Civilization VII Preview
A new Civilization game always comes down to one question: do you follow tradition or do you change the rules? At first glance, Civilization VII looks familiar. Animated leaders from world history fill the map hexes with cities, artists, and archers. Playing it, the changes to the rules are profound, and completely rethinks how the player interacts with the game. I’ll highlight a few features that felt like major departures. The new Civilization game is real, and it is full of surprises.
Rise and Fall of Civilizations
Starting with the most important change: naval units can navigate rivers! Long-time fans of the series understand what a big deal that is. But beyond a simple but much fan-requested feature, there are a lot of changes in how you play the game, big and small. Firaxis Lead Designer Ed Beach started development of Civilization VII with a trip to London. He found maps of a tiny area that saw the city growing from Roman Londinium to the modern-day capital of England. In previous games, you would never have this experience of watching cultures change over time. Now in a single game, you play as three different civilizations
It’s true! Civilization VII changes to the first fundamental choice a player makes. A “campaign” of Civ takes place in three eras: antiquity, exploration, and modern. Each time you turn the page of history to the next chapter, you will be prompted to select your next culture. I got to sit down and play that first chapter as Egypt. At the start of the age of exploration, I get to choose a new Civ to layer on top of the first. By default, Egypt can become the Songhai Empire seeing as they are both in North Africa. But if you complete certain goals, you broaden your options. If you focus on horses, Mongolia could also be an option.
This radically changes how you plan for your victory. Even more radically, leaders have been completely decoupled from Civs. You could hypothetically have Augustus Caesar lead the Inca who become Portuguese and finally become Canadian. You are encouraged to be a bit more focused than that, as certain synergies will lead you to victory. But I can’t help but imagine the fun stipulations I could put on myself to play a really weird game.
Filling in the Map
The other biggest departure is the total absence of builders. This change felt very strange, but I think ultimately I will get used to it. Now cities develop tiles directly. At each population milestone, you choose a tile to fill with farms, mines, libraries, or temples. Civilization VI quickly became a game about adjacency bonuses. You were always trying to plan ahead so that your industrial district would stand next to a canal.
These bonuses work differently now, because there aren’t really districts anymore. Instead, you can place each building, and more than one building can occupy a tile. Your library and your temple can be across the street from one another. This was one area of the game that I struggled with, and my cities looked a little random. But it’s the change I am most excited about. After a few centuries, your cities will look like real cities and not a bunch of multicolored game pieces sitting on a board.
Not all of your cities will be cities however! In another transformative feature, some of them will exist as towns. Towns don’t directly produce units and buildings like cities do, you can only buy those things with gold. You can also use that gold to upgrade a town into a full city, but doing so comes with new needs to fulfill. All of these changes remake the turn-to-turn decision-making. Instead of focusing on settlers and builders, now your focus is more rooted towards your settlements. It encourages long-term planning. We will see how this shakes up the endgame, but my map-nerd brain is already loving the shift.
Pressing Negotiations
A new game means new graphics. I was a little surprised at how similar the style was to Civilization VI. Previous style changes have been much more dramatic. The graphics are obviously more sophisticated. I was blown away by the detail of the leaders. You could see the light permeating their pores and the shadows of their arm hair move.
A debuting Civ game has always had a graphical update, but I was struck by how much attention was paid to legibility. The menus and interface have not yet been finalized, but the map felt less cluttered than ever. I was in love with how your cities and towns spread. Buildings and neighborhoods are less like diorama models and more like you were seeing a satellite view. Part of me wanted a Civ game with a more cartoony art style, but their commitment to realism is quite impressive.
Diplomacy is definitely different, but it will take a long time to figure out the long-term consequences of a particular policy. A lot of the same language has been carried over- there is denouncement, and casus belli, and everything. The developers said that their goal was to make your neighbors feel… less insane. You should no longer meet a new leader and then be denounced one turn later for failing to build a big enough navy. Leaders also now share the screen, so those excellent animations now include two characters reacting to each other.
The Path of Victory
I’m an easy mark for Civilization, it’s true. I’ve gotten every new title on release day since Civilization IV came out in 2004. I like to think this makes me a great critic of Civ; that my experience gives me a broader perspective. But if I am being honest, I’ve been ready for a new game for a while. This is by no means a slight against Civilization VI, my most-played Steam game. But I’ve seen that game play out a lot, and I am ready for something exciting and different.
I think people are going to love Civilization VII. If nothing else, it is going to be a more intuited experience. Will that make the game more accessible? Will that make the game feel less random? We will find out, maybe sooner than you think. Civilization VII is ready to release this February, simultaneously on all major consoles. That’s a lot of human history being played out. This go around, how many times will players be nuked by Gandhi?
Civilization VII will be available on all major platforms on February 11, 2025.
