Sid Meier's Civilization 7 Review: Rewriting History In Beautiful, Messy Strokes

Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 begins, like its predecessors, with a settler on unclaimed land. You discovered a metropolis, soar into the tech tree, and inside a couple of turns, you have as soon as once more found the wheel. It’s solely as the sport ticks alongside that the array of selections turns into really advanced, a sequence of occasions that serves as a surprisingly apt summation of the collection as an entire. Each sport has the unenviable activity of balancing custom with innovation, sustaining artifacts from a system devised in 1991 whereas, as at all times, reinventing the wheel.

In some methods, Civ 7‘s method feels unusually daring, notably in its embrace of a brand new Ages system that cuts up civilizations throughout three distinct eras. In different methods, a lot of its concepts really feel like logical evolutions of Civ 6‘s half-measures, and it is all too simple to gloss over how divisive overhauls have at all times been. While Civ 5 now serves because the inimitable touchstone for a lot of gamers, its left flip into hex-based design and the absence of key Civ 4 options at launch made it simply as contentious as this may possible be.

Cutting & Rebuilding Around The Fundamentals

Only The Big Ideas Are Sacred

Civ 7 options loads of additions, however veterans usually tend to discover all the things that is lacking within the earliest minutes of a playthrough. Before even coming into a sport, a diminished array of map sorts and sizes makes for a poor introduction. In the fledgling levels of an empire, the main focus shifts to the absence of acquainted faces like staff and Great People. Although making cuts is normal Civ process, particularly at launch, a couple of of Civ 7‘s excisions have been core elements of the franchise’s id from the beginning.

Newcomers, however, could not suspect that something is awry. Most adjustments really feel extra like reworked design pillars than lower corners, making steps that Civ 6 wasn’t fairly able to make. I miss staff, however I miss what they have been within the older video games, not the expendable models that Civ 6 grafted onto its district system. Not each lacking factor has this justification — cities cannot at present be renamed, an unpardonable sin that Civ 6 additionally dedicated at launch and later fastened — nevertheless it applies to the bulk.

Picking up the items, the core development of Civ 7 facilities on a number of normal options and some new ones. Guiding a civilization via the Ages depends on advancing its capability for manufacturing, whether or not that is literal manufacturing or its potential to generate meals, cash, technological developments, and civic developments. Militant conquest is one instrument for empire enlargement, and struggle is nearly at all times inevitable, however laying out new districts for affluent cities and sending out settlers to distant lands might be simply as strategically central.

For these like me preferring to play “wide,” Civ 7 has some recent solutions. As is custom, over-expansion is punished by unhappiness, however civilization-wide unhappiness principally ticks in on account of going over a particular settlement cap. The larger change is the emphasis on cities, as every new settlement past the capital will begin as a city and revert to at least one each time the Age adjustments. Every settlement might be upgraded to metropolis with a monetary funding, however maintaining a few of them as cities makes it attainable to unfold out throughout the map with out an obscene uptick in micromanagement.

Civ 7’s Ages System Is A Lifeboat For Sinking Civs

Catching Up To The Snowball

The reduction in micromanagement is a guiding factor of Civ 7‘s design, one which finally serves its most blatant prerogative — getting folks to complete their video games. Plenty of adjustments, each good and unhealthy, go into this aim, however the unavoidable one is the Ages system. Most contentiously, the Ages system forces civilization swaps on the daybreak of the Exploration and Modern Ages, whether or not that is a pure development like China’s Ming dynasty giving solution to the Qing or an absurd pivot from the Majapahit to France.

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How Civ 7 Reimagines The Idea Of 4X Games

Civilization 7 builders are altering issues up for the technique within the sport to be much less cumbersome for micromanagement, whereas nonetheless being a 4X title.

The Ages system has been billed as a greater illustration of historical past, however it’s a weak argument. While it displays one thing that the collection has largely ignored, it does so within the reductive method of urgent a button for a sudden reset, and the flexibility to guide the Mayans as Ben Franklin definitely does not have any grounding. The actual trick is that it provides an opportunity to regroup. If a civilization is on a demise march, with civil unrest splintering the dominion or science lagging behind each competitor, holding on till the following Age might save a marketing campaign from abandonment.

An analogous idea appeared within the undeniably Civ-like sport Humankind a number of years in the past, however though it did not win me over there, Civ 7 makes the case extra convincingly. I pulled out a victory in my first sport solely as a result of the leap to the Modern Age bailed me out of some key errors, and much more dire straits might doubtlessly be escaped by embracing “Dark Age” choices, which let a faltering civilization go for broke. It’s additionally good to see civilization perks that lean into era-specific particulars, just like the increase Meiji Japan receives from overbuilding.

The Ages System Could Still Use Some Tweaks

Subtlety Is In Short Supply

At the identical time, Civ 7‘s whole dedication to the thought could tip barely too far into the onerous reset. While an Age transition provides a cool alternative to flee a dead-end struggle, I discovered it excessively foolish when a struggle that Ashoka declared on me within the remaining flip of the Exploration Age instantly evaporated. Although it did not take lengthy to wrap my head across the motivations for adjustments like my cities out of the blue reverting to cities, there’s nonetheless a way that every age is an enormous button push moderately than a pure turning level.

Each Age additionally provides its personal Legacy Paths, that are challenges themed round cultural, financial, army, and scientific development. Some of those match naturally into the gameplay loop, whereas others promote comparatively particular strategies of development. It’s theoretically attainable to win video games whereas ignoring Legacy Paths within the Antiquity and Exploration Ages, however they outline Modern Age victories.

Civ usually struggles to discover a clear thesis for the Culture Victory, and unsurprisingly, it is the one which I discover probably the most irritating right here. Completing the Legacy Path hinges on racing world wide to dig up artifacts left by previous occasions, a neat idea that nonetheless looks like a very arbitrary win situation. The chase is enjoyable, nevertheless it’s not the one solution to get well artifacts, and the choice to take action via overbuilding is weirdly appended and poorly defined.

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly Of Progression

Let Victory Speak For Itself

In a broader view, Legacy Paths symbolize Civ 7‘s tendency towards specific, front-and-center sport mechanics and development paths, which is the place I discover myself probably the most deeply conflicted. Civ 5 traded a number of the franchise’s extra simulationist components for contemporary board sport sensibilities, and its successors have doubled down. The constant markers of progress present in Legacy Paths aren’t conceptually far faraway from components like boosting tech tree progress with Eurekas in Civ 6, however Civ 7 looks like a crossing of the Rubicon total.

The provide of extra particular duties to deal with all through the sport ought to assist new gamers keep on monitor, however they deal one other blow to the sense of being left alone in a sandbox of historical past. The identical goes for the discount in map variants, a results of tying new options right into a Distant Lands mechanic that props up the Exploration Age. Some components, just like the unusually clear conveyance of what every improve will contribute, present apparent advantages at the same time as they set the practice onto a extra linear monitor. However grand its concepts about Ages could also be, Civ 7 has successfully narrowed its imaginative and prescient.

The development components that I outright dislike, no less than of their present implementation, are the meta ones. Winning the area race in a Civ sport is a titanic second that rests on the unbelievable achievements of human historical past to convey a way of accomplishment. Bouncing to a display screen that ranges up Confucius afterward isn’t. I’m not essentially against a number of the ideas at play, however the general impact is reasonable, and it grabs its concepts from video games which can be beneath Civ‘s requirements of innovation.

Refining Civ 6 With New Opportunities & Pitfalls

Progress Is Never Easy

As a sequel to Civ 6, Civ 7 finally makes good sense. It streamlines well, slicing baggage and leaning into the weather that the majority compulsively drive the sport ahead. Certain selections are downright impressed, like navigable rivers that make naval models extra enjoyable when little is occurring at sea. Army Commanders successfully soup up Great Generals into an answer, in the end, for marrying the most effective components of old-school unit stacking and the extra tactical fashionable method to fight. Independent Powers are a equally elegant fusion of barbarians and city-states, and I’m joyful to see that the workforce is not afraid to rethink collection staples.

As the following installment in a legacy that spans a long time, Civ 7 is in a extra sophisticated place. Some of its mechanical transparency leaves me chilly, like diplomacy that solely looks like an actual trade between leaders when struggle and peace are declared. The emphasis on new, comparatively inflexible methods may pose a threat to infinite replayabililty, particularly if the potential for attention-grabbing pivots when swapping civilizations finally grows previous. I have never grown bored with something up to now, for no matter it is price.

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Civ 7 Roadmap 2025: Leaders, Civilizations, & Update Schedule

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Civ video games are by no means fairly absolutely realized at launch, however much more than ordinary, I’m focused on Civ 7 as a platform for post-launch refinement and expansions that add recent components of complexity. Although the necessity for a couple of extra civs throughout the splintered timeline opens up a messy dialogue about monetization, the bottom sport feels mechanically full. Rather than fleshing out a slightly-too-empty shell, an extended highway that Civ 5 obtained away with because of its robust necessities, Civ 7‘s future help looks like a possibility to loosen the parameters that ensured the fundamental success of the Ages system.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

Screen Rant Gives Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 9/10

By my third sport of Civ 7, I had mentally codified most of my frustrations and considerations. By my fourth, I had stopped desirous about them. I do not know what Civ 7 represents for the way forward for the collection, and if I obsessed over envisioning the video games past, I’d in all probability find yourself mourning what the collection as soon as was and the way Civ 4 as soon as outlined it for me. As simple as it’s to checklist out complaints, nevertheless, the sport that exists beneath all of them remains to be someplace close to the top of the technique style, and the revisions accomplish their major targets with relative ease.

Civ has been heading in the right direction to turning into a Ship of Theseus for some time, and defending a extremely particular thought of what Sid Meier’s identify ought to imply would have resulted within the rejection of a number of video games prior to now. Setting apart the burden of amassed methods, expectations, and human historical past itself, there may solely be one function that defines the collection. A Civ sport should, above all else, make you assume “one more turn,” for lots of of turns and hours on finish.

Midway via my fourth sport of Civ 7, I compelled myself to go to mattress to squeeze in a minimally applicable quantity of sleep earlier than work. When I awakened within the morning, my first thought was that I wished to maintain constructing my empire, and that is once I lastly knew how I felt in regards to the sport. Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 is streamlined, unusual, and certain to be divisive. It’s additionally, undeniably, Sid Meier’s Civilization. As ever, the collection stands aside.

Reviewed on PC.

Grand Strategy

Turn-Based Strategy

4X

Pros & Cons

• Effectively maintains Civilization’s addicting gameplay.
• Cuts down micromanagement.
• Ages system stops outcomes from feeling inevitable.
• New mechanics are good evolutions.

• Some components of development really feel limiting.
• Ages system might use additional iteration.

Source: Sid Meier’s Civilization/YouTube