Civilization VII review: A major overhaul solves Civ’s oldest problems

You can spend influence on everything from treaties to espionage.

Samuel Axon

You can spend influence on everything from treaties to espionage.

Samuel Axon

Influence is used to build favor with, leverage, and ultimately acquire independent settlements.

Samuel Axon

Influence is used to build favor with, leverage, and ultimately acquire independent settlements.

Samuel Axon

You can spend influence on everything from treaties to espionage.

Samuel Axon

Influence is used to build favor with, leverage, and ultimately acquire independent settlements.

Samuel Axon

Most critically, it plays a role in a system of war support. When a war occurs between two civilizations, every leader in the game (not just those two) can spend influence to support one side or another. The side with the most support suffers significantly less war weariness and fewer diplomatic consequences for the continuation of the war.

If you have high influence yields and pour it all into supporting a war that’s important to you strategically, you can put yourself in a much better position.

It works extremely well, and it simplifies a lot of disparate systems that have been tried in Civ over the years into one coherent thing that’s much easier to understand and manage than ever before.

Of all the major additions in Civilization VII, this is my favorite. For the first time, I find diplomacy fun instead of a chore.

Grab bag: Steam Deck, minor gripes, and hopes for the future

Those are the big categories of changes in VII, but there are a few things of note that don’t neatly fit into any of these buckets, so let’s rapid-fire through a few.

Steam Deck, consoles, and controller support

Consoles have always been a footnote in the Civilization franchise’s storied history. There was Civilization Revolution, a stripped-down version of the game that came out on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. (It was better than you’d think if you approached it on its own terms, but it wasn’t the desktop PC Civ experience by any stretch.)

Civilization VI got ports for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Switch, but the ports were not very good at all. The game was playable, but the ports were definitely an afterthought.

So it’s interesting that Civilization VII will have PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch versions launching the same day as the PC, Mac, and Linux ones. Along with that, the game is Steam Deck Verified—which wasn’t even a concept when the last Civ game came out.