Civilization 7 is gearing up to be one of the biggest games of 2025 for strategy lovers, offering a fresh take on the beloved franchise. The first time I sat down to begin my review of the game, it felt like I blinked and I was suddenly 300 turns into the match—to say it’s entirely immersive is an understatement.
I recently had the opportunity to glimpse behind the scenes in an exclusive Dot Esports interview with creative director Ed Beach and executive producer Dennis Shirk, discussing the biggest and brightest additions players can expect in the Feb. 11 release.
When asked what the first step was when sitting down to plan Civ 7, Ed shared how the team took part in a “big post-mortem” for Civ 6, with whiteboards and wikis packed to the brim with data to help them understand where to go next.
Alongside the aim of improving player experience and the late game, the team always hopes to have “some big change in the formula” to keep fans interested in playing the newest addition to the franchise.
For Civ 7, the particular mantra that drove the team was “history comes in layers.” This message can be seen throughout the game and felt in its new approach to the Age system as your game evolves and takes new forms throughout each of the three stages.
Elaborating on this, Ed dove into a recent trip he took to the northern part of England, close to Hadrian’s Wall. Seeing the “Roman presence” and “castles and ruins all over the place” inspired him, solidifying this mantra as a natural focus for the team.
Alongside the gameplay approach, the aesthetic in Civ 7 is strikingly different from the games that have come before it. While Civ 5 took a more realistic approach to its visuals and Civ 6 ended up more cartoonish and colorful, Civ 7 manages to look as if it’s been plucked straight out of a tabletop game. It’s elegant but still has plenty of character.
When asked about the inspiration behind the change in aesthetics, Dennis shared how the art director, Jason Johnson, wanted to achieve something in between Civ 5 and Civ 6’s art styles and that he drew inspiration from museum dioramas and miniatures, calling the style “readable realism.”
Continuing, he described the natural creativity of the environment team that worked on Civ 7, noting how if they were playing a game of 40K, for example, it’s likely that their board would’ve been meticulously hand-crafted. He dubbed it “truly inspiring.”
Peeking behind the scenes for a moment, the pair revealed what they wished fans knew about working on Civ games and the upcoming title in particular.
“I think one thing that I’m not sure the fans are talking about quite as much … is that we really have boosted our efforts in our writing department this time,” Ed shared, expanding that there’s a whole new narrative system in Civ 7, fuelled by the efforts of writers and historians who did deep-dives into the leaders’ lives and their corresponding civilizations.
“The cool thing that I really like about it is all those stories are only triggered if the right conditions happen in your game world,” he said, giving the example of a story that only pops up if the same city has been hit by two floods within a certain number of turns.
“We could have put a lot of stories into the game, and just had, every five turns you get a story. But … we really wanted to put it together so it made sense, it felt like it was organically part of what’s going on in your world.”
Ed then estimated that there were over 1,500 unique storylets to discover in the game, pointing to the variety of potential narrative paths on offer. “It’s this huge new vector for us to enrich the experience that I don’t feel like people are talking about quite enough.”
Dennis highlighted how much of a mammoth task this was for the QA team to test—earlier saying the QA team had the hardest job out of everybody in the building—before agreeing, “It is probably one of the biggest back-end additions to the game, the biggest change that’s happening in the shadows.
While you’re playing it, it’s fairly seamless, these things just happen. But the amount of work that went into actually making this a thing, to give players this extra richness in the world to help them tell their own stories in their head… that was a really big lift.”
As you might imagine, the office has regular multiplayer sessions to balance and test the game. Ed tends to favor the Economic path to victory—he worked extensively on the Treasure Fleet mechanics—while Dennis is a fan of building Wonders and chasing a Culture victory.
The entire team’s passion for building authentic, engaging experiences for the player is evident, pointing to an exciting future for the franchise. Civ 7 comes out on Feb. 11, with Advanced Access kicking off a little earlier on Feb. 6, and it’s one to watch if you’re looking for something new in the world of rich, immersive strategy gaming.
Published: Jan 31, 2025 08:54 am