Civilization 7 Steam reviews hit new low, despite Firaxis’ best efforts

Recent Civilization 7 updates have seemingly failed to buoy the struggling 4X game on Steam, as player ratings sink to a fresh nadir.

Civilization 7 might be seriously flawed. The Ages system is unavoidable; it’s the foundation of the game, and it seems that people simply dislike it. Firaxis can alter the user interface, rebalance the leaders, add new settings and multiplayer game modes, and fix the many other issues players have voiced about the 4X sequel. Despite the release of several significant updates for Civ 7, the general opinion, at least on Steam, is only becoming more unfavorable. With competitors like Age of Empires, Stellaris, and Ara History Untold achieving a variety of successes, Civilization 7’s crucial user rating has recently fallen to an all-time low.

Three major issues with Civilization and the larger 4X game formula are addressed by the Ages system. It reduces micromanagement, to start. Civilization 7 attempts to simplify the endgame, where you would typically have to cycle through all of your soldiers, planes, boats, and tanks and tell them to wait, by removing unnecessary units from the map each time you advance to a new era. Second, the Ages system gives you more flexibility—at least on paper. You are not required to select a victory type and then maintain that choice from your first turn to your last because of the different hard and soft resets that take place at the beginning of every new Age.

Civilization 7’s Steam rating, which is based on user reviews from the last 30 days only, has fallen to “mostly negative” for the first time in the last seven days. Just 38% of the 1,314 player reviews that have been submitted in the last month are favorable. The overall rating for Civ 7 remains’mixed,’ but it appears that players have not been won back by the subsequent updates.

“The Ages system is garbage,” a player comments on Steam. “No amount of UI updates, quality-of-life updates, or minor patches will fix that.”

“I tried to enjoy this game,” a different player remarks. “With the Age resets, it simply doesn’t feel like a Civ game and railroads you the whole time. Although I understand that Firaxis wanted players to complete games, I now only complete one Age, and the results are the same. Not good. Go play Civ 6 or 5 now.

The maximum number of concurrent players that Civilization 7 has drawn in the last 24 hours is 11,707, per Steam DB. Concurrently, Civilization 6 and Civilization hit a peak of 47,484 and 19,157 users, respectively. Civilization 7 is currently the lowest-scoring Firaxis game on Steam, excluding DLC and games with insufficient reviews to receive a rating.