A Comm for Historymemes

Oh man I know were not really in too much disagreement here but that false equivalence argument grinds me a bit.

Yeah that's fair. I didn't feel like writing a book so I was being a bit bellicose with my comparisons.

I'm not a Civ stan, so I'm not dying on this hill, but despite the core gameplay being similar across all of the games each game adds new features that change the gameplay loop. Leaders bonuses, wonders, the way Ages function mechanically, how diplomacy is handled, exploration, etc all get modified and tweaked with each major release. It does seem samey, but the net result is that you're doing different things while using a familiar system.

I guess a better comparison would be to something like Dungeons and Dragons. In the end you're sitting at a table, talking and rolling dice. Trying to explain the differences between 3.5 and 5th Edition to a person who doesn't play seems like you're splitting hairs ("oh, so you just roll two dice instead of adding -5?, that's basically the same thing"), but the updates are more aimed at refining the experience for existing players while also making enough changes to keep the gameplay experience fresh.

If you want a more in-depth explaination, PotatoMcWhiskey on YT (the big Civ content creator) has two reviews on Civ 7 where he talks about the changes between Civ 6 and Civ 7 from the perspective to a player (one review is focusing on positive things and the other on negative things (largely UI related)): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLm8D6tN6GA