DaRmaZat Sid Meier’s Civilization VII is the latest installment in one of the most iconic franchises in the history of turn-based 4X strategy games, dating back to its debut in 1991. This seventh edition, developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K, has been available since February 11, 2025, on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, and even on Mac and Linux.
Of course, the core of this seventh Civilization once again revolves around building a civilization that becomes the most successful—whether in single-player or multiplayer. Sid Meier’s Civilization VII introduces some major innovations compared to its predecessor. This review focuses on the PC version.
Welcome additions, limited options
Similar to other games in the genre, this seventh installment adopts an Ages system, currently dividing history into three eras: Antiquity Age, Exploration Age, and Modern Age. Each of these ages features its own civilizations, leaders, and gameplay elements. By default—unless you disable the corresponding option—each phase (which can easily last several hours) concludes with an impasse before transitioning to the next Age. The selection of playable civilizations and leaders is honestly a bit underwhelming.
In the Antiquity Age, for example, you can choose from the Egyptians, Ancient Greeks, Romans, Persians, or Mayans. During the Exploration Age, some of the available civilizations include the Mongol Empire, the Spanish, the Inca, the Abbasids, and the Songhai Empire. Finally, in the Modern Age, playable nations include America, the French Empire, Meiji Japan, Prussia, and Russia.
Before starting a campaign, you can set the difficulty level, map type, game speed, and map size. In the “advanced” settings, there’s an option to adjust the length of an Age and modify the impact of disasters on your civilization. Overall, though, the customization options feel quite thin. One notable new feature is the ability to select leaders and civilizations independently, allowing for all kinds of quirky yet highly flexible combinations—think Napoleon leading the Egyptians or Hatshepsut overseeing the construction of the Great Wall. Additionally, the maps are more dynamic, featuring inaccessible terrain (such as mountains and rivers), which affects troop movement efficiency and overall strategic planning. Diplomacy now incorporates “Influence” as a key factor in negotiations and sanctions. The military system has also been reworked, with armies now leveling up through Commanders who have skill trees with multiple promotions.
Familiar—perhaps too familiar—mechanics
Building a well-functioning civilization begins with a solid economy based on production, trade, and consumption. Some constructions and resources need to be acquired elsewhere to maximize output and enable exponential growth. Unlike in previous games, new units no longer simply appear on the battlefield when your population grows. Instead, you must issue an immediate command from the Town Center, whether for military or worker units. Some units can receive additional boosts within the same turn—for example, scouts can gain extra vision to more efficiently uncover useful areas on the map.
Exploring the world is crucial to maintaining an advantage over competing civilizations. At the same time, you need to research the most advanced technologies as quickly as possible. Early on, these are simple advancements like scouting, animal husbandry, and food production. Expanding food supplies leads to city growth, automatically adding adjacent tiles to your territory for your growing population to settle in.
On these tiles, players can create “Improvements”—rural structures for housing and work. Early on, these might be farms, sawmills, or coal mines. New constructions can only be placed on dark green or light green tiles. Yellow tiles are already occupied by Improvements and cannot be built upon, while red tiles—due to natural obstacles like water or mountains—are completely off-limits. Overall, these mechanics feel logical but perhaps too predictable. Nothing really surprises or innovates here.
The impact of narrative choices
As you explore the map, you inevitably encounter other civilizations. These neighboring villages and cities may be friendly, hostile, or neutral, indicated by an icon above them. Interestingly, enemies who are vastly outnumbered sometimes choose to flee upon seeing your troops approaching.
Of course, you can initially choose to leave them alone and not seize their tiles—because from that moment, real conflicts may arise. As the leader of a civilization, diplomacy is a key aspect, allowing you to engage with other leaders and use your influence to conduct diplomatic actions that can benefit both parties without mutual obligations. There’s even a ‘friendly independent’ status available.
The narrative choices make you feel like you have real influence on the game.
To maintain the necessary social policies within your civilization, you first need to establish a government. Depending on your choice—whether a classical republic, despotism, or oligarchy—you receive various benefits every few turns. After that, you need to research one or more Civics—studies related to mysticism, discipline, pedagogy, and more—all of which provide long-term benefits. Additionally, narrative choices come at you rapidly. Personally, I found this to be a strong gameplay element, as it enhances immersion and reinforces the sense that your decisions matter.
Civics and Discoveries to rewrite history faster
Every ruler needs the best advice to shape their so-called Legacy Path. That’s why you quickly gain advisors specializing in security, trade, arts, or knowledge. Naturally, you first need to unlock the relevant Civic, but these become particularly valuable in later Ages. You can also adjust your chosen trajectory at any time.
As expected, the map contains numerous Discoveries. These yield valuable resources and sometimes unique bonuses, which your explorers should investigate as soon as possible. Conveniently, you can cancel queued orders for your units. If, for example, you’ve assigned troops to explore a certain area over several turns but then discover a more interesting location in the opposite direction, you can easily adjust their mission.
Flawed UI and controls
However, the game’s interface and controls are far from perfect. A lot of information appears in menus as sparse, static text. Sometimes, you want to click on an item for more details, only to find that it’s not interactive. This often forces you into more cumbersome workarounds.
Planned actions for specific units are only visible when selecting them, making micromanagement unnecessarily difficult. A better approach would have been integrating planned actions into a queue, similar to the Town Center’s production and research queue. Alternatively, a system like the Journal (which tracks objectives and goals) could have been used. Due to these peculiar design choices, Civilization VII feels significantly less user-friendly than its competitors.
Several basic features are glaringly absent.
As mentioned earlier, the game setup options feel lacking, and the same applies to in-game features. There’s no option to customize control layouts, and several standard functions found in other strategy games—such as auto-panning when moving the cursor to screen edges—are inexplicably missing. There’s also an occasional issue with saving, where even after a manual save, you might still have to replay a portion of the game. On the bright side, the game runs stably, and aside from some overly dramatic choir singing, the soundtrack is perfectly fine.
Conclusion
This Sid Meier’s Civilization VII turns out to be a rather basic 4X turn-based strategy game that, despite its big name, settles a bit lazily among the many other games in the genre. Content-wise, it’s somewhat disappointing, the gameplay lacks enough uniqueness to truly surprise me, but above all, this game simply has a terrible UI. Hopefully, that will be addressed soon, along with some additional—preferably free—content. Because this is simply too thin for such a major title.
Additional Information
Release Date: February 11, 2025
Reviewed On: PC. Download code provided by developer and publisher via BeyondGaming.
Developer: Firaxis Games
Publisher: 2K Games
Official website: https://civilization.2k.com/en-GB/civ-vii
Relevant links: Sid Meier’s Civilization VII on STEAM
