PS5, PS4, PC Players Can't Decide Who Civilization 7's UI Was Made For

The UI is bad on the PC but its atrocious on the PS5. There are so many bugs from popups never going away, to entire sections just not working (I still can't get the trade route UI to work reliably on the PS5).

Its bland and unintuitive; but I could live with it, if it actually worked most of the time. I finally managed to win a victory on Sunday; but wont be picking it back up until the UI issues have been resolved.

@thedevilsjester
Yeah the trade screen feels broken to me too. I have to manually set each trade route so that sucks. Overall though I have found I can live with the bugs but less patient people would definitely do well to wait for a few patches...or the full game on sale like a lot of Civ fans apparently do.

Looks like I’ll be waiting on this one, I’m sure it’ll be amazing when fixed and they’ve released a DLC or two.

@ATaco The workaround I’ve had to use is manually sending my unit to a city, then using the button in the bottom right that lights up when the Trader is stood on the City Centre. I can’t think of any other reason for the counterintuitive layout than it’s broken.

There is so much of the UI that doesn’t feel like it works totally as intended. The minor visual blemishes on the UI I can look past, but the laggy UI (the allocate resource screen is the biggest offender) and buttons not working is pretty poor for an AAA game.

— EDIT —

Want to add that despite the UI woes, the core game is really good fun and a much-needed shakeup. I didn’t want CIV VI Part II and this title stirs the pot nicely.

Yep, I've had to do that with my own traders. It got really tedious when I was completing my economic milestones. So much so that I stopped using the traders completely after leaving the antiquity era. Oh and a bit of a little tip here but you don't have to go as far as the city center with the merchants. As long as you are within that city's borders you should be able to activate the trade route.

I actually think that's the intended design of the traders, you're supposed to send them to the settlement you want to trade with manually.

The screen that is displayed when you select the trader just moves the screen to the relevant town (that you are eligible to trade with) so it's easier for you to then move it there.

That screen will also show you settlements you can't trade with, and the reason why (usually distance or need to improve trade relations with them)

@thedevilsjester @ATaco I assume the intention is when that list comes up of potential trade routes, you can pick one and your merchant walks over there? It straight up doesnt work.

I thought maybe I was misunderstanding it, but it greys out trade options with Civs you're at war with and has a note that "you cant establish new routes with nations youre at war with" so I think it is the intention it just doesnt work.

Like you say, yeah I've just been backng out of the menu, then manually walking my merchant to other cities, then it lets you establish a route

@ATaco I can deal with bugs, but knowing that major patches are incoming in March (as per their communication), I don't want to put 100+ hours in, suffering through bugs and poor design choices, when a little patience will let me play a more polished version.

Part of the issues with the UI are shown in the few posts here. The design for things like trade routes is not clearly communicated and so that its easy to just assume its a bug because there are so many that are absolutely bugs that its hard to separate poorly communicated intentions from outright broken UI.

It is a fun game, and I enjoyed the time I put in it over the weekend, but I will be waiting for the March patches before jumping back in (and lets hope its March for PS5, since they seem to patch PC first and have consoles as secondary concern, as seen with the latest patch)

A couple of trips to reddit sorted out my confusion with the UI on PS5, they don't explain it well in-game but once you do figure it out you forget it was an issue to begin with. Trade routes was the main one for me, followed by leader attributes. I still haven't had any crashes or bugs. It's been really enjoyable so far, but I do miss the atomic age just because I enjoy building massive advanced armies at the end of a playthrough. I don't know if anyone mentioned it here but cycling between a city/town and it's stationed troops/commanders/etc is done by pressing square.

Is there any word on when Push Square might be offering a review on Civ 7?

The UI is bad but the game is not.

It needs more polish and streamlining the functions but they are on the right track in how to give the series a breath of fresh air.

I am really enjoying the game and see a lot of the benefits of the streamlined approach. I thought I was going to hate losing workers and some elements like that, but it is so much better. But, like everyone has said, trading is far more complicated and tedious for no reason. I see what they were trying to do, but it needs more work. They also need to improve showing what districts have defenses to take down. Diplomacy is much better, seems to have more brains than prior versions.

But, I am finding myself much more interested in the last two ages than when I would lose interest in Civ6. Combat is much better, but that also needs some intuitive UI improvements to make it easier. Having the Commanders nest the troops and manage promotional levels is so much more efficient.

The thing is...pc players are used to modding everything. I haven't played a PC game with an interactive UI that wasn't modded. They're so reliant on mods they can't seem to play a game without.