I hate that this is the case, but I went to play a second game after winning my first and immediately quit. I have thousands of hours across all Civ games. Welp, here goes...

There are so many bugs. Here are two I remember:
- There seems to be a memory leak that locked up my computer after letting it run for 6 hours.
- Wonders don't build in the videos, which is annoying during the game but hilarious as an afterthought. The game just presents this mess of construction supplies as a sign of your greatness. A perfect analogy to Civ 7 as a game.

There are awful game design choices (in random order):
- Science and Culture unlocks compete with Wonder videos and so you often will click "Change Policies" and instead start a wonder video with a popup of another unlock in the way.
- When an enemy sues for peace there is no way to view the map it can be hard to know what city/town they are offering you. Best luck if you don't remember which of the 4 cities that start with the letter K that you want from them.
- You can never know what tiles gain fertility bonuses unless your camera is pointed correctly and you are watching the screen at the moment its listed. If you were not the victim, you will never know unless you memorize the entire map. It will say "Stromboli has erupted. 2 tiles gained fertility, but I will never say..."
- Many game mechanics are not explained. My first playthrough I had to google what Physicians did. I prepared by building or buying 7 of them in my capitol. When the plague hit, I used one and it did nothing. I found out from reading Reddit that it did do things, none of them are obvious and some just take time. Also, I didn't need 7 in a single city. Thanks game design.
- Another gameplay mechanic that wasn't explained was the Railroad Tycoon victory. I completed the Economics path and the screen just said "unlocks the World Bank Victory" or something. I clicked the link to read about it and the link doesn't take you to a page that talks about victory types. I just ignored it and somewhere near the end of my turn a random dude was the only unit left to move. That was how I learned how to win Civ 7, not because the game explained it on a screen, in the useless-pedia, or made it a clear objective. I figured out just clicking through a long list of tasks that need my attention until I got somewhere near the bottom. You know, minor details.
- If you have a naval commander that is full of units and they need to be upgraded it takes 18 clicks. You have to click the commander, click the unit, and click the upgrade button which leaves you with nothing selected so you have to repeat the process again. Since you have to reselect the commander, you have to move your cursor halfway across the screen twice for each unit, which really sucks for 6 units.
- When you pick a unit and click to attack, many times it just won't work. Most of those it seems to be because you are clicking too fast and you've chosen a unit before it was allowed to attack. You can see the attack indicator but clicking does not do anything. You have to click off the unit and reselect the unit before it will let you attack.
- Speaking of units, selecting units (when they are stacked, especially in a city) and deselecting units is painful. Yes there are ways but it adds to the feel that the game is just poorly implemented. Most games like this use the menu as the LAST press of the Esc key and anything before it will undo or back out of something like windows, screens, abilities that are in the middle of being targeted, or unit selections. Not this game. Enjoy your settler or explorer lens or accidentally popping the menu because you assume Civ 7 works like the other games you've played recently and its a habit button press.
- When you move units around in a city or are trying to target ranged attacks, there is no obvious reason why you can't move quickly or shoot from one tile to another. I often find that I move a ranged unit to a tile only to find that it can't shoot my target. Also, its not obvious why some moves use most or all of your actions on a turn. With the chaos of urban tile graphic design, I find that sometimes I use 3 actions per tile and sometimes I use 1. You never know until you try and can't plan for it.

Anywho, this is the short list of what I could think of right now. There are way more design failures and issues that I am forgetting or haven't experienced based upon the other reviewers.

I will update this review multiple times in the future and hope to one day flip it to a positive review.

Three final thoughts that are important though:

First: IF any of these have a simple solution and my criticisms are wrong, the game still gets a fail for it not being explained or obvious and requiring players to go to Google and Reddit to understand the game.

Second: Next year is the 35th anniversary of the Civilization series. Think about the amount of time, past in-house knowledge, player habit data and vast online community knowledge base that can be mined for best practices and optimal design of this or that. Now think about the fact that they have any of the above issues with the game. Half an average human lifetime in a first world nation and they can't generate maps that look good... and have a pathetic variety of map types.

Finally, it's cynically amusing that a game about the chronicling and playing through of the history of civilization(s)... doesn't rely on its own history to design a good game.

I'm genuinely angry at myself for spending money on this half-finished, dumbed-down mess. Avoid, it's awful and the DLC model is disgusting.

Not recommended.
I've played Civ VI for >3000h, and Civ 1-5 even more.
But this one does NOT have the "1 more Turn"-Feeling. There are simply too many things making me ... anxious ? uneaasy ? angry ? furious ?
I was amazed, when Civ V got its two DLCs and was very playable after that.
Same thing with Civ VI.
But now I see a pattern: In my eyes, they are trying to sell a game with only a small part of all features and sell the rest of the features as DLCs. And they want 70 Euros for the first part and probably 40-50 for each DLC ? Plus some extra for more Civs ?
NO thank you. I think I will wait a few years and then buy trhe full set for 40 Euro in a Steam sale. And Civ VIII I will do the same.
It was a bad idea to buy civ VII beforehand.

I've played from Civ 1 to Civ6, but Civ 7 just isn't my game. Maybe I've grown old, but breaking up the game into three separate eras and forcing you to change the civilization which you've played with each time just doesn't seem right. I'm a Japanese, so I usually play with Japan, but of the three ages, Japan is only represented in the modern era. And Himiko the only Japanese leader? Oh, come on. Too much doses of DEI, in my opinion.

They killed the 'one more turn' gimmick this game was famous for. Replacing fun and interesting mechanics with boring realism. An absolute grind factory; I'll be going back to Civ 6 asap.

I grew up on, played, and loved every Civ since the first. I have loved them all so much, I bought the settlers edition without a doubt that Civ 7 would be great and worthy of plenty of playthroughs. This is by far not just the worst Civ, but one of the worst games I have ever played! The only positive I can say is appreciate the inclusion of the wonder animations that were missing in some of the previous versions. Other than that, terrible, just terrible. Shame on the developers. The game is so restrictive in playstyle due to limitations in city/settlement count, and the just about resetting of the game with each age, you cannot play like you want. The age progression system makes no sense at all. Any developer who thought this age progression and resetting of the game midgame is a good idea needs to be blacklisted from gaming; it ruins the game. I gave this game several chances with several civilizations, and will not be playing any more. Going back to civ6, which was great. Anyone thinking about buying this game, do not waste your money. Buy any of the previous Civ games for a far, far better experience.

Absolutely awful. They've destroyed the franchise with this game.

Cilization 7 - A promising game but clearly not finished

Don't waste your money on this unfinished junk. It is the worst in the series. The developers should be fired.

I have been playing Civ games since the first one on the Amiga and this is the first time I have ever felt the need to leave a negative review. I can remember the febrile rage at the initial releases of civ 5 and 6, but I found much to like about both those games. The changes in those games felt like a real effort was being made to progress the title.

Civ 7 is not civilisation. It is almost a completely different game. It barely retains any of the elements of an actual civilisation game. Tech and age advancement is so linear as to almost completely remove the sandbox element that makes these games so addictive and satisfying. Instead of being given a general goal to gain achievements, you are pretty much pushed along one path or another, completing a series of mini goals to hit the main goal. This leads to an almost complete removal of any serious choices about how to play. I have also read that the game ends at the development of nuclear weapons, pretty much removing an entire stage of the game (I have so far not been entertained enough to keep playing that far - unheard of for me with any 4x, much less a Civ game).

The new leaders do not appear to have any personality, and interaction with them is a chore, just a way of using up influence. They also seem to have little effect on the way you play. I have, admittedly only tried a couple of plays, but each time I found myself almost completely ignoring the AI players in favour of taking out the barbarians, even during wars. I was declared on by two AI players (catherine was one, the other was of so little significance I cannot even remember who it was). Both times I made no effort whatsoever to attack either player, merely had some troops around in case they decided to do anything. In catherine's case, absolutely nothing happened, no battles, no threats or attempts at diplomatic aggression, after about 10 turns, she folded and gave me two of her cities. During the other AI war I just happened to have an army near one of their cities attacking some barbarians and they immediately folded and gifted me that city.

I will be going back to 5 or 6 as I think the issues with this game are unlikely to be solved. I really hope this is not the last of the civilisation franchise but it really does feel like it. I would rate both Humankind and ARA over this dumbing down of Civ (and I would put neither of those above 5 or 6). This game is a curiosity, not a progression of the series.