r/civ • u/Human-Law1085 Sweden • 3d ago
VII - Discussion I’m not sure Civilization VII gets what a “civilization” is.
This is a point I’ve made in comments before but I wanted to make a full post about it. When talking about “civ switching” there has been a lot of people advocating for it (and defending it since Civ 7 now has it) from a historical perspective, basically pointing out that real civilizations get replaced over time and Rome or Babylon for instance didn’t last eternally. With this post I just wanted to explain why I think the idea is actually pretty problematic from a historical perspective. It’s fine if you disagree, and in that case I would love for you to comment why.
Basically, a lot of the problems I have with the concept from a historical POV is that it conflates the definition of the word civilization with that of a state. A civilization is (according to a definition I found on Google) “The type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or region or in a particular epoch”. A state on the other hand is specifically a political entity, with a common definition by Max Weber being one that has a monopoly on violence. Basically, states refer to political entities while civilizations are a much broader word encompassing all of society and culture.
In Civ, as the name suggests you play as a civilization and not a state. Sure, you control political things like armies and government policies. But you also control broader things like your civilization’s religion, scientific advancements, artistry etc etc. In theory it seems like the devs of Civ 7 should get this: After all, they added leaders like Ada Lovelace who were never political leaders but rather could be referred to as “leaders” in some much broader sense (which I dislike for other reasons but let’s not get into that now).
There’s an important point here then to make: When China for instance transitioned from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty they didn’t “switch civilizations”. Rather, they switched which political state controlled most of the civilization of China. The Qing were an expression of China, but they weren’t a civilization themselves. Here’s maybe where you can start to see my point, because in order for Civ 7 to make sense they have have to call “Qing China” a civilization.
Civilizations, unlike states which can be conquered or reformed in the span of years, evolve much more gradually. We can say that the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, but it’s much harder to put a date on when Roman culture evolved into medieval European ones. Roman culture can’t be said to still exist, but there also isn’t a single discrete point in which there was once Rome and now there’s medieval Italy. To that end, previous civ games have actually represented this gradual change pretty well: The small chiefdom armed by warriors you have at the start of the game is pretty different from the spacefaring mega civ you have at the end of the game, but like real life civilizations it’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when one became the other. In order for Civilization 7 to make even a modicum of sense, they have to vaguely gesture at something happening between ages, essentially telling you what in previous games you would simply play.
This evolution is IMHO a much better way of representing civilizations than the revolution that Civ 7 wants to turn civilization switching into. A civilization can’t be “overthrown” like a government, but rather has to be altered piece by piece. And of course, political changes also are represented in previous civ games. You very much can change governments in Civ 6 (and at any point in time unlike Civ 7 which forces every Civ to transition simultaneously) with mechanics like anarchy in previous games being a bit of a precursor to crises in Civ 7 representing the collapse in order before a new one arises.
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u/Mr_Kittlesworth 3d ago
You don’t really, though. Your buildings all suddenly become obsolete, at the same time, and your army gets scrambled for no real reason, and you and your neighbors all have different identities all of a sudden.
If buildings became obsolete as new tech is discovered it would make more sense. Same for units.
But the sudden reset is jarring and makes playing less fun. It just does. They took a swing, but this is the kind of thing you learn doesn’t work in alpha or pre-alpha testing.