A retrospective on the first 30-ish hours of gameplay.
Three playthroughs, about 30 hours. That’s how much I’ve played Civilization 7 since its release Tuesday, 14/02/2025. If you know me, that shouldn’t surprise you – I was very hyped for this game. And still am. Even now I’m thinking of which leader to try next, which mementos to equip and which civilizations I’ll choose for a path through (alternate) history towards victory. But the game’s definitely earned its fair share of criticism. I’ll take you through my own experience with it, as someone who’s played Civilization 5 and 6 mainly.
The first thing you see when you launch the game is the gorgeous opening cinematic, which tells a tale of inspiring hope through history. After that, however, you face the main menu. The best way to describe it to me is “functional”. It does what it needs to do and not a thing more. For me, that works. I’m a decently utilitarian person at times, but your mileage may vary. The most important thing is that it gets you into the game, and it does that. You click “new game” and start by selecting your leader, your starting age, your civilization, and then the miscellaneous game options. Yes, there’s fewer options at launch to customize your experience. Fewer maps are to be expected, but some mainstays such as the ability to toggle specific victories on or off is lacking, colour selection, teams, as well as control over vegetation, rainfall, mountainousness etc. Options that were present in previous games. Not to worry, though. Firaxis, the developer of the game, has been very open in their communication and has told the community that these options are absolutely returning in the first patches. There’s arguments to be made for and against ‘unfinished releases’ here, but this article is not where I want to go into that. What matters is the open honesty of the developers about the product I bought.
Once the game loads (Which was rather quickly, which I like), you spawn onto a map that’ll be decently familiar to you if you’ve played any civilization game. The ancient age as a whole plays very classically (pun intended), with the key differences mostly being “passive”. As in, you don’t need to do anything else, they’re just there. First of all, the map has new features. Height, for one. Cliffs with different height levels. Rivers that are wide enough to allow ships to sail on them are another new feature that was often requested and finally made it. That one in particular is one of my favourites. In my first game my capital wasn’t even close to the sea, yet I could build harbour buildings and a navy just fine and set them out to sail. Another key difference is that Civilization 6’s districts are gone. Now you simply place buildings directly on the map tiles, wherever they may have the best yields. No need to group buildings of a particular type together either, with one exception: unique quarters. Some civilizations, such as the Romans, get two unique buildings, that together on the same tile create a unique city quarter with an extra bonus. And those buildings, you get to keep through the ages too, which means you keep some flair of your old civilizations even as you advance through the ages.
Thought I skipped over that change, did you? The game is now divided in three parts, the ancient age, the exploration age, and the modern age. Each age, you select a new civilization to play, but your leader stays the same. I thought I wasn’t going to like this mechanic at first, but it quickly won me over. You see, this means that each civilization’s unique features are relevant the entire time you play them. In older games, your unique features often only last for a small time in the game. E.g. your Roman legions upgraded to medieval troops, and you never saw your unique unit again. Now, as long as you play Rome in the ancient age, you’ll always have your trusty legions until the exploration age arrives. And then you switch to a new civilization that’ll be relevant through the entire exploration age, and the same in the modern age. The resources on the map swap through the ages as well, introducing treasures and later modern day resources such as rubber and coal when they become relevant. And on top of that, each age has its own dedicated mechanics. The core civilization experience stays, but things like religion, ideology, exploration of the new world etc are kept to their own respective ages, meaning you don’t have to deal with mechanics upon mechanics bloating up the late game any more. The downside is that every age kind of feels like its own game. Because, well, they are. Behind the screen, the game basically recreates your game with the same map and cities. It can be a little weird at first, but I got used to it fast. And last but not least, the new commanders. Commanders are a unit that binds your separate soldiers together into armies. It can deploy and un-deploy them at will, and move them as one, or order them to attack, pillage, dig in etc. They’re also the only unit you need to give promotions now. All in all, they streamline moving your units in a smooth and fun way. The air commanders even make aerial units easy to use. Planes were some of my least favourite units in the previous games, but with a single unit that can order them around easily, I do like them a lot now. On top of adding interactions with your land forces in the form of paratrooper dropping your infantry into combat from afar, and cargo drops that heal them.
So in short, the core gameplay, to me, is a vast step up over the previous entries. And the historical accuracy is better than ever, too, now that every civilization is tailored to its era. And the memento system, which are unlockable “items” you can equip on your leader, is all about adding little historical titbits as well. For example, the first memento you’ll unlock (through the new levelling system, which adds an RPG flair to your leaders) is your very own “Complaint to Ea-Nasir”, the oldest preserved customer complaint, which is a clay tablet written in Akkadian from about 1750 BC, about the low quality copper that Ea-Nasir had sold to someone named Nanni. It might’ve been a scandal back then, but today it gets you a little head start for your economy if you give it to your leader to go into the game.
There’s still a few rough edges in the game, though. The UI, as I wrote above, is rather bare and utilitarian, but it gets the job done. The maps, though the new terrain is amazing, generate a little awkwardly. Continents tend to end up as squares. But, the developers are on it, and will fix these things in the first few major patches while they support the game in the long term. In the mean time, however, there are ways you can fix the game yourself right now. There’s three in particular I want to call out:
- TCS Improved Plot Tooltip: To make the tooltips on the map easier to read.
- Artificially Intelligent: To give the AI some extra braincells, though in my opinion even the base game AI does a fair job.
- YnAMP: To add in a few extra map options, like bigger maps, and map generation that isn’t squares.
Add these three, and I at least have no reason to ever install Civilization 6 again. And if the developers follow through, soon you won’t even need these mods. Playing Civilization without the QoL of commanders, or the new map features, or the new civilization designs, would feel off at this point. Besides, where would I be without Benjamin Franklin’s grandfatherly smile as he offers me a local festival? The gameplay has never been more on point. It just feels like Firaxis got so caught up in making sure the new gameplay elements all work as well as they can, that they neglected some overall QoL options and UI polish. Nothing they can’t fix.
I won’t end this with a rating. Consider my barely coherent rambling about the features, and make that decision for yourself.