izigame.me

This is such a absolute mess It is hard to know where to get started and will be one of my longest reviews by far because of the passion I have to this as a lifelong Civilization player and lover, I will give the game the most positive first in that is visually nice to look at and the unit combat and unit models are drastically improved and is the main reason I even kept playing, the general/leadership units to go alongside normal combat units also is a very nice touch for both land and sea, the leaders having their own upgrades and traits similar to lifestyles in Crusader Kings was also a very good addition and there are many other smaller visual elements that are nice.
Initially I was opposed to the new way cities work in that now each building is its own district and even just a city growing in population means you need to build a new district, however I will say this has grown on me as I played and now I can see some merit to it and do like to see how huge cities can get.
I will give another very big positive in how settlers and the new town system work, now when you make a settler and have them found a location it creates a "Town" which is connected to and dependent on your main city and feeds it directly, this I find very interesting as you can choose to have one huge city with many small towns around it to support it (This is how I do it) or you can choose to make those towns into their own cities when you desire and can also make the towns specialize in something to make them better at it, though sadly it gets rid of that each each era and removes some types.
However despite the several things that are nice and show much of the potential this had the rest is all negatives that are either bad or outright mind numbing insane, to get right to the worst is the new system where the leader and nation are separate, I am absolutely speechless at why they thought this was a good idea and ruins any possibility of being immersed with the nations you are building and those around you and makes me not take anything going on seriously, like having Benjamin Franklin leading Rome (Which is what I was forced to do as I want to be American but cant until later) or Friedrich the Great leading a African tribe, its just stupid and ridiculous and alongside the next point is a gigantic reason why its getting a hard no, the next gigantic problem I will NEVER forgive them for is going the Humankind path of making you change nations between each ages, why in the world would they go to that I do not know and it destroys any unique identity Civilization had, I hated the Humankind approach and am heartbroken Civilization decided to follow THAT of all things, it ruins any attachment or enjoyment I can have with building my nation up when I have to keep switching to a completely different nation and culture multiple times and it also drives me nuts how I am stuck with ancient era names for my cities when changing later, it just does not make any sense and it gets even worse after playing it for some hours, I also found out that when you change nations and eras, every other civilization does as well which instantly makes them catch up with you, this defeats any point in trying to focus on technology or culture to get far ahead of the other nations when they just all catch up with you no matter how much better you are doing then them. Yet more unforgivable nonsense they did is making you have to UNLOCK more advanced civilizations, as if being forced to change every era wasn't bad enough now I have to UNLOCK THEM?! These most serious problems are so severe and deep coded I don't think mods can fix it.
More negative points is that they seem to have just removed barbarians entirely from the game, why? Fighting the early game barbarians was a fun if not sometimes frustrating element that gave you early combat to rank up and gave you something to do during the slow early build up and now you have to fight the city states which has consequences with diplomacy through the other nations.
Another bad point is (though I assume this will get DLC later but still) that there are very VERY few options for world generation, like standard is seriously the largest you got? I always played on the largest maps because it makes the games longer, makes the players not feel forced next to each other and makes it more calm to take your time, you had this long to make it and your map generation is that reduced and I cannot believe they removed the True Earth Start option, that was one I loved to use (if somewhat glitchy back then) and do not understand how they made the map generation so reduced.
There has also been a quite significant amount of glitches but that is honestly minor to me as they will get fixed but for now they just add to the frustration.
The next bad thing is the era system, while they did add in some small positives to it like the legacy system of how you played carrying over or each nation and culture getting unique looks with each era (I am huge with appearances so this is a great win) including giving flag bearers and officers to most units. But that is where the good ends because they have torn out yet another huge piece of a civilization game and thats the many different eras you can go through and the tech for each, now we are stuck with just THREE eras that are WAYYYYY too generalized, in older Civilization games you could feel as you went through each era and also felt that race to get the tech and culture of each era to try and be that nation to be first into the next, but here that has not just been reduced it is now destroyed completely, each era feels so dramatically generalized its hard to tell exactly where in history I am, its such a huge jump each but then it goes from huge jumps to a sudden brick wall as you no longer can go into the future or even modern day information era as a era, its not less specific in terms of making your units that way, but its still just completely generic "Modern" which also for some reason starts you off with mid to late 1700s, that is not modern, and now we are missing the Renaissance as a era or Industrial as a era (my favorite), now they are just packed into the way generalized "Antiquity" "Exploration" then "Modern" and this also goes right back to my previous stated huge problem of them now making it where all nations jump era at the same damn time, that kills any reason to try and rush ahead and to chose if you want to take that risk you used to where you have to choose to try and build across all parts of your nation and risk someone else rushing for tech or culture, or yourself choosing to neglect a part of your nation to get a advantage against your enemies, it had stakes and choice, now all of that is entirely gone making it feel like its trying to handicap players doing good so players who are doing bad can keep up, which DEFEATS THE WHOLE POINT! I could "maybe" forgive this if they put it in the match options if all players advance age at once so if that ridiculous handicap on skilled players or those that got a good spawn so those that are falling behind can catch up then maybe, but now its forced for every situation which removes any stakes.
So many of the dramatic changes they made feel like to me they felt they needed to be making changes for the sake of making changes, like seriously you had the formula of one of the most classic and beloved games of this type, you had the answer in your hands and all you needed to do was give it a modern update to the graphics and UI and make some changes here and there while keeping the main core alive for the MANY fans you have had who grew up with it, and the worst part is if they wouldnt have gone down the terrible Humankind path and stuck with being Civilization while doing the minor changes like better graphics and the improved combat and city design I would have loved it, but they have torn the heart out of the game and replaced it with something else entirely.