less baked than the others).

That said, I feel Civ formula seems to be in decline. To me Call To Power was peak civ ( yeah, fight me ), but while 3,4 and 5 were great "second-bests", I couldn't really get into 6, and I"m not really planning on playing 7, not with this 3-age format anyway.

I never even knew you could mod it

I mostly play on a Linux computer, buy that should work. Thanks!

I mean, the ages thing grew on me. It was way too common in other civs to just snowball early and dominate the rest. Any modern civilization was just bad, because by the time they got online it was over.

Yeah, I am enjoying the age mechanic as a new approach to the formula. It's not without its flaws, but in previous Civs after a certain point I just stopped playing/didn't finish games when the outcome was clear. I'm doing that less now.

Yeah releasing an unfinished game without any exciting new changes and adding more dlc each iteration has been killing new civ releases and burning many long term fans who get hyped for a new civ. Paradox, Ubisoft, MicroProse, etc pull the same predatory monetization shit and when the price tag is 70 USD their half baked, missing ingredients cake just doesn't look appetizing to most.

Honestly the flaws I have the biggest complaints about is the God awful UI.

Incorrect tool tips, no drag and drop, no ui for city connectivity, no renaming cities, disappearing entities.

It's genuinely painful at times.

Big agree. Figuring out over building with the interface was so frustrating! Seeing city connectivity too.

What makes you think that? It's possible that they did it in-house, of course, but there's no precedent for it. No previous Civ had a linux version done in-house.

I'm sure I'll move on at some point, but I'm currently running maybe 30 mods on civ 6, and they are mostly QoL.
Parts of both gameplay and UI are just poorly thought out even to this day.
So I was expecting the new game to be released in a state I'd dislike. It might take longer to improve than I thought, though.

I haven't played it and hate nearly everything I have seen about the age system, but they did make the map generation more varied in the latest patch. They've called the map inadequacies a priority to work on, so it will probably get better if you return to it down the line.

Why would you ever buy the deluxe version of any game?

aspyr made the linux ports since alpha centauri (the best civ that has ever been made) afair

I meant that it’s an official port, don’t know who didi it, sorry. But it was available on the high seas on the release day.

Civ 7 is out now? Jesus. I can only handle the strategic view from civ 5

It also speeds up the games a bit. I simply do not have the time as a full adult to sink 10+ hours into a single game. I have actually finished every game of Civ 7 I've played so far, which has never happened with any prior Civ installments at my current playtime.

I haven't tried civ7 yet but I really like humankind, the only 4x game that I actually finished thrice. If only Humankind didn't die, maybe it would have had more content added.