With the reveal of Sid Meier’s Civilization VII, it’s been quite the talking point that the biggest change with this new entry is the ability to change civilizations mid-game.
The historical 4X strategy game series has always been about picking one particular civilization. A new historical 4X game Humankind recently challenged the notion by allowing players to effectively switch civs mid-game as they transition from one age to another.
Civilization VII looks to be following that trend, and at a panel at PAX West 2024, developers Firaxis explained the thought process of splitting the game into three ages, and why civs are now comparmentalised into these three ages.
The idea comes from problem needed solving that was brought up in post-mortems for Civilization VI. “What we really need to do is we need to restructure the game,” said Ed Beach, game director. “A 4X strategy game starts small… with just a warrior and a settler, and by the end there’s so much stuff that you’re managing. It’s unwieldy. It’s tough to do.”
“What we wanted to do do is to break the game up into smaller segments that could be more managable… we wanted to break it up into chapters.”
In exploring that idea, Beach shared how Civ VII, should it be split into chapters (which we now know are called ages), how would the city-building change. He brings up three different maps of London, focusing on the specific part of town called Ludgate, and explains the changes between the maps all under different rule. The first was when London was founded by the Romans. The second was when the Normas ruled. And lastly, how it looks under British rule during the Industrial revolution. Remnants of the past still exists between the three “ages”, though they are definitely changed, with each “civ” building on top of each other.
At the panel, Firaxis also showed a new example of the civ-switching route.
During the gameplay reveal, we see how Hapshetsut can lead Egypt (the historical choice), the Aksum (also recommended due to regional location the leader is historical form) or go wild and pick any other civ. Hapshetsut can then lead the Songhai (the historical choice, at least as recommended by Firaxis) or other civs in the next age.
Firaxis now confirms that you can play as the Romans in Antiquity Age, followed by the Normans in the Exploration Age, and then as the French in the Modern Age.
The Norrmans are an entirely new civ to be featured in the series, now being able to so thanks to the ages system as they would pretty much be rolled into France as the history evolves.
On that note, Firaxis showed another example, featuring the leader Ashoka. One historical path this leader can lead is the Maurya (already revealed previously) in Antiquity Age, and then into the Chola in the Exploration age, and later leading the Mughal in the Modern Age.
These are all civilizations based in India. If in past games, elements of this civs would have been all blobbed into the India civ. In Civ VII, these are now “deblobbed”, as the panel said, allowing the game to explore in more granulity the many different civilizations that exists.
Chola India is also a new civ for the series. These people were merchants that established trade routes as far as Southeast Asia. In the Civilization series, India has never been portrayed as a mercantile civ. Their playstyle usually is more about building tall where cities can house ridiculous number of population to mirror modern India. Though in Civ VI, having Ahsoka as the leader of India allows the civ to be more warmongering than it ever was (outside of Gandhi threatining nuclear destruction).
In a way, you can still play some civs as just the same civ. In this particular example. you can play as an Indian civ, switch to an Indian civ mid-game, and then switch to another Indian civ for the late game. Given how history is, not all civilizations stood the test of time (some fall, some morphed into a different culture/civ), so expect only a few of the previously represented civs to have some presence in all three ages. But it’s good to know that some still are, for the purists out there.
Also, when changing civs in single-player, the player will always get first dibs on what civilization they can pick. It’s unclear yet how multiplayer will handle the civ-switching during an age transition.
On a smaller note, the panel also goes into depth on how the artstyle of Civ VII, dubbed “readable realism” was formed.
Civilization VII is releasing in Februay 11, 2025 for the PS4, PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store), Mac (Steam), Linux (Steam), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.