Building an entire nation from scratch isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but when the world is your oyster, fans of the 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) video game genre are more than happy to sink in the hours for world domination. As a sub-genre of strategy games, such games generally involve growing an empire through the ages, with a strong emphasis on economic, social and technological development, and a mix of deploying both military and diplomatic ways to succeed.
Among the franchises in the genre, none is more iconic than Sid Meier’s Civilization, which can be traced back to the 1991 title of the same name developed for MS-DOS on PC. With six mainline numbered entries – each building upon the foundation of their predecessors while increasing in size and scope – under its belt, publisher 2K and developer Firaxis Games have set Civilization VII on a new path, and it’s shaping up to be the most flexible and accessible of the series, as gathered from a three-hour-plus hands-on preview in Singapore.
In a first for the series, the game will feature a simple yet game-changing new addition: the ability to choose a leader independently from a civilisation. For context, the previous games presented players with a host of nations or cultures to choose from, such as France, the Aztecs, or Mongolia, just to name a few. Doing so ties each one down to its respective historical leaders, namely Catherine de Medici, Montezuma and Genghis Khan in the above examples, each bringing their own unique attributes, but subjecting the nations to a fixed gameplay style.

Civilization VII does away with the tired and tested system and instead allows players to pick their leaders and associated bonuses irrespective of their preferred civilisations to form different combinations, opening up the game’s potential to create personalised and unique gameplay builds the likes the series has not seen before.
“It was a big decision to be made, but the creative director felt that this would give us flexibility, choice, and even more interesting ‘what ifs’ for a player to experience,” explains Dennis Shirk, executive producer of Firaxis Games in an interview with Geek Culture. “If you had the leaders coupled with the civilisation strictly, you wouldn’t have that flexibility to take it in different directions.”
“While we always have historical periods, I usually, as a player, follow the historical, original recommendation, because I’m a role player in my head. I like that, and I respect that of our players, that some want to have that role-playing of the natural linkage. But for those that aren’t necessarily tied to that, they have options. They can try something different or try something new,” he adds, clarifying that despite the new level of freedom, long-time fans who wish to play the game as history intended can still do so.

From our preview session, Shirk’s statement certainly rings true, as the freedom to mix and match civilisations with leaders is unparalleled. As mentioned, the game does recommend a certain civilisation based on the selected leader and its associated playstyle, but the final choice ultimately falls to the player, granting them autonomy over the kind of experience they want to explore and cultivate.
In this case, a Military playstyle was the personal go-to option for leader selection as it looked more visually impressive, which went against the game’s recommended civilisation. For this hands-on, the choice was to pick Persian ruler Xerxes as the military leader presiding over the culturally advanced nation of Egypt, Judging from the fact that the game could accommodate the war-mongering preference easily, the team seems to have found the right balance between flexibility and utility.
For the uninitiated, general gameplay in Civilization VII revolves around building up an empire and becoming the first player to reach victory, a feat that can be accomplished via four main playstyles – Culture, the construction of various wonders of engineering and the arts; Science, which sees a player researching and obtaining a specific technology; Economic, mastering the elements of trade and obtaining the highest amounts of resources; and Military, overwhelming foes through strength and conquest.

Before starting any game, the player is presented with various choices that tailor their experience to their skill level. These options include difficulty settings (of which there are five), game speed, map size and map type, the latter referring to the kinds of terrain players will encounter in the game, such as bodies of water and the number of areas with heavy vegetation.
It is during this selection process that players will also encounter the game’s second major shakeup. Unlike previous titles in the series, which all feature different Eras, the new Age system in Civilization VII introduces three, well, Ages that determine distinct time periods of human advancement as chapters in the game. These consist of the Antiquity Age, the foundations of the first civilisations, the Exploration Age, where mankind started to expand their borders across distant lands in search of resources, and the Modern Age, a time of both rapid technological growth and an influx of global conflict.

The changes are not just in naming conventions alone, as Ages dramatically shake up how the game flows. Now, civilisations are not set in stone throughout the entire game, instead being tied to specific Ages, with players having to choose a new Age-exclusive civilisation whenever they transition to a new Age, bringing new abilities, units and buildings that they must use to tackle new challenges.
Each transition also brings exclusive resources, technologies and even unique gameplay systems, but here’s the kicker – every player in the game must now transition and participate in the same Age together, which means the pace of the game remains constant. This means that if everyone is in the Antiquity Age, there is no chance that a skilled player can proceed to develop technology that rightfully belongs in the Exploration or Modern Age.
Drawing from player feedback from Civilization VI, Senior Game Designer and Economics Feature Lead Edward Zhang explains how the reworked mechanic helps to improve accessibility.
“A lot of new player’s fears were that the game goes on for too long, or maybe that the late game gets bogged down by a lot of micromanagement, or that throughout the game, some players already lost while others already won. So we dealt with all that by introducing the Age system,” he shares.

To offer players a balance of freedom and guidance, the number of civilisation choices available during each Age transition is also limited based on several factors, such as the player’s current civilisation, their leader, and gameplay decisions made like their playstyle. Depending on their performance in the previous Age, they may receive bonuses for the next wave, which helps to level out the playing field. Across transitions, certain elements will also remain unchanged, such as leader attributes and bonuses or some unique civilisation traditions.
Understandably, genre newcomers might feel rather overwhelmed by all these new gameplay elements but thankfully, Civilization VII aims to provide its most accessible 4X experience yet, not only offering the aforementioned difficulty adjustments to suit players of all skill levels, but also a robust user tutorial in the form of Advisors, an addition designed to guide new players throughout the game.
With this, even players with little to no experience in strategy games will get ample guidance, especially at the start of the game, going through all its major systems including how resources work, which buildings and technologies to acquire first, and the like.
Indeed, the experience proved to be surprisingly approachable for someone completely new to the 4X genre. Past games in the series always had an unspoken “correct” way to play, and now, it seems the team has taken steps to ensure that players can tackle its challenges however they wish, regardless of skill level.

Armed with little experience from playing real-time strategy games like Age of Empires, it was pleasantly surprising to see the preferred “turtle then assault” playstyle of such games working out fairly well. The game makes it possible to progress slowly by throwing troops at enemy towns while largely forgoing the scientific and economic aspects, with the new Advisor system offering useful tooltips every step of the way to keep the momentum going.
Alongside its enhanced tutorial guidance, the forthcoming outing is set to introduce other streamlined systems to ease players into the experience, including the removal of the builder system – “so players are not going to have 10 builders to manage later”, says Zhang – and turning some cities into towns, now armed with the autopilot mode.
The option to upgrade them later has been retained, though, with the developer sharing, “I think all those changes can really help new players to get into the game. In my opinion, this is the most accessible 4X title we have developed and a perfect starting point for newcomers to enter into the genre.”

Of course, Civilization VII isn’t just targeted at newcomers alone. Returning fans can look forward to a fresh yet familiar experience, where the core gameplay intricacies of building a nation through various means of advancement remain integral to the experience – albeit with a major change in the game’s flow.
This departure from the series formula, according to Shirk, is the point. “Keeping things fresh is always an overarching goal of a team. Civilization IV to V was a bigger jump, with its move to hexes and unstacking the stacks. [The fifth to sixth game] wasn’t as big of a jump and was more iterative, as we decided to unstack the cities but the core game was still kept the same,” he elaborates, describing the transition between the upcoming jaunt and its predecessor as “a more dramatic leap”.
“While the core game loop is still the same, you’re still doing the four X’s from turn to turn. You’re exploring, you’re producing, you’re researching, tech, civics, going to war, defending your territory. Those things are all going to be very familiar to fans. But what we wanted to do this time is change the paradigm, by putting the ages system in place, by putting the civilisation switching in place, we’re creating something new as an experience,” continues Shirk.

As explained, Civilization VII is not exactly presented as a continuation of the franchise, but more of an experience that can be enjoyed alongside past games like Civilization VI, largely due to how much of a different experience it offers. Again, franchise veterans can still enjoy those titles if they prefer, but for newcomers and returning players who desire something fresh, Civilization VII aims to provide the best 4X strategy experience in a bold new way.
“It’s a sandbox. You get to do and build what you want if you do well or not, that’s immaterial; if you get wiped out, that’s half of the fun. Just come in and try things out and see what happens. If you’re a new player who has ever thought about what it feels like to be a leader of an empire, Civilization VII is your perfect simulator to try things out, that lets you satisfy your fantasy,” concludes Shirk and Zhang.
“Sid Meier always leans on the famous Mel Brooks line, ‘It’s good to be king’, and that’s precisely the case with Civilization VII.”
Civilization VII releases on 11 February 2025 for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PC.