Firaxis' big swing with Civilization VII? Convincing players to actually finish their games

It has been eight years since Firaxis launched Civilization VI, but creative director Ed Beach hasn't stopped ruminating on what the studio might have done differently.

"Civilization VI was very successful," he says, speaking to Game Developer at Gamescom 2024, "but it didn't mean the design team loved it by the time we were finished. We are self critical, and we're happy to dissect and pick apart our own creation and see its flaws."

Beach was looking to the past to explain how Firaxis is approaching the future, which is important to understand given it has just unveiled Civilization VII. He explains Firaxis uses a formula that requires each new entry in the franchise to incorporate equal parts new content, updated content, and existing content.

It's a rule of thirds that enables the studio to innovate without completely alienating players—while also avoiding scope creep. Digging into how that equation influenced production on Civilization VII, which is slated to launch in February 2025, Beach says the headline issue was the fact players simply weren't finishing games.

"The number [of people who completed a game of Civ VI] was surprisingly, depressingly—whatever adjective you want to put in there—low. It was less than 50 percent. So, why is that happening?," he asks.

The short answer is 'pacing.' He says your average Civilization player might spend 15 to 20 hours completing a single game. As the hours pass and empires grow, the managerial elements become more pronounced, leaving players needing to complete a exponentially growing list of tasks just to get through a turn.

Beach claims players "hated" the pacing of Civilization VI. It's an admission that resulted in Firaxis conducting individual postmortems of each system to learn when they pushed "important, strategic decisions you don't have to make more than every five to 10 minutes," and when they demanded players make "tiresome 'click here, click here, click, here' decisions that just aren't very interesting."

A sequel for the ages

That inquisition saw Firaxis reconfigure Civilization VII to ensure more people felt capable of crossing the finish line. "The number one thing we wanted to do was break the game up into chapters," Beach explains. "We're calling them 'ages' this time. We're only at three ages to get through the game, because there's a lot of restructuring around the map that happens between the two age transitions. We wanted to make it so we could reset the board a little bit and simplify things out and change up the rules. [For instance], our trade system works differently in each age."

Exploration has also been tweaked to preserve the sense of fun sparked by discovery. "I think a core pillar of 4X games is exploration, and that's one reason players wouldn't go all the way through the game and restart. It's because that first 50 turns of figuring out where you are on the map and who's around you is innately fun. We have done some things [this time] to bottle up that fun and spread it throughout the game," says Beach.

Elaborating, he explains Civilization VII is broken into chapters, beginning with the 'Antiquity Age.' During that age, players will only be allowed to explore the landmass they start on. "Even if you invest in a lot of naval technology, we won't let you go across the ocean," adds Beach. 

When asked how the team will essentially restrict players without causing frustration, he explains the technique was used in past titles across 70 to 80 percent of maps. Now, it's being enforced without exception.

Again referencing the formula we mentioned earlier, Beach says the team wasn't shy when it came to pitching new ideas—but sometimes you have to cut your coat according to your cloth.

"The design team were so self-critical," he says. "They were like 'we want to change this, and this, and this.' So, I would bring up that rule of thumb and say 'you want to do something entirely different here, Another thing entirely different here. These two areas—the foundations are the same but they're falling into our 'one third modified'. There were times I could see the trajectory was radically different enough that it was violating that formula."

Beach created a spreadsheet that he whipped out during two design meetings to prove his colleagues were over-indexing and breaking the formula. "[I said] basically you get 33 percent total change, and then another 33 percent you can modify," he adds. "So you've got a 50 percent budget for changing the game, and you're all at 60 percent—and we haven't even finished all of this."

When deciding which aspects of the franchise to alter, Firaxis uses a technique called 'ripples.' It's a process that requires the team to understand "the minimum viable amount of implementation you need to get to the core idea of something you can then experiment with." Testing is a fundamental part of that process.

"We have single player playtests and multiplayer playtests on a scheduled cadence," continues Beach. "So, whatever is ready to try out in the next playtest session [is included]. Then the whole design team gets together and discusses [the feedback]."

Underlining the importance of variety when playtesting, he notes combat becomes more visible in multiplayer tests because people "like to bash on each other." Conversely, single player tests are better for appraising systems like building and diplomacy.

Looking towards launch, Beach explains Firaxis currently has hundreds of developers working on Civilization VII and is "taking full responsibility for shipping to all the platforms in house." That decision was made to ensure all versions of the title, which is built on a proprietary engine, work as intended. He says it's a choice that has left the studio in a "more comfortable place" as it attempts to wrap production.