Evolution, Revolution Or Devolution?
As someone who knows for a fact that Sid Meier’s Civilization series peaked in Civ IV, it is interesting to see Ars Technica suggest that with a bit of work Civilization VII might match the Civ IV experience. This may intrigue those that miss the stack of doom instead of trying to micromanage dozens of single units effectively when launching a major offensive.  It seems that with the use of a military commander unit you can stack up to four units in a single hex, who spread out when you launch your assault. It sounds like an interesting mix of the two styles of armies, which could improve the experience of those with tastes similar to my own.
Civilization VII has dumped worker units altogether, with improvements handled from within the city screen. That’s not always available however, as your cities actually start as towns and you can specialize them as such, or after they’ve grown you can spend gold to upgrade them to cities, that can build troops and improvements. There is a hard limit to how many towns and cities you can have before you start seeing huge penalties start to appear, the limit depending on ages, civics, and technologies. This will certainly impact the play style of the more warlike players. Speaking of ages, they are now seem somewhat more like the ones found in Humanity.
For better or worse, the rumour is on Feb 11th you will be able to check out Civilization VII. There will be some patches quite quickly however, Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN lists a few of the features which didn’t make it into the game in time for launch but are forthcoming. How Firaxis could have missed setting up teams in multiplayer is baffling, and a bit discouraging.
There are those who paid almost double for a pre-order playing it now.
