Civilization VII

i’ve been playing civilization for a long time. long enough that i have core memories tied to it. long enough that i can track my own relationship with history through every iteration of the game. and now, with the release of civilization vii, i get to do that all over again.

the common wisdom for a new civ game is to wait six years or so after launch to pick it up. one of the more frustrating things about a game like civ is that the dlcs and expansions add flavor and systems that improve the game, and once a new mainline game comes out, that all gets wiped blank. we have to wait for the dlc that adds the united nations, again. civ vii feels like the worst in that respect in a long time—almost unfinished.

the beginning: civ ii and a childhood of world conquest

when i was seven, my dad worked for ziff davis, benchmarking new hardware. that meant testing software. which, to me, meant new games. and in 1996, one of those games was civilization ii.

i remember sitting next to my dad, my little chair pulled up to his, watching as he explained the game. we always played as the usa, because otherwise, i couldn’t remember the city names. he’d let me make the big decisions—what to research, when to go to war, whether to build the pyramids or the great wall. every time we built a wonder i didn’t recognize, i wrote it down in my notebook to look up later in my copy of microsoft encarta (my best friend). that’s how i learned about machu picchu, the hanging gardens, and the lighthouse of alexandria before i ever encountered them at school.

after a few games together, we moved to hot seat multiplayer, with him gently steering me away from decisions i’d regret two turns later. i vividly remember waiting for him to get home just so i could ask for civilization time. then came cross-house lan play, which opened up years of not just civ, but also quake and doom. when i visited him at the office, i got to feel like one of the grown-ups, strafing around corners.

but it always comes back to civilization.

civilization as a teacher

that’s the thing about civ—it’s always been a game about systems, but it’s also a game about stories. every playthrough is a version of history that never happened, but maybe could have. my childhood was full of these alternate histories. what if the romans made it to the industrial age? what if japan stayed a tiny island nation forever? what if america never built the statue of liberty?

these what-ifs shaped how i think about history. civ was never accurate (i see you, gandhi, finger on the nukes), but it was a gateway. it made me curious. it made me look things up. it made me care.

civ vii: does it still spark that curiosity?

so here we are, almost 30 years after civ ii, and civilization vii is finally here. and the question i always ask with a new civ game isn’t just “is it good?”—it’s “does it still make me feel that way?” does it still give me the urge to write things down and look them up later? does it still turn history into a playground of infinite possibilities?

so far, after two playthroughs, i have some thoughts. some good. some bad.

the good

• the age system is smart. this is the major new change, and with some polish, it could be a really exciting way to play civ. in previous games, by mid-game i had too many units and a pretty good idea if i was going to win or not. usually, i could stop playing at that point, knowing how things were going to go. now, there are three ages, and as you move between them, there’s something like a soft reset on the board. you lose most units, but depending on how well you did in the previous age, you might get bonuses and skills to make sure you don’t start completely over. it rewards strategy in a way i like.

the bad

• the ui is indefensible. this is an information-heavy game, and i cannot for the life of me figure out how religion works. why can i only use one missionary per city? does my religion spread naturally? this is one small part of a much larger problem—where the game almost feels like it’s hiding things from me.
• it feels designed for console (or vr??) first. animations FLY around, pop up in weird places, and feel way too unpolished to have made it into the final version of the game.
• the diplomacy system is a mess. i wanted to like it. i really did. but you can only have one of each diplomatic task going on at a time. so if i want to reconcile with multiple people after a war, i have to do it one at a time and wait ten turns between? by the end of my second game, i had tens of thousands of influence and nothing to spend it on. in my first game, everyone kept going to war with me and then enemies i never once fought offering cities from the other side of the map to make peace.
• it’s very linear. to get the rewards at the end of an age, you have to progress on the four main paths (science, culture, money, military), which often forces you into strategies that don’t fit your civilization. if you ignore any of these paths, you risk starting off the next age behind. it turns what should be a sandbox into something more rigid.
• the modern era is dull. there really needed to be a world congress or some other system to separate the modern era from the rest of the game. everyone is just racing to build the space race buildings, and that’s about it.

final thoughts: does it hold up?

for me, civ is more than a game. it’s a time capsule. it’s a way of tracking my own history with history. and i want civ vii to live up to that legacy.

this is the first civilization launched on PC and console at the same time, and i can see a lot of that DNA in the game itself. it’s striped down and simplified, in a way that feels like one step forward and four steps back.

at the end of the day, i’m still here, still playing, still chasing that same feeling i had when i was seven years old, scribbling down names from microsoft encarta. i’ll see you in a year when the first expansion pack has launched!