Summary
- Civilization 7 fans are already getting sick of the overly aggressive AI forward settling on higher difficulties.
- One of the main issues is the lack of counterplay to this tactic, as you’re penalized for dealing with cities cropping up close to your territory.
- It’s led to fans to call for the return of Civilization 6’s loyalty mechanic, which allowed you to disrupt cities by reducing their loyalty with their owners.
Civilization 7 has been a major disappointment for a lot of fans of the series, who called the title an “unfinished mess” when it launched earlier this month. It’s a game with major problems, whether it be easily fixable such as the dodgy UI, or more foundational dislikes such as the new Ages system.
Now that players have had the game in their hands for a little while, a new problem seems to have arisen when playing on higher difficulties. First brought up by Reddit user Throwntosaturn on the Civilization subreddit, it appears as though a lot of people are having problems with aggressive forward settling from the AI. More specifically, the lack of counterplay is what is driving players up the wall.
Civilization 7’s Forward Settling AI Has Fans Begging For Loyalty To Return
In their post, Throwntosaturn claims that this tactic from the AI is almost impossible to play against, and even penalizes you for the rest of the Age if you try to do anything about it. All you can really do is capture them and then become the proud owner of a fairly useless city, wasting your settlement cap, or raze it to the ground and get a permanent war weariness penalty.
“If you spawn anywhere near an AI, you basically don’t even get to play the expansion game – have fun being stuck with whatever s****y cities they place.”
It’s an issue that a lot of players share, and one that has them wishing that Civilization 6’s loyalty mechanic was still a thing. This is essentially a mechanic that was added in the game’s Rise and Fall DLC that allowed you to disrupt the upper government of a city, potentially causing a revolt and for the city to break away from its owner and be ripe for taking if the loyalty level hits zero.
Throwntosaturn’s post is full of fans crossing their fingers that Firaxis will add it back at some point in the future, claiming it will eradicate a lot of the cheesy strategies that high difficulty AI can pull off. Of course, Firaxis is currently in the midst of dealing with player feedback at the moment, so maybe it should add this little issue to the list now too.
Grand Strategy
Turn-Based Strategy
4X
- Released
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February 11, 2025
- ESRB
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t
- Developer(s)
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Firaxis Games