Civilization VII costs € 130 in the start-up edition on Steam, but the 4x strategy game started with a bug that met in particular veterans that the game was “unplayable”. The “Marathon” mode, which is particularly popular with frequent players, simply didn’t work. In the gaming experience, the Meinmmo editor Schuhmann drove his limits: Civilization 7 was far too fast, then far too slow.
That was my irritation: I was actually really looking forward to Civilization 7, then started on Friday afternoon and really didn’t like the first 5 hours. I stopped again after 3 games and played Against The Storm again from Saturday.
The pace of the game simply did not fit what I knew from Civilization 6: First the game ran unnaturally quickly and an age was over before I could do anything. Then I changed the setting at game pace and Civilization VII ran excruciatingly slowly.
The game was boring, the pace didn’t fit, it just “slipped” as beautiful as I knew it from Civilization VI. The famous “only one round” feeling did not arise for me at all. What was going on?
Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 shows gameplay in the trailer
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A tailor -made bug for people like me
But veterans of the series, such as Writing Bull and Steinwallen, praised the game in a Podcast of the Gamestar and said that the game and its new mechanics have to be given a chance. They did not go into the problems with the game length that plagued me in this way. Apparently the problem only affected me:
Now I have understood where my irritation comes from: a bug for the release ruined the complete entry into a game that I was actually looking forward to. But the bug only hit people like me, the civilization basically played as a marathon. The bug thoroughly hidden them with CIV VII.
The marathon in Civilization VII becomes a sprint
That is the situation: At Civilization VI, many players in the series and I also got used to the game length “Marathon”:
The game length determines how many rounds and therefore also hours a game in civilization VI normally takes:
Depending on the game length, building, research and city growth take longer or shorter. Anyone who got used to the game length “Marathon” and also wanted to start Civilization 7 so experienced an evil awakening.
Before the wheel is invented, the age of antiquity is over
That was the problem: For the release of Civilization 7, the game lengths that are slower than the standard were obviously totally broken. It took far too long to build or explore something in the game, while the game was relentlessly progressed with crises and epoch changes.
On Reddit a player writes:
Round 100, no miracles built, no legacy points have yet been collected, the largest army in the world consists of my slinger and fighter. 90 % of ancient times are over and I wonder if I have time to invent the wheel before the age changes and I have to explore the new world.
35 laps with the scout pull through the world alone before you can do anything
So I felt: I as someone who basically play marathon had the same frustrating gaming experience: it took 35 laps to build the first slinger. The age was already over 20 % – I found it totally ridiculous.
The whole game balance seemed completely out of control: it couldn’t be serious that I only pull through the area with the scout for 35 rounds before I can build anything? I like marathon, but that’s not how I had imagined playing.
Explore future technology in 500 BC
So I wanted to solve it: Civilization 7 starts with a second setting through which you can influence the duration of the age. After the frustrating “Waiting for the Schünderer” experience, I played around.
But if you put the game speed on “standard” but extend the age length, you had the reverse problem.
Now the game gave you so much time in ancient times that all miracles could be built until the end of the age and all research could be completed. I then researched “Future Technologies” 500 before the birth of Christ because the technologies of antiquity were all researched. I had researched the ancient.
For me and also for some others, Civilization 7 was “unplayable” in this way; I didn’t even understand why the experts praised the game in a talk on Gamestar.
Weak release state apparently contributes to lousy reviews on Steam
That is the solution now. Yesterday, Monday, February 10, 2025, a first patch at Civilization 7 came online (via steamcommunity.com). The first line is the same:
This is about as if Activision Blizzard is the first patch of Call of Duty: “Weapons now also have balls.”
With all the love for Firaxis and the series that gave me so many nice hours: I really ask myself, like a game of such a renowned series, for which you can call such a prize with such a serious mistake? Just play nobody’s marathon? Did you only install the mode at the last second?
In any case, this first gave me completely civilization 7. Perhaps this also works and that explains why Civilization 7 has 81 % at Metacritic, but only 52 % of the reviews are positive on Steam. I hope, after the first weekend with CIV VII has gone so wrong that the next few days with the patch will be better: Civilization 7 is fighting on Steam, well-known global strategy expert has theory of harsh criticism of the first players