Sid Meier's Civilization 7

Sid Meier's Civilization 7 was provided by 2K for review. Thank you!

After what seemed like the longest wait in history, Sid Meier's Civilization 7 has finally launched. While everyone knew that this new entry to the series would bring many changes, it's quite hard to overstate just how much Civilization 7 shakes up the formula for Civilization games. While some core elements, such as the way units function in the game, remain largely unchanged, the rest of the game has seen a pretty dramatic overhaul in how things are done.

Civilization 7 is based around 3 ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. In a standard game, players will progress through all 3 ages, and gameplay will shift dramatically as you advance between them. The Antiquity Age is all about founding your core cities, making initial contact with your neighbors, and perhaps even conquering them to lessen the competition later on. The Exploration Age opens up the full world map by having ships that can navigate the oceans, and the Modern Age encourages players to confront each other by having little land left to seize while giving players a high city limit.

When the current age ends, which is determined by a set number of turns that can be decreased if a civilization is very technologically advanced, everyone's cities (besides their capitals) will revert to towns, meaning you can only purchase units/buildings there, not produce, becoming more reliant on your capital. Civilizations may also lose a large amount of their army if they don't have enough Army Commanders available to support them between ages, and all units are transported back to their cities. Thus, the ages function like phases in the game, sort of a soft reset where Civilizations will somewhat start afresh. Still, with the territory and bonuses they accumulated in the previous age.

Wars also won't carry on between ages, although if you were previously at war, you'll start the age with a relationship penalty with any AI states you were at war with.

Does this system work well? It depends on your approach. In my initial games, I didn't understand the Age system, nor was it very well explained in the game, which became a bit of a theme with Civilization 7. Therefore, I found the age system a little frustrating at first. Once you understand that you need Army Commanders to keep your army between ages and that the Legacy Points system counts towards your final victory and carries over between ages, it makes much more sense.

Therein lies the issue I have with Civilization 7. I think the actual mechanics of the game are pretty interesting and, for the most part, work well. The problem is that the game just isn't explained or presented in an understandable fashion. I've spoken to a couple of others who have played, and they also didn't understand the Legacy Points system on their first game or even knew how to view what points they had. In a Civilization 7 Livestream hosted on the Firaxis Twitch channel, a player pointed out that there is no way to check what bonuses you have previously selected for your civilization in some cases.

Once you've played a few games and understand how it all works and how you need to play the game to win, I quite like this new direction that Civilization 7 goes in. It just needs to explain itself to the player better. Right now, it's treating players like they should know how all these mechanics work, but even if you are a Civilization veteran, these mechanics are brand new, and you won't understand them. This can be exacerbated by tutorials seeming to be disabled in multiplayer matches.

In a game like Civilization 7, players need to be given data clearly and understandably, and the UI isn't the best at providing the info needed. Right now, you go in assuming it will be like the other Civilization games, and the game doesn't tell you that it's any different at first, it's something you don't realize until later on when you realize you've fallen behind the competition.

The greatest pleasure I had from Civilization 7 was expanding and growing my empire. As cities grow, each population gained lets you claim another tile around the city, both giving that tile's resource yield and visually constructing buildings on that tile. It makes the game take on an almost city-builder aspect at points. Roads are now automatically constructed between cities, and "worker/builder" units are a thing of the past, with the city growth mechanic instead being how you improve tiles and their yield, and I like that change.

Presentation-wise, Civilization 7 feels like a step up. The game board is presented well, with varied biomes, with cliffs and coastlines looking nice. The expansion of cities across the world map makes the cities feel much more realistic and grand compared to the single-tile cities of the past. The music is also a plus point, as in classic Civilization games, it changes depending on your civilization, so it's always nice to hear a mix of cultural music.

There are some bugs right now in Civilization 7, and unfortunately, they mostly seem to plague the already-troubled UI system. Occasionally, tool-tips won't display, windows are sometimes displayed in the wrong order, and a couple of times, the controls on my gamepad entirely stopped functioning for a few seconds. We also had some issues with certain icons and in-game assets taking a long time to load, such as a city not visually appearing for several seconds or technology icons not being present for a while. I razed a city, and the name stayed on the map for the rest of the game.

Diplomacy with the AI has always been an issue in the Civilization games, and while I feel like the AI in Civilization 7 is a bit more measured in their approach, and you can understand why they take certain actions now, there are still some issues. When I was fighting the Romans for example, they offered me a city in exchange for peace, I accidentally took the city off the table, but when I re-added the city to the table, the game said the AI would reject the offer. Sure enough, when I attempted to propose the offer, it was rejected, even though it was the offer the AI had made me.

We also had several issues with multiplayer matches, where players were getting desynced and crashing to the desktop. While it was generally fine with two or three-player matches, once we added a fourth, someone always had an issue at some point.

Is Civilization 7 a bad game? By no means. It's fun, and some aspects feel improved by the game's slightly faster-paced, streamlined nature. But I can't help but feel that if the game had been given 2 or 3 more months in the oven, it would have launched to a much better reception. There are things that are straight-up missing from the UI that would be good to know. The new mechanics are not explained properly to newcomers or veterans of the series, and the bugs that crop up from time to time just exacerbate the situation.

Sid Meier's Civilization 7 - Steam Deck Performance

Civilization 7 feels like it was designed with the Steam Deck in mind, and that might not be so much of a surprise if you remember that the game is also on the Nintendo Switch. It supports 1280x800 as a resolution, so there are no black bars. It has the best controller support of any game in the series, and the text and UI are legible throughout.

Although I do have some problems with the UI, as I mentioned above, its layout is perfect for a handheld experience.

In SteamOS, I limited the frame rate to 30 FPS and the TDP to 8W.

When it comes to the graphical settings, the game defaults you to pretty decent settings, it seems as though Firaxis fine-tuned the settings for the Steam Deck themselves, which I decided to stick with for this one. Pushing the visuals higher makes it stutter when trying to zoom in and out, and going lower is possible with higher frame rates but drains the battery unnecessarily. The default settings are already low for battery drain, and moving to 40 FPS isn't as beneficial for this kind of game.

At these settings, the game pretty much runs at 30 FPS the vast majority of the time. Zooming into the cities will cause stuttering and slowdown, which can't be avoided. But as long as you play at a standard zoom level, you shouldn't see performance problems.

The power draw on my Steam Deck OLED was steady at around 9W- 11W, and temperatures were around 55C- 60C. So you can expect around 4.5 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck OLED and around 3.5 hours from a Steam Deck LCD.

Accessibility:

Sid Meier's Civilization 7 has a few accessibility options, such as rebindable controls, colorblind assistance, adjusting the font size, and displaying subtitles in cinematic scenes.

Conclusion:

Sid Meier's Civilization 7 is a good game at its core. When you're deep into playing the game and you understand the concepts and mechanics of it, it all works quite well together. Still, while you're learning the game, it can be a pretty unpleasant experience, plagued with unexplained game mechanics and UI issues that make the whole thing more confusing than it needs to be.

One thing you can't deny about Civilization 7 is that it runs beautifully on the Steam Deck. The graphics look good, the battery life is long, the performance is mostly smooth, and the controls are surprisingly well-adapted to a controller. You can play just as well on the Steam Deck as you would on a desktop PC.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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