Civilization 7 developer Firaxis is playtesting a way for players to essentially bypass the game’s biggest, and most controversial, new feature: the updated Ages system.
In a Steam update detailing Firaxis’s plans for Civilization 7’s post-launch roadmap, the developer says it’s testing out “some dramatic changes to the Legacy Paths and Victories,” although it doesn’t add anything on that front beyond wanting “to open up the game and provide many new paths your empire can follow while achieving greatness and competing for victory.”
More specifically, Firaxis says it’s internally playtesting “one of the most requested features from players.” That is, the ability “to play as one civ continuously through the Ages, allowing you to choose a civilization from any Age and guide them throughout your journey through history.”
Basically, it sounds like Firaxis wants to give players the chance to experience a similar flow to earlier Civ games, which would have you control one faction continuously from the beginning of history to the space age, whether that’s ancient Egypt or the USA. The old Civ games still had Ages, but they didn’t tie each civ to a specific age that would’ve roughly matched their actual point in history, which is kind of Civ 7’s whole thing.
Apparently, that’s been a controversial enough change that Firaxis is keen to give players the option to either play the new way or the old way. And with this change and others in the works, it’s opening itself up to player feedback.
The Firaxis Feature Workshop is a new initiative where “a small number of community members” will be able to go hands-on with new features before they go live, in order to tell the developer “what’s working, what’s not, and what’s missing.” If you want to know more about that, you’ll want to stay active on the Civ 7 Discord, where Firaxis will “share more details on how to apply soon.”
Check out our ranking of the best strategy games to find out why Civ 6 still reigns supreme.