Sid Meier’s Civilization VII
Civilisation VII
’s playful disjointedness: from her Athenian palace – a short walk from the Hanging Gardens – Queen Isabella leads the Mexican civilisation.
Anyone who’s engaged with Sid Meier’s strategy series during its 34-year existence knows that the most exhilarating turns in a game are the initial ones. Sure, the mid-game can be an absorbing juggling act, requiring you to manage diplomatic crises and placate the citizens of a sprawling empire, while choreographing your battalions’ advance into enemy territory. And, almost invariably, the finale will trigger a hectic rush toward whichever victory goal you’re pursuing, whether a technological breakthrough, establishing a global religion, or military domination. But there’s nothing like those uncertain first steps with your lone settler and their immediate surroundings, the obscured landscape suggesting a world that brims with resources, natural wonders, and foreign cultures to befriend or conquer. There are no wrong moves during this phase, only a dizzying range of potentialities, each decision setting off a domino effect of repercussions that will reveal themselves in the centuries to come.