Civilization 7 hands-on: Huge changes are coming to the classic strategy series

GamesStrategyCivilization 7Civilization 7 hands-on: Huge changes are coming to the classic strategy seriesWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Firaxis)

Civilization 7 screenshot

Be honest: When you play Civilization, do you dutifully guide your subjects from the dawn of history to the moon landing, or do you get bored sometime around the Renaissance and start over? If you’re the dutiful type, you’re in the minority: Firaxis has been collecting statistics, and although it wouldn’t share specifics, the developer told me it was surprised to discover how few Civilization players had finished a game of Civilization.

In response to this revelation, Firaxis has substantially changed Civilization’s structure for the next game, which isout in February. In Civilization 7, you no longer begin in the Ancient era, advancing through and beyond the Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, and Modern eras. There are just three ages in Civilization 7—Antiquity, Discovery, and Modern—and the tech tree has been somewhat simplified.

The short version(Image credit: Firaxis)Excited to find out what’s new in Civilization 7 but just want the bullet points? You got it: Here’s alist of all the new features I saw during my hands-on with Civ 7.

The short version

(Image credit: Firaxis)Excited to find out what’s new in Civilization 7 but just want the bullet points? You got it: Here’s alist of all the new features I saw during my hands-on with Civ 7.

(Image credit: Firaxis)

Civilization 7 screenshot

Excited to find out what’s new in Civilization 7 but just want the bullet points? You got it: Here’s alist of all the new features I saw during my hands-on with Civ 7.

It might turn out to be the most controversial change since Civilization 5 ditched unit stacking, or since Civilization 6 adopted a cartoonier art style (which has been walked back in Civ 7). But before the word “simplified” causes too much anxiety, I should elaborate: I think the changes are exciting, and Firaxis has also added, tweaked, and expanded. You can now build towns, not just cities. There are powerful new units called Commanders. You’ll find navigable rivers for the first time (yes!), so you can have your own Mississippi or Nile. Major features from the Civ 5 and 6 expansion packs are here, such as religion and natural disasters.

It’s still Civilization, a judgment I arrived at after playing for three hours, and that creative director Ed Beach, who was also the lead designer of Civilization 6, expresses in numbers.

“We’re very mindful of exactly how much we were changing,” Beach said to a group of press, including myself, who were flown to Firaxis’s office in early August to try the game. “You’ve probably heard the Firaxis mantra that 33% of the game stays the same, 33% of it gets updated, and 33% is brand new. We absolutely followed that again.”

History in layers

Here’s one big change: Despite leading Rome, I played as Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut. Your leader no longer has to match your civilization.

This relates to a key part of the new three-act structure: In the transition to a new age, you’ll select a new civilization. Each age has unique civs, and the choices available depend on your leader, but also what you’ve accomplished so far. If you’ve amassed a huge stable of powerful cavalry units, for instance, you might be granted the option of swapping to Mongolia for the Exploration age.

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Walls can now be built around each city district.(Image credit: Firaxis)

Civilization 7 screenshot

“Now we have a new version of Civilization where I can play a single pathway through history, and I get to be the Romans, I get to be the Normans, and then I get to be Britain,” he said.

Along with sub-goals that break up the journey toward one of Civ’s victory conditions, getting to adopt a new culture’s architecture, units, and bonuses along the way—an idea you’ll also find in 2021 strategy game Humankind—might just tempt me to finally start sticking things out to the end. It’s hard to say, though, because Civ’s early game remains as compelling as ever, and some of the changes in Civ 7 make it even more exciting.

Sid Meierâs Civilization VII - Gameplay Reveal Trailer - YouTubeWatch On

Sid Meierâs Civilization VII - Gameplay Reveal Trailer - YouTube

Settling in

One of those changes has to do with how cities come to be in the first place. Settler units now found towns instead of cities, which are a much more sensible thing to found, I think. Don’t get ahead of yourself!

I like this change a lot, not because I care about min-maxing, but because my love of expansion conflicts with my desire to actually manage 12 cities. In Civ’s blissful early game, when I’m making my most creative and consequential decisions, I enjoy sticking cities wherever I think cities should go, sometimes for purely aesthetic reasons. If I see a cute bay with fish, you better believe I’m hitting it with a cute bayside fishing town. But now it can actually be a fishing town.

I love the waterfall, although I’m not sure where the water is coming from. Sewage?(Image credit: Firaxis)

Civilization 7 screenshot

My overall impression of Civ 7 is that Firaxis has sought to remove low-impact decisions—stuff players always do, or choices they don’t take seriously—while emphasizing actually important decisions.

Spreading influence

Natural disasters are back, so enjoy that fertile volcanic soil with caution.(Image credit: Firaxis)

Civilization 7 screenshot

Influence can also be spent to cooperate with or sabotage other nations. It’s an all-purpose diplomacy currency, basically, and might be too universal. I could spend it to enthusiastically accept a neighboring country’s proposal for an international farmer’s market, and also to sanction them or attempt to infiltrate their military.

In command

I concluded my session in the middle of a protracted war between Egyptian Rome and Roman Egypt.

The AI leaders still behave like kids who are making things up as they go, leaping from negotiations over fruits and vegetables to declarations of war, but I’m not sure more human-like computer players would be a profitable area for Firaxis to invest in. If they behaved like real players, the AI leaders would probably focus all their early-game energy on building cool Wonders and then quit the first time they suffered a significant military loss.

Oh no, a giant tank outbreak!(Image credit: Firaxis)

Civilization 7 screenshot

(Image credit: Firaxis)

Civilization 7 screenshot

But there are also good signs for Firaxis' plan to get more of us to play Civ games till the end. One, I’m curious to experience a Crisis event—I didn’t get that far in my session, but I’m told that these events act as climaxes to the first two ages, requiring players to select a series of Crisis policies that negatively affect their civs.

And beyond that, I’ll be interested to know just how different the Exploration and Modern ages are from Antiquity. During our brief interview, Beach gave me some hints about what to expect in the Exploration age. It’s themed around the part of any Civ game (and of world history) when deep ocean tiles become traversable, and you start to discover what’s going on outside of your own continent. Exploring “the distant lands,” as they’re called in Civ 7, will lead to the discovery of valuable new resources.

The real history of global exploration of course did not involve everyone venturing across the oceans at the same time and on equal footing—some explored, and then they violently exploited the people they found—but Civ isn’t meant to be an accurate replay of history. Still, I already know that I want to try to defy Civ 7’s structure and themes to, for instance, play an isolationist nation during that second act, engaging with just a few foreign traders from behind my walls.

That’s the plight of a strategy game designer, I guess: Give us a structure, goals, and themes meant to help us progress through the game and take advantage of all its systems, and of course the first thing we want to do is reject them all to see what happens. Another headache to sit alongside Civ 4 designer Soren Johnson’sobservationthat “given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.”

Civilization 7 will release on February 11, 2025, and it’s coming to Windows, Linux, and Mac at launch (here’s itsSteam page), as well as Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch.

For more details, I’ve compileda big list of Civ 7 changes and new featuresI saw during my gameplay session, and heard about from Firaxis. The studio has also broadcasta gameplay showcase on Twitch.

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History in layers#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

Settling in#

Spreading influence#

In command#

History in layers

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

Settling in

Spreading influence

In command