Civilization 7 – Hands-On Preview: Create Your Legacy

Civilization 7 attempts to take the franchise into a new age by emphasizing how cultures evolve over time. The tried and tested formula of grand strategy remains, but the key changes this time are more than enough to make it a Civilization 7 instead of “Civ 6.5”. In fact, Firaxis Games has a key approach known as the 33% rule when it comes to civilization Sequels: 33% stays the same, 33% of the content is updated and improved, and 33% of the content is brand new. Between the improvements and the brand new content, everything about the game feels top notch.

Game Rant recently visited Firaxis Games in Baltimore, Maryland, and played for about three hours Civilization 7During that time, we were able to get to the end of the Ancient Age, try out most of its new features, and otherwise spend our time building up our cities, attacking other civilizations, and engaging in diplomacy on various levels as well. Although the February 11 release date is still quite a while away and Firaxis still has a few rough edges to iron out, we were impressed and hungry for more. We would have played all day if Firaxis had let us, which speaks volumes in itself.

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Civ 7: New features and improvements at a glance

• Civilizations and leaders are chosen independently. For example, someone could be Benjamin Franklin and have Egypt as their starting civilization.
• There are three eras: Ancient, Discovery, and Modern. Each era offers unique content, civilizations, and game systems.
• Crisis system – At the end of every age a crisis begins and leads to its downfall.
• During era transitions (from Ancient to Exploration, from Exploration to Modern), players retain certain bonuses and can evolve and change their civilization by choosing a brand new civilization. For example, depending on the choices made in Ancient, someone could be Egypt in Ancient and Mongolia in Exploration. This system represents how cultures emerge.
• The legacy paths (science, culture, military, economy) provide goalposts to ensure that someone can reach the associated victory condition by the end Civilization 7. Advisors will provide recommendations and warnings on each legacy path.
• Cities start as small towns with no production output; everything is converted into gold. They can later be upgraded to cities and given a specific focus.
• There are no construction workers; cities and towns grow organically.
• Cities have urban and rural districts.
• The diplomacy function uses influence to perform various actions with other civilizations and independent peoples.
• Commanders are a new civilization unit that can strengthen other units, “group” units into armies, and move them together across the board.
• Each resource has a unique gameplay advantage, while empire resources affect your entire civilization.
• There are navigable rivers.
• Timeless means that certain units or buildings can be built at any time.

New Civ 7 screenshots

Play Civilization 7

To keep things simple, we went with the recommended combination of Egypt as our civilization and Hatshepsut as our leader. When we loaded the game, we immediately noticed a few interesting things. First of all, the stylized diorama approach is really impressive graphically. It also fits well with undiscovered locations, which are surrounded by hexagons with the Civilization 7 Logo. The game also walks players through their checklist of things to do, which is a nice touch to make sure nothing gets missed or forgotten. It doesn’t inform players of every single change or what they should be doing, but it’s a nice reminder to produce things in a city, that certain research items are completed, and that units can move or trade.

Hatshepsut Bonuses

• +1 culture for each imported resource
• +15% production when building buildings and wonders in cities next to navigable rivers

Egypt Bonuses

• +1 production on navigable rivers
• +30% production for the construction of the pyramids
• Special Unit: Medjay – Egyptian special infantry unit. No maintenance required. +3 combat strength in friendly territory, double when stationed in a settlement you own.
• Unique Unit: Tjaty – A large individual with a charge. Can only be trained in cities with a Necropolis and the specific Tjaty you receive is random. Each Tjaty can only be obtained once. The cost increases per Tjaty trained.
• Unique Building: Mastaba – +3 Culture. +1 Gold Adjacency to Desert Terrain and Wonders. Unique Egyptian cultural building. Timeless.
• Unique Building: Mortuary Temple – +4 gold. +1 luck proximity to navigable rivers and wonders. Unique gold building of Egpyitna. Timeless.

After establishing our capital, we sent scouts to explore the map, produce Medjay to form armies, and invest in developing technologies. The technology game felt very familiar. Civilization 6but it felt like an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” moment. We were also able to start investing in Civics that help strengthen and define our people as a civilization. The rest of the rounds went as you would expect from a civilization game. We continued to invest in our city, continued to produce different units and explore the area, and eventually we encountered independent states and other civilizations. Using diplomacy, we eventually became overlord of an independent city and began to invest in our heritage paths.

We decided to focus on the military legacy path, which initially tasked us with raising an army and gathering it under a commander. This is a huge quality of life improvement when it comes to moving units around the field, as a commander can “pack them together” and move them all as one unit. The commander can’t attack, but they can buff nearby units, and the more battles won with them nearby, the faster they level up to receive more buffs. Finally, we founded a town, had it produce gold for us for a while, specialized it, and then made it a city for 350 gold. Everything needed to establish players on a world map is top-notch, and everything feels crisper than Civilization 6.

There are also a few random elements to a Civilization 7 Turn that we enjoyed. Occasionally natural disasters such as Civilization 6 will strike, which isn’t that surprising, but there are also story elements and decisions that players have to make – aside from all the big strategy elements. For example, during one round we were informed that our men had become ill and we could decide how to treat them. We had a choice between two options, neither of which sounded like the best medicine, but we listened to our gut and everything turned out well… this time. These small elements will go a long way in making the lives of Civilization 7that really bring the players closer to their map and civilizations. After all, we’ve played for almost three hours and still haven’t finished the first age.

We wanted to see how military operations could work, so we teamed up with Julius Caesar of the Roman Empire when we went to war against Ashoka. Since it was a surprise war, we were heavily penalized. One of our goals in the Military Legacy Path was to capture a city, so we got two decent level commanders, built up armies of Medjay and Archers, and attacked Ashoka’s capital. It was a crushing defeat that forced our commanders to retreat while everyone else died at their feet. After enough time had passed, we tried to call a truce with Ashoka, but that didn’t really work. However, not long after, Julius seemed to be able to wipe out Ashoka, and we gained a city from his defeat. It seems like we just got lucky there, but it was still a lot of fun. With better planning, expansion, and unit strategies, it seems easy enough to wage war and take out enemy civilizations. We proceeded without a plan, paid the price, but were still rewarded.

Not long after, our crises started coming online. It resulted in a popup similar to the Civics screen, but we had to choose from a selection of debuffs. We chose unruly commanders that limited happiness, and later we had to choose a second element of that crisis. There were still stops along the way in the crisis timeline, and we wish we could have seen more of how that played out. The end result, we know, is the age transition, but of course we didn’t get that far.

In total, Civilization 7 feels like a purposeful upgrade. It knows what it wants to do – be a model for how civilizations grow and change over time – and it implements smart features to bring that to the forefront. At the same time, its depth is more than enough to satisfy the most diehard fans, while there are some nice quality of life improvements for those who feel overwhelmed by the various systems in the game. It remains to be seen how it ultimately fares, but it seems to be for civilization7 is a lucky number.

Civilization 7 will be released on February 11 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Travel and accommodations were provided by Game Rant for this preview.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VII

The award-winning strategy game series returns with a revolutionary new chapter. Sid Meier’s Civilization® VII lets you build the greatest empire the world has ever seen!

Rule as one of history’s many legendary rulers. Build your civilization, construct cities and architectural wonders to expand your territory, conquer rival civilizations or cooperate with them to gain wealth, and explore the farthest reaches of the unknown world. Will you build an empire that will stand the test of time?

Sid Meier’s Civilization® VII is a 4X strategy game developed by the legendary team at Firaxis Games, developers of the Civilization and XCOM franchises.

Grand strategy

Turn-based strategy

4X

franchise

Sid Meier’s Civilization

Released

2025-00-00

Multiplayer

Online multiplayer

Motor

Gamebryo engine

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