Sid Meier’s Civilization VII — Review

Although many games are known to dramatise history, few like Sid Meier’s Civilization franchise have stood the test of time, glueing gamers to their seats as they raise humble nomadic settlers into global superpowers, for almost 30 years. After about a decade since their previous outing, publisher 2K and developer Firaxis Games have brought the franchise back for one more turn with Sid Meier’s Civilization VII, and this addition is still as addictive as ever, albeit with a few shortcomings.

Fans of the 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) video game genre will find Sid Meier’s Civilization VII both fresh and familiar. Its core gameplay loop remains unchanged –  players choose a civilisation and compete with others on a map segmented à la hexagons to achieve one of four major victories. There’s victory through Science by winning the Space Race; through Culture by building world wonders and populating the World’s Fair with artefacts; dominating the global Economy and establishing a world bank, and in conquering settlements before building the atomic bomb in Military; all while managing your global influence, and your people’s happiness, gold, food, and productivity. The latest chapter also incorporates a new Age System and a new progression system for the player and individual leaders.

Right off the bat, franchise veterans will realise the game’s 26 world leaders are not tied to their respective civilisations, like in previous outings where well-known leaders like Gandhi or Queen Elizabeth I would lead the Indians or English, respectively. Instead, Sid Meier’s Civilisation VII allows you to choose a world leader before choosing a civilisation to lead, resulting in bizarre combinations in the vein of alternate history author Harry Turtledove, like playing as Japanese queen Himiko who leads the Greeks. As different world leaders and civilisations possess different abilities and advantages surrounding the four victories, the power of choice allows players to fully express themselves in historical role-play, while still finding their own comfortable combinations to win games.

Building on top of this is a new progression system called Legends, where players  earn experience points in two paths by completing challenges every time they complete a game. On one hand, playing the game as any leader levels up the Foundation path, unlocking cosmetics and collectables for their profile. Conversely, every leader has their own progression track levelled by playing as these characters and as leaders level up, they gain Mementos that can be equipped to boost their leader abilities for future games.

With Legends and allowing players to mix their world leader and civilisation of choice, all roads lead to Rome, but we also recognise that Rome was not built in a day. You’ll spend hours finding ways to optimise your path to victory as you experiment to find the right combination to win. Play as Benjamin Franklin who is known for expediting science through production buildings while leading the Mayans, where production is further boosted every time a technology is successfully researched, and you gain an advantage but that’s not the end of it. Continue playing as Benjamin Franklin in future games and you’ll unlock the right Mementos which further boosts the rate of generating science and production, allowing you to build buildings and research technologies much quicker. 

If the game’s opening cinematic depicts knowing the past as being about understanding the present and learning from our mistakes, this gameplay loop encompasses the experience the same way – you learn from what you can do better in your previous game, and plan how you can further improve your future games with new Mementos. You feel yourself playing Sid Meier’s Civilization VII smarter and better each time you jump into a new game.

That said, the majority of the game’s 26 leaders generally focus on contributing directly to its four victory conditions, which leaves room for a more varied roster to keep things interesting in the future. A handful of leaders have different personas of the same person, while possessing different gameplay advantages. You can play as ‘Napoleon the Emperor’, where spending influence on diplomatic endeavours comes cheap and gold is earned for every leader you are unfriendly or hostile with after every age. Or, you can also play as ‘Napoleon the Revolutionary’, where culture is earned when your military units defeat enemy units. 

New leaders who encourage strategies aside from focusing on racking up victory points will be a welcome inclusion, from the likes of American abolitionist and social activist, Harriet Tubman, who leverages espionage and stealing technologies and civics to get ahead of the game. 26 leaders are a good start to kick things off, but here’s looking at future expansions to add more into the mix. For example, we note that religion seems to take a back seat in Sid Meier’s Civilization VII, so a leader who mass-produces missionaries and spreads religious ideology to achieve victory would be a possible approach to vary the leader roster.

The next distinction that sets Sid Meier’s Civilization VII apart from its predecessors is the Age System, where a game is now split into three ages – Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. Every age allows players to choose their path to victory, accompanied by objectives or a to-do list that doubles as a tutorial teaching new players how to achieve victory. Once a set number of objectives are completed across the board, the game transits to the next age for all players in the game, granting legacy points that further expedite victory conditions in the end game and resetting unit positions. Splitting the game into ages allows players to pace and familiarise themselves with the game’s dynamics while maintaining a level playing field across the map, so gone are the days where victory is assured too early in a game just because a player’s civilisation is too overpowered, resulting in other players abandoning their game before it ends. Instead, what matters now is that all player finish all their objectives before the final Modern Age concludes.

But while splitting the game into essentially three digestible acts brings accessibility for new players, the ages become too predictable for those who are already familiar with the gameplay loop. It’s always a scramble to expand your nation across the map and gather as many special resources as possible during the beginning of the Antiquity age. Transitioning into the Exploration age means you should always produce as many military units as possible to prepare for guaranteed war and hostility among players in the Modern age. Unless you are playing with real players in Multiplayer mode, it is almost guaranteed that your counterparts will declare war against you and mobilise their forces against your cities near the endgame. Players will naturally benefit by adopting a more aggressive, conquest-driven playstyle, making the Military victory a constant secondary win condition. 

Sid Meier’s Civilization VII then suffers from too much linearity in forcing players to make beelines to their desired victories during every age, while forcing them to take Military action against a predictably chaotic final act.

Additionally, victory conditions can seem convoluted even though you may be leading the rat race. The game can end with a cutscene implying your civilisation’s victory and you will still be slapped with a “Defeat” in the concluding leaderboard after your 5 to 15 hour gaming stint. Players might be confused as to why they would face defeat even though they are in the lead, only to find that the Modern age has transitioned to end the game before they fulfil every objective for their victory.

Everyone loses if time runs out and no one has completed all the objectives of their chosen victory path. If you are not in the lead, you can expedite the end of the Modern age and deny a leading player’s victory by fulfilling objectives not related to your chosen strategy, which is a cheap way for your opponents to declare that if they do not win, no one does, consequently discouraging players from jumping back into a new game. It would help if the Modern age persists until a civilisation successfully meets the final victory condition, instead of transitioning to a game conclusion where no one wins. Or, the game can just award the victory to the player who has accumulated the most legacy points throughout all three ages.

Victory quirk aside, one of Sid Meier’s Civilization VII’s strong suits is its presentation. The franchise has moved the board from a cartography-styled UI to something simple, clean, and more realistic. Each randomly generated board is rendered beautifully and realistically with distinct biomes, and whenever a world wonder is successfully built, it is always satisfying to see the timelapse showing the intricate stages of their building leading to their completion. Each leader speaks their native tongue and a colloquial soundtrack follows each encounter, which makes meeting them on the map feel like an exciting cultural exchange. Every completion in researching technologies and civics, finding natural wonders, and building man-made ones introduces historical quotes that read like a documentary out of the BBC. The game also has comprehensive instructions and a glossary called “Civilopedia” which covers every jargon in the game, making for a reassuring hand-holding experience for new players.

All in all, Sid Meier’s Civilization VII is a beautiful sequel to the franchise with loads of room to expand in its addictive “one more turn” gameplay philosophy. The game just needs a slight tweak in its endgame design to encourage fans to keep playing. Still, time flies whenever you jump into a new game and try to find the fastest ways to optimise your desired victory conditions. 

Joey Leong

Crack open a cold one with Joey, because the moment you approach him, he will start talking about film and video games for days. He spends his waking moments during the weekends meditating on how the latest movie he’s watched or game he’s played has impacted his worldview.