Creative director of Civilization 7 on the new eras, leaders and cultures ‘without any written data’

Civilization 7one of the most highly anticipated games of 2025, will feature a slew of major changes, perhaps most noticeably the new Ages mechanic. A game of Citizen 7 will cover three different eras – ancient, exploration and modern – but players will keep the same leader throughout. In 2024, Polygon had a hands-on preview of the game at Gamescom and had a chance to talk to some of the Firaxis Games team, such as executive producer Dennis Shirk. According to Shirk it is Citizen 7 creative director Ed Beach “didn’t want to make a movie Marital status 6.5; he wanted to do something that would make our fans start over. The old strategies won’t work. They need to open up and look at it with fresh eyes to understand how to play this game.”

Now we have an interview with Ed Beach about those decisions, and how the process of designing Civilization games has changed over the years. A lot has changed since then Citizen 6 came out in 2016, and Citizen 7 will be a completely new experience.

Polygon: How do you choose the civilizations? And the leaders? Has that process changed over the years?

Ed beach: As the Civ franchise has grown over the years, so has the process of selecting which civilizations and leaders to include in the game.

If a designer initially thought a civilization might be fun or interesting to play with, that might have been enough to add them. However, as the Civ community has grown and more players from around the world become Civ fans, we have both the desire and the opportunity to think more carefully about who is represented on the world stage.

In general, civilizations and leaders are selected if they have the right combination of a few things: their prominence in history, how well they represent our player base, and the gameplay opportunities they offer.

For Civilization VIIthis process has evolved further. Civilizations and leaders can now be selected separately, and your choice of civilization no longer lasts throughout the game, but is instead tied to a specific era.

For leaders, the ability to independently select them means we can actually examine figures from history beyond traditional heads of state. We still have kings, queens and emperors, but we now have famous figures like Harriet Tubman or Machiavelli, neither of whom led a nation but both left a lasting impact in history.

For civilizations, because they are tied to specific eras, we can “dig deeper” into historical time periods and select empires that may not be well known overall, but were incredibly important and powerful during these periods of history. And with multiple eras we can even depict the evolution of some empires, such as India, from Maurya to Chola to Mughal.

What is the research process when integrating new civilizations? Are there cultural advisors and/or historical teams you work with to ensure the information is accurate?

The research process for integrating civilizations is a lot of fun and requires a lot of work. Many developers at Firaxis Games are – as you might guess – naturally interested in history, and we do our best to authentically represent cultures, whether it’s the language they speak, the clothes they wear and more.

During the development of Civilization VIIwe had two permanent historians at Firaxis Games: one specialized in the history of East Asia and the other specialized in Scandinavian and medieval studies. Both were essential in helping us not only represent cultures with care, but also in shaping the Age experience and figuring out which civilizations were good candidates to explore.

As some may know, we also consulted directly with the Shawnee regarding their inclusion on the list Civilization VII. It was truly a wonderful collaboration.

In researching these civilizations, did you discover anything unexpected about any of them that proved difficult to adapt to?

We have always had major problems with representing cultures without any written record. We have always wanted to include an early North American indigenous culture, such as that of the Mississippians, but never had any idea how to create a leader for such a civilization that left no documentation of specific people. Luckily our new one Citizen VII The approach of loosely linking leaders to civilizations has solved that problem. Now any leader can be linked to the Mississippians, although other native North American leaders such as Tecumseh and Pachacuti are especially recommended.

Are there any civilizations/leaders/time periods that you’ve always wanted to involve but haven’t had the chance to yet – or perhaps haven’t because it would be too difficult to adapt them?

Because of Civ’s original structure, where you play as the same civilization from start to finish, we’ve always had a creative challenge figuring out which “version” of an empire to choose as representative throughout history. This gets even more complicated when you have civilizations that weren’t around in 4000 BC, like America.

This is what Ages helps us solve: by splitting history into several playable chapters and rooting each age in certain parts of history, we can select civilizations that exist during the age and show how empires rise , fall, grow and evolve. A civilization like Songhai, which may not be well known in today’s popular culture, was hugely influential at the time – and fits perfectly into the Age of Discovery as a representative of West Africa at the time.

Has the team ever considered the opposite of what they agreed to with the new leader-mechanic change? (This means you play as multiple leaders, but with the same civilization.)

We did consider this approach, but quickly encountered a number of problems. If we had different leaders in all eras, but kept the same civilization, we would limit ourselves to selecting civilizations that have a clear representation in all three eras – such as China or India. For example, if you were to choose America, which leader would lead America in 4000 BC? Or the Inca today?

We are also aware that because so many things change from Age to Age, it is important that you have a coherent experience. We’ve found that most players’ understanding of what happens in a game of Civ tends to focus on the leaders: Gilgamesh was your friend, unlike the Sumerians. By having the leader remain the same across all eras, you can develop a story about your opponents as they remain constant.

Will there be mechanisms related to ideology? Or will that be relegated to social studies as in Citizen 6?

Yes! We recently revealed in our modern era livestream that ideologies play a crucial role in that era. Essentially, after studying political theory, you can choose an ideology to pursue, which you will be stuck with for the rest of the game. This has a major impact on the way diplomatic relations with other leaders are conducted; shared ideologies strengthen alliances, while conflicting alliances create friction. Ideology also plays a huge role in the modern era’s military heritage path, one of the routes you can take to unlock the game’s final victory conditions.

Since the launch of Citizen 6we’ve seen a few games trying to challenge that 4X mantle (Humanity And Millennia). Is there anything specific that the Civ team learned from those titles, or perhaps from other titles over the years that have drawn inspiration from Civ?

It’s been really interesting to see how other games in the 4X space tackle some of the same questions we’re looking at, and to see how players respond to their solutions. For Civilization VIIwe have the unique advantage of having a very long history of games within our own franchise, and therefore our efforts within it Civilization VII are really focused on finding ways in which we can improve some of the weaknesses we’ve identified in our own titles. Hopefully we make another Civ game that can stand the test of time.

Is there something you’d like to ask about, but no one ever does?

I think maybe the question “What is the regular part of your work week that you enjoy most while developing a Civ game?” And I should answer with our Tuesday afternoon multiplayer sessions. We’ve been running these regularly throughout the project and with our new Ages system, multiplayer matches can be completed within a 2 to 3 hour period. That’s made these sessions even more interesting, as you can imagine!

Civilization 7 will be released on February 11 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Windows PC.