2K Games supplied a flight from Chicago to Baltimore and lodging for 2 nights so that Ars might take part in the sneak peek chance for Civilization VII. Ars does decline paid editorial material.

From squares to hexes, from tech trees to civic trees, over its more than 30 years throughout 7 mainline entries, the Civilization franchise continues to develop.

Firaxis, the studio that has actually established the Civilization video games for several years, has a mantra when making a follow up: 33 percent of the video game remains the very same, 33 percent gets upgraded, and 33 percent is brand name brand-new.

Just recently, I had the chance to play Civilization VIIthe next entry, which is because of introduce in February 2025. The construct I played was an early alpha develop, however the bones of the video game it will end up being existed, and it’s fascinating to see which 3rd Firaxis kept the very same and which 3rd it has actually reimagined.

It ends up that the core of the video game that its designers will not much wish to alter is the turn-to-turn experience. In the case of Civilization VIIall bets are off when it pertains to the total arc of the journey from sticks and stones to area travel.

Reassessing the structure of a Civilization video game

The majority of the time, playing Civilization VII feels a lot like playing Civilization VI— however there’s one huge modification that covers the entire video game that appears to be this follow up’s tentpole function.

That’s the brand-new Ages system. The long video game is now gotten into 3 sections: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. Each Age has some special systems and gameplay, though a lot of systems cover all 3.

Within each age, you’re provided a handful of “Legacy Paths” to pick from. These map carefully to the franchise’s enduring success conditions: Science, Economic, Cultural, and Military. The concept is that you select the Legacy Path you wish to pursue, and each Legacy Path has various success conditions that alter throughout each of the 3 Ages.

These conditions are huge and broad, and Firaxis luckily hasn’t gotten too jazzy with them. I played in the Age of Antiquity and pursued the Cultural course, so my objective was to construct a particular number of Wonders before the end of the Age.

In some methods, this resembles the boom-and-bust cycle of Dark and Golden Ages in Civilization VIhowever I discovered it a lot more natural in VIIIn VII typically discovered myself making arbitrary-seeming options I didn’t believe made good sense for my long-lasting technique simply to video game the system and get the Age shift I desired. In this brand-new video game, the Legacy Path goals are most likely to constantly be entirely in line with the total success technique you’re pursuing.

Among the benefits of this brand-new structure is assistance for much shorter video games that aren’t simply hyper-compressed variations of a bigger video game. Formerly, the only method to play a video game of Civilization that wasn’t a lots or more hours long was to select among the quicker video game speeds, however that essentially altered how the video game felt to play.

Now, Civilization VII offers you the capability to play a match that’s simply one Age, if you pick to.

The brand-new Ages system is incorporated with another huge modification: your option of leader and civilization are no longer looped when you begin a brand-new video game, and they’re not set in stone, either.

Now you choose both a civilization and a leader independently at the start– and you can do some unusual, ahistorical mixes, like Greece’s Alexander as the leader of China. Each leader and civilization provides particular bonus offers, so this offers more modification of your playstyle at the start.

It does not end there. At the end of each Age, you can basically alter civilizations (though as far as I might inform, you stick to the leader). Firaxis states it took motivation for this function from history– like the truth that London was a Roman city before it ended up being an English one in the Medieval age.

Which civilization you can shift to is determined by what you did within the Legacy Path system, to name a few things.

The quantity of time I needed to play the video game was simply enough to practically complete the Antiquity Age, so I didn’t get to see this in action, however it seems like a fascinating brand-new system.