Civ VII Developer Video - November 2025 | What's coming with tomorrow's update!

[stealth_nsk]

As things stand, 3rd age needs to make game around map interesting. It currently doesn't for most victories. You do an optional minigame for archeology, trade for the resources you need, and put your population into specialists. You only really engage with the map if you try to win a war. In Civ VI, you used to settle late game cities in unhospitable terrain, to access rich deposits of coal, oil or uranium, but "unhospitable terrain" isn't a thing in VII. So if the fourth era is really coming, it hopefully comes with overhaul across all eras and harsher terrain before modern.

Yes, it's late game problem for all Civ games. Civ7 does better than previous games at least in military side where the game first creates interwoven civilizations during exploration settling and then throws them at each other in ideological conflict. What it needs is to have some way to make map interesting for peaceful play, without mini-games like archaeology or missionaries. But I don't think there's adequate solution for this.

Piracy could test the ground for some interesting concepts, though - military operations without full-scale war clearly could be a base for 4th age, but they also could find some place in modern.

 

[Xandinho]

And Russia don't need representation in 4th age at all.

An Atomic Age themed around the Cold War without any Russian representation? One of the two major political, ideological, military, and scientific superpowers that define the Cold War, alongside America? A Cold War–themed era would practically require the inclusion of the Soviets—but the problem is, they’re quite controversial. So what’s the solution? Don’t add an entirely new set of civilizations.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Why they would be uninspiring or controversial? If 4th age will come with its set of new game mechanics, civilizations interacting with them could be fun.

I can't speak for everyone, but as a fan of history, I'd find an age with mostly contemporary nations uninspiring, personally.

We're talking about end of colonial era and overall world reshaping. I'd say civilization transition totally makes sense with countries like Australia just emerging.

Isn't that what the Modern era was supposed to imply? That being said I could easily see a civ like Australia, or even better Canada, coming from the Normans too in Modern. They could at least be portrayed in their colonial forms, as opposed to their 20th century depictions from Civ 6.

 

[stealth_nsk]

An Atomic Age themed around the Cold War without any Russian representation? One of the two major political, ideological, military, and scientific superpowers that define the Cold War, alongside America? A Cold War–themed era would practically require the inclusion of the Soviets—but the problem is, they’re quite controversial. So what’s the solution? Don’t add an entirely new set of civilizations.

Cold War itself is unlikely to be a theme for 4th age. If it spawns from 1950 to 2070, cold war is 1/3 at best. Also, we had ideological conflicts in modern age. So I'd say "proxy wars" are more fitting thing for representing military situation of the modern era, than cold war specifically.

 

[pjotroos]

Yes, it's late game problem for all Civ games. Civ7 does better than previous games at least in military side where the game first creates interwoven civilizations during exploration settling and then throws them at each other in ideological conflict. What it needs is to have some way to make map interesting for peaceful play, without mini-games like archaeology or missionaries. But I don't think there's adequate solution for this.

Piracy could test the ground for some interesting concepts, though - military operations without full-scale war clearly could be a base for 4th age, but they also could find some place in modern.

That still doesn't tackle the fact that the two most interesting Xs in 4X are the first two. Exploration works, because Antiquity heavily constrains what we can do. Exploration constrains nothing. You can go anywhere, settle anywhere, conquer anything and generate enough happiness to ignore the settlement cap. Eras system was meant to tackle the Late Game Problem by limiting our movements, but it only did it for an era and a half.

Like, strip everything else aside, the reason why so many people say fourth age should be between antiquity and exploration is because that's where the constraints currently are. The window between being unable to cross oceans at all and being able to zip through them without a care in the world is 6 technologies. Imagine an exploration era where the 1 movement through oceans and the damage from traveling persisted all the way through (reduced later in, maybe, but never gone); and it was only in modern where that travel actually became safe. That would make for a very different experience, and something to look forward to in modern.

 

[Sagax]

EDIT: Not to mention I disagree with this partial bonus replacement. Of all America uniques, including traditions, infrastructure, etc. only Marines somehow could fit 4th age and even them really should be replaced with some aircraft carrier and fighter jet UUs. American civilization went through conceptual transformation and in my book it needs to be represented in 100% different way.

Funny to read that in the same comment that says Russia doesn’t need a 4th age representation. Unless you consider USSR a completely separate entity, then I guess it’s fair.

I think at this point people just don’t have enough faith in FXS pulling off an enjoyable 4-age experience, when the current 3-age experience already feels like a house of cards riddled with pacing issues. Without knowing more, people can only look at what we have now and imagine that another age will be something along the same lines. And to many that’s not a desirable prospect.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I can't speak for everyone, but as a fan of history, I'd find an age with mostly contemporary nations uninspiring, personally.

Well, we had civilizations like Australia or Canada before and they worked. But clearly they are less inspiring than historical ones.

Isn't that what the Modern era was supposed to imply? That being said I could easily see a civ like Australia, or even better Canada, coming from the Normans too in Modern. They could at least be portrayed in their colonial forms, as opposed to their 20th century depictions from Civ 6.

In my book, exploration is about establishing colonies, modern is about fighting for colonies (that world wars are about) and emerging of post-colonial states is modern-age crisis. Sure, Canada doesn't fit time frame well, but conceptually it fits.

 

[stealth_nsk]

That still doesn't tackle the fact that the two most interesting Xs in 4X are the first two. Exploration works, because Antiquity heavily constrains what we can do. Exploration constrains nothing. You can go anywhere, settle anywhere, conquer anything and generate enough happiness to ignore the settlement cap. Eras system was meant to tackle the Late Game Problem by limiting our movements, but it only did it for an era and a half.

Yes, that's exactly the problem. And yes, it haunts all civilization games from beginning. It still never prevented game designers from prolonging the game. Even Civ6 got prolongation in one of the expansions.

Funny to read that in the same comment that says Russia doesn’t need a 4th age representation. Unless you consider USSR a completely separate entity, then I guess it’s fair.

Yes, that's exactly my point. Transformation from USSR to Russia, even though it's legal inheritor, including losing of a lot of territories and complete ideological change. I don't consider them the same entity.

I think at this point people just don’t have enough faith in FXS pulling off an enjoyable 4-age experience, when the current 3-age experience already feels like a house of cards riddled with pacing issues. Without knowing more, people can only look at what we have now and imagine that another age will be something along the same lines. And to many that’s not a desirable prospect.

And yes, that's true. As I said before, I really hope for 4th age IF Firaxis will manage to make it (and modern) fun. At least more fun than current modern.

 

[disjointaccount]

Having throught about it some more, I think my take on this is "there should be a transition civ-wise from modern to atomic, but it should look different to the previous transitions". Where it'd be appropriate to do so, I'd be fine with aspects' of civs kits carrying over (for example, I see no real reason marines couldn't remain as the American UU). Or maybe even a bit of a change in what a civ's "kit" is. Like, I have a harder time imagining relevant UI for a lot of countries. So maybe that could go and kits could be streamlined to focus on more civics/ideology stuff or whatever.

But ultimately I think for most modern civs, too much of their kits are either too tied to era-specific mechanics, or too thematically tied to the era, for as little as a name change to not feel weird. And again, there are plenty of notable modern civs that don't really have direct atomic successors/notable current-day countries that don't have super logical modern predecessors.