Interview – Ed Beach on Civilization VII Ages, diplomacy & security blankets

thesixthaxis.com:

Civilization VII is coming at a really interesting time for the historical 4X genre, with a bunch of rivals having sprung up in the last few years, and everyone trying to explore similar concepts to better translate the passage of time and evolution of nations into video game form.

We got to go hands on with the opening few turns at Gamescom 2024, and alongside a breakdown by Firaxis for the overarching concepts and changes, it feels like an exciting new chapter for the storied franchise. But there’s always more to ask and to find out, and we had the opportunity to sit down with Creative Director Ed Beach to dive into what’s new, different and what’s staying the same in Civ 7.

TSA: So, change is very difficult for people to accept…

Ed Beach: We’ve noticed! Our forums are abuzz with that!

TSA: [laughs] I mean, we’ll obviously talk about what’s different with Civ 7, but what kind of security blankets are there for people? What’s staying consistent and staying true to Civilization?

Ed: The number one change that seems to have thrown our community, and that we were expecting to throw our community, is that your civilization changes are you get to each age. I think the security blanket that they’re going to realise is there, is that they’re thinking “I’m starting as Egypt, and the game is asking me to switch to India.”

They saw that in some of our competing products, and it was very jarring, but we have a historical pathway system that’s really going to make a lot of those choices much more logical within history. So certain areas of the world, like India and China, that have their own ecosystem of dynasties that evolved over time, a lot of people are thinking there’s one India in the game, but that’s not necessarily true anymore. We are not revealing our whole lineup of civilizations, because that’s part of our marketing campaign to roll that information out, but in an area where it makes sense for us to have a representation of, say, India in all three ages, that’s very