Civ 7 is pretty bad. The wife and I picked it up early so we could play it while we took some time off work. It’s neat and the new systems are cool. I like how Civs and Rulers work. I think the game flows really well now. Too bad they just had to iron out all of the fun to get it there.

Valid UI and customization complaints aside, the AI is miserable. Even on the default difficulty I found myself being forced to play the game it wanted me to play, not the game I wanted to play.

Right out the gate we restarted twice because the starting positions can be completely non viable. I was left on a 8 hex, not counting mountains, desert. My wife started near 5 city-states/barbarians the second time. Then my expansion to three cities was cut short when three separate AI players settled directly on my boarder, put one or two armies next to my cities each and swooped in and stole a city-state I had been spending influence to win over at the last minute. The barbarians attacking from the other side intensified. I had one army on each side. I easily had the largest army in the game and had spent the entire time trying to make friends. The AI players all chose some “policy” that made them all hate me and then they dogpiled my one city. I took them to the cleaners, but still lost. I was forced to play discount total war instead of Civ. I had to push for domination and won eventually. I couldn’t denounce people, they can uno reverse that. I would spend tons of resources winning over a city states for someone to swoop in, but then out and then the city state instantly starts slaughtering my people.

The same thing happened in two other games we played. I don’t even like domination victories. The AI isn’t even unintelligent or advanced. There is always a point when everyone you know shows up to your doorstep with an army and they just leave it there to attack later. Like clockwork. My warriors lost a 1v1 vs slingers. The game just isn’t completed. They’re clearly still working on customization, UI and AI.

I don’t want to min max. I want to casually play a game with my wife. We used to play Civ 6 and 5 on Prince. We used to have fun losing in those games, but we’re not having fun winning or losing in Civ 7.