Civilization games are easy to get lost in, so much so that I don’t think I’ve ever actually finished one of them. This is apparently a common problem because developer Firaxis Games wanted to address it with Civilization 7.
In an interview with Game Developer, creative director Ed Beach said that less than 50% of players completed a game of Civilization 6 due to its drawn-out pacing, something that many absolutely “hated.” Tasks took longer and longer to complete as you went, and as the game became more complicated, players became overloaded with things to do to expand their empires. So Firaxis made some changes.
“The number one thing we wanted to do was break the game up into chapters (which the team is calling Ages),” Beach said. “We’re only at three ages to get through the game, because there’s a lot of restructuring around the map that happens between the two age transitions. We wanted to make it so we could reset the board a little bit and simplify things out and change up the rules” in between and across each age.
The team made other changes to pacing as well, focusing on expanding the fun of exploration throughout an entire run instead of just in the beginning. Each game starts with the Antiquity Age that allows players to explore land, but not go across bodies of water, for example.
And don’t worry, Firaxis is still leaning on its Rule of Threes for developing Civilization 7: roughly one-third of the previous game will carry over, the next third will be tweaked, and the final part will be all-new. So far, we know about a lot of new stuff, including Ages and the new ways to use leaders. Ages were a big part of the gameplay reveal announcement during Gamescom 2024 this week, but this is the closest look we’ve gotten at what will arguably be the biggest change for Civilization veterans going into the new game. We also learned that there will be a tutorial overhaul for new players, as well as new ways to mix and match leaders to change up each game.
Civilization 7 is set to release on February 11, 2025 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
