With Civilization VII, Firaxis Wants Everybody To Rule The World

A strong focus on new ideas to help new players get in, get going, and start telling their own epic stories only makes a great game greater.

By Dia Lacina | February 3, 2025 | 9:00am

Video Games Reviews civilization vii

With Civilization VII, Firaxis Wants Everybody To Rule The World

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In its opening movie Civilization VII lays out its greatest change and a new entire paradigm of play. A sword is found, passed around, lost and recovered, restored, buried, over and over. Moving backwards and forwards, the low commanding roll of Gwendoline Christie’s voice reminds us that history is made from layers of civilizations. The imperfectly stacked, often churning, layers of hopes, fears, triumphs, and disasters. Faces and clothes change. Buildings change. But always two things are true: the sword and a person. History is made up of the decisions of the people who lived through it and their lives are transcribed in what remains.

Sometime in mid-300 BCE, the Empress of Rome, Isabella I, interred the body and empire of Xerxes of Persia in that same geo-historical strata. It didn’t have to be this way. But he made one exceedingly bad decision. And in the long game of history, decisions have consequences far larger than the individual.

But it all started with one woman and a city: Roma. Nestled just back from the coast alongside an estuary and three mountains (Kilimanjaro, Stromboli, and Vesuvio), the early years of Rome were ones of quiet expansion. Farms developed, granaries were built. The population swelled and settlers moved off to found newer villages. Horses and sheep were raised in Mediolanum. As Rome expanded, cotton and marble were discovered. A great deal of effort went into the civic and technological planning of Isabella’s city-state. While in this nascent era Rome’s wealth and stability was all but assured, she wanted more for her people. She wanted Culture.

Rome needed culture. And that’s what Isabella set out to give her people.

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Aside from the huge roster of leaders and a wealth of civilizations to pair them with, the first two obvious distinctions in Civilization VII are Ages and Legacy Paths. Instead of each civilization being on its own trajectory towards modernity, now games will take place in three discrete phases, each with their own cultures, technologies, and narrative arcs. They start off slow, build to crescendo, and then conclude. Guiding players and their chosen civilization through those Ages is the Legacy Path—four distinct timelines of advancement that not only push the age forward and determine how your reign will be remembered, but inform how you will start the next Age. Think of it as playing three smaller games of Civilization that feed into a much larger overarching game of Civilization.

For centuries, Isabella had worked tirelessly to bring culture to not just Rome, but to all people. As the empire grew, it made connections: Xerxes of Persia, Himiko the High Shaman of the Khmer, and Hatshepsut of Egypt. Despite language and cultural differences, they overcame geography and time to forge a continental alliance of mutual cooperation and trust, connecting the far corners of the known world with science, industry, and culture. Open borders, free trade. Isabella brought about a Pax Romana that lasted over 2000 years, and not a drop of blood had been spilled to create it. Every civilization had all grown prosperous under her stewardship, expanding to new territories and growing bustling metropolises. Merchants sailed coastlines loaded with jade and furs from the arctic north. Kaolin from the clay pits of the central steppe made its way to farmland across our nations, enhancing harvest yields. Wine and pearls from the balmy southeastern peninsular coasts were abundant, not exclusive.

Even during times of hardship, Isabella made it work. When a solid third of Rome’s farmland and granaries were obliterated by the simultaneous eruption of Kilimanjaro, Vesuvius, and Stromboli—we found a way. Perhaps it was folly to found Rome with its back against three active volcanoes, but we put on our big girl pants and pivoted to the abundance of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Granaries became fisheries. We kept the Pax together. The peoples of the world were fed, cultured, employed, and happy, all thanks to Isabella’s shrewd negotiations and resourceful stewardship. Our connections made us stronger than the Category 5 Hurricane that threatened Xerxes’ port city of Bactria. Our alliances protected us.

And through it all, we created Wonders. Whether to honor the gods or rival them, who can say? But with an abundance of wealth and stability, Rome dotted the landscape with monumental architecture. It didn’t take long before Isabella’s own advisers were claiming this a Golden Age.

And then, in 780 BCE, Xerxes made a decision to attack Rome. A coastal assault from behind, on Roma herself. A decision that couldn’t be taken back. One that would change the course of everything.

Civilization VII

Historians will no doubt say that Isabella should have been paying more attention to the Crisis unfolding around her. That clearly Xerxes’ happiness was dwindling, all the signs were there. His other metrics weren’t doing so great either. Science? Production? He was doing well enough. But he couldn’t abide sharing land. He disliked Isabella’s small but deadly and technologically superior military, how Rome had beaten him to the punch on two Wonders, that farmlands abutted on the imaginary line separating his empire from hers. It turned out that despite all the abundance of our alliances, pettiness, greed, and paranoia would be the undoing. He began rejecting trade deals, farmer cooperatives, and offers to coordinate on the building of Wonders. If he could find a way to be a petulant child, he would. But wasn’t Rome itself struggling too?

A major component of Ages is the Crisis. Every Age ends in Crisis, an inflection point that heralds the transition for all civilization. As societies grow and expand, they also chafe. Frictions develop. Outsiders rise up. Farmlands fail. The nymphs depart.

As the Crisis occurs and intensifies with the passing of the Age, the opportunity to assign Crisis Policies arises. Much like the Policy cards from Civilization VI (and returning in VII) they’re easily one of my favorite components to the crisis. In essence, they are the way for the player to have a say in how the Crisis unfolds, both mechanically and narratively, from bandits plaguing merchants to decentralization of power causing underperformance in production and farming.

In Isabella’s first Crisis, I chose Inferior Tactics which conferred a negative combat modifier against independent powers. When the time came to choose another policy, I picked Banditry which imposed a penalty of -5 gold for each imported Resource.

It was true that things began to falter before Xerxes’ betrayal. Bandits constantly attacked trade caravans. And the small, highly disciplined forces of Isabella’s technologically advanced Legions were unequipped to deal with barbarian hordes who threw themselves at charioteers with no regard for military honor or personal survival. Even though alliances held, the state of the world coupled with Xerxes’ betrayal had made everyone a little less happy, less productive, and much much more skeptical of the future.

Isabella knew there was only one option. The benevolent empress of culture and trade would have to sheath her heart in iron and surround it with legionnaires. Legacy Paths are more of a guideline, and with one nearly under her belt it was time for a policy shift: Gatekeep, Gaslight, Girlboss.

Knowing that the pinnacle of her Monumental Architecture Era was close to an end, she roped Himiko and Hatshepsut into helping her towards the construction of wonders. Egypt wouldn’t build the pyramids; she would help Rome build them. Isabella brought her girls in close, and because of her monetary policies and trade routes, Rome, even with the Crisis, was overflowing with gold. Girlies who stayed true got regular injections of cash aid. If Isabella had spare influence, she spent it. Manipulative? Megalomaniacal? Sure. But Rome wasn’t going down without her knuckles bloodied.

Isabella conscripted tremendous armies. Building them up in cities across the continent. Shuffling them through Egypt and Khmer thanks to our allegiances. Slingers were upgraded to Archers. Ballistae were constructed. Legions were grouped under Commanders and together they waited outside the borders of Persia. Then, when Isabella’s armies were all within striking distance, an impossible order was given—the simultaneous attack on every Persian city. There would be no place for Xerxes to flee.

Bactria, Çūšā, Pārsa, Gordion…They all fell together. While the Crisis ravaged The Age of Antiquity, the monumental empress gave herself over to the thrill of military expansionism.

And then the Age of Antiquity ended.

Perhaps we’ll never really know what happened to Isabella’s Rome. Did it simply absorb too much of Persia? Were there famines and plagues? Populations migrated and dispersed and intermingled. Culture changed. The titanic constructions Isabella’s Rome left behind remained as testament to their achievement, but in the end Roma was reduced to barely more than a village amongst what remained of the Coliseum. Isabella, having grown into an even more formidable leader, chose to relocate her capital to the arid plateau where Mediolanum once stood, but instead of Milan, she named it Madrid. From this central and well-resourced location she would build a new era. It was time to understand boats.

Really big boats. There’s a whole world out there, after all, just desperate for Isabella’s brand of peace. You should have seen the way she kicked Benjamin Franklin’s teeth in during the Modern age.

When you ask Civ players about the enduring nature of Sid Meier’s Civilization, these are the kinds of stories you get. Epic tales of how Boudica teamed up with Lenin and demolished Western Europe. The half-dozen times Gandhi unleashed nuclear war in one game. How Empress Theodora founded a religion based on Sapphism and won the entire world over with cultural lesbianism. Or that one guy whose 10-year-long nightmare game of Civilization II inspired an entire gaming movement that ended up on the front page of CNN once. For those of us who really take to Civ, it’s often because it comes naturally to us to narrativize our experiences. But I’ve spoken to so many people who say flat out, “I don’t know how you get from there to here.” They struggle to conceptualize the Civilization apple.

I love the changes in Civilization VII, not just because they feel truly invigorating in a game that I’ve been playing for nearly 35 years, but because for the first time Civilization is really offering an olive branch to those players who struggle in making those narrative connections. Sure, the spreadsheets and numbers are all still here. And while Ages may seem to truncate the long, epic Civ games of legend, and will no doubt be divisive, the colossal systemic machine that generates hundred-hour long games is still the beating heart of Civ. But along with them come Great Works and Civics and Policies and Crises and Legacies and Quests that all are rich with writing and prompts to not just dole out story, but help guide players into creating that narrative in themselves without overwhelming them.

Usually when I get to the end of a Civ game, I feel a lot more like the Cumaean Sibyl than Garrett Martin did in his preview. I often have several dozen half-finished games in me before I do one big canonical playthrough that lasts me until I learn how to play an all new Civilization a few years later. I managed three full games of Civ VII during the rather generous review window. And for the first time in decades of playing Civ, and as a genuine rarity as a game reviewer, I simply want to go back for more. With Civilization VII, Firaxis’s developers have not only made a gorgeous, beautifully scored game about historical weirdos (seriously, just wait until you’re getting yelled at by Niccolo Machiavelli’s 3D model), they’ve made one that truly feels accessible and invigorating for the franchise and genre. Long time fans may be disheartened by the breaking of the rule of thirds, but sometimes rules need to be broken for Civilization to advance.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VII was developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K. Our review is based on the PC version. It is also available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Dia Lacina is a queer indigenous writer and photographer. She tweets too much at @dialacina.