The Civilopedia in Sid Meier's Civilization 7 is meant to give players information on gameplay and mechanics, historical details, and useful hints/tips on how to navigate the game's complex systems. The current state of the Civilopedia, however, does not successfully achieve any of these things, and manages to make things even more confusing than they already were. None of the past versions of the Civilopedia have been perfect, and they were constantly updated over the years to make them more complete than their original form. Unfortunately, Civ 7's is glaringly problematic, and needs a major overhaul.

This issue might be one of the biggest that developers at Firaxis need to address in the coming months, but it's a shame that the Civilopedia was released in its current state as it will certainly be a point of frustration for anyone who tries to use it. It faces myriad issues, from simply not being intuitive for players to a general lack of organization or clarity to misleading or incorrect details about important game mechanics, and more. While Civ 7 is enjoyable for many different reasons, the Civilopedia is not only missing important features, it fails to serve its purpose.

The Civilopedia Doesn't Allow Robust Keyword Searches

Search Is Limited & It's A Challenge To Find What You Need

The first problem is the Civilopedia's basic search function. Let's say you want to find information on Independent Powers. Entering this into the search bar doesn't give any results, while typing "Independent" pulls up a single entry for "Befriending Independents." That entry mentions Independent Powers, but there are a handful of other entries that include the term "Independent Powers," e.g., City-States, that players would never know about because the entries don't pop up. The Civilopedia should search the entire database and entry details for keywords and provide you with all entries that mention or are relevant to that topic.

Having a general tab for Concepts is not only confounding, it's completely devoid of any meaning.

Lack of an adequate search feature makes navigating the Civilopedia an absolute nightmare. The way the Civilopedia tabs are designed is completely unintuitive, and they aren't alphabetized or organized in any meaningful way. Having a general tab for Concepts is not only confounding, it's completely devoid of any meaning - everything is a "concept," and this category is way too broad.

On the other end, an entire tab for Government (with entries limited by Age) is surely narrow enough that it could be collapsed into another category. Diplomacy, Influence, Government, Statehood, etc., all have overlapping concepts, but have been divided up confusingly.

The Civilopedia shouldn't be Age-specific. Limiting what you can see in each Age contradicts the philosophy behind breaking the game into chapters. You should be able to plan ahead and see what will be available in future Ages to build a better strategy. Wonders, Techs, Civics, Government, etc.: What is the purpose of limiting what a player can see in the early stages of the game? On that same note, the Civilopedia needs to be accessible from the start screen. Players can't look up or concepts listed for each Leader or Civilization until they actually start a campaign.

Civilopedia Entries Are Confusing & Incomplete

Terminology And Information Isn't Consistent & Details Are Vague

Entries in the Civilopedia often use inconsistent terminology and convey inconsistent information, introducing confusion to an already complex game. For example, the entry for Celebration says, "Celebration unlocks a Tradition slot." If you then look up Traditions, there is no mention of how to unlock these slots, which is because Celebrations actually unlock Social Policy slots (not Tradition slots). There is no entry for Social Policies, but instead, this is located under Policies: Basics, and when you read the description for Slotting, it doesn't state that slots are unlocked via Celebrations - that's listed in a Tip at the bottom.

For example, you want to figure out how Commanders increase Happiness in Settlements. There is no Concept entry for Commanders, first of all, so looking at Happiness then directs you to the Unhappiness: Consequences page, where you find out that Commanders don't increase Happiness but decrease unhappiness. These mean the exact same thing and have the same in-game effect - this language differentiation is completely unnecessary, and the information shouldn't require acrobatics to track down. Jumping to different Civilopedia entries to acquire basic information about game systems is time-consuming and frustrating.

Migrants are another example of missing and/or incomplete Civilopedia details, where the entry provides no information on how Migrants are earned.

There are also instances where concepts or are used but don't actually appear in the game or can't be further researched. The Happiness page describes a "Sources of Local Unhappiness Section" that frankly does not exist in the game at this point. Or, while reading about Espionage, you discover there are two separate rewards: secret and top secret.

These are not detailed in any Espionage report or tutorial, and they don't have their own entries. After playing for several hours, I noticed that Migrants were suddenly appearing in the Capital, which seemed to line up with Espionage actions being completed - though I'm still uncertain.

Civ 7 Can Fix The Civilopedia In A Few Simple Ways

What & Who Is The Civilopedia For?

There are too many examples of these issues to detail here, but they raise a deeper concern. What is the purpose of the Civilopedia? Is it meant to provide historical context or information about gameplay concepts?

Maybe it should be both, but it definitely shouldn't be either/or. The primary reason players use the Civilopedia is to understand game systems and mechanics, not for a history lesson, so including entire tabs (e.g., the Culture tab) full of only historical context is an exercise in futility. The first step in fixing the Civilopedia is getting on the same page about what it's for.

The first step in fixing the Civilopedia is getting on the same page about what it's for.

The Civilopedia should be player-oriented and include a more robust search feature. Things need to be recategorized in more meaningful and intuitive ways - the Concepts tab is too general to be useful, while Government is too niche to justify its own tab. Another simple fix is to remove Age-specific limitations on what you can see and to make the Civilopedia accessible from the startup page. Above all, information and concepts in Civ 7's Civilopedia for each entry need to serve a functional purpose and should clarify information, not make the game more confusing.