Summary
Civilization 7is easily one of the most anticipated games of 2025, although the year is also looking stacked withplanned releases likeGrand Theft Auto 6. Comparing the two is apples and oranges, of course, because they appeal to different audiences. TheCivilizationfranchise has a long legacy, and it looks likeCivilization 7is planning to shake up that legacy with significant changes to Leaders and Ages, complemented by a ton of new mechanics like the Crisis system and Legacy Paths.
Of course,Civilization 7is built on the foundation the franchise is known for, meaning several decisions were informed by elements ofCivilization 6and every game before it. Game Rant recently visited Firaxis Games in Baltimore, Maryland to spend a few hours playingCivilization 7and also briefly spoke with executive producer Dennis Shirk and game designer Carl Harrison about the new features inCiv 7. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
For a full contextual understanding of this interview, we recommend also reading ourCivilization 7Hands-On Preview.
Q: This is the seventh mainline game, not counting spin-offs and stuff. When you’re looking at history and trying to make this game, how do you stay inspired to do it after so many titles?
Shirk:The good thing is, is, because we’re a building full of history nerds, there is always something to be inspired by. One of the big systems is the crisis system, and one of the inspirations for that, as an example, is theFall of Rome. Obviously, Rome as an empire is not around today. Rome is scattered across the globe in different forms and cultures, and there’s this idea that, in each age, some cataclysmic event is usually happening in the world. Whether it’s the Fall of Rome or World War 2, there are things that have all happened in history. We’ve never modeled that in a Civ game.
This is just one example of something we’ve done with this crisis system, this “choose your method of destruction” that slowly ramps up toward the end of an age. When you have that crisis start coming online, you have to actually choose things you’re going to be assailed with. It’s a cool system inspired by real life that we’ve never done before. The good thing is there are endless amounts of real-world history and situations to gain inspiration from, and that really helped decide our approach to Civ 7.
If we were staying in the same exact paradigm as Civ 4, 5, and 6, this would just be Civ 6.5 versus a true Civ 7. I think that it’s a lot harder to think of new game systems that work in those same exact systems all over again, especially those our fans have not already guessed we’d do. Ed decided to go with a new approach and jump into the deep end of “You know what? Let’s try something new.” That’s what’s most exciting to me about this because people have to approach it with fresh eyes this time. There are no assumptions about the way you’re going toplay or win a game of Civ 7.
Harrison:It’s not just that we’re all historians. We’re also gamers. It really helps that this is a game we enjoy playing, so there’s always something where we’re like “Oh, what if we tried this? What if we did that? Oh, here’s a cool idea?” And that is the best part of it for me.
Shirk:As a producer, I can vouch for how uncomfortable that can be sometimes, how late in the process that arrives - the “cool ideas” - but it’s like, “Oh, no, that is cool. We have to try that.”
Q: With the changes to leaders, we’re looking at big representations instead of big heads of state. What has the process been like for picking these newer leaders for Civ 7?
Shirk:There will always be a section of fan favorites in every game, leaders that were so popular in the past and are critical to our fans. If they don’t get to play as X, they’re going to be upset, like Sid said. During Civ 5 actually, because we ended upshipping Civ 5 without Genghis Khan, Sid said, “What?” We ended up releasing Genghis Khan the next month in a free update because he was right. We shouldn’t have shipped without Genghis Khan, so there’s always going to be that collection, that foundation.
We are also going deep to find not only coverage across the globe, we want to make sure to represent as many people as possible, but to also dig deep into our bag of tricks in terms of that’s an obscure industrial or cultural leader that is super interesting that nobody knows about. Plugging some of those and representing them in the game is always a great choice. Carl and his team, since he’s on content design, can probably rant about this a little bit more because their whole job is working with the historians to find content spaces to fill.
Harrison:It’s not even about just ones that are obscure and people don’t know about. It’s also the ones that people do know about that we’re like, “That’s so cool. We’ve never done it before. Let’s get them in.” It’s really neat to be able to do that kind of representation or bonuses, whatever it happens to be.
Q: What was the driving factor in your civilization changing with every age?
Shirk: The motivation for that comes from Ed’s presentation about London. It’s because Rome became all of these - and then those became all of these. Its culture expanded outward from there. In a game of Civ 6, let’s say you choose aCiv where their uniques are modernbecause that’s where their strength is. You’ve got to play the first three-quarters of the game as a generic civilization player for the most part. You might have an agenda and stuff you’re playing with, but your cool stuff is not going to come online until that real-world Power actually happened. With this one, you’re playing Civs at the height of their power because that actually happened in our world. Rome existed at the height of its power, then Rome was decimated, became other things, and other Civs rose up.
This was an opportunity to represent and model a new culture emerging based on the way you’ve played. If you’ve built a massive horse army as Rome and rampaged across the landscape, that’s a prime candidate for Mongolia. you’re able to choose Mongolia as the next culture that emerges on the other side of that age transition, and you get to play Mongolia at the height of its power, all the things that came with Mongolia like unique units, structures, districts, all of those things. Eventually, there’s going to be a crisis, that age transition happens, and then you’ve got some new choices for the modern age. What emerges from Mongolia? They don’t exist in the same way anymore. You’ve got the legacy you’re pulling along, you’ve still got that Roman central district at the heart of your city providing the same benefits because that’s part of your history. Ed really wanted to model and change that paradigm with Civ, to have people play this model of emerging cultures over time.
Q: We’ve got new units like Army commanders too. Can you talk a little bit about designing new units and maybe how many new units are in Civ 7?
Harrison:Absolutely. With the new ages, the magnification of our microscope on each age is greater than it’s ever been before. We’re able to zoom in on particular unit types and have more units of each type specific to the age they’re appearing in, letting us get more granular there.
That also applies to ourCiv unique units. Because we have a clearer sort of starting point and decline-type ending point, we can say unique units last that entire time. Once you unlock your unique unit, that unit will be with you the whole age. In Civ 5 and 6, your unique unit could be there for just the swordsman, and by the time you moved it across the map to attack your neighbor, it was done. That’s no longer the case.
Shirk:If you restart your game at some point and try a different culture, the amount of work that the art team has done to support the content side with culturally specific everything, including the units, every unique you’re playing throughout all time, the architecture you’re staring at, the units within the unit, all having various degrees of uniform armor, etc. The way that they fight an extreme amount of work is going into making sure that we’re modeling all of these things to feel appropriate for the time you’re in and the culture that you’re playing.
Q: For the legacy paths, they’re kind of the same thing as victories, and in the final Age, they are victory conditions. My question is, in building up to these victory conditions, why choose the word “legacy” exactly?
Shirk:These will unlock what you can carry forward; the concept behind them is that they are goalposts for you. One of these issues we had with Civ 6 is that a lot of players could play aimlessly until they decided what they were going to for. By the time they’ve decided that, the world was starting to form, and it might be too late to actually achieve that victory. This allows me, as a typical builder-culture player, to start on a legacy path that I want to go down.
I want toplay a culture game, so I can put that milestone down. I’m then positioning my Civ to be better in later ages if I want to go on a longer-term cultural victory. I don’t just play blind and eventually land somewhere. This gives me milestones, and in addition, I’m going to earn legacy points so that when I go through an age transition, I can choose the kinds of things I want to bring forward with me, like the bonuses related to the culture or science game you played. That’s what those legacy paths are for. It gives you direction and more bonuses in that particular realm of gameplay.
[END]
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