Firaxis’ flagship series returns with Sid Meier’s Civilization VII, and, for the first time in the series’ history, it;s released simultaneously across all platforms, including the PS5.
For the uninitiated, Civilization (Civ for short) is the quintessential 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXplot, eXterminate) game where the objective is to lead your faction (Civ) to glory from prehistory to the modern day against computer-controlled rivals, and to claim victory by being the greatest in either science, culture, or military prowess.
It’d be impossible to review the latest in such a long-running series without making constant comparisons to its predecessors, and the biggest and most impactful change is the new ‘Ages’ system.
Unlike previous Civ games where you would guide one single faction from 4000BC to the near future, a game of Civ VII is now divided into three distinct sections. These are the Antiquity Age (Bronze Age and Iron Age), Exploration Age (Medieval and Renaissance), and the Modern Age (Industrial Revolution onwards).
During each age you now control a different Civ that flourished during that period, and so your faction changes throughout the course of the game. Each age has its own optional objectives that guide you to a victory condition and you can choose to pursue one, several, or none at all, which allows you to adapt your strategy as you go along. Towards the end of the first two ages a crisis happens causing progressively worse economic turmoil, until the age ends and your current Civ is reborn as a new faction.
Who you choose to play as next varies based on your leader and what you have achieved in game. With the new ages, major things like cities and wonders are kept, but some buildings become obsolete and can be built over with newer improved versions. Doing well in earlier ages gives you legacy bonuses going into the next age, and the overall result of this feels like a campaign of three different back-to-back games.
Of course, while this is an interesting alteration, it’s such a seismic tweak to the structure of the series that it’s proven controversial with some long-term players.
The other major change is leaders who are no longer limited to leading one Civ. Your leader stays with you the whole game and you can mix and match their unique abilities with the abilities of the Civs you choose to play each age, making each play through feel unique. Leaders also level up after games giving them extra minor abilities, which makes replaying them more interesting.
Some of the leader choices are rather unusual and ahistorical, though, and when you combine this with the controversial Civ swapping, you may end up running into Benjamin Franklin who leads the Mayans, then Mongols, then Germany which could end up far too immersion breaking for purists.
Another tweak involves cities. All settlements except your capital now start as towns and as they grow can be specialised to the tiles around them. Towns can later be upgraded to cities but it’s not always the best move giving a nice balance between ‘tall vs wide’ strategies.
Warfare has been improved thanks to the new army commander units that let you stack up to eight units of your choice into a single tile and move them across the map as one. You then deploy units when you need them to resume the one unit per tile style combat from Civ VI. Reinforcements can be sent to the front lines from a friendly city with a button press. This removes annoying movement micromanagement from long military campaigns.
Diplomacy has also been overhauled and now uses a new currency to both propose deals and deny them to your rivals. It also lets you deal with barbarians and cities states. You won’t have enough for everything so you must spend it wisely.
The new navigable rivers have been a long-requested feature in the series and mean naval units can play more important role throughout the game as well, exploring beyond your shores in the Exploration Age.
It’d be unfair to judge vanilla Civ VII to its predecessors with multiple expansions and DLCs so naturally some features such as the World Congress are predictably missing. It’s likely that these will be added in future expansion packs. There’s also poor variety of map types to choose from and the ones available don’t generate very interesting worlds.
There’s also no Earth map so players who enjoy true start location games are out of luck. Some basic quality-of-life features are also absent such as the ability to re-roll the map if you don’t like your spawn position. You can’t even play ‘one more turn’ after the game ends – blasphemy!
Fans of multiplayer should be aware that although its available with cross-play functionality, it’s otherwise bare-bones and there is no teams or hot-seat mode available.
What’s most shocking, though, is the third and final age of the game only last until mid-twentieth century and so modern units such as helicopters and stealth bombers are completely absent. As data miners have recently revealed, the missing ‘Atomic Age’ appears to be cut content and will likely be sold later as paid content. Combine this with DLC being released as soon as three weeks after launch date (which you will need to buy if you didn’t cough up for the more expensive editions of the game), and some fans understandably feel furious they’re being sold an incomplete game.
The games visuals look gorgeous and appear to be a mix of the realistic style of Civ V and the more cartoonist style of Civ VI. There’s lots of details to notice such as watching the crew of a tank mending it while the unit heals or a scout on lookout mode literally climbing a lookout tower. The combat looks great, too. Cities expand organically, with each building you create being rendered on the map, although this can lead to over-detailing and its often difficult to see what’s in each tile without zooming in very close or relying on tooltips
Composer Christopher Tin returns to the series and provides superb music with the game’s main theme Live Gloriously. Each Civ has its own theme which immerses you in the culture you are playing as. Gwendoline Christie does a great job of the narration and joins Sean Bean and Leonard Nemoy in the ‘Civ Narrator Hall of Fame’.
The UI is the biggest issue with the game currently. Most of the main screens are accessed from a radial menu which seems to work well most of the time. The issues are trying to access all the critical details of your empire such as trying to find out ‘why’ your cities are receiving certain yields and getting a clear overview of what’s going on.
In the late game it can get so bad you almost feel like you’ve lost control, and things are just happening for reasons you can’t see. The icons over units and cities are bizarrely small and you need to zoom in or rely on tool tips. Units have important commands that are hidden in sub-menus. A lot of the interface is grey-on-grey and the only thing distinguishing the button you have highlighted is a dim glow effect so it’s often a struggle to see what’s selected and you can often choose the wrong thing by mistake.
As you would expect from a console game version of this genre, the controls are not great and can sometimes feel sluggish. Combined with the UI issues it can sometimes make the game feel like a chore to play, although you will get faster with persistence. The performance seems good and has fast load times especially in the earlier stages of the game.
