“Can you build a civilization that lasts the test of time?” These words are so ingrained to fans of Sid Meier’s Civilization series that, as we all found out, the idea of civ-switching introduced in Civilization VII was not a popular one. Sacrilege, even.
Like every numbered Civilization game, each iteration is created to bring new ways to play the historical 4X strategy game. Civ V’s legacy is the introduction of hex tiles and the removal of the “stack of doom”—military units now must occupy one space on a tile and cannot be stacked. Civ VI’s legacy is the city-building aspect, unstacking the city improvements from all being in one tile to instead be spread across multiple tiles, with adjacency and special bonuses.
Civ VII, unfortunately, was not able to unstack the civilization as a continuous entity across the ages. In real history, civilisations rise and fall, one melded to be another through the ages. And by untangling the civs like this, Civ VII was able to give more historical nuance to some civilizations that, due to game design choices, had became a monolith that it isn’t.
It does come with some historical ick, having to acknowledge a long-gone civilisation being turned into the civ that colonised them. But for gameplay purposes, it makes sense. Instead of having to wait for the right age where the civilization get access to their more powerful unique units, buildings and whatnot, civ-switching means you’re always have access to their unique kits. You’re supposed to switch to a civilization at its apex, their prime, their peak, and all the powerful abilities it entails.
Civ VII’s other unpopular new system is how you win a game. This game is now designed in a way that you’re playing three games in one. Each Age (which does not correspond to how previous games segmented the eras of human history) has its own Legacy Paths where you follow specific objectives (or not, just get to the endgoal by your own plays) to achieve the most points. If you’re only playing just this one Age, those points will determine the winner. Otherwise, it supposedly sets you up to the next Age, and in Modern Age, you can truly chase the victory conditions. All of them involving building a victory lap of a project to secure your victory.
All this exposition is to contextualise how I find 1.0 Civilization VII was. Our review is a positive one, and I concur.
That said, while I stand on the hill of civ-switching being a cool thing, I also think the victory chase is awful. Each of those Legacy Paths are attempts to recreate the Space Race victory, with mixed results. And I don’t like how you have to extremely change your playstyle should you stick to the same Legacy Path. Cultural Legacy Path in Antiquity has you rush to build Wonders, a timeless Civ past time. That’s cool. But by Exploration, now you have to play the religion game? And by Antiquity, it’s another build-a-bunch-of-civilian-unit-and-send-them-out gameplay. It’s all contrived, and I don’t feel past achievements really bring any advantage other than having more decisions to set up the board during Age Transitions.
So this is where The Test Of Time free update comes in. It brings fundamental changes to Civ VII’s gameplay, so that it plays more in line with past Civ games. This is the big U-turn of the various minor updates that walks back some of the unpopular changes (like Age Transitions being a big reset, to the point of stopping ongoing wars).
But has developer Firaxis build a Civilization VII that can stand the test of time?
For context, my thoughts on the Civilization VII Test Of Time update is based on the 20 hours I’ve spent with it, as a person who has clocked 100 hours in Civilization VII already, and hundreds of hours more in Civilization V, VI and even Beyond Earth.
Time-Tested Civs
The biggest and most welcomed change to Civ VII’s Test Of Time update is making civ-switch optional. Or as the game likes to frame it: Time-tested civs. You can now play any civ at any age, and opt out of switching entirely. The catch is that only their unique passive is active all the time—units, buildings, districts and improvements are still only available during their Apex Age (i.e. the Age the civ is locked to previously).
In short, civs behave like previous games, where their unique kits come online at a specific age. But rather than some civs having their uniques spread through the ages, all of them will come online at the same specific Age.
To compensate for playing a civ out of its Apex Age, the civ-specific Civics tree now contain a new civic: Syncretism. In real-life, this is the concept of adopting other culture and religion as part of their own. Malaysians who studied with a specific History textbook will know of Hellenism, where ancient Romans adopt parts of Greek culture into theirs. Of course, Malay culture has since adapted Islamic practices today but some tradition, like specific words in the language, are vestiges of Hindu influences.
In Civilization VII terms, Syncretism lets you pick one unique unit or building from two civs (not sure how the two civs in question are selected, though), or pick to affirm your current beliefs instead by unlocking a Tradition to slot in your Social Policy deck that further enhances your civ’s current bonus.
The catch? It’s just one unit, or one district (of two buildable buildings)/unique improvement from another civ that you can incorporate. You’re not taking them all, just partially.
My problem with time-tested civs in my first few games is figuring out whether a civ is worth sticking through and through. Mostly because I don’t think civ abilities, the one passive that works across Ages, are that enticing enough for me to keep throughout the whole game.
Do I really want to get aggressive as Prussia in Antiquity and make enemies this early? I can make a case for Russia, if you intend to turtle and stick to the tundras on the extreme edge of the map, those bonuses work in your favour. Outside of Syncretism, you do get access to a few more unique Traditions to bolster your social policy slot, further accentuate your civ’s unique playstyle. But like most of Civ VII’s passives, it’s all little +1 here or a 10% there that until you’ve had enough experience with what the numbers mean, don’t seem all too enticing.
Since then, I did find are a few that’s worthwhile for my playstyle. Great Britain’s bonuses to coastal cities that will make you settle at coastlines like past games, and Greece’s major bonuses to befriending independent powers is just as powerful outside of Antiquity Age. And let’s not just talk about how bonkers the Abbasid can be with it can rule the world through the Ages. But I need to find more civs with theoretically evergreen passives to really sell me on the virtues of sticking to one civ.
If anything, the addition of time-tested civs might convince you to civ-switch. Sticking to the same civ means you have to make do with less access to unique units and infrastructure in hopes that its passives gives you the right boost to outplay your rivals.
Interestingly, should you transition out of a civ for the next Age, you can transition back to the same civ again in the Age after that. Should you have the AI to mirror your choices, they won’t end up overpowering you by civ-switching while you aren’t.
I personally don’t find time-tested civs something I will engage often with until someone convinces me some of the civ passives are bonkers even when out of Age. But the implementation here sounds fair, well thought-out, and should satisfy the fans who insist on building a “civilization that can stand the test of time.”
Triumphs And Victories
The other big change Civilization VII The Test Of Time update brought in is the entire rework of the victory conditions. Legacy Paths, an attempt to recreate the magical Space Race victory via other means, is completely scrapped. In its place are victory conditions that rewards the player that dominate the entire world over four different aspects: Cultural, Scientific, Economic and Militaristic.
Cultural Victory is straightforward as it basically like past games before: have the most Tourism. The way it is calculated is different though. You rack up points from building Wonders (finally, a reason to chase Wonders outside of Antiquity Age) and unique improvements (those finally have really good values, and a reason to be suzerains of independent powers). There’s a threshold score you need to reach to attempt victory, and you must hold on to that score for a few turns before victory is declared. The threshold score lowers as you reach further into the endgame.
Similarly, Economic requires the building of Gold buildings and slotting resources into settlements to increase its equivalent to the Tourism score: GDP. Treasure Fleets from Exploration Age, the Legacy Path victory condition that forced you to go and colonise Distant Lands is still here, albeit those Fleets will now add to the total GDP (which may or may not be calculated like an actual Gross Domestic Product: treat it as an abstract score).
Scientific victory still includes the Space Race, but to fit the scoring system all victories have, each scientific project earns you Innovation points. New one-time projects have been added to the Antiquity and Exploration Ages so you can make Scientific victory progress before the Space Race kicks off proper. Researching Tech Mastery for some tech in the tech tree also provides Innovation too.
Militaristic is the most straightforward, it counts how many settlements you have. Ideally you want to conquer other civ’s towns and cities to bolster your score and deny them from your rivals. But you can play wide and aggressively forward settle as well, assuming you can defend all those claimed settlements that surely will raise the ire of neighbours.
The score threshold to be declared victorious is ridiculously high at first, but comes down after enough turns have passed. The game will likely declare a winner before turn 100 of the Modern Age in Governor (normal) difficulty). And when you met that score threshold, there’s a 5-turn counter that require that winning civ hold their score without contest before they get the W.
The threshold score and the several turns of wait is a nice design choice, in that it demands you to still have the ability to defend yourself. Any lost settlement will flip all those scores associated with that settlement to the conquering player, and if you know someone’s close to the threshold (you can check the scores at any time) you can deny them with a well-timed war.
That said, I feel like the reworked victory needed another balance pass. Even on Governor difficulty I’m struggling to keep up with rivals and their crazy yield output. I’ve played at least 10 games since the update launch and even on normal difficulty I can’t for the life of me outpace the rivals unless I declare war and grab some cities out of them. And they still outpaced me afterwards somehow. Previously, I can regularly win a Civ VII game on Viceroy, granted the AI wasn’t that smart before.
There is a moment where I was caught off-guard, a notification pops up saying another leader will in 5 turns out of nowhere. Turns out, they’ve been in a ridiculous economic lead the entire Age and no one was ever close to catching up. There’s no way to that around within 5 turns. This feels like back at launch when you can suddenly be jumpscared by the end of an Age (the game now lets you know when it’s only 10 turns left for each Age). Whether you like or not, you have to stare at the victory progress tab and check everyone’s progress from time to time. There’s no notification if a victory leader is gapping the competition until it’s pretty much too late to do anything.
I’m a bit disappointed by how unimpactful the Triumphs system is. These are a list of goals you can take on and if you’re the first to do it, you gain bonuses. However, the bonuses only affect Age Transition. Instead of the Golden Age/Dark Age thing Legacy Paths award you to be spent on Age Transitions, you now just pick three bonuses. And if you opt not to complete any Triumphs, the five default bonuses (Dedications, as it’s called) are good enough. I don’t feel like I’m missing out, and I don’t feel incentivised enough to chase these. Supposedly most of the Legacy Path objectives will live on as part of Triumphs, but as it is right now, they do feel like Legacy Paths: contrived and unrewarding.
I yearn for a more fleshed-out Diplomacy system. In past games, I oftentimes bribe other civs to wage war against a dominant Civ while I slowly build my cities and catch up, or basically pay tribute to another dominant Civ to take the heat away while I slowly turtle my way to victory with little investment on military. While in Civ VII, AI civs really love to ask for alliances, go to war, and barely do anything to contribute to the war they declared while I have to do the heavy lifting. I appreciate the cool ways leaders are designed to interact with Diplomacy (like bonuses for intentionally be unfriendly) but removal of trading during Diplomacy still leaves gaps that needs filling. Especially now, since Civ VII plays more like previous iterations. The Endeavours and Espionage systems within Diplomacy are something I still don’t find useful enough to impact my play, and the way the AI is using Diplomacy paints a poor picture of its potential.
With how victory works now, Civ VII plays like Civ games of the past, for better or worse. While Civ VII’s structure of treating each Age as a game itself put a sour note when you didn’t “win” in the initial two Ages, clutching real victory at Modern Age is pretty much doable in most games I’ve played. After this update, I can enter Modern Age and already know my chances of winning is slim to none, so I reckon the statistics of games that went uncompleted—something Civ VII’s Ages structure was designed to fix—will start climbing in numbers again. And not even the meta-progression experience you get for finishing a game is enticing enough to retire and declare I lose the game.
If you’re not snowballing those yield numbers in the Modern Age, the AI will leave you to dust quick. You will have to learn to play Civ VII again if you managed to win a couple of games before, as this plays completely different. Maybe too different for those who stuck around playing Civ VII. The game either needs another balance pass, or a better way to show how opponents are yeildmaxxing so players can take notes and improve their game. Being left to dust against one dominating civ, usually the one in the Distant Lands since they usually get to freely settle in huge swathes of land, that has over 300+ yields from the competition is crazy work.
The UI Improvements
The more underrated part of the Test Of Time update is the overhaul in UI Civ VII had with this. Granted, Civ VII has been updated over the year with some UI changes here and there (the movement cursor when navigating the map for console players are perfect now) but there’s a lot the game can do in the department. And they did.
The Leader Select has been tidied up with all the text columns make good use of the available screen space (not much scrolling going on anymore). While I’m a bit disappointed that the Leader’s quips and animation don’t play when you select them like a fighting game (see Street Fighter 6) does it, I understand that having it played while on the menu itself means less clicks just to see their personalities. Console players on controllers have to suffer triggering all those quips as they scroll through the list, though, but a small price to pay. The UI change also made sure you will not miss to slot in those Momentos, the passives unlocked through meta-progression Civ VII introduced.
The much-maligned Trade screen gets a massive upgrade. It now makes more sense why some Resources can be slotted in (some of them only fit in Cities and not Towns, who knew?). Again, less empty space is seen here. While selecting and slotting these Resources can still feel iffy on the controller (there’s lag in button inputs) it’s at least a good step in the right direction. Might need to fix the jumpiness though, the screen can go empty in a few frames before appearing again, which I hope is something the QA team has flagged in their reports but just wasn’t resolved in time before the update has to ship.
The UI improvements does mean some screens can feel archaic, or rather not cohesive, with the current UI design direction. It’s not the the Great Works screen needs fixing, I think it’s fine as it is as you don’t interact with it much. But it sure looks older and less in line with the newly designed menus like the new Victory screen with all its flourishes. In a way, it’s reflective of Civ VII’s gameplay, in how buildings of Ages past can still remain in some cities if you haven’t overbuild them. Though that’s not necessarily a compliment.
While this is introduced over a series previous updates, I appreciate the clearer indication on placing unique buildings into Quarters. That said, I think the settlement build/production screen can do with a few more improvements. On a controller, scrolling down to the list of wonders available suck. If there’s a button combination that jumps you to the buildings/units/projects/wonders part of the long production list, that would be immensely helpful. Having a production queue back is nice, but it doesn’t indicate whether a tile will be occupied by another building currently in the production queue. It would also help if an existing unique building is highlighted in some way so you can easily place the second one to form the unique Quarter. Or better yet, the ability to assign both unique buildings into the same tile for production immediately.
Unfortunately, with the way Age Transition works now, the Age Transition screen has suffered aura loss. Previously, Civ VII basically loads you out of the game and into the end-of-game screen where you can setup the next game, or go back to the menu. Now, the Age Transition is done seamlessly in the same game screen, but there’s a long loading with new flavour text and that’s it. You don’t get to see the start-of-new-game loading with the narrator reading the civ description upon Age Transition anymore. I get why, if you don’t civ-switch, hearing the same paragraphs narrated three times per session won’t be as cool as when you were civ-switching every Age. But it does feel empty.
Speaking of not-civ-switching. One other cool thing Civ VII was able to bring back from Civ VI is having the same civilization theme song arranged in period-appropriate instrumental. It’s one of the coolest thing to hear six different arrangements of the same song changing as the game progresses in Civ VI. Civ VII doesn’t have that many per civ theme, but the few arrangement changes the new update introduced add much-needed variety to the soundtrack. Shout out to the use of a church organ.
Closing Thoughts
One of the concepts game director Ed Beach described on the development of Civilization VII is that “civilisations are built on layers.” And Civ VII sure is doing that. Firaxis has overbuild new systems on top of, and replacing, old unfavoured ones with the Test Of Time Update. It can feel messy, you can feel some of the vestiges of the old game design here and there.
But more importantly, fans who wished Civ VII to play a bit more like Civs of the past and was completely not on board with the civ-switching and how victories are handled can’t complain anymore. Civ VII plays like good old Civ again—I easily matched a fifth of my year’s worth of total time spent before this update in just two weeks—at the cost of throwing out most of its back-of-the-box features.
The more important question now is where will Civilization VII heads next. Can it find a new core feature that set it apart from past titles while not rock the boat as much?
I applaud 2K Games for giving Firaxis the chance to turn the game around. But after the Test Of Time update, Civ VII doesn’t add much that set it apart from the comforts of Civ V and Civ VI. I fear some folks will still stick to the classics despite all the work being done here.
But now that a new foundation has been set, let’s see what Firaxis is building next for Civ VII. Hopefully it’s something that they believe in, but more importantly, also something that can fans believe in. In that it’ll be the right direction for the historical 4X game to head to.
To answer the rhetorical question that is the title of this feature: “not yet.”
Hopefully it can at least garner back some goodwill from fans and do so in the future. I still believe Civ VII will turn out to be another wonderful entry to series in the long run, despite the rough reception it has in its first year since launch. I’ve seen this happened to Civ VI, it can happen again.
Played on PS5. Check out our original review of Civilization VII here.