Build an Empire that Stands the Test of Time in Civilization VII

The very much anticipated Sid Meier’s Civilization VII is certainly going to truly change the popular 4x strategy series forever when it finally comes out with its set of innovative features and gameplay mechanics. Sternly stepping upon the already existing foundation of the previous entries in the series, Civilization VII would bring multiple changes in order to further expand the strategy options you could exploit and greatly improve the user experience. Ranging from the possibility to individually select your leaders apart from the civilizations to the new progression system that would let you go through the different Ages with their respective challenges and unique objectives. 

The Sid Meier’s Civilization VII release date is set for the 11th of February with full cross-play support for the major consoles as well as PC and it would definitely offer very exciting gameplay for all fans of the strategy games genre. The title has a major focus on reaching the ultimate balance, customization settings and as much replayability as possible. 

Surely, when the Civilization VII steam release drops it will likely be the most thrilling entry in the franchise so far. Following would be everything important regarding the ages, civilizations, units and mechanics we managed to compile so that you are in the know on what you would get with Civ 7.

What are the Ages and How to Navigate Through them More Effectively

In Civilization VII, the idea of Ages delivers on a dynamic progression gameplay experience, in which every Age could pose unique opportunities and strategic objectives to complete. What is different here than the previous installments is that the Ages in Civilization VII are not as linear but are rather defined by fixed milestones and transitions that would actually have an impact over all civilizations at the same time. This approach ensures better game balance and prevents any single civilization from getting much more powerful than others, but you could still be better prepared to transition to the next Age than your rivals in many other ways.

Players have to navigate through three different Ages (Antiquity Age, Exploration Age and Modern Age) that all last around 200 turns. Every Age has its own respective types of technology, cultural progress and gameplay capacity. Depending on the player’s choices and activity the transitions between Ages could include different types of disasters thus creating a more connected and adaptive world, where players would have to adapt their approach on the go and according to the environment. The Age progression in the Civilization VII gameplay gets tracked with a progress meter and your actions are going to fill it more and more. This system certainly adds another layer of depth to the gameplay, by strongly encouraging players to build their strategy with the future in mind as they navigate their civilizations through history.

Once the meter is filled, the Age officially ends and all of the players enter an Age of Transition. It is at this time that a crisis could happen. You could get attacked or invaded, there might be a disaster of some sort or unrest among the population and only when you handle the crisis situation you are able to transition to the next Age. Have in mind that there are several important actions a player may often be required to take such as:

• * Pick a new civilization to lead your evolving empire in the coming Age
• * Think about which elements of your previous civilization to retain
• * Select the Legacy options and policies from a previous Age  

Then the game map would expand with new territories to explore inhabited by tribes or nations to interact with, but also containing plenty of Resources to gather. Some of the Resources could be available through multiple Ages, while others might be exclusive to only one Age period.

There are a few significant factors that could influence your choice of civilization during the different Age Transition periods. They include historical relations between your previous and future civilizations, the leader you have selected and certain gameplay choices that were made during the previous Age. While playing you could choose to remain historically-accurate by selecting civilizations that have real historical links or perhaps you can decide to only pick civilizations that align best with your strategy even if they are not that connected to one another.

You can choose between a single age scenario or the much more extensive campaign with all three Ages included. The final victory could only be achieved in the Modern Age, which means that even if you manage to win the legacy paths for the Antiquity or Exploration Ages. In Civilization VII there is a total of 4 main victory conditions: Science, Culture, Military, and Economic so you still have to complete the victory conditions for the final Modern Age in order to win the game. 

The Civilizations you can Choose from and their Unique Evolution and Perks

Let’s move further and discuss a bit more about the civilization options and the leader that you could choose from. This entry marks the first time in the Sid Meier’s Civilization series which lets players choose their leader independently from the civilization, which is definitely an option to introduce more variety and flexibility and is much more likely to give players the ability to create completely new strategies through the combination of multiple gameplay elements and stat boosts. 

Every leader brings a unique ability to the table and these could then be further upgraded with additional attributes which you can earn throughout the Civilization VII gameplay, giving you the possibility to be even stronger or more combinative when establishing your strategy as you go through different Ages. 

Civilizations are most of the time Age-exclusive (although some of them could evolve through all the Ages such as India for example), coming equipped with a plethora of specific abilities, units, civics and construction options as well as their respective upgrades and Improvements to make them even more efficient. 

This would practically mean that you could select a leader from a completely different civilization to manage and govern yours. The chosen leader is going to stay with you all through the campaign, as the governed civilizations progress through the times. This allows the developers to introduce new exciting leader characters, combinative bonus schemes and interesting game enhancements more efficiently. What’s more is the fact that the game could provide a much more balanced gameplay experience, effectively fixing and/or smoothing some of the known challenges players have faced in Civilization VI. 

The transitions between civilizations could be based on authentic historical events, cultural similarities and the game settings. You could obtain various bonuses and additional perks depending on the trajectory you manage to build for yourself. If you do certain actions, or have already discovered specific types of technology/civics in the previous Age, there is the possibility to actually unlock and transition to a civilization that is totally different from your current one. Here is an alphabetical list of all the civilization options in each of the Ages:

• * Antiquity age civilizations: Aksumite, Assyrian, Carthaginian, Egyptian, Greek, Han, Khmer, Mauryan, Mayan, Mississippian, Persian and Roman
• * Exploration age civilizations: Abbasid, Bulgarian, Chola, Dai Viet, Hawaiian, Incan, Majapahit, Ming, Mongolian, Norman, Shawnee, Songhai and Spanish
• * Modern age civilizations: American, British, Bugandan, French Imperial, Meiji Japanese, Mexican, Mughal, Nepali, Prussian, Qajar, Qing, Russian and Siamese

Wonders, Civics and Technology Trees to Drive you Forward through the Ages

Each civilization has a set of special characteristics such as starting location bias, skills and abilities, civic tree, infrastructure, army of warriors and the newly-introduced civilian citizen units they do add some advantages, but best of all are the associated wonder components or the sort of specials for each civilization. These wonders allow your civilization to acquire some unique advantage in their favor; they could be represented by monuments, pyramids, ceremonial sites and temples or other culturally appropriate symbolic structures.

Another thing to mention here is the civilization Civic tree, since all the civilizations have their own unique cultural development tree. What distinguishes it from the commonly shared technology and civics trees is the fact that each civilization comes with a small tree of up to three or four unique cultural technologies. 

To help solve the quick advancement issue previous games had In Civilization VII these tree types are age-specific and age-constrained at the same time, so when you unlock all the available technologies from the Antiquity Age, you would not be able to access any of the future technologies from the Age of Exploration before the whole game world transitions into that Age. In addition, a bunch of the technologies and civics offer Mastery tech options for more complex research or advanced specialization to obtain additional bonuses.

The Esteemed Leaders that would be Followed by your Civilization

In Civilization VII there would be 21 unique leaders at first (but if we count that 5 of them have 2 personas, the confirmed total for now could be considered as 26). Regardless of their exact number in the initial Civilization VII release, you would have to think in terms of individual leader abilities and attributes, and how would they combine with the civilization abilities for each Age, as well as to consider the civics build in order to achieve the most intricate experience possible.

Leaders remain unchanged throughout the game, that way you keep the personal attachment and you could make history with the likes of Ada Lovelace, Amina, Ashoka [World Conqueror/World Renouncer], Augustus, Benjamin Franklin, Catherine the Great, Charlemagne, Confucius, Friedrich [Baroque/Oblique], Genghis Khan, Harriet Tubman, Hatshepsut, Himiko [High Shaman/Queen of Wa], Ibn Battuta, Isabella, José Rizal, Lafayette, Lakshmibai, Machiavelli, Napoleon [Emperor/Revolutionary], Pachacuti, Simón Bolívar, Tecumseh, Trung Trac and Xerxes [King of Kings/the Achaemenid] all of whom coming with specific traits such as Unique ability, Attributes, Personal Agenda, Starting Biases and Unlocks.

They can get interesting upgrades and six attribute research trees: Cultural, Diplomatic, Economic, Expansionist, Military, and Scientific. As the game goes on you must develop these leader skills, which would heavily affect the whole game and the civilization you have selected.

Cities, Towns and the Districts they Expansively Transform in

Cities mostly function in the same way as they have in the previous Civilizaion series entries, acting as production hubs for all of the major elements such as culture, science and military. The resource system has different tweaks and updates made to it and currently each city would have four available slots to assigning different resources to so that you get the maximum output.

The newly-introduced towns bring a new level of settlement management, giving the player much more possible strategies when building their empire. Towns introduce a set of important mechanics that can greatly impact your Civilization VII gameplay too. Unlike the aforementioned cities, towns initially begin with just two resource slots by default. One of the more distinct features of towns is that their capacity to turn all production into gold, so they are extremely important when it comes to wealth as well as being a vital part of the efficient distribution of food supplies across the lands you rule over. 

Once a town grows its population, you could upgrade it to a city or turn it into a more specified type of settlement, such as a farming, fishing or mining town. This way you could advance the extraction and usage of particular resources or production types, obtaining various buffs or other benefits to your empire. When a new Age starts you may revert your once upgraded cities back into towns allowing you to redirect their purpose or keep them as they are if need be, making city planning, management and development in Civilization VII one of the more outstanding changes in the history of the series. 

Buildings

Players are able to use gold in order to purchase more specialized buildings and constructions, for example granaries and fisheries, but you should be aware that not all of the buildings would be available for purchase that easily, making you ponder longer about your decision regarding resource and city management. You can also construct defensive walls and they are built the same way as most buildings but do not take a building slot, which allows you to build walls in any district tiles that you want to.

All of the available types of Units, Buildings and Wonders you could use are determined by the Ages. Buildings could become less valuable with time, but their effects could be greatly strengthened by achieving a Golden Age in a specific path.

Another important detail is the classification for the types of buildings, as some remain permanent (with the possibility to be carried through the Ages) while others might have to be demolished and then replaced as the Age changes. Here are the three main Building types you get:

Normal buildings are available in specific ages and provide you with yield and bonuses only while that specific Age lasts. When future Ages arrive, these types of constructions lose their bonus features and should be replaced with newer and more age-contemporary ones.

Persistent buildings are also built during a single age but do manage to retain both their yield and adjacency bonuses across all Ages. They cannot be taken down or replaced in later Ages.

Ageless buildings are the most unique of the bunch because they could be constructed during any Age. They have minimal or no yields at all and there are no adjacency bonuses that come with them but instead their presence offers some very civilization relevant improvements around them. The effects coming from these structures remain consistent throughout all Ages without any change occurring.

Managing Population Happiness and Settlement Caps

You would not be able to construct an indefinite number of cities with the inclusion of the settlement cap (If you exceeded it, there would be in-game penalties waiting for you!), as it is strongly paired with the comfort and happiness levels of your settlers. The settlement cap is here to limit the number of cities an empire can have per Age. This cap could actually be increased when you make progress through the culture tree, making the crucial role of culture in advancing both Civics and expanding your settlement capabilities much more obvious. There is a unique settlement cap system for every available empire, allowing for a more custom approach towards expansion and emphasizing even further the great importance of managing to strike a balance between city development and cultural advancement.

There would be a penalty of -5 happiness in all your settlements for every location that exceeds the settlement cap and it could only get worse if you pile up on these as it might severely ruin your chances of maintaining a happy population, which quite often leads to more serious problems.

But if you do manage to handle things properly and well-enough great festivities and celebrations await you as the Empire reaches a certain level of happiness. The Celebration function unlocks certain effects adding extra bonuses towards your growth, productivity and expansion, so it is definitely worth it to give attention to this aspect of Civilization VII as well!

Urban and Rural Districts, Quarters and Territories to Explore

The Civilization VII game would actually differentiate between two types of districts urban and rural ones. While the urban districts would be mostly similar to the general type of districts in Civilization VI they are going to function in a different way. Each district is able to initially have two buildings on it, although that count is going to become higher as you go upgrade your trees and move through the Ages. In theory, you have the option to construct a granary in the city center, but were you to choose and position it on a neighboring tile, it would then transform into a district. Have in mind that districts must be placed adjacent to one another, in this way you could effectively create a structured and better manage the growth of your city. 

When it comes to the rural districts, they are formed by new citizens. For instance, if you have a forest close to your city and there is a new citizen that appears in the city, you can choose to position them in the forest and that move could build a lumber mill, turning it into a rural district. There is no need for workers or any improvements; a new citizen would just start working into the district and form it from there.

As for Quarters, these are specialized districts created by the players and they work in the following manner. If you construct two unique buildings from the same civilization culture in one district, that location becomes much more significant and would provide you with certain bonuses. When you have two scientific buildings in the same district, it turns into a campus; two production buildings would result into a production district and so on.

In Civ VII there is a brand new system in which the Terrain Yields would not be determined by the individual tile features but by the biome in it instead. Every biome type has got its own unique yield now, thus making the map much more coherent and without the need for too many operations related to placement and arrangement of tiles in the game.

Many of the in-game rivers would be navigable, meaning that you are allowed to construct a city in a way that not only does it stand next to the river but also farther inland. This feature assures you could manage a fleet and a network of shipyards.

Independent Powers, Diplomacy and Religion have All Gotten Improvements/span>

The list of improved and enhanced features of Civilization VII is a lengthy one and it is time to discuss the Independent Powers you would discover on the map. They are minor tribes or factions that players can interact with in multiple ways. We could say they are a combination consisting of the previous forms of Barbarian tribes and city-states but with a set of improved mechanics that offer for more challenges and opportunities that players could seize. 

Independent settlements, could act neutral, friendly or hostile and according to their stance players would have to interact with them in different ways, by forging strategic allies or building your defenses with them in mind. Diplomacy would also be of great importance and this installment of the Sid Meier’s Civilization series has definitely taken some elements from the Beyond Earth entry in the franchise.

In Civilization VII, you are getting another special resource titled “influence,” which has to be spent for various diplomatic reasons and when building relations with the other civilizations on the map. With it you could initiate trades, border control and alignment. Even though details on this matter are still quite scarce it does seem to be a much more interesting concept that the ones in previous entries of the series. 

As for the more religious aspects of the title we do know that there would be a Pantheon available in the Antiquity Age and probably it would carry on somehow in the other ages as well. These structures are going to offer players even greater bonuses that would apply to cities with an already existing religious altar built in them, so in case you wish to optimize your resources more, be sure to give attention to the religious side of things as well.

Commanders, Scouts, Special Units and Other Warfare Mechanics for a Greater Battle Experience

The combat system in Civilization VII also has some cool changes and an added layer of complexity through the addition of commanders, scout units and specialists. Let’s first have a look at the Commanders, they will act as central leaders, gathering experience and then unlocking powerful bonus options to further strengthen the other units located around them, which would certainly improve army management and turning battles much more tactical. There is also the continuous combat system which allows for a more seamless real-time engagement when it comes down to battles. The units for every civilization are designed in a way to represent the distinct cultural identity of the empire they belong to, making their visual aesthetic appealing and diverse. 

The scout units have acquired multiple new skills and features such as the “Observation” ability that would allow the scout unit to have greater visibility range even when they take on higher grounds or looking out for sudden attacks as well as enemy detection used as preventive measure. Another scout skill worthy of a mention is the “Search” one and it would show you the locations of interest that you could discover in the area of the closest six tiles and then collect the goods awaiting you there. 

There are now city Specialists as well and they play a very important role when it comes to optimizing the productivity levels of the city and taking your empire to the next level. In Civilization VI population was typically sent to work areas for basic resource generation, but Civilization VII aims to introduce a far more strategic use of Specialists. In this case, you are now able to order members of your population to work in specific buildings, for example, institutions such as libraries and universities, in order to conduct different research assignments and by doing so to increase your empire’s output. With such a feature you could now develop a rising empire, where a smaller number of specialized cities generate a substantial proportion of your output and provide you with greater benefits.

Fortification

With the new fortification mechanics and the unique reinforcement options for combat units, the combat in Civilization VII becomes a lot more dynamic as an experience. When you decide to fortify a unit on a specific tile, the game would mark that tile as fortified and with this feature your unit gets not only a defense boost but when taking serious damage you could reinforce it by swapping it with other healthier units without losing the fortified bonuses and construct for even a moment. The tile keeps the same status, and the newly positioned unit instantly gets the defensive advantages while your hurt units get back to safety and possibly get treated and healed enough to join back the battle.

AI Improvements and Ease Of Decision-Making to Let you Focus on What is Really Important

The developer’s team has revealed a lot about the improvements regarding the AI department and their work on improving all the decisions and overall capacity for the Civilization VII game. One of the main ideas in this process has been to reduce any of the unnecessary decision-making that could occur during the last stages of previous games. Civilization VII would rather aim to make each Age as distinguishable as possible and automate it as best as possible by allowing players to predominantly focus on only the important choices they need to make.

The way that the AI now handles the various military mechanics and tactics includes armies attached to a single leader, giving player far more streamlined options for movement and deployment of units across the map. Such AI improvements reduce the necessity for overwhelming micromanagement for armies and expansive campaigns, as well as automations and easier overall processes.

Civilization VII Deluxe and Founders Editions and Upcoming DLCs

Apart from the Standard Edition with the base game only, there are two other options to pick from, namely the Deluxe and Founders editions that come with a lot of extra bonuses and perks such as advanced early-access to the game, content packs with leaders and cosmetics and the upcoming post-launch DLCs: Crossroads of the World and Right to Rule collections. 

The Civilization VII steam release is just around the corner and this entry in the series is seriously shaping up to be an awesome gaming experience that offers a fresh take on the strategy genre with its many innovative changes for all the major it has to offer, so it seems to be a very promising experience that is even more engaging. With that being said we conclude our through review of the Sid Meier’s Civilization VII game and would like to extend our invite to join us again next time, when we will continue to keep you posted about anything interesting in gaming.