Civilization VII, the latest of the long line of historical 4X strategy games, brings about major changes to the formula. Some of them brilliant, some will take some time to get used to, and others don’t feel quite right as things stand right now.
After playing three full games of Civ VII across the three Ages, which isn’t a lot but it is 20+ hours of play, I have one other thing that our main review of the game didn’t cover that needs addressing: The Legacy Paths is flawed, and I can’t bloody win a game of Civ VII in time because there’s just not enough turns to spare.
Civ VII Legacy Paths Are Neat But Flawed
Civ VII shakes up the way how you achieve victory. Like past Civ games, it does involve proving superiority by doing a specific thing, and with multiple paths to victory.
But since the Ages are designed as its own game that supposedly builds up to the final Age, each Age can be “won”. And these paths to victory are more detailed. Rather than just conquer all the capitals for a domination victory, there’s a series of objectives to win a military victory that differs for every Age. And these things are called Legacy Paths.
In theory, it’s a neat idea. Rather than just have players accrue points by metrics that are not necessarily driven by gameplay, players are awarded for achieving as many of the steps toward the four Legacy Paths of each Age: Economic (new to Civ VII), Military, Scientific and Cultural. You are never locked into a victory type early in the game, just like past games, but you are encouraged to pursue as many of these Legacy Paths so that you can get a boost in the next Age.
But in practice, I just couldn’t get the victory project completed in time. All three times I attempted to cap off the game by being the first to finish the Space Race, the game just… ends. Abruptly. With no warning. No more turns.
It’s been infuriating me because I have no idea if I even have time to complete my victory lap, and then only to find out that because no won technically won the game declares the winner by counting the Legacy Path points. Two out of three times, I was outclassed by one opponent AI having a few more points.
But if I had just a few more turns. Just one more turn.
Not Enough Turns To Win The Game
In Civ VII, the amount of turns per Age varies. You only get a percentage number of how far in the Age you’re at, not exact turns. Age progress is made by having civs completing Legacy Paths or by researching the Future Tech or Future Civics on the Tech and Civics tree respectively.
At the state of Civ VII right now, it’s difficult to min-max your yields for your cities and towns, mostly because the UI is in a horrid situation right now. Where’s the best place to add a Specialist? How much total yield am I getting for building/overbuilding this building and how much adjacency bonus am I getting it from placing it here? How much are towns, and which towns, have boosted the yields I’m getting from this city? These are all unknowns to me, and if these information are actually there in the game then the game itself has done a pretty bad job of shoving it down my nose. I felt past Civ games did a better job of making me informed of how a city is doing so far, and allow me to make more informed choices each turn.
And I have made clear my other issues with the UI the game has right now at launch here.
With Civ VII, I don’t even know if I have a shot at winning the game as it is designed to be. Because the AI with all their known cheating advantages could’ve been researching Future Tech and Future Civics so the Age ends faster and faster. Like, I get it, it’s a great strategy to be able to deny someone like that, especially if you’re in the lead and outclassed the competition. Give them no chance to catch up. But this is is the end of the game. A Civ game is historically cherished for its satisfaction of getting that victory.
And I’m not getting that win yet. And it felt like it’s not through no fault of my own. Which makes it frustrating. I’m salty.
No Room For Fumbling Because You Can’t Bounce Back
And yes, I’m also salty that because I couldn’t clinch that eventual win I would have if the game goes about 10 or more turns, I also lost as a result from Legacy Points score. Now that makes me feel like you cannot fumble the first two Ages at all, where the AI civs are good at scoring Legacy Points.
In my best run yet, I was two turns away from completing my Economic Legacy Path in the Exploration Age—the Treasure Fleet was right there near the coast! And since I went all in on trying to get that Economic Golden Age and failed, I was set on the back foot on the start of the Modern Age with three Dark Age choices (and as such, not that many Legacy Points). Little did I know that that compounded into a fumble of not being able to complete the Space Race (technically, completing the first staffed flight into space) hours later. That lack of two turns costed me a win.
With the Legacy Paths that you can either hedge your bets by going for quantity of Legacy Points, hence not locking you toward a victory path yet but still get good rewards across the board, or double down on a route and use the advantages for achieving the Golden Age reward and snowball into that preferred victory type. But in practice, you better offer hedge your bets, as there’s no way you’re going to complete the win condition in time. So accruing more points by completing the easier objectives of each four Paths is how you win the game.
Anticlimactic End
In an effort to stop the late-game being a slog, developers Firaxis also made systems where it feels like you just don’t have enough time to complete that thing you need to do, with no way of knowing if you’re able to complete it, with no idea of how to respond and make changes accordingly.
Past games have a hard turn timer where you know the game will end, and so you can make plans to get the win done in time. In Civ VII, it can just pull the rug under you during the most intense of wars, or when you’re counting down for that eventual win, which makes for a rather anticlimactic conclusion. I’m no warmonger in Civ games, but players suffering from the rug pull during wars is such a downer, especially if they’re about to win before the Age ends. It’s similar in feeling to my case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory through no fault of my own (because the game doesn’t tell me how many turns are left).
At least in the first two Ages, you can sense the end is coming when a Crisis pops and asks you to take a pick of debuffs. In the Modern Age, there’s barely any warning, and I really don’t glance much at the Age progress percentage to clue me in what’s going on.
I feel like I want to blame the bad UI again for this, but it’s probably due to a new system that I (and many Civ fans) are just not used to it yet. But still.
Can We Add More Time On The Clock?
Here’s some suggestions: What if we can slow down, or even reverse, the Age progress somewhat?
Not like diabolically so that you can stretch an Age for eternity. But have it be something you can do to buy you time to complete that game-winning project.
You can sabotage an AI’s game-winning project. But what if we can sabotage an AI’s tech and civics progress so that their Future Tech and Future Civics research don’t progress the Age forward?
Or have a feature where you can put more time on the clock, so to speak, when a Civ begins a game-ending project so other civs can react accordingly? If two civs starts their space program, add more turns so the game can be settled by a proper Space Race, or something like that for the other three victory types.
Or, and hear me out, scrap the whole “build the final project to win” thing. I felt like the idea of completing Project Ivy, The World Bank, The World’s Fair and the first staffed space flight are supposed to be the victory lap. A last hurrah. But they’re a hindrance to a proper game win. They take too long to build! And there’s not much room for error to reach there and build the project before the game just ends out of nowhere.
One More Turn?
I like the bold ideas Civ VII brings to the franchise, even if it means having to take a few steps back as a result. It’s always like that in past base game releases, it will take time for everyone to get used to.
As much as I’ve been complaining here, I still like playing Civ VII. And I do believe it’ll get better over time, as they always have been.
But please, Civ VII, just, one more turn? I can’t keep losing games like this.
(Oh yeah, there’s no One More Turn option to play the game after the victor is declared in Civ VII. What’s up with that?)