Civilization 7 review: establishing your unique legacy

Sid Meier developed the first Civilization game in 1991 and has contributed to every iteration since. When I visited Firaxis Games last year, I saw that the company maintains the very computer Meier used to develop the game, which can still be booted up and played. Walking through the halls of the studio, I saw not only the legacy of its games but its employees, too, some of whom have children who work or worked at Firaxis, including Meier’s own son. It’s no wonder, then, that Civilization VII is a game about legacy and all the ways it leaves a mark on history and contributes to the future.

Civilization VII is a strategy game in which you shepherd a country or people plucked from throughout world history through the ages of time. As their leader, often a famous ruler or notable historical figure, your job is to grow your empire to become the preeminent society of the world either through conquest, commerce, culture, or scientific advancement. As time progresses, you must make choices and take actions for your civilization that determine how it develops into a world power. You must acquire resources, choose systems of government and social policy, research technologies to improve your civilization, defend it from threats, and keep your citizenry happy.

One way legacy manifests in Civilization VII is through the game’s new civ and leader system. In previous games, choosing a leader locked you into a particular civilization. Now, a civ and a leader are chosen independently of one another. Caesar Augustus is no longer tied to Rome but can now be the pharaoh of Egypt or the king of Spain. Since the Roman Empire is my Roman Empire, I really enjoy this change. Augustus ruled an empire that encompassed Europe and North Africa, so it makes historical and narrative sense that he can lead the civilizations of those geographic locations.

But beyond the little thrill my historian heart gets from pairing Augustus with Gaul… err France, the new system is simply a way to give players more flexibility. You don’t have to abandon a favored leader just because you don’t want to play as their civ for the umpteenth time, and the game even has a recommendation system that matches leaders with civs that synergize with their abilities.

Perhaps the most profound example of legacy in Civilization VII is the way civilizations transition between historical ages. Whereas a player’s civilization stayed the same throughout a game before, now, as you move between antiquity to the exploration age and the exploration age to the modern age, your civilization changes as well, evolving with history. Like Augustus and Egypt, it makes sense. Civilizations rise, fall, and change with the march of time. Depending on the choices you make and policies you pursue, yours will, too.

I started my game playing as the Mississippi empire of North America. Throughout the game, I had the choice of pursuing the goals of one of four advisers, each with their own sphere of influence: economic, military, culture, or science. They gave me quests to complete, like establish a certain number of cities or acquire different luxury resources. Since the Mississippi is a commerce and trade-focused civ, I chose the economic quests, and when it was time to transition to a new age, that choice unlocked more advanced economic-focused civilizations. It’s a really interesting, game mechanic version of that one Gladiator quote, “What we do now, echoes in eternity.” My Mississippi empire fell away and the Majapahit emerged in its place.

But legacy can also be complicated and difficult to navigate if you don’t understand the history it comes from. (Yes, I’m stretching this metaphor, but indulge me.) Civilization V is the only Civ I’ve played logging hundreds of hours, and going into VII, I’m kinda lost on some things. There’s an entire system that runs concurrently to the overall game, in which I have to figure out optimal building placement in my cities, taking into consideration things like “adjacency bonuses” and “specialist allocation” that I just do not understand after 20 hours. Reading the game’s prolific Civilopedia helps a little, but even that is so confusingly worded (and wordy!) that I’ve given up on trying to make sense of it. There are a lot of times when I make a choice with no strategy behind it because I simply have not figured out what’s going on. I get the feeling the whole system was put in place for players who like to min / max the hell out of their civs for competitive play, but I am a simple girl. I want to watch numbers go up and buy off my enemies with my massive piles of gold.

That’s worked out well for me. My civ is very wealthy and very well liked by my AI opponents, despite not totally understanding everything going on. There’s a level of satisfaction in slowly overcoming that learning curve that keeps me playing for “one more turn.” In a game of Civilization VII, some players will leave a legacy of conquest — others of inspiring cultural works. But the legacy I leave behind will be one of excellent civil engineering.

Civilization VII launches on February 11th on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch.