I'm Worried That Civilization 7 Is Missing The Point Of The Civilization Franchise

is making major changes to its game's model, and I think that it might undercut one of the things I like about the franchise the most. I've thought about it a lot because I wanted to give Firaxis Game veterans who have worked on the benefit of the doubt about their recent decisions to change underlying aspects of the games. The main issue arguably causing the most controversy is the severing of ties between civilizations and their leaders. After all, this is a game, and previous iterations would have their most memorable (or infamous) real historical figure(s) tied to the civilization they influenced in real history.

forgoes that notion, instead allowing players to choose any leader and any culture, mixing and matching like a trip to the frozen yogurt store. While this, on its face, isn't that big of a deal — after all, leaders were essentially just figureheads for the civ in previous games — it does create a peculiar issue of eventually running into situations where someone like Teddy Roosevelt could subsequently be the leader of a Greek, German, or Chinese civilization. And while as absurd as that may seem on its face, besides a not-ideal Leader Bonus, I could live with that change.

What's more troubling than the mixing and matching of leaders is the changing of civs between Eras. In the recent developer stream, developers explained more about the three Era system and how, during each Era, it's possible to switch to whatever civilization you desire, completely replacing the previous one. But it's more than just the visual change — this would essentially open the door for any civilization to drastically change to another civ between eras, as long as the prerequisites were met.

This totally forgoes the notion of a single historical thread and transforms the campaign into true fiction, where the barriers of cultural and social change in any given group of people now become irrelevant. That's not to say there aren't historical periods where one dominant culture or