Civilization VII review: Change history this weekend

The latest game in the long-running Civilization series brings some big changes to the format that was established in previous games. Veteran Civ players may feel that this new approach is dumbing the game down somewhat, although others argue that it’s a good way of making the game more accessible for newcomers.

Like all previous Civ games, Civilization 7 allows you to choose a leader and a civilization that you control and develop throughout the ages, with the aim of either conquering rival civilizations, or using ‘soft’ power to emerge as a world leader through economic, scientific or cultural dominance. But, in Civilization 7, your leader and your society are now entirely separate, allowing you to mix-and-match leaders and countries in all sorts of historically inaccurate ways.

See how Civilization compares to other Mac Games we have reviewed: Best Mac Games.

A recent binge-watch of The Great prompted me to start my first game as Catherine The Great Of Russia – although I was actually leading the armies of ancient Rome rather than 18th century Russia. That’s not a bad combination, though, as the game explains to me that Catherine’s strengths tend to focus on cultural affairs, which do overlap with the cultural achievements of Roman society and make her a good strategic choice for that civilization.

Once you’ve chosen your leader and their civilization, the game allows you to start in any of three different Ages – Antiquity, Exploration, or the Modern Age – with each age representing a different historical era. As you progress through each age you can follow four different paths that lead to success – economic, cultural, scientific, or military. You can focus on one specific path if you want, or diversify and explore the benefits of each path, with each path presenting different goals that you can achieve in order to emerge victorious.

Another interesting development with Civilization 7 is that your leader remains the same as you progress through all three ages, but you get to choose a new civilization to lead at the start of each new age. In my case, Catherine The Great was able to choose Russia during the Modern Age, restoring her to her rightful place in history.

Dividing the game into ages like this does make it feel more approachable, as it feels like it’s splitting the game into manageable sections, rather than chucking the whole of human history at you and just leaving you to get on with it. However, some players may miss the sheer depth of the military and political intrigue that was available in previous games. That’s largely a matter of personal taste, but one criticism that has emerged loud and clear across the board is that the game’s user interface is poorly designed, with unhelpful menus and tool-tips that make it difficult to find the information you need.

Some people have also reported bugs in the display of text and fonts, although we didn’t experience these problems while running the Mac version of the game. We did, however, find it annoying that the game is constantly badgering you to create an online account with the publishers, 2K Games, in order to use the online multiplayer mode or to unlock other bonuses. Thankfully, though, the developers have already announced that they’re listening to the players and are working on fine-tuning the interface in future updates.

On the Mac side of things, Civilization 7 runs natively on Apple Silicon – but not on Intel Macs, unfortunately. It also lists Sequoia as the minimum required version of macOS, although my MacBook Pro is still on Sonoma and didn’t have any problems running the game. Performance is good too, despite the game’s detailed 3D graphics and the large areas of terrain that you need to cover. The game has a built-in benchmarking tool, and my MacBook’s M2 Pro chip was able to cruise along at a comfortable 55fps using High graphics settings when set at 2560×1440 resolution, so you should be able to play it even with a humble M1 processor if you don’t mind turning the resolution or graphics settings down a little.

Should You Buy Civilization 7?

Personally, I tend to lean towards more action-oriented strategy games like the Total War: Warhammer series, so I like the new approach adopted by Civilization 7, with the bite-sized Ages making the game feel less overwhelming. Veteran Civ players may feel that “things ain’t what they used to be” but newcomers will find that Civilization is a rich and challenging strategy game that will keep them occupied for months.