Civilization 7 dev on Ages system and series shakeup: "It's going to be the hardest thing for fans to get adjusted to"
Civilization 7 will debut a new 'Ages' system that should lead to a more curated gameplay experience each game. We spoke to Creative Director Ed Beach about how different it makes things.
Lloyd Coombes
29th Aug 2024 11:15
Images via 2K Games
Civilization 7 will see a sizeable change in the way each match works, introducing a new trio of Ages. As players work through these in a chapter-like fashion, they'll complete objectives and face new Crises that will test any in-game leader, with the potential for players to form new civilizations out of the ashes of prior ones.
We've covered the new system in depth in our Gamescom preview, but I was able to catch up with the series' Creative Director, Ed Beach, to talk about just how seismic this shift is for Civilization 7.
"It's going to be the hardest thing for fans to get adjusted to"
Since Civilization 7's reveal, there's been some consternation amongst fans about how the Ages system will affect the open-ended, almost sandbox nature of a traditional Civ game.
"It changes the fundamental structure of the game," Beach admits.
"A 4X game traditionally just starts very small with maybe two units, and it just builds and builds and builds until it's getting wider and wider and explodes.
"There's so much to manage and keep track of late in the game. We really wanted to make it so that was more manageable for players.
"The Ages system gives us points where we reset the game a little bit, and players get a chance to get a little bit of calm and to breathe and to get that scale back down. So that helps a lot of things. It helps with pacing in single-player.
"It's a very fundamental structural change, which we're really excited about."
From the ashes
Crises will strike towards the end of each Age, and players can react to these in different ways. Make the most of the chaos, and you can find yourself with bonuses going into the next Age or shifting your entire civilization into something else entirely.
While Beach notes that the team had begun experimenting with leaders moving between civilizations in the last game (Kublai Khan, for example, could lead Mongolia or China at the start of the game), it's a much bigger shift this time because players can now pivot multiple times per game.
"It's going to be probably the hardest thing for our fans to get adjusted to, but I would argue that there were always some wacky things in Civ," he explains.
"We've just sort of moved around where the wackiness is. So, for instance, before you would have things like "I could start at in 4000 B.C. as Germany", but Germany is not going to be founded as a nation for centuries - many, many centuries, millennia at that point.
"But, I'm playing as Germany and I'm right next to the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Greeks who are very, very good at that part of the game.
"We actually found, in multiplayer, no one would pick Germany or America or Canada or something like that because why would you pick these? I don't get my bonuses for 300 turns and I'm gonna be wiped out before that comes along. So now, it's more sensible that everyone has bonuses in all the parts of the game.
"Yes, there are some wacky bonuses that can come out of it. We keep the AI, the AI sticks with historical pathways so they sort of seem pretty sensible to the players about how their leaders and civs line up with each other. But if the player wants to kind of invent in their head their own fantasy, like moving from Egypt to Mongolia because I was great at mastering all the grasslands where all the horses lived. Yeah, that's fine with us."
For more on Civilization 7, be sure to check out Beach's comments teasing what could be included in expansions, as well as how the team scaled development for the Nintendo Switch.
About The Author
Lloyd Coombes
Lloyd is GGRecon's Editor-in-Chief, having previously worked at Dexerto and Gfinity, and occasionally appears in The Daily Star newspaper. A big fan of loot-based games including Destiny 2 and Diablo 4, when he's not working you'll find him at the gym or trying to play Magic The Gathering.
