My hands-on demo for Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 ended at the turning point of a crucial military operation. At arm’s length from the train station, I kept clicking my mouse as I stood up and packed my bag, desperately trying to capture the capital of Ashoka, ruler of the Mauryan Empire. As in any promising Civilization campaign, I didn’t want to stop playing, but this particularly tumultuous rampage was an attempt to get closer to the most profound change Firaxis Games has made to the Civilization formula in some time: the introduction of ages.
Civilization 7 Campaigns span three different ages – Ancient, Discovery, and Modern – a change made to better reflect the rippling course of history. Each player’s actions contribute to an age progression metric, and at a certain point this leads to an Age Transition, a crisis-ridden time in which you decide what to inherit from your existing empire and deal with the barbarians at the gates. You keep the same leader in all three ages, but the civilization he controls changes with each transition. Your options are determined by your past choices, as well as geographic and historical connections.
For example, players may pair the Pharaoh Hatshepsut with Egypt at the start, but if they accumulate three horse resources during the Ancient Age, they can move to Mongolia for the Age of Discovery. Certain resources, civics, technologies, buildings, units, wonders, and even game systems are age-specific, and the map expands as you enter a new age, allowing for the introduction of new independent powers: Civilization 7‘s humanizing portrayal of barbarians. They are now villages scattered across the world that can grow into formidable city-states, potentially providing a buffer between your civilization and a hostile empire.
“The thesis is that history is built in layers,” said Dennis Shirk, executive producer at Firaxis Games. “Like Rome, for example, all over the world, particularly in North Africa and Europe, the seeds of Rome are woven into societies, cultures and people. Eventually people change, absorb things and evolve, and that’s the natural course of things. But instead of having a straight line from point A to point B at the end, Ed [Beach, creative director on Civilization 7] wanted to try to explore this space.”
Across the river from my Gamescom appointment were the ruins of a Roman villa in a parking lot beneath the distinctly Gothic Cologne Cathedral – a compelling real-world example of Firaxis theory in action. On that note, Civilization 7‘s layered approach is thoughtfully archaeological, theoretically allowing players to complete the game with a unique stratigraphic profile of their empire that reflects their decisions throughout history both visually and mechanically. A presentation endeavored to shed light on all of this exciting historical interplay, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a sense of how this works in practice, as my demo was limited to the ancient world.
As Augustus, I could have chosen Egypt, but I chose Rome instead, building my capital a few hexes from the coast—a nice and fortunate geographical coincidence. My scouts charged into the unknown, causing hexagonal monoliths to rise and fall, revealing shiny sea tiles with thriving underwater flora. Plant life painted a delicate mirage on the water’s surface, one of many visual flourishes I noticed in the game, details that reflect what the game’s art director Jason Johnson calls “legible realism.” Another example was a flood of bubbling mud spreading across my farmland, the result of a violent flood that hit the turn I discovered irrigation.
Next, I noticed the lack of building units. As Rome expanded, I physically selected the next squares I wanted to expand to and the improvements associated with them. This change helped optimize play time, at least compared to Civilization 6. On the other hand, there is influence, a new diplomatic currency that I spent on frequent, pacing-hampering pop-up chats with other empires and wartime sanctions explicitly targeting Ashoka’s agriculture. In the grand scheme of things: Civilization 7 is much more interested in interrupting dialogues than its predecessor, with narrative events that Crusader Kings 3 during the game. It is similar to the “Goody Huts” of yesteryear, where you have to make a choice that determines the type of reward you receive.
During the 30 or so turns that I managed, I heard the soothing voice of Gwendoline Christie, who game of Thrones Dynasty of Civilization narrators who took over the duties of Sean Bean, who lent his Yorkshire tone Civilization 6. First Civilization 7 wanted to have a different narrator for each age, but Christie’s early lines made such an impression that Firaxis scrapped the idea. “What struck us was that the first few recordings we got back – and it didn’t matter how short it was, like a five-word quote – everything was read with heart and feeling; it was like she was performing in front of an audience every time she read something,” Shirk said.
Image: Firaxis/2K Games
The main changes are rounded off in Civilization 7 is the introduction of Commanders, military leaders with skill trees that soak up all previously allocated unit XP. You can stack six units like a Trojan Horse on a Commander space and deploy them in a specific direction to prepare a devastating attack on an opposing civilization’s border. Or at least that’s what I did to begin my tyrannical siege of Ashoka’s capital. “We did it because we hated putting armies in [Civilization] 6”, said Shirk. “The greatest enemy of an army is not the enemy, but that one pass with mountain fields through which you have to get them all.”
Shirk said the team at Firaxis refers internally to the Civilization 4/5/6 Fighting style known as the “Fish Slap”, where one unit usually runs up to the other and hits them with a proverbial fish, only to then run away and end the fight. This led to the development of Civilization 7‘s “continuous combat” under combat designer Brian Feldges. When units attack, they clash and smash into each other on the face of the hex they’re in, and the fight doesn’t end until you’ve given all your orders. “We wanted to establish alignment so that flanking looks and feels right, and when the battles start, you actually have battle lines in your game as you go through and do all your fighting,” Shirk said. “And then you finish the turn, and only then do they go back to their paths.”
In addition to a new strategic dynamic for Civilization 7the death of Fish Slap has also allowed Firaxis to improve the contextual visual design of each unit. Rightly so, Roman archers don’t look anything like Egyptian archers this time around. The visual variance extends to the individual, with certain members of each unit sporting alternate headgear, outfits, and eventually unique battle damage. It’s a reactive approach that deepens immersion and is in line with the core goal of Civilization 7: to differentiate itself from its well-known predecessors.
“If you look at [Civilization 4, 5, and 6]they’re all relatively similar,” Shirk said. “We change the rooms, put up new wallpaper, add a few different things or extensions to the house, but they’re iterative and our fans have gotten so good at guessing what we’re doing. They know what order we’re going to do it in, what’s going to be in the first extension… and Ed [Beach] didn’t want Civ6.5; he wanted to do something that would force our fans to start over. The old strategies won’t work. You have to open up and look at it with new eyes to understand how to play this game.”
