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It’s no state secret that Civilization 7 didn’t get off to the strongest start. Robert Zak gave it a 76% in PC Gamer’s review, which is quite low for a Firaxis game, and echoed a lot of my own criticisms. It’s sitting at exactly 50 percent positive reviews on Steam as of this writing. The interface is kind of a disaster. It feels stripped-down in some ways. New Civs are usually controversial, but rarely to this extreme. So where do we go from here?
It certainly doesn’t help that all of the announced DLC so far, which is everything that was included in the $120 mega super duper premium version, is just smaller stuff like new wonders, new leaders, and new civilizations. That’s not nothing, but traditionally, each fresh Civ game hasn’t really come to stand side-by-side with its ancestors until it got a big, juicy mechanical expansion or two. And Civ 7 probably needs it worse than Civ 6 or even Civ 5 did. So what are we hoping for here?
1. Add another Age
Somewhat conspicuously, Civ 7’s current run of Ages terminates right about 1950. And if you’re reading this, you know there have been upwards of 75 additional years of history since then. The moon landing! The internet! The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090! Are these not hallmarks of civilization?
From where I’m standing, the most glaringly obvious way to expand Civ 7 would be with an additional age to cover everything between the events of M*A*S*H and right now. Possibly even a bit into the future.
Civ 6 took a swing at climate change, and while I don’t think it was especially successful, that ongoing crisis is very relevant to our present times while presenting an interesting, late game mechanical challenge.
I’d like to see them give melting glaciers and sea level rise another try.
Civ 7 has already brought us momentous, Age-ending disasters like plagues and barbarian invasions. I’d like to see them give melting glaciers and sea level rise another try. And while we’re at it, why not borrow an idea or two from Millennia and include a small chance of a Terminator-style AI singularity? In our timeline, AI mostly just consumes more water than most medium-sized townships to help you cheat on your term paper. But this is a videogame. We can bend the truth a little.
While we’re at it, why not make it a nice, round five ages? I know that’s not trivial, because every new age needs to be populated with new, age-specific civilizations. But Exploration is already really weirdly broad, and we’re kind of missing something truly ancient.
I feel like you could shuffle things around and come up with something like Bronze, Iron, Early Modern, Modern, and Future.
2. Expand religion and culture
Religion… kind of sucks right now. It’s mostly only relevant in the Exploration Age, and it feels like a whittled down version of Civ 6’s system.
Yeah, yeah, I didn’t like “theological combat” either. But going back to good ol’ missionary spam? Feels bad, man. We could really use an expansion that builds on and fleshes out religion in some way.
Heck, maybe we could rethink how Civ portrays religion altogether? A lot of them aren’t really even interested in spreading their beliefs to the rest of the world, from what I understand.
Culture and diplomacy could also use some love. There’s a lot I like about the base systems, but again, it feels like a Happy Meal toy version of Civ 6 in certain places like espionage.
Spy stuff isn’t something any 4X has ever done especially well. But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. And dangit, I miss rock bands. I know they weren’t everyone’s favorite feature. But the current culture endgame is entirely archaeology-focused, and I liked taking over the world with pop music and hot fashion. Maybe this could tie into adding another age or two.
3. Flesh out resource management and trade
The other system that feels almost like a prototype to me at this point is resource management.
Particularly in the Modern Age when I should be caring about building factories, it just seems like Firaxis laid the groundwork for something really interesting but shipped it before it fully took shape.
I’d like to see more specific and flavorful mechanics for the industrial revolution, not just building a single building that lets me stack fish on my capital for more population growth. Industrialization changed the whole world pretty rapidly. As-is, three of the four victory types don’t even care about it much.
This could be paired with a trade rework, since that has a lot of the same problems. Make treaty. Send trader. Get more stuff. Maybe something like Civ 6’s Monopolies game modifier could be folded into the base game? They already basically integrated Barbarian Clans.
I’d also love to see more mechanics around social movements and internal strife that aren’t so event-driven and buried behind an almost totally opaque “Happiness” mechanic. Maybe I should have to provide consumers with goods? Maybe I can be the Big Communism Builder? There are many possibilities.
4. Something totally unexpected
More than all of that, though? I’d like to see a brave, maybe even reckless expansion that genuinely breaks new ground. I can understand why Firaxis wouldn’t want to court more controversy at this point, but I’d encourage them not to make the mistake of believing boldness was their misstep here.
Flesh out something Civ has never really paid attention to in the past. Hit me with some features I wouldn’t even know to ask for, but will love when I get my hands on them.
Human history is a big topic, and Civilization as a series has mostly been looking at it through one, particular lens since the beginning. Go wild. Surprise me. Like I said before, Civilization needs to keep reinventing itself to stay relevant. And while I see a desire to pursue that objective in Civ 7, they’re not really going about it in the ways I would have hoped.
5. Anyone else miss scenarios?
Just wondering. I know I do.
Civilization 7 is very much not my thing at this point on the timeline. But it has some good stuff going for it. It’s a good foundation, like an early access game I play for a couple dozen hours and then put it away until it’s time to check back in on it in a year or two. And I’m sure we’ll get all kinds of patches along the way.
But it’s the big, traditional expansions I’m most excited about. If anything can really help this successor live up to the series legacy, it’ll be a couple of those.
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Kurt Indovina
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