The designers of Civilisation VII recommend beginners pick Hatshepsut as your leader for your first campaign. Photo: Supplied / 2K / Firaxis Games
First designed in 1991 and sparking arguably a whole new genre of empire-building games, Civilization has tens of millions of players, among them tech world builders like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
In the game, you choose a leader from across ancient to modern history and set about building a civilisation. With the leader as your avatar, you develop agriculture, technology, a culture, economy, and religion as you journey through history. And, naturally, you expand territory, through diplomacy and warfare. The game is rich in scientific, political, economic and cultural detail.
It's been nine years since the last edition of Civilization, and Civilization VII is set to launch on 11 February and ushers in plenty of changes.
Firaxis Games Civilization lead producer Dennis Shirk told Culture 101 the latest edition allowed them to focus on a certain time period of civilisations which they couldn't do in political "hot spots".
"What we try to stay away from, in general, is any time period or leader or CIV [civilisation] whose legacy is still fluid. That's why you don't usually put living people into the game, because if the legacy is still fluid and we don't know yet what the accomplishment or what the results are, it's something that we don't necessarily want to gamify because that's a real life thing that folks are experiencing."
Lead designer Ed Beach says a good example of that was snapshotting 19th Century imperial Russia.
"It's not really a reflection of either the Soviet Union or Putin's current Russia, so all the bonuses are tied to that Russian time period and so you can sort of understand that you're playing within that space of history.
"Obviously there's some ties to what's going on in the modern world, but it doesn't feel like that at all."
The previous game, Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, included the story of Polynesian explorer Kupe with input from Māori groups - a feedback element that has become crucial for the developers over the years, Shirk says.
"We've learned between CIV 4, CIV 5, and to CIV 6 how much we have to reflect on ourselves, on our North American outlook, in regards to how other people perceive the leaders we put in the game or the CIVs we put in the game, the cultural treatments.
"So we've gone down a path of making sure that all of our local representation, whether it's 2K, the localisation teams, even our QA teams across multiple continents, we've hired local consultants, experts in their fields, our in-house historians are new to the game this time.
"We're really going the extra mile to make sure that what we put in the game is thoughtful and that we can be proud of, and that the local peoples can be proud of what we what we end up adding."
Beach says the seventh series also introduces leaders who are not necessarily political figures, such as Florentine diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli.
"We have a new diplomacy system in the game this time and he is master of that. So he's a very crafty opponent to play against, but he's a lot of fun to play as him as well."
They've also decided to break the game down into chapters so that it's manageable, he says.
"We needed to do that this time to improve our pacing and get people to experience more of the end of our game.
"So if you choose Machiavelli for your journey, you're going to pick an antiquity age CIV to begin with. I think the one that makes the most sense for him is the Roman Empire, because they're still on the Italian peninsula where his home was."
Each Age has its own set of civilizations to choose from. While Civilization VII lets you mix and match leaders and civilizations as you see fit, historically accurate pairings will often make for clear synergies. Photo: Supplied / 2K / Firaxis Games
Shirk says they didn't want to recreate the history of the world rather they want to give the player the building blocks and watch the story that they tell.
"It's great watching players take a foundation that is historically relevant and then mix it up and mash it together into different kinds of ways to create zany stories and zany outcomes.
"No two games are ever the same, you always end up with a different history of the planet every time you play."
The game developers took notice of players' growing interest in the narrative aspect and decided to invite historians and writers to populate content for a narrative system which is triggered during certain events, Beach says.
"We try to bring out the story of what it would be like to be one of those people living in that city and having that happen to you during that particular time of history."
Civilisation VII developers say players can choose which path to take, whether they want to be focused on diplomacy or military. Photo: Supplied / 2K / Firaxis Games
There are various ways to play the game, not just in a military-style; there are culture, economic and science paths to choose from too.
"If I tell the game that I'm a culture player, I wanna build things and then it'll like hold your hand and teach you how to do that," Shirk says. "It's gonna tell you build your first wonder, and do that, and then it's gonna say build two more, and then you're gonna keep building wonders until you've achieved I think it's seven in the antiquity age.
"And that will allow you to get that one legacy path and get you on a foundation. And then the next stage that changes, you're going to be doing different things related to your culture.
"That's what's beautiful about CIV and the way it's always existed is you can play the way your inner person wants you to play, depending on who you want to be, or if you're just angry that day you can play in a different way, in a different style."
