Civilization 7 is making major changes to its game's model, and I think that it might undercut one of the things I like about the franchise the most. I've thought about it a lot because I wanted to give Firaxis Game veterans who have worked on Civ the benefit of the doubt about their recent decisions to change underlying aspects of the Civ games. The main issue arguably causing the most controversy is the severing of ties between civilizations and their leaders. After all, this is a Civilization game, and previous iterations would have their most memorable (or infamous) real historical figure(s) tied to the civilization they influenced in real history.

Civ 7 forgoes that notion, instead allowing players to choose any leader and any culture, mixing and matching like a trip to the frozen yogurt store. While this, on its face, isn't that big of a deal — after all, leaders were essentially just figureheads for the civ in previous games — it does create a peculiar issue of eventually running into situations where someone like Teddy Roosevelt could subsequently be the leader of a Greek, German, or Chinese civilization. And while as absurd as that may seem on its face, besides a not-ideal Leader Bonus, I could live with that change.

Civilization 7 Is Not About Civilization Anymore

Create Your Own History

What's more troubling than the mixing and matching of leaders is the changing of civs between Eras. In the recent developer stream, Civ 7 developers explained more about the three Era system and how, during each Era, it's possible to switch to whatever civilization you desire, completely replacing the previous one. But it's more than just the visual change — this would essentially open the door for any civilization to drastically change to another civ between eras, as long as the prerequisites were met.

This totally forgoes the notion of a single historical thread and transforms the campaign into true fiction, where the barriers of cultural and social change in any given group of people now become irrelevant. That's not to say there aren't historical periods where one dominant culture or religion replaced another in a specific geographic area, but the way that Civ 7 will go about it seems to have no rhyme or reason. That's to say there is a reason, but it is completely arbitrary and left to the player.

A similar mechanic caused some controversy previously when fans pointed out that the trailer showed the animation for the conquering action, with buildings with rich and detailed cultural relevance being instantly replaced by new ones with no connection to the previous ones. In Civ 6, when a new town or city was conquered, it would remain that same culture until reaching a new era, where the buildings would eventually be replaced by the new owner's civilization and culture.

How Will The Civilization 7 Era Change Work?

Choose Your Path

Firaxis themselves explained in a recent developer livestream when Ed Beach, Creative Director, said, "Civ 7, is it the same as Civ 6? Absolutely not," eventually explaining the choices during Eras more clearly. Outlining the potential paths for Hatshepsut — the fifth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt — his flow chart pointed toward obvious choices, like Aksum (an East African and South Arabian society that originated from classical antiquity) and Egypt — then showed her potentially transitioning into civs like Mongolia.

While in a sense, he's right that meeting certain "requirements" could justify an Egyptian empire transforming into the Mongolian hordes (I guess?), it completely gamifies the different civilizations, replacing a desire to explore an interesting faction or culture into stat min/max game. Because, at the end of the day, I'm a gamer, and I'm not going to pick the Songhai Empire because geographically it was closer to Egypt and makes more sense for me to become them — I'm going to pick whatever is best for my chances to make it through the next Era. Putting the onus on the player to adhere to historical accuracy will result in, well, non-historical campaigns.

Instead, the justification is that I'm supposed to carve out my own historical timeline, except in this case, I think that history generally might just not matter at all anymore. Reducing each civ down into a Terran- or Zerg-like choice, where decisions don't depend on the strengths and weaknesses of that society throughout the ages, will create disted civilizations that make little to no sense, with the baked-in lessons on history being lost in the process.

Who Cares About History, Anyway?

Firaxis Seems To Really Care

To say that Firaxis is flippant when it comes to real historical accuracy would just be untrue. In fact, they've painstakingly, over the years, strived for some level of historical accuracy and education in its series of games by consulting with anthropologists and historians. It is one of the reasons I like Civilization. As a child, it helped me learn interesting factoids I wouldn't have otherwise known and introduced me to different distinct cultures. The Eras as well, served as an introduction to history on huge turning points in humanity that my Social Studies class hadn't gotten to yet. In this new version, that may be lost, replaced in favor of the next S-tier meta build.

In Civ 7, players are limited to the Antiquity Age, Exploration, and Modern Ages.

More than modernizing the game for a new audience with a lower attention span (which is part of it), it's pretty undeniable that gameplay mechanics are going to take the front seat in Civ 7 over historical accuracy. While I'm sure that the information in the game will still be accurate and true to history, the ability to change to whatever civilization you want after achieving a certain Era just doesn't fall in line with how civilizations are really formed.

Societies don't really get to choose where they go based on a set number of conditions, and trying to justify this with the radical transformative periods of time like the rise of the Roman Empire is really missing the nuance of history or is just not an argument made in good faith. Those societies, while transformed over a short period of time, still retained many of the cultural and social norms established for hundreds or thousands of years previously. The ability to select based on what's best is, sadly, not how it works.

Simplification Does Not Mesh Well With 4X Strategy, Or Civ

You Can't Satisfy Everyone

In Civ 7, players are limited to the Antiquity Age, Exploration, and Modern Ages, while in Civilization 6, there were nine total eras, including the Future Era that was introduced in Civilization 6: Gathering Storm. In Civ 5, there were seven eras. In both games, each of these eras accurately reflected major changes in humanity and civilization, whether that be the Middle Ages, Renaissance period, or industrialization. It also served as a turning point in the game to get new tech.

It's important to note that while Civilization 7 sounds like a more simplified version (and it is), according to devs, these will also be broken up by significant and unique events within each era so only time will tell how much history will actually matter.

I love strategy games, but there is just something about 4X that I can't stand, and the Civilization franchise is the one exception for me. I understand where they are coming from in wanting to simplify things and open it up to a greater audience, but so far, while the new animations have been impressive, I'm not a fan of some of these gameplay decisions. From the looks of things for now — this effort in simplification and player choice (two things I'm usually a proponent of) may strip the historical bits of the game away in favor of just another 4X game, not the Civilization 7 game that I want.

Source: Sid Meier's Civilization/YouTube