Civilization 7 Dev Firaxis Says 'There's Hope for Gandhi, Yet'

ign.com:

Civilization 7 is out in the wild, and veteran fans of the strategy series might be left wondering: where’s Gandhi?

Indian leader Gandhi has been in every Civilization base game since the franchise’s first release in 1991. He is inexorably linked with Civilization, and spawned one of gaming’s most infamous bugs: Civilization's ‘Nuclear Gandhi’ — a bug that turned out to be a myth.

But Gandhi is nowhere to be seen in Civilization 7. So what gives? That’s a question I put to Civilization 7 lead designer Ed Beach, who gave Gandhi fans a clear ray of hope that eventually he’ll make it in as DLC.

“So I would say we haven't forgotten about anybody who's been in our game before,” Beach said. “Certainly civilizations, there's a lot of consternation right now about where's Great Britain or England, why aren't they in our game?”

(Carthage and Great Britain join Civ 7 as part of The Crossroads of the World Collection DC in March 2025, followed by Bulgaria and Nepal.)

“But there's sort of a big, longer picture roadmap that we have, and some pieces fit better in the long picture roadmap they do in the short picture one,” Beach continued.

Beach went on to explain a bit of Firaxis’ thinking when it came to which Civilizations to add for Civ 7. “One thing I always think about is, we've had the same situation where iconic civilizations haven't been in our base game before,” he said. “We had both Mongolia and Persia missing from the base game of either Civ 5 or Civ 6, and both of those were just massive conquerors who ruled huge chunks of Asia during their time period.

“So we always have to leave somebody out. There're just too many popular choices and we always want to have a few fresh ones that sound really new and exciting to people. So things are getting left behind, but we always are looking at the big picture, when we're going to bring leaders or civs into the fold. So there's hope for Gandhi, yet.”

There you have it: there’s hope for Gandhi.

Perhaps in the shorter term, Firaxis will be