Sid Meier's Civilization VII. Revolution for Revolution's Sake?

I've already talked about my attitude to the Civilization series and its place in my life, it's time to decide on my attitude to the new part, namely Sid Meier's Civilization VII. As I've already emphasized, this is probably the most revolutionary game in the series, but... has this revolution benefited the gameplay? Let's figure it out.

"Warm" welcome

Even before its release, Sid Meier's Civilization VII received a strong dose of criticism from Ukrainians for promoting Russian narratives, which your humble servant also joined in, but we'll talk about what to do with the Russians separately, because after writing that blog, I cooled down a bit, looked at the situation more calmly, and it seems I've found a partial solution to the problem.

As for how Civilization VII was received, as they say, "not everything is so clear-cut and we still won't know the whole truth." Because Sid Meier's Civilization VII has very good critic ratings on Metacritic - 80/100, and OpenCritic - 88% of critics recommend it. And at the same time, terrible user ratings on the same Metacritic - 3.7/10 and Steam - 50/100 based on 24.5 thousand reviews. And that's not all, at the beginning, in Advanced Access for buyers of the Deluxe version, which began on February 6, 2025, 5 days before the release of the regular version of the game, the rating was even lower, around 35/100.

Yes, I know very well that players like to "bomb" the ratings if they don't like something, but Deluxe is bought only by the most loyal fans of the series, that is, Firaxis Games was unable to please those who are usually very loyal to their games. And that's a shame. Why critics didn't pay attention to the numerous problems pointed out by users is a mystery to me and a big question about the adequacy of Western gaming journalism. Because these are not just glitches that can be fixed with patches, but fundamental problems that only DLC can solve.

Even Firaxis Games itself, two days after the start of Advanced Access, admitted that the game had problems and promised fans to take into account their wishes and criticism and fix the most critical problems of Civ VII - the interface, multiplayer, and usability. The first major patch, Patch 1.1.0, is already in March 2025. So it is not clear where the Western critics were looking. Did they play at all? But God be with them, let's talk about Civilization VII itself.

History as a puff pastry

When I said that Sid Meier's Civilization VII was the most revolutionary Civilization game, I wasn't kidding, because in this game Firaxis Games abandoned a key element that defined the series - the continuity of civilization's development from the beginning of time to the future. One leader - one country - one story. In Civilization VII, everything is different.

At the beginning of the game, the developers explain that none of the civilizations existed throughout history. They rather imitated each other, building their countries on the foundation laid by previous civilizations. Greece imitated Egypt, Rome - Greece, Byzantium - Rome, and so on. It is this idea of historical, cultural layers that Civilization VII promotes, comparing history to a puff pastry. But... they forget to remind you where exactly they spied this idea.

The truth is that it seems that the designers at Firaxis Games were very closely following AMPLITUDE Studios' work on the HUMANKIND project, which was released in 2021. And although HUMANKIND initially received not very favorable reviews, including for the idea of historical eras, which Firaxis "stole", the game was later loved. Firaxis borrowed the idea of changing eras and civilizations, but changed it a little.

HUMANKIND is divided into seven eras: Neolithic, Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Early Modern, Industrial, and Modern. When changing eras, you can choose a new civilization as a descendant of the previous one, get new bonuses, and change your play style. Or you can not choose, but stay with the old civilization, but get the bonuses of descendants. Everything else in HUMANKIND remains unchanged - cities, territories, units, improvements, etc.

In Civilization VII, things are a bit different. First, there are only three eras – ancient, the Age of Discovery and modern. Second, you can’t leave your old civilization, you have to choose a successor. Third, each era is essentially a separate game, with separate technology and social policy trees, separate improvements, wonders, units, opportunities, even with separate gameplay. Moreover, when moving from one era to another, most of your cities lose their city status and turn into settlements, some resource appendages (this also seems to have been borrowed from HUMANKIND), some units disappear and you essentially have to start a lot of things over. Victory points at the end of an era turn into bonuses for the leader and the country for the next one. That is, each era in Civilization VII is almost a separate game.

This approach allows you to change the gameplay from era to era, for example, religion has a significant impact only in the era of geographical discoveries. In modern times, railway connections, factories, resource distribution and production of things are of great importance. In antiquity, it is simply physically impossible to get to the neighboring continent, where individual civilizations are developing, expansion will be available only in the second era. So in the era of geographical discoveries there is a separate gameplay with a gold fleet and transportation of colonial things to the metropolis plus bonuses for colonies. A kind of greeting from the classic Sid Meier's Colonization. And in modern times, the search for archaeological artifacts can become an important factor. Yes, this was already in Civ VI, but here a cultural victory is associated with it.

The division of the game into eras allows you to choose the period to your liking, for example, I always liked the discovery and exploration of the map at the initial stage of the game more than the diplomatic relations and micromanagement of dozens of megacities in the modern era. Now you can choose only the starting point, that is, play the entire game, 2/3 or only the last modern part, Firaxis promises to add the ability to choose the end point of the game. Again, the division into eras and short games only in the modern era allows you to liven up and speed up the online game.

And the breakdown into layers theoretically allows you to add new eras. Immediately after the release of Civilization VII, dataminers found another hidden era in the game - the atomic era. And this is logical, because now the game essentially ends in the middle of the 20th century (I managed to make an atomic bomb and get Game End back in 1858) - with the launch of a satellite, the opening of the World Bank, the creation of an atomic bomb or the opening of the World Exhibition. All these are events of the middle of the 20th century, there are no nuclear, wind, solar power plants, underwater settlements, cybernetics and flights to Alpha Centauri in the new "Civilization" and this is a bit of a betrayal, because over the years I have become accustomed to ending the game with a flight to the stars.

That is, if Civ VII has atomic age assets, then they will most likely be added in a future DLC, and then maybe a separate era of solar system development and continuation of gameplay on other planets, like in Civilization: Beyond Earth (actually, this game was criticized for nothing at the time, it's not that bad after the additions and patches).

But all this is still speculation. Did the revolutionary division of the game into parts bring something new to Civilization - certainly. Did it make the game better... not sure. Still, the concept of continuity of development, which has always been at the heart of Civilization, is the very essence of the game, cutting the game into pieces with clearly artificial restrictions between parts is not what fans of the series want. Yes, this allows you to avoid classic situations of archers against tanks, because the transition to a new era is done by all civilizations together, but... again, this is very artificial, in real history we had both modern and paleolithic societies on the same planet, who was lucky with space and resources.

Franklin, Great Khan of the Chinese

As we have already emphasized, when moving to a new era, unlike HUMANKIND, you have to choose a new civilization. And this sometimes leads to very strange results. Yes, it is quite logical that the descendants of Rome or Greece are Spain or the Normans, and accordingly their descendants are America, Imperial France, Germany. Everything seems logical, but... if you, say, discover four horse resources in antiquity, then... you can continue the game as the Mongols. You will build three city walls - as the Chinese. So the situation in the title, when your leader Franklin eventually becomes the Great Khan of the Chinese, is quite likely and this is... very strange, not to say cringeworthy. In general, the fact that, unlike HUMANKIND, in Civilization VII you cannot choose the same civilization and get development bonuses sucks.

By the way, about the leaders. If Firaxis is so committed to the idea in this part that the story is not straight, but a series of segments, then they should also change the leaders, introducing a system of dynasties, like in Paradox games or in the same Old World, by the way, a great game, try it. Instead, our leaders received a real role-playing system in Civ VII. Now, according to your actions and narrative events in the game, you earn points in different categories - military affairs, diplomacy, culture, economy, etc. and can improve yourself and your beloved and receive bonuses according to your style of play. It's really interesting.

Regarding the choice of leaders and civilizations. It's... strange. About Russia later, but in Civilization VII, for example, there is no... Great Britain now. But there is the Qajar dynasty of the Shahs of Iran, which you wouldn't even remember without Wikipedia. Or the Buganda kingdom in Uganda, which of course influenced local history, but it's definitely not the civilization that shaped the modern world, no offense. And there's a lot of that here.

It is clear that Firaxis will add leaders and civilizations, as it was in Civ V/VI. For example, in early March 2025, an update will be released with such "small" forgotten civilizations as... Carthage and Great Britain. And at the end of March - Bulgaria and Nepal. Plus, two new leaders will appear - Ada Lovelace (Programmer - for president!) and Simon Bolivar. That's something! By September 2025, four more as yet unknown new civilizations and two leaders will be released. Remembering the previous part, in the end there may be more than 50 civilizations in the game.

Interface is nothing? Interface is everything!

The biggest complaint from players about Civilization VII concerns the game interface. And as a player, I have to fully support this. The Civ VII interface is a horror that flies on the wings of the night. It not only does not help, it hinders the game. And the point is not even that Firaxis tried to standardize for all platforms, including consoles, smartphones and VR, although in all fairness - such a decision is absurd from the very beginning, because the buttons that you need to press with your fingers on the screen and the buttons that you press with the mouse cursor should be different. The point is that the Civ VII interface simply lacks many elements. It seems that the UI developers who worked on Civ I - Civ VI were fired, and all their knowledge and achievements were carefully buried.

In Civilization VII, it is impossible to see all cities with all production, or all units with their status and location. These are basic things that should be in all turn-based and not only turn-based strategies. In Civ VII, this is not there. There is also no separate interface for viewing the spread of religions, or the location of trade routes. This is kind of crazy, because all this was in previous parts of the series, and playing without these functions is like playing blindly.

The resource distribution interface is terrible, extremely inconvenient and uninformative. The narrative event interface does not even contain small pictures of this event, as is done in games from Paradox or in HUMANKIND. In Civ VII, it is just a little text and two large buttons. That's it. And there are many such complaints. The lack of necessary map layers and the extremely low informativeness of the map itself, where it is sometimes difficult to separate the cities of one civilization from another. Information about the development of the city and its productivity in a separate window. And there are a lot of such complaints.

To be honest, all the UI developers of Sid Meier's Civilization VII should be blacklisted by the gaming industry. They are the ones to blame for such low ratings of the game at the start. It's nice that Firaxis seems to have understood the players' complaints (Why wasn't this clear even at the interface testing stage, that's a separate question?!) and promises to fix the game's interface first. It's impossible to fix everything there without a complete overhaul of the game, but at least something.

What else did you like and dislike?

The article is already quite long, so I'll just briefly list what else I liked or didn't like about Sid Meier's Civilization VII.

I liked the new system of commanders who can lead, deploy armies and give them bonuses. Now it's not the troops that gain experience, but the commanders/navies who are nearby, and it's they who move into a new era.

The lack of workers, automatic hex improvement, and path building were nice, because in the old Civilizations, managing dozens of workers in the later stages of the game was a bit tiring.

The new system of resources as bonuses and raw material settlements – I liked it. Building blocks on top of others and "immortal" buildings – yes. Reducing the influence of religion – yes. Artificial restrictions on eras, including on the development of technologies – no. The inability to rename cities is a big mistake.

The new diplomacy system, in which some leaders openly respect - rather not. The new small city system is strange, but it makes some sense. It is impossible to absorb a city in the first eras, but you can get an interesting bonus, including a new building. Between eras, small cities disappear and others appear. It is unusual, but it works.

Natural disasters are good, but they were in Civ VI, and in the new game there is no man-made impact on the environment at all. This is wrong. Deadly attachment to political doctrine in modern times is no, because we have seen many times how democracy turns into fascism/communism, and then back into democracy and vice versa.

The lack of any conscious ending to the game was very disappointing. I'm used to, and not only from the Civilization series, but from all similar games, that at the end of the game I am shown detailed statistics, a diagram of the development of all civilizations in different industries and changes to the world map. None of this in Civilization VII. And this is definitely a betrayal. And so smoothly we approached the main betrayal of Sid Meier's Civilization VII - the Russians.

What should we do with the Russians?

Ok, now let's get serious.

It seems to me that we need to come to terms with the fact that Western developers and publishers, and indeed all residents of Western countries, will never accept the axiom that is well understood by every Ukrainian, that all Russians are guilty of the crimes in Ukraine, and not only in Ukraine, and not only the conditional Putin and his entourage. This idea is incomprehensible to foreigners, it is uncomfortable and simply unacceptable to them. For them, accusing the entire people of crimes is a sign of Nazism, because that is exactly how the Nazis, and in fact not only the Nazis, accused all Jews. "Jews use the blood of Christian babies to make matzah." "Jews deliberately sell low-quality goods." "Jews are killing Ukrainian peasants," and so on. Not some specific, individual Jews, but all Jews. And the more we insist on the guilt of all Russians, the more they will consider us, not them, to be Nazis. Unfortunately, that's exactly how it works.

It is unprofitable and inconvenient for Westerners to accuse an entire nation of supporting genocide, even if it is. It is more convenient to find a scapegoat, a conditional Putin. It was already so, because all Germans and Japanese are guilty of the genocide of Jews and Chinese during World War II. And those who turned their backs on the chimneys of crematoria, "didn't look up," and worked in military factories. And those who waited for their father from work, who worked on the railway, on which trains with bad Jews go to where their issue will be finally resolved. And those who sent warm gloves to their brother because he is cold to hold a machine gun when he shoots Ukrainian peasants and burns their homes. And those who wrote touching letters from home to the man who raped and slaughtered women on the streets of Nanjing. They are all guilty. None of them have been punished. They have simply forgotten about it. And so it is now.

So no matter how many times we try to prove to Western developers and publishers that by supporting Russian games or Russian narratives they are contributing to the genocide of Ukrainians, they will not understand and will not hear us. Boycotting games by Western developers and publishers will not help either, they will not even notice the share of Ukraine, and moreover, they will be additionally offended by us and will definitely not think about doing Ukrainian localization next time. Boycotts and public harassment of developers will only make it worse. The only thing that might work is a consistent and calm explanation of the toxicity of Russians and everything related to them. But this is not accurate.

Let's go back to Sid Meier's Civilization VII. The mysterious soul of Catherine the Great, who, let me remind you, is actually not Russian at all, but German, this is of course disgusting, but let's leave it to Firaxis Games. Unfortunately, the Russians are a really important "civilization" from the point of view of history as a force of evil, which negatively influenced the development of events on a global scale, unlike the same Buganda, already mentioned above. Just throwing her out of a game dedicated to the history of mankind will not work, no matter how much we would like to. Or maybe we shouldn't?

Playing as the Normans of Augustus, I landed in the New World, where I met Charlemagne, who ruled the Spaniards. For some time we developed side by side, without interfering with each other and even cooperating, but with the transition to modernity, Charles unexpectedly became Russian and built, God forbid, Moscow next to me. Well, I have always believed in the technological and economic path of development, but I kept a powerful army at hand... You simply cannot imagine how pleasant it is to bomb Moscow and St. Petersburg, and then turn them into raw material appendages (Firaxis, bring back the renaming of cities!!!). So now I will always include Russians in each of the games in Civilization VII, let them develop to modernity, and then destroy them. That is the purpose of the Russians in Civ VII.

Would I like to see Ukraine in Civilization VII? Absolutely! And like Scythia, Sarmatia or Rus in antiquity. And like the Hetmanate in the Age of Geographical Discoveries. And like Ukraine in modern times. Will Firaxis add it in one of the next updates – I don’t know, maybe. But if we harass the developers and boycott the game, the chances of this will only decrease.

To play or not to play?

Should I play Sid Meier's Civilization VII now? More likely no than yes. It's a good game, and I got my share of pleasure from a few games, especially "leveling" Russian cities. But at the current, to put it mildly, inadequate price, with current problems, before major patches - definitely not. As in the case of Civilization V and Civilization VI, the developers need to be given a year, or even two, to work on the bugs, and then Sid Meier's Civilization VII may be on the way. In the meantime, you can play the same HUMANKIND, from which Civilization VII borrowed a lot, this game has already been improved and it is actually not as bad as it seemed at the beginning.