If you’ve heard the saying “patience is a virtue,” then one of the biggest tests of patience is the Civilization series. Sid Meier created a behemoth that withstands the test of time and lead to many turn-based strategy game enthusiasts flocking to his creation, even spawning the “4X” genre of games (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate, each referring to how you can win the game). Being that my love of the series goes back to the time I sunk hours into Civilization II on the PlayStation in the mid-1990s, I naturally followed the game to PC and sought to dominate the world, tile by tile.
Forking over a large portion of the contents of my wallet for early access, I started up the game not really knowing what would be in store. Civilization releases have gotten sparser, with nine years between Civilization VI and Civilization VII. Yet, would the game still be as fun as it once was? One thing flashed in my mind when I saw that you could now select a leader independently from a civilization itself: endless possibilities. My hopes were then dashed as you have to now unlock leaders and civilizations (which the mod community has mercifully resolved even before the game’s release date of February 11, 2025).
For my first playthrough, I selected the Philippines’ own national hero, Jose Rizal, and made him head of the Mississippian culture in my usual strategy of rapid economic and territorial expansion. Between ages, you can change civilizations, which allows you to achieve goals like rapid expansion in the Age of Antiquity, military conquest in the Age of Exploration, and focusing on science in the Modern Age, for example. Each leader and civilization has their own traits as well, and the race to win has many paths—although culture and missionaries seem to have a heavy advantage at the time of this writing.
One thing I have to bring up for our younger readers is that this is by no means an easy series, and Firaxis doesn’t make it any easier with its Civilopedia entries in this installment. Once robust and teeming with information, the Civilopedia now a shell of its former self. While I have no issue with that, some players do rely heavily on the Civilopedia, and learning what specific units do is important to defend your territory and prevent your enemies from overrunning you with powerful military units (which is what sadly ended my first playthrough, and served as a harsh lesson to do things differently the second time around). Diplomacy is rather complex, as you can choose to steal technologies and civics from other civilizations—something I (ab)used heavily during my second playthrough.
Another mercifully welcome change is that you no longer need to waste turns churning out Workers or Builders to improve tiles—the cities do it for you. However, all cities outside of your capital start as towns, and it costs gold to convert them into cities. As an aggressively expansionist player, controlling the land is paramount. One glaring problem (another that the mod community went and fixed before launch) is the cryptic UI that doesn’t show enough information that you need to play, which could hurt those playing at higher difficulty levels. What is unrealistic, however, is that a farm placed on a desert produces as much food as farms on flat grassland—something we all know makes zero sense, but given how quickly towns grow (unless you specialize them to produce fish, science, military units, etc.) this becomes moot once a town is converted into a city.
Game setup has also been pared back significantly. You can no longer set the world age, rainfall, or sea level, and can no longer play on massive maps, which I prefer because this is what 4X games should truly do. Another issue is that your entire army partially resets when you advance to the next age, which means if you’re military-minded, you want to conquer early and quickly. The frequency of natural disasters and crises is another thing to take into account, and you might spend turns repairing buildings or improvements or having production completely grind to a halt as a result of the latter. You also have narrative choices which grant you gold, science, culture, happiness, and more, bringing decision-making straight to your doorstep rather than just constructing buildings here and there to improve on your stats.
What makes this installment of Civilization great is the music. I was never bored while playing, and the music is a testament to that, as I threw countless hours at the game before its official launch date. Despite its flaws, there is one great thing about online games—things can be patched or fixed or modded (as the dedicated modders of the Civilization community have shown us time and again), making the game better over time. While some welcome changes were made, nine years is a long time between releases, and the UI and other gameplay aspects could have been improved on in this period. However, as a longtime fan of the series, I’m willing to give it a chance to improve—after all, who knows when the next installment will come out?
Developer(s): Firaxis Games
Publisher(s): 2K
Platform(s): PC, macOS, Linux, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Words by Jose Alvarez
Also published in GADGETS MAGAZINE Volume 25 No. 8 Issue.