Several Civilization 7 updates have arrived since February, but none of them have had quite the impact that either players or Firaxis might have hoped. Over on Steam, the 4X sequel continues to bear the shame of an official ‘mixed’ rating; in terms of daily concurrent users, it’s also still being outstripped by its predecessor Civ 6. But that might be about to change. Stellaris, Manor Lords, Age of Empires, and the other strategy stalwarts may have pulled away from Civ 7, but the latest overhaul, arriving today, is certain to close the gap.
You reach the end of the Modern Age. You’ve won the game. But you’ve also built a gigantic army and you want to see what it can do. Until now, it’s hard luck – the turn limit has been reached and the game is finished. But thanks to the new Civilization 7 update, you can now use the coveted ‘one last turn’ feature, extending your match for as long as you like. The win status won’t change, but if you want to experiment with your units and unlocked technologies, try to conquer any remaining rivals, or just build up a giant empire, you can. That’s a transformative change for the 4X game, but Firaxis is also fine-tuning the details.
Natural disasters have been a pain in Civ 7 so far. They occur too often, and after they’re finished, you have to repair destroyed buildings one by one. Thanks to the new update, the regularity of floods, eruptions, and the rest has been drastically toned down. If you’re playing on the ‘light’ setting, natural disasters occur 50% less often. On ‘moderate’, it’s 25%. The ‘catastrophic’ setting remains unchanged, though, so you can still play a natural-disaster-ridden challenge run. However, there’s a new ‘repair all’ button, so you can instantly rebuild anything that’s been wrecked, without having to cycle through the menu.
The update makes several other crucial changes to Civilization 7’s interface. If you select a Great Person, every tile where they can use their special ability is now highlighted on your map, so you don’t have to move them around until you find the right spot. There’s also a tracker in each city menu which shows you your most recently completed building – if you’re playing Civ 7 into the small hours and starting to lose track of what you’ve made, this is vital.
Similarly, when you select a new potential Wonder, the menu will tell you straight away whether you or another leader has already built it. Also, if you have several units packed onto a commander, and you want to upgrade them all, you can now do so with a single button – like with the new ‘repair all’ function, there’s no need to cycle everything in the menu individually.
Research queuing is finally here, too. Until now, if you wanted to unlock, say, Mathematics in the Antiquity Age, you would have to select Sailing first. When that research was completed, you’d have to go back to the tech menu and pick Writing, then Currency, then Navigation, and so on. With research queuing, you can choose the ultimate technology that you want to get to, set the ones you want to unlock on the way, and just leave your civilization to it – you only have to use the menu once, to set a course through the tech tree, instead of re-opening it every time a new branch is unlocked.
There are also ten new resources in the form of rubies, flax, hardwood, rice, mangoes, llamas, clay, limestone, wild game, and tin, and the resource distribution system has been rebalanced. While distribution is randomized from game to game, some resources are guaranteed to spawn during certain Ages, since they’re essential for certain advancements and tech. On the contrary, certain treasure resources will now only appear in particular continents or hemispheres of the map.
Lastly, multiplayer teams are now available, so instead of playing 1v1v1v1, you can pair up your civilizations and host more complex co-op versus co-op games. If one player on your team wins a victory, you win the game, too. However, other aspects of the match, like your legacy path, are personal to each player.
The giant new Civilization 7 update 1.2.0 is out today, Tuesday April 22. Although you may argue that a lot of the new features could and should have been present in the strategy game from the start, at least they’re here now; it’s taken a couple of months, but Civ 7 already feels a lot closer to what we were expecting before it was released.
Check out some of the other best grand strategy games, or maybe the best RTS games available on PC right now.
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