We finally got our first look at Civilization VII gameplay at Gamescom 2024, and it already looks unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the storied series. That includes a massive change to the way Civilization VII progresses thanks to a fresh “Ages” system that’s meant to split its progression into something like Chapters.
We’ve already reviewed Civilization VII in its first trailer, which left us feeling pretty positive about the anticipated sequel. Despite that, we had a ton of questions for Creative Director Ed Beach, who sat down with us for an interview at gamescom. Read his thoughts on the fresh structure of Civilization VII, whether it will include elements from the previous game’s Gathering Storm expansion, and more. And you can find everything else that was announced at gamescom 2024 right here.
Civilization VII will be released on February 11, 2025 for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Switch.
I told you offscreen that I just started playing Civ VI and now I have to relearn Civ VII, but I think it’s okay.
Ed Beach, Creative Director, Firaxis: We’re trying to make the barrier to entry a little lower than it was before. Civ VI can be a little dense in places. If you jumped in at the end with all the expansions and all the content, it’s not really the easiest place to start. So I think Civ VII might be exactly what you want to do.
Yeah, I’m really excited. Which brings me to my next question. So you’ve been consistently updating Civ VI and there’s a lot of mod support. So why is now the best time for Civ VII?
Beach: Well, we’ve been thinking about Civ VII for a long time. We started working on the game before the pandemic, so it’s been in development for quite some time. The design team had ideas that worked really well in Civ VI, but they had some side effects in terms of the game taking a really long time to play. When the game ends, there are a lot of cities, units, etc. to manage, so we wanted to think about that and come up with a different approach so that we could make the game more manageable, more accessible, and actually just get players to the finish line more often than we’ve had in previous Civ games.
Yeah, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stayed up until 3am playing another round. That got to me. So Gathering Storm and its global warming and mechanics offer such a animated change to the core gameplay. Is that something that will be implemented in Civ VII?
Beach: So we’re not talking much about what comes after the post-Renaissance era of exploration yet. The first era, which we’re really diving into now and we have demos and stuff. We’re not forgetting about the climate change, although that was very personal when we started working on it with Gathering Storm. I was the lead designer on that expansion.
I looked at a lot of things about climate change… I mean, we’re not a simulation game, but we tried to do some things right in terms of how sea level rise works and how storms move across the globe and so on. So we’ve carried a lot of that forward and what you can see in the game now that we’re demonstrating with the old world is that there are still floods, there are still volcanic eruptions. We still have storms that roll across the map.
So a lot of the Gathering Storm mechanics, ideas and so on, we still have.
Is this part of the crisis that is being introduced into this fresh system?
Beach: So these are kind of adjacent, but similar. We have a couple of different crises. The one we’re demonstrating right now is the invasion crisis, imagine you’re the Roman Empire and you’ve gotten too large and everybody wants a piece of your action. And so these barbarians are at your gates and they’re knocking on your door. So that’s the one we’re demonstrating in the version that we have here right now. But we’re working on other types of crises, like population unrest or plagues, and some of these crisis systems exploit the same random event system that we exploit for natural disasters.
So why did you change the age grouping system?
Beach: So that’s part of trying to make the game more manageable for people. 4X games generally have the problem that you start with your first unit, you have one city, you think, wow, this game is great. It’s very manageable when I have dozens and dozens of cities and so many units to manage. It all gets stuck. And we wanted to break our game up into chapters very much like a long book series or a TV series that you might like, is broken up into seasons or books.
So we could have large traumatic moments like these crises that you’re talking about, but also give players a chance to take a breather and reset things and simplify things. And that allows you to guide the player through a long experience in a more satisfying way than just saying, “Oh no, it’s going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and you just have to keep up.”
So this is a good fresh way to solve this problem and we’re really excited about how it’s working.
As a fresh player, I’m really elated to hear that. But do you think it’s still demanding enough for returning players to find this fresh system engaging?
Beach: Well, yes. The experience is still just as long. So we’re really doing a deeper, more immersive dive into the history of each historical era than we’ve done before. And some of the gameplay mechanics, we can make deeper changes to them so that they play out differently, maybe in our old era than in our exploration era, for example, our trade systems are different in all three eras.
So I think there’s a lot of stuff that people can dive into. We recently showed the game to a whole group of veterans in our community. They’re really excited about the possibilities and theorizing and everything. So there’s a lot for everyone.
What was the best feedback you’ve received from the community?
Beach: I think we had to be really careful because we divided the game into stages. We made the players really think about who they are, what civilization leaders represent them in the game, and they have the chance to go through a unique historical path.
Maybe you start as Rome, and where did Rome evolve? Maybe it evolved into another European civilization, and that would take you to Germany or Britain or France by the end of the game. And players like that kind of historical storytelling and immersion. And we allowed for some of the weirder combinations, and some of our fans love that, because they love creating theories, and I want to mix this with that, and I’ll be super powerful in science.
But we also had to think about players who wanted a more historical path through our game. And so we set up the game so that that’s the default way that both the human and the AI go through the game, and then you have to, it’s up to the player to decide whether they want to go with this weird play style.
Okay. So you’re talking about the possibility of changing leaders at any age.
Beach: Yes.
What’s the weirdest combination you’ve ever seen?
Beach: Well, we’re not talking about all the leaders and civilizations that we have now, but you can do things like you can have Augustus Caesar as the leader of India, you can have Hatshepsut of Egypt as the leader of Rome. So some of the things seem a little bit weird to you, but there are really good and compelling reasons to try these things… leaders that don’t normally go together can have bonuses in the same part of the game and you just want to explore, wow, what if I get really powerful in culture or in my military strategies?
And those combinations are really compelling. Our quality assurance department, who plays this game all the time, says, “Oh, you have to try this with that, because this is amazing.” So it’s great to hear things like that.
Okay, great. I definitely lean more towards military… So I think I’ll try one of these combinations, which sounds very convincing to me… Well, thanks a lot for talking to me about this. I’m very excited to start a lot of wars in Civ VII that I can’t finish.
Ed Beach: Well, I hope you get sucked into it and want to watch the whole thing because you want to see how it all ends and watch it to the end.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s news director and also co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? DM her @the_katbot.
