Civilization VII – My Game Reviews

Why Civilization VII is not a success in 2026

Civilization VII is going to be one year old this week, and it is clear that the game is struggling to compete with the fifteen-year-old Civilization V and also its immediate predecessor, Civilization VI. This is clear sign of a game that has not met the expectations of the fans of the series and the casual audience that should have been flocking to this game which had multimillion dollar marketing and a pedigree behind it. This is a sign that the series in its current trajectory has played itself out and needs to return to what makes Civilization great. It needs to be an experience of constructing a breathing world in an history sandbox.

The developers didn’t even bother to have England as a civilization on launch. They were putting content behind walls and making you, the consumer pay more for at best a mediocre game. This microtransaction method is flying in the face of the fact we used to get a full game on launch with the previous titles. They sold England as an microtransaction like a piece of scrap to make more money on a project which was lacking energy and any sort of vision that went beyond deconstructing their own game.

I have spoken a lot about the issues of Civilization VII and why it is inferior to the previous games:

Another issue that I haven’t really spoken about is the need for competition. Civilization VII’s failure can be seen as the inevitable decadent phase of every human endeavor. The soul of humans extends to the objects we make here.

Civilization VII was taking the fans for granted in a sense. It is decadent style over the shallow substance.

Music is great and graphics are good, but that cannot sell a game anymore like in the past. You need to have good gameplay, especially if you want players to stay around in here.

Civilization VII is basically 3 mini games in one. The game deliberately takes away choice from the player. You reset every single age, and I find such a mechanic not something that really fits with Civilization. The blobbing issue with players becoming too powerful was just a part of the game. The developers were concerned about that too much. Civilization is not a game that is meant to be solved but experienced holistically. The approach they took to fix this issue was taking away the soul of Civilization. These games are sandboxes not linear experiences with some flexibility but one is aware that these games want to focus on the structure of that game.

Civilization games tend to be more focused on making a world rather than just playing a game. That is why the atmosphere of the Civilization games is really important. Civilization II, while an ancient game now, had FMV(Full Motion Video) of actors as the advisors. That creates character and somehow they have taken it out of the recent games. It is too much of a board game. While that may appeal to mostly console gamers, the PC genre is where the true spirit of the Civilization series is. They made a choice of porting it consoles just to squeeze out more money and that did not help the game.

Why is that Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is still doing well on Steam Charts a year into the game been on Steam? It’s because the game appealed to its audience, regardless of the creative choices. They kept the spirit of the original game alive in the sequel and improved upon its core gameplay mechanics. When you look at the voice actors in the behind-the-scenes videos or promotions, they seem to be putting energy into the project. Caring about a paycheck isn’t enough, you need to impart your own personal spirit into whatever project you are working on. Civilization VII has only a small amount of that in there, mostly in the music in my opinion. Everything else is pedestrian in its quality in comparison to the previous games.

Civilization VII was looking for an audience which doesn’t really care about Civilization. That’s why the game is struggling to compete with the older civilization games.

The game needed real competition. The video industry has been clustering around the same developers who have gotten comfy having no one to challenge them. Civilization VI began showing this complacency and Civilization VII shows that the series needs to be made anew.

To make a new civilization game, the developers need to return to the roots, and that means Civilization I. Make it simple but complex enough for the modern age of gaming. They need to remove the board game mentality and leave that for an offshoot here. would have given us a real Civilization game.

The important thing is that they need to appeal to the fans and expand their audience without sacrificing the spirit of the original games. Simplicity in video games is really though now with Unreal Engine being so popular but there is a hunger for it which is different from previous gaming generations. People want style not photorealism and I think that bringing that back to Civilization would help to revitalize the Civilization series and return the approval of the fans and casual audiences.

What Empire Earth has that Civilization VII still doesn’t have

Civilization VII right before Thanksgiving has only around 7.5 thousand players right now playing it on Steam.

I have already talked about how Civilization VII was a failure and the game is basically the dark ages of the Civilization franchise. The dark ages of course had brightness in it, such as in Charlemagne’s court. Civilization VII burned brightly at the beginning as so many games do and it fails to continue capturing people’s attention.

I watched with great interest at how Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and Civilization VII would perform together as they were released close to one another.

They are different genres, but they are both historical games with have audiences that overlap.

It is a tale of two games. Both burn brightly upon release but they are not the same. Kingdom Come 2, in spite of there being a high skill ceiling for this game, managed to tell an interesting story in 15th Century Bohemia and give a narrative from many class perspectives.

Civilization VII simply seems like an entry in a franchise which is exhausted in energy.

The game should have been pc-centric not console centric as it seems that it was. The willingness to put the game in VR makes no sense for a series that has largely been on the PC. Its soul began on the PC, and the console versions were a necessary addition but the main part of the franchise’s energy.

Empire Earth has what a lot of what the gaming industry doesn’t have now. The energy and the soul which makes it special here.

The importance of a holistic integration of many gameplay and design elements into a video game is vital for keeping it going in the memories of gamers.

What Civilization VII was missing: The Demographics Screen

Civilization III Demographics and Top Cities

The screenshot above showcases the demographic screen in Civilization III.

In the early 2000s, developers were not afraid to put out some statistics on a screen. It was a nice practical way of showing on how the world in your Civilization game was changing and who was on top in the battle for civilizational supremacy.

In Civilization VII, we get three mini games as a replacement for it.

Civilization VII was a game that burned brightly before being surpassed by both Civilization VI and V. I have already stated why I think that the game is one of the worsts mainline entries other than maybe Beyond Earth.

There are many reasons that I have gone into about why I do not like this game. However, one of the most important reasons why I had issues with it was that the change from a game with macro view of history to a game with micro views.

The game simply does not like you think about the people in the empire. It is a board game where you just move units around it. Civilization in a way has always been this way. However, with Civilization V, the game has been moving away from a balance of the macro and micro. Now we barely get macro. Micro is rather shallow and uninteresting.

The citizen’s faces are not there now. They are simply nameless, opaque icons to move on the screen. Nationality in Civilization III was also very important, and it gave a sense of character to the game.

Civilization VII’s developers need to keep the spirits up and think that there are no big issues with the game. However, the game is not garnering much attention. No matter how many updates that they make, the game is simply not going to be well remembered by gamers.

It was the Dark Age of the Civilization Series. The next game, Civilization VIII is going to made more quickly vs the time gap between Civilization VI and VII.

Civilization VII takes away all the nerdy aspects and shows what happens when you become too mainstream and forget your origins. This is a common problem throughout the industry now. There is no soul to the games only the smell of money hiding behind the corner of every pixel you see.

Civilization VIII needs to return to what made the games great and memorable even among people who barely even played video games.

I think that Civilization VIII will be a much better game and it will start the prosess of repairing the franchise but we are going to have wait and see.