UPDATED: What I Want to See Improved in Civ 7

Civ 6 is still one of the most popular 4X-turn based strategy games on the market. However, the competitors are circling.

Oxide Game's Ara: History Untold was shown off recently at the January 2024 XBOX Developer Direct as a direct competitor with the Civ series.

Amplitude Studio's Humankind released in 2020 to mixed reviews but has served as a fresh take on the popular genre.

With more 4X turn-based games to come, Civ 7 is going to have to step up its game to ensure the reigning champ of the genre keeps the crown. Another Civ 6-style launch, which missed key features and patched itself together over the following two+ years, could see the series overtaken by one of these competitors. 1. Make the Leader/Civ bonuses easy-to-understand

This is the biggest reason newbies feel disenchanted and intimidated to play Civ 6. Scrolling through dozens of Leaders and Civs with long, convoluted abilities and compounded by the lack of concision in their descriptions.

Here's an example (note how you scroll to see the whole description):

Original: To World's End: Cities do not incur war wariness. All military units heal completely when this unit captures a city with a world wonder.

Hellenistic Fusion: When conquering a city that is not a Free City receive a Eureka for each encampment or Campus in the conquered city and an Inspiration for each Holy Site or Theatre Square.

Hypaspist: Macedonian unique melee unit that replaces the Swordsman. +5 Combat Strength when besieging districts. 50% Additional Support Bonus.

Hetairoi: Macedonian unique heavy cavalry unit that replaces the Horseman. Additional +5 Combat Strength when adjacent to a Great General. +5 Great General points when killing an enemy unit. Starts with 1 free promotion.

Basilikoi Paides: A building unique to Macedon. +25% combat experience for all melee, ranged land units, and Hetairoi trained in this city. Gain Science equal to 25% of the unit's cost when a non-civilian unit is created in this city. Strategic Resources Stockpiles increased +10 (on Standard Speed) May not be built in an Encampment district that ready has a stable.

Not simple at all for new players. After some concision, without losing meaning: To World's End: No war wariness. Military units fully heal after capturing a city with a world wonder.

Hellenistic Fusion: When capturing another Civilization's city receive a Eureka for each Encampment or Campus and an Inspiration for each Holy Site or Theatre Square present.

Hypaspist: Unique Swordsman. +5 Strength when besieging cities. 50% extra Support Bonus.

Hetairoi: Unique Horseman. +5 Combat Strength adjacent to a Great General. +5 Great General points from kills. 1 free promotion.

Basilikoi Paides: Unique stable. +25% combat experience for all melee and ranged land units, trained here. Gain Science equal to 25% of the military unit's cost when trained. +10 Strategic Resources Stockpiles (on Standard Speed).

We don't have to look far to see how much better this can be. Civ 5 did a great job at keeping Leader bonuses straight forward and instantly understandable.

Ensuring these bonuses are easy to understand is a win for new players, which is an overall win for the Civ community. No doubt the next title will include new types of resources, stats, and currencies. Making those understandable at a glance will be essential for new player retention and overall uptake of the game.

2. Instantly Readable Government Policy Cards.

I already know what you're saying; "tHeRe'S mOdS fOr ThAt."

I know, I know. But I don't want to mod the game when the problem is easily solved by the devs.

Government policy cards are easy to understand in the beginning of the game but get wildly out of control later in the game.

For example, the Skyscrapers Economic Policy Card is simple. +15% productions towards all wonders. Many early-game policy cards are like this. Later, they get confusing.

The Rationalism Economic Policy Card is so long and requires you to scroll. Nobody wants to be forced to read scrolling text in a videogame and remember, you're looking

through dozens of cards at once! Firaxis should see what the

modders are doing for this and emulate it, assuming Civ 7

will have a similar card-based government system.

The card-based government system is an interesting idea. It makes your government feel distinct from other players. You can easily customize it to your playstyle and you get lingering bonuses from government types you adopted earlier in the game.

The last thing on policy cards are their colours. Why are economic policies yellow? Maybe because the main currency in the game is gold coins. But using that logic, the diplomatic policy cards should be brown, not green, because the diplomatic favour currency is brown... So, I'm lost on the logic there.

Military cards should be red (no change, matches the Encampment District colour), economic cards should be a brighter yellow (closer to gold coins and matching the Commercial Hub District colour), diplomatic cards should be light purple (mirroring the Diplomatic Quarter district colour, currency colour should change to a light purple to distinguish from Culture), and wildcards should be white (indicating no alignment with any district, currency, or playstyle).

If the government policy cards remain in Civ 7, this mechanic would be well-suited with the adjustments mentioned above for better player readability and a more engaging gameplay experience.

3. Reinstate Civ 5's World Congress

This is the most baffling addition to Civ 6. The broken, boring, and lazy World Congress mechanic makes me wish there was a way to vote myself off the island.

As if in a choral group, my friends sigh a collective 'ughhhh' when the World Congress abruptly appears on their screens; knowing they'll have to waste time voting on policies nobody asked for and usually, nobody cares about.

Earning Diplomatic Favour is complicated for new players and its implementation is bizarre. Players are often punished if they're doing well in other victory types, for example, capturing capital cities reduces the diplomatic favour you earn. Building units or buildings that use fossil fuels increase your nation's carbon footprint and therefore, reduces the Diplomatic Favour you earn, etc. You spend the Diplomatic Favour you earn on randomly selected proposals that range wildly from being irrelevant to game-breaking and unrealistic. Irrelevant proposal: "+5 strength to ranged units"

Game breaking proposal: "All players have their nuclear weapons set equal to the target player." This makes no logical sense and can easily cause the winning player to insta-lose. Remember, players can't pick which proposals come up, it's random! But we can do better. How? Don't fix what's not broken. Copy Civ 5.

Civ 5's World Congress is engaging, impactful, and exciting. Policy proposals are brought forward by players, not by random generation. The World Congress in Civ 5 is also founded automatically upon the first player meeting all the other players and when that player reaches a certain threshold in the tech tree. This is logical and rewards the player who has taken the initiative to find everyone. Earning votes in the World Congress in Civ 5 is simple. 1 vote per Suzerain, which increases as the game progresses. Players can also vote for the Leader of the World Congress. The new Leader is rewarded with an extra vote (for as long as they're Leader) and the ability to introduce a proposal. The player with the second most votes in the World Congress is also allowed to propose a policy.

By allowing players to govern themselves and by keeping vote earning simple, Civ 5's World Congress quickly became one of my favourite mechanics that leaves me excited (or nervous) for the next session to convene since it's impact is meaningful and logical.

While Civ 5's World Congress isn't perfect, it's orders of magnitude more engaging than the snoozefest we were given in Civ 6.

4. Greater Diversity of Military Units

It's difficult to create an engaging videogame spanning all of human civilized existence that can be played in a couple sessions.

Very broad generalities need to be taken and wide strokes of the brush need to be applied as to not overcomplicate the game or mechanics. I get it.

However, there's a rather deafening lack of unit variety in Civ 6 that was poorly addressed in DLC.

The jump in power between Warrior and Swordsman is huge and the gap in tech between them is long. Something in between would reduce that gap and make the early game more interesting for aggressive players. An Axeman or Clubman between the Warrior and Swordsman would fit the period and could help bridge the gap.

A similar problem exists with Archers and Crossbowman units. Civ 5 included a Composite Bowman unit in between Archers and Crossbowman, its baffling why this was removed in Civ 6. The most abrupt jump in power though, is Line Infantry and Infantry (WW2 style). Again, Civ 5 had Great War Infantry in between these two to break them up, but not in Civ 6.

Every era should have at least one version of the specific class of unit (tech permitting; I don't expect airplanes in the medieval era). Why is there a gap between Spearman and Pikeman? Why is there gap between Pike & Shot and AT Crew? Galley and Caravel? Etc.

There're so many more examples but like the World Congress in Civ 6, it seems Firaxis got lazy or ran out of time. I hope the unit disparities and lack of variety is improved upon in Civ 7 for the betterment of all players.

UPDATE:

There was lots of interesting feedback from readers after this was initially posted so I've updated this to include some of them below!

5. Navigatable rivers

Rivers are vital pieces of natural terrain in Civ 6. They give significant boosts to cities settled along them, they provide defensive bonuses for units being attacked by melee units from the other side of the river, and they provide strong adjacency bonuses to certain districts.

But what about being able to travel on rivers just like units can embark onto water tiles? I'm torn. I think it's a great idea, but I'm worried the implementation could remove or reduce some of the bonuses I've mentioned above.

Rivers hold a special status in Civ 6 because they're situated in between tiles, rather than serving as full water tiles themselves. So, embarking into a non-tile river could jumble up the unit movement mechanic and cause confusion.

Instead, give movement bonuses to units moving ALONG rivers - just like units get movements bonuses following roads/railroads.

This could be used by Recon units to make them more viable in new situations. Imagine in Civ 7, you could paradrop "Special Ops" units into enemy territory, hidden until discovered by an adjacent unit, and can move faster along rivers in enemy territory! This would be a great way to buff otherwise boring and weak Recon units in the late-game.

6. Better AI: Stop Cheating

I can't believe I missed this in my original iteration of this article. The AI needs significant improvement in decision-making and diplomacy. Arbitrarily giving AI cheats/buffs without changing how they problem-solve is lazy and a tiring trend used across 4X strategy games.

On higher difficulties, the AI gets buffs to their Science and Culture generation, extra starting units (settlers, builders, and military), and completed techs and civics. They cheat HARD.

Perhaps, the AI could recognize they need more military units before declaring war? Or perhaps they should recognize a player is winning in a particular victory type and take counter actions to try and cripple them (rather than just denouncing the player). Perhaps the AI could be biased towards their Civs bonuses (Mongols build more mounted units and is more aggressive, England tries to settle other islands/continents, etc.)? But implementing all of this takes work and QA testing. More work and QA testing means delays. Delays are bad for business.

Unfortunately, I'm not holding my breath for any changes to be implemented to AI decision-making in Civ 7. Using the same 4X cookie-cutter AI using cheats/buffs is likely where we're heading.

7. Art Style: More Seriousness, Less Cartoony Since Civ 6's initial review and release there's been some controversy amongst the community about the art style of the game.

The oversimplified, cartoony look is charming and approachable to some (as it was for me at its initial release), but in the age of Fortnite, Civ 6 is starting to look childish and arcady. Re-playing Civ 5 reminds me of how good things used to look, and I discovered how much I miss that.

Firaxis tried the cartoon-look with Civ 6 and it was met with a lukewarm response. It's time to return to what's always worked; a more realistic and serious style that stops the leaders from looking like cartoon animals and the buildings from looking like Settlers of Catan.

8. Music Revamp

Complaining about the music is low-hanging fruit. 75% of the music in Civ 6 is excellent and appropriate for its civilization. But it could be better.

Towards the end of the game the music changes (usually when the game crosses into the Industrial Era) - regardless of the civ you're playing. It becomes the same bombastic, Disney-style, orchestral music for nearly every Civ. With a few exceptions. This is very annoying and again, lazy implementation. Let's talk about Canada, who has their own custom soundtrack for most of the game, but their endgame soundtrack is ridiculous and - as a Canadian - offensive.

Canada in Civ 6 is already a stereotyped caricature of Canada during the time of Prime Minister Laurier (I mean seriously, a Hockey Rink as a unique improvement? Really?). The Canadian music however is a joke. It's the Canadian National Anthem, remixed to add rock music or other inappropriate instruments to make it... more exciting I guess? Could you imagine if England's music was just God Save the King but with base drops and synthesizers?

Long-story short, I mute Civ 6's music more often than not.

Conclusion

These are my major concerns with Civ 6 that I hope are addressed in the next iteration. I'm sure you have your own concerns and hopes for Civ 7. Leave them down below. I'll be reading them all!

Civilization 6 is available on PC/MAC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Android/iOS/Linux now.