While Sid Meier’s name is still on every new Civilization game, the pioneering game designer is not the sole creative lead, or an auteur figure, for the series. But he still regularly contributed in some form in the newer games in the series bearing his name, including the upcoming Civilization VII.
In an interview with content creator Potato McWhiskey, game director Ed Beach shares an annecdote how Sid Meier helped the Civ VII team, by making a prototype for the new movement system.
This new movement system is designed to rectify a problem from Civ VI, which was a solution to a problem in Civ V. In Civ V, a unit can still move into a tricky terrain even when they have partial movement, so players tend to “cheat” or optimise movement so they can get through tricky terrain for less cost than usual. Civ VI’s solution was to disallow using partial movement to go into tricky terrain but now the problem is that if you have extra movement points but can’t go anywhere which means there’s a an extra button press or click to skip the rest of that turn. That extra click adds up throughout the game.
Here’s Ed Beach recounting how Sid Meier helped the team prototyped the new movement system for Civ VII:
“I went to Sid and I said ‘Look, we’ve played with different movement systems. This is a problem.. and the solution I came up for Civ VI was not optimal, it was better than Civ V but we still need to solve this problem.’
“So [Sid] came up with the suggestion of let’s use terrain as a turn-ender because as soon as you hit that difficult terrain, you don’t have that extra click, you don’t have to hit your space bar. So he offered to prototype it. He’s got this game engine that he just whips up whatever type of prototype you need. And the very first prototype of Civ VII movement with the terrain ending obstacles that we have now was created by Sid. I played it. He played it. We instantly liked it. And that’s how the new Civ VII movment system came into being.”
There is another example Beach hinted at of Sid Meier’s contribution to Civ VII, but didn’t explain in the interview.
When Potato McWhiskey asks if his vision of Sid Meier is a “company guru” figure at Firaxis, Beach nods in agreement.
Sid Meier has been making games in the 1980s with his first commercial game released in 1982.
Sid Meier’s Civilization VII releases on February 11, 2025 for the PS4, PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store), Mac and Linux (Steam), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.