Think about Caesar Augustus on the head of a military of Mongol warriors or Ben Franklin constructing the Nice Wall of China. In Sid Meier’s Civilization 7, such flights of historic fantasy can turn out to be historic truth. The sport has new ages to expertise, new civilizations to construct up, new leaders to information them, and — for the primary time in franchise historical past — the flexibility to combine and match leaders and civilizations to construct the empire of your wildest desires. The Verge had the chance to check out the sport and discuss with its builders at Firaxis Video games. The temporary, three-hour demo wasn’t sufficient time to get a really feel for the way properly leaders and completely different civilizations work collectively, however I left feeling enthusiastic about all of the methods Civilization VII goals to vary the course of historical past. 

In earlier Civilization video games, civs have been all the time tied to a selected chief who was normally, however not all the time, a noteworthy head of state. Later iterations of the sport supplied a number of leaders for civs, and on a few events the place it made historic sense, one chief may straddle a number of civs like France and England each getting access to Eleanor of Aquitaine, who, throughout her unusually-long-for-the-time-period life, was the queen of each international locations.

In Civilization VII, leaders are not tied to particular international locations, giving gamers the chance to synergize the particular skills and bonuses of leaders with the distinctive attributes and models of various civs.

“We’ve recognized for a very long time that our group has wished a ‘construct my very own civilization’ software package,” Ed Seashore, Civ 7’s inventive director, says. Seashore defined that stability points made this function unfeasible for earlier video games, however it was a precedence for Civ 7. “If we make all of the leaders stability with one another and all of the civs stability with one another, then mixing and matching will work.”

Earlier than a Civ 7 recreation begins, gamers will select their chief, then their civ. The sport will make suggestions as to what civ will greatest go well with a selected chief in response to the precise strengths and “types” of every. I selected Amina, warrior-queen of Zazzau, as my chief. She’s an financial and militaristic chief fitted to civs that prefer to battle or make some huge cash. I don’t prefer to battle, however money guidelines every thing round me, so I settled on pursuing an financial victory. And although her attributes make her well-suited to a civ like Egypt or Rome, I selected her to guide her native civ of Aksum.

In earlier Civ video games, Hatshepsut would lead Egypt. In Civilization 7, nevertheless, the selection is yours, and you’ll see what completely different civs she’s greatest suited to control.

Based on Seashore, Civ video games are developed in response to a easy equation whereby one-third of the sport is new, the opposite third is up to date, and the ultimate third stays the identical. 

Although Civilization is certainly one of my “quintessentially me” recreation sequence, I fully disregarded Civ 6. However as I performed Civ 7’s demo, I spotted that the moment-to-moment gameplay fell into the “stayed the identical” class. Regardless of lacking out on a complete recreation, I used to be in a position to parse the new-to-me person interface. And what I didn’t fairly grasp, just like the function that permits gamers to develop specialised districts inside a metropolis, the sport’s tutorial was excellent at catching me up on. 

One function that was a part of the “replace” slice of the Civilization growth pie was the historic period system. The place earlier than, the passage of time was marked by a civ progressing from the traditional period to the classical period, Firaxis has streamlined the numerous historic eras into simply three chapters — antiquity, exploration, and fashionable. Inside every chapter are legacy paths or objectives the participant pursues with every path organized into certainly one of 4 classes that’ll sound acquainted to Civilization-heads like myself — financial, army, cultural, and science. Since I used to be gunning for the financial victory, its attendant legacy path required me to do issues like set up a number of commerce routes or amass all kinds of sources different world leaders would pay prime greenback to get their arms on.

On the coronary heart of Civilization 7 is the concept historical past is in-built layers. Seashore used the evolution of the town of London for instance, explaining how completely different empires dramatically modified the face of the town. The Romans constructed the town’s partitions that the Saxons would later enhance earlier than the Normans got here and up to date them even additional. 

The flexibility to combine and match civilizations comes from this “layered” idea of historical past, and it doesn’t finish when a participant first picks their chief and civ. For the primary time within the sequence’ historical past, gamers will be capable of change their civilization at completely different factors all through the sport. The sport retains observe of the selections gamers made and the legacy paths they pursued, then when a participant progresses to the following chapter of historical past, they’ll get a brand new civilization to guide primarily based on their decisions.

For instance, at the beginning of the Exploration Age, I may need had the selection to vary from Aksum into one other economy-focused civ just like the Dutch. Or, had I indulged her militaristic capabilities, I may need gotten the Spanish empire as a substitute. 

And although the concept of Ben Franklin main the Chinese language may upset some historical past buffs, the concept of civilizations evolving into one thing new primarily based on the paths they take and the applied sciences they develop is sound historical past. London’s numerous evolutions from a regional Roman capital to the crown jewel of the British empire is only one instance. 

“We now have a system that’s listening to occasions which are occurring within the recreation world,” Seashore says. “And it has a number of 1000’s of little tales that may come out of the sport as a result of one thing has triggered.” 

These occasions don’t should be civilization-shaking in scale, both. My scientists had developed a brand new meals remedy method however wanted to know easy methods to deploy it: ought to they apply it to some bitter berries to make them extra palatable or use it to soak some hyena meat? For the reason that concept of consuming grilled hyena didn’t sound too interesting, I selected the berries resulting in the invention of easy methods to domesticate olives.

I bitterly lament that the demo didn’t let me progress to the following age to see how impactful the standard olive would have had on my civilization’s historical past or the brand new civs Aksum may have developed into. That type of dynastic storytelling has been lacking from Civilization video games, so I’m eager to see all the brand new histories Civilization 7 will allow me to put in writing.

Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 launches on PC, Mac, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Change on February eleventh, 2025.