Civilization 7 is bringing in one of the most controversial innovations of rival 4X Humankind, a presentation at Gamescom 2024 has revealed. Rather than sticking with just one civilization and guiding it from the origins of human settlement to a distant future filled with death robots, you’ll be switching nations multiple times within one game.
As well as releasing a new trailer on Gamescom opening night, Fixaris Games showed off 20 minutes of the turn based game in a presentation full of interesting sights and design insights. This explains that the game is split into three Ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. You can play a shortened campaign across just one, but in the regular mode you switch nations at the end of each Age and become something new.
The Civilization 7 gameplay in the video shows Egypt transitioning to Songhai, and gaining a new unique building, unit, and passive bonus in the process. This is dubbed the ‘historical choice’, presumably just because of the nation’s rough geographical proximity.
If you can pick the historical choice, this suggests that you don’t have to – so you’ll probably be able to mix and match nations as you like. According to the developers, your previous civilization doesn’t disappear entirely, but forms a foundation for the new civilization.
I’m a bit skeptical about all this, and not just because it’s my natural state of being. This is apparently the biggest change introduced in Civilization 7, and it sounds a lot like the main innovation and selling point of Amplitude’s 2021 4X game Humankind.
In that title, you would start as, say, the Babylonians, and could choose how you progressed through six eras, perhaps becoming the Maya, then Caribbean Pirates, then the Germans.
But Humankind had a rocky reception. It has Mixed reviews on Steam (66% positive) right now and according to Steam Charts its player base shrunk precipitously soon after launch. By contrast, after releasing in late 2016, Civilization 6’s player base has continued to grow, and it’s probably more beloved now than it ever was (DLC has helped, and it took people a while to get on board with those cartoonish graphics).
After Humankind clearly failed to become the prophesied ‘Civ-killer’, it seems really odd for Firaxis to borrow its main, intriguing but also controversial, feature for its next game. Of course, the changing cultures thing wasn’t the only problem with Humankind – some fans suggest the earlier stages of this strategy game are much better designed than the later – but it was a dealbreaker for many.
Negative reviews for Humankind complain about the jarring feeling of swapping civilizations, describing this as feeling like an immersion-breaking sudden shift rather than a natural progression or evolution.
It can stop you building attachment to your civilization if you know it’s destined to change beyond recognition, and if civs are not well balanced then you have a real problem: what should make the game feel endlessly replayable and full of variety will instead make it samey, as people feel obligated to choose the few ‘best’ cultures each time.
In the Civ 7 presentation, game designer Carl Harrison touts the positives of the Ages decision. “In the past, every civ needed to be balanced across a game that spans all of history,” he says. This naturally resulted in things like late era civs being strong in the late game, but weak overall.
“Now we can balance around the Age itself this means we can give every civ bonuses, units, and buildings that are always relevant and powerful.”
He also implies the change will allow for greater historical immersion, as you’ll only have era-appropriate nations kicking around. It does seem like it’s allowed Firaxis to include a greater number of less famous civilizations. For instance in the presentation we see the Magyars from ancient Hungary and the Maurya empire from India. However, the joy of taking out Napoleon as the Aztecs or putting Rome on the moon will be sorely missed.
It’s worth mentioning that there will be one point of continuity. Leaders still stay the same throughout Ages, but they’re now decoupled from nations. The presentation also suggests that there’ll be more philosophical, cultural, and scientific leaders taking the helm of civs, not just historical heads of state.
Another big shift from Civilization Six: Firaxis is switching its Game of Thrones narrator from Ned Stark (Sean Bean) to Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie). We’re moving from a Yorkshire accent to something closer to received pronunciation. Incidentally, these are two of the scientifically proven ‘most-trusted’ accents in Britain, which is why they show up in adverts all the time over here.
Civilization 7 is due to release on February 11, 2025. We’ll keep you up to date with the latest news on the title. Meanwhile, if you like thinking while you play, you might enjoy these grand strategy games or games like XCOM.