In Civ 7, you no longer commit to a fixed nation and leader. A big change that also scares the creators.
Everyone expected a new civilization sooner or later, but few would have thought that Firaxis would dare to make so many changes with Civilization 7. But when the game is released on February 11, 2025, fans of the series will have to get used to a lot of changes.
In particular, the way you deal with nations and their leaders is new, because you no longer play with just one nation throughout the game. Instead, you can represent three different cultures in one game, which change with each era. Antiquity, the Age of Exploration and the Modern Era will each offer different peoples.
In an interview with Techradar, Civ producer Dennis Shirk went into a little more detail about this major change.
The biggest change
In the interview, Shirk talks about the ages being one of the biggest changes ever, but that’s why it scares them a little, of course:
It’s one of the biggest changes we’ve made to the game and one of the scariest when it comes to changing Civilization, something that is actually very consistent.
Shirk is not entirely wrong about that, because even though there are already seven offshoots of Civ, the series has changed only bit by bit over the years, but rarely from offshoot to offshoot. One of the last major changes was certainly the switch from square tiles to hexagonal ones in Civilization 5, or the implementation of districts in Civilization 6.
With the revision of the selectable civilizations in each erathe latest part is now changing a cornerstone of the seriesthat has existed for over 30 years. The new mechanics are intended to better reflect how nations change over the centuries, but also to improve balance in multiplayer.
In the modern era [of previous games}, you were sometimes just skimmed through the rounds to victory because you were so far ahead due to the snowball effect. Nobody can catch up to you. With the era system, you are always playing against other civilizations at the peak of their power.
You no longer play against people whose unique units are a thing of the past. It’s still a challenge because they are rolling out a new set of unique units. You play against people who are about my level.
Shirk also admits that there can still be some easy snowballingif a particular nation has done particularly well through the last age, but the lead is no longer so insurmountable.
What else is changing?
The changing civilizations are not the only major new feature in Civ 7. As a side effect of this, your leaders can now preside over any nation. So you can also rule Ancient Rome as Benjamin Franklin.
The leaders then each have their own talent tree, which you develop their strengths through as you progress through the game. This also gave the team the chance to include characters who never led a faction historically, but were considered brilliant in their field, says Shirk. In other words, scientists, artists, or militarists.
