Civilization VII costs 130 € in the Founder’s Edition on Steam, but the 4x strategy game launched with a bug that primarily affected veterans who found the game “unplayable”. The mode “Marathon”, which is especially popular among frequent players, simply did not work. MeinMMO editor Schuhmann pushed his limits in the gameplay: Civilization VII was first way too fast, then way too slow.
This was my irritation: I was really looking forward to Civilization VII, started playing it on Friday afternoon, and found the first 5 hours of gameplay really disappointing. I stopped after 3 games and played Against the Storm again on Saturday.
The pace of the game just didn’t match what I was used to from Civilization VI: first the game was uncomfortably fast and an era was over before I could do anything. Then I changed the game speed settings, and Civilization VII ran painfully slowly.
The game was boring, the pace didn’t match, it just didn’t have the same flow I was used to from Civilization VI. The famous “just one more turn” feeling didn’t come to me at all. What was going on?
A tailored bug for people like me
But series veterans like Writing Bull and Steinwallen praised the game in a GameStar podcast, saying that one should give the game and its new mechanics a chance. They didn’t elaborate much on the problems with game length that plagued me. Apparently, it was a problem that affected only me:
- What was going on?
- Was it a bug that only I had?
- Why was my gaming experience so different from that of the testers and experts?
Now I understand where my irritation came from: a bug at launch ruined my entire entry into a game I was really looking forward to. But the bug only affected people like me who typically play Civilization as a marathon. It thoroughly ruined the first weekend with Civ VII for them.
The marathon in Civilization VII turns into a sprint
This is the situation: In Civilization VI, many players of the series, including myself, had gotten used to the “Marathon” game length:
The game length determines how many turns and thus hours a game in Civilization VI usually lasts:
- A “quick” game reaches the end year 2050 after 330 turns.
- A marathon game takes 1,500 turns.
Depending on the game length, building, researching, and city growth take longer or shorter. However, those accustomed to the “Marathon” game length and wishing to start Civilization VII in the same manner experienced a rude awakening.
Even before the wheel is invented, the ancient era ends
This was the problem: At the launch of Civilization VII, the game lengths that were slower than the standard were clearly totally broken. It took far too long to build or research anything in the game while the gameplay relentlessly progressed with crises and era changes.
On reddit, a player writes:
Turn 100, no wonders built, no legacy points collected, the largest army in the world consists of my slinger and warrior. 90% of the ancient era is gone, and I’m wondering if I have time to invent the wheel before the era changes, and I have to explore the New World.
35 turns wandering the world with the scout before being able to do anything
I experienced this: As someone who generally plays Marathon, I had the same frustrating gameplay experience: it took 35 turns for me to build my first slinger. By then, 20% of the era was already over – I found it utterly ridiculous.
The entire game balance seemed completely out of control: it couldn’t seriously be that I wandered only with the scout for 35 turns before I could build anything? I enjoy Marathon, but that is not how I imagined playing.
Exploring future technology in 500 BC
This is how I wanted to solve it: Civilization VII starts with a second setting that allows you to influence the duration of the eras. I fiddled with this after the frustrating “waiting for the slinger” experience.
However, if you set the game speed to “Standard” but extend the era length, you faced the opposite problem.
Now the game gave you so much time in the ancient era that all wonders could be built and all research completed by the time the era elapsed. By 500 BC, I was already researching “future technologies” because all ancient technologies had been researched. I had emptied the ancient era of research.
For me and several others, Civilization VII became “unplayable” in this way; I really didn’t understand why the experts praised the game so much in a talk on GameStar.
Weak launch state evidently contributes to bad reviews on Steam
This is the solution now. Yesterday, on Monday, February 10, 2025, a first patch went live for Civilization VII (via steamcommunity.com). The first line states:
- Fixed an issue causing Ages in Epic and Marathon speed games to be shorter than intended (“Fixed an issue that caused the ages in Epic and Marathon games to be shorter than intended”)
This is roughly equivalent to Activision Blizzard’s first patch for Call of Duty: “Weapons now also have bullets.”
With all due respect to Firaxis and the series that has given me so many wonderful hours: I really wonder how a game from such a prestigious series, which demands such a price, can be released with such a serious flaw? Does no one play Marathon? Was the mode added at the last second?
In any case, this has completely soured Civilization VII for me. Perhaps others feel the same way, which explains why Civilization VII received 81% on Metacritic, but only 52% of reviews are positive on Steam. I hope that after the first weekend with Civ VII went so wrong, the next days with the patch will be better: Civilization VII is climbing up on Steam; a well-known global strategy expert has a theory about the harsh criticism from early players
