Some 20 hours in, I can say that Civilization 7's age transitions are the series' most radical and disruptive mechanic yet

20 hours in

Pssh... at least finish a full game before you post a review!

Right? That's only one sunrise worth of playtime. Need to see the sun on the second day to know if it's addictive.

I'm not sure I want a 'soft reset' in the middle of the game. The whole point is to play one civilization through to victory.

When the age transition finally comes, it's like one game ends then another begins.

But why? If I wanted a new game, I'd go to the main menu and click "new game". I want to keep playing my existing one! I don't want to have to change civs half way through the game. I see that you get to keep some advantages, like your existing territory and commanders, but were people asking for this? I don't understand the appeal of this.

I can say that the question of whether this is the best iteration yet will probably be redundant until all the expansions roll out and we see the full vision enacted.

Indeed. At least I'll have the benefit of reading feedback from 5+ years of DLC and expansions until they bundle it all into a reasonable "complete" edition and I pick it up.

The one advantage I can think of to this approach is that it makes it harder to "snowball".
Civ VI had a big problem with this were you'd end up so far ahead by 1000 AD that you were all but guaranteed to win the game... but you'd still have to play through multiple ages to get to the end and there would be very little challenge left for the multiple hours it would take to grind through to the end. I think I got bored and just restarted more often than I actually finished games in Civ VI because of this.
If you have multiple soft resets along the way, I could maybe see that giving the devs some ability to reset the "power curve" periodically so that you're always dealing with some manner of challenge as you move from age to age.
- Yeah, I was watching Potato McWhiskey and this is his take. They have metrics that show most people don't actually finish a game and that indicates a pretty big flaw in game design.
  One interesting thing the devs brought up was the ability to pivot from one civ to another based on new information. Like if you discover your continent is mostly plains and horses, then maybe your next iteration looks more like the Mongols, with bonuses to cavalry. If your early conquest didn't go off, maybe you pivot to a more science or culture oriented civ.
  I don't hate these ideas, it just depends on how it actually feels in game.
The appeal is that Humankind did it and they’re trying to ape the mechanic from that game, even though nobody liked it in that one either.
- Oh great. I haven't played Humankind but the Civ games have been facing some stiff competition lately. I can't really blame them for trying to pull in new mechanics. It'd be nice if they were good ones though.
Once read that Civ has a tiny little problem...and that is basically that each time they release a game, it's done. That's it, there's nothing more to add in sensible manner. So instead of FIFA approach, they try to slightly shake up the rules of the game with each version, change some mechanics, add some mechanics, maybe even drop some of them.
I've been playing Civ since the very first one. I got my start with it on the Amiga 2000.
Your concerns echo mine, but I also know that Sid rarely makes missteps. So while I'm concerned, I'll wait until I actually get to play it.

It feels to me like Firaxis took stuff from Humankind and Millenia into their game because they are out of ideas.

I would be receptive of this if it was limited along geographical or cultural lines, but given that in Civ you don’t really play as nations from different time periods but rather their most modern equivalent (Like Germany instead of any of the previous countries that became Germany over time) I have the feeling you’ll be able to go from Japan in one age, right to American in the next age, my interest level in this game has dropped exponentially. Like, the driving mechanic behind the entire series is guide “A civilization” through time, not a series of entirely different, unrelated civilizations. That’s why the game is called Civilization and not CivilizationS

Strange to hear Civ described as a Grand Strategy title. Usually that is reserved for things like Victoria or Crusader Kings, which are not turn based.

CIV does loosely fit into the grand strategy genre by way of scale and mechanics, but you’re right that it’s usually not included, mostly because of the nature of how symmetrical and “video gamey” each game start is.