Sid Meier's Civilization needs to keep reinventing itself to stay relevant

When I first got to sit down and play a couple dozen turns of Civilization 7 last year, I had one key takeaway: It was a lot more different from its predecessors than I was expecting. And for me, that was definitely a good thing. Leaders and civs have been divorced from each other on the startup screen—you can have Ben Franklin lead Egypt or Queen Hatshepsut lead Rome. You pick a new civ for each of its three historical ages, similar to Humankind. Each civ has its own perk tree. Districts have been significantly reworked from Civ 7. It's a lot. Maybe the biggest departure from one mainline Civ game to the next in the franchise's history.

This hasn't come without controversy. The question looms: how much can you change Civilization before it's no longer a main series Civilization game? If you're asking me, though, the answer is quite a bit more. This series has been around since before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and has inspired waves of historical strategy games that have gone on to inspire waves of their own. It's a grandparent at this point. I wouldn't even mind if they went further into the weeds than Civ 7 already is.

A big part of why it doesn't bother me is the fact that the older Civs remain so accessible and so playable to this day. Different parts of them have held up better than others, but I think you could sit down as a total newcomer to the series today and play Civ 4, Civ 5, or Civ 6 and have a really good experience. Those games aren't going anywhere. I have friends who still mostly play Civ 4, and see the era of one military unit per tile as high heresy. Civ 5 has remained my favorite all the way through the long post-launch life cycle of Civ 6. I fired it up again just over this last winter break.

So the most offensive thing Firaxis could possibly do, in my opinion, is give us essentially the same game again with better graphics. Civ 6 was never different enough to fully pull me away from Civ 5. I need something with a really strong pitch for why I'd switch over. Why would I play the launch version of Civ 7 over any of the other three relatively modern Civ games that already benefit from tons of expansions, patches, and a rich modding community? I don't want Civ to turn into something like Call of Duty or Madden where new entries often feel more like going through the motions than anything. And dang it, Civ 7 seems to want to give me a compelling answer to that question.

Prior to this entry, every main series Civ game had a different game director. Civ 7 is being helmed by Civ 6's Ed Beach, which initially rubbed me the wrong way. "But it's tradition!" I'd shout. "We need a fresh perspective!" But what I think this opportunity has turned into is, for the first time ever, seeing someone who finished an entire Civilization game getting to take a step back and think about what they would have done differently. And it seems like maybe that led to a more daring direction than the series would have gone otherwise. Beach already got his version of a "safe" Civ game out of his system with Civ 6. So now, why not swing for the fences? Get a little weird with it?

Civ-likes, as a specific subset of 4X, have become a bit of a crowded club over the last few years, too. We got Humankind from Amplitude, Millennia from C Prompt, Ara: History Untold from Oxide, and the somewhat divergent Old World from Mohawk. But for me, none of them have really come all that close to challenging Civ for the crown. The one that comes closest, Old World, is also the one that's the most different from the Civ formula, and I don't think that's a coincidence.

So to see Firaxis look at some of these competitors and incorporate bits of their innovative ideas here and there is also exciting, because frankly, I trust them to do it better. There is some kind of noticeable difference in craft at work here. There is a secret sauce. It's why I keep going back to Civ 5 and Civ 6 over and over and I've barely touched Humankind or Ara since launch (and might never touch Millennia again), other than maybe when I hear that they dropped some kind of huge patch. I'm glad that competition exists, because I think it's pushing Firaxis to reexamine their own design ideas.

I know there is probably a subset of players, maybe the type who don't really play games other than Civ, who would be happy to get a fairly safe sequel every five to ten years, and who would put hundreds more hours into roughly the same game with better graphics. But that's not the path I want to see Civilization take, choked by inertia and bogged down in decadence like a once-great empire fading into obscurity. I want to see a Civ that is bold, innovative, and recognizes that times change. Something new gets built on the ruins of what came before. I'm hoping Civilization 7 will truly be that game.