Firaxis and 2K Games revealed the near future of the strategy game Sid Meier’s Civilization 7, including a big update and an expansion.
According to the official announcement, the update is titled Arc of Tomorrow, and it’ll be distributed (obviously) free of charge.
It’ll include the following features:
- The Atomic Age: a new, fourth Age that extends the playable timeline of history from 1950s to 2050s.
- As with all Ages, this will include period-specific gameplay, along with new Buildings, Units, visuals, and more.
- New Atomic Age gameplay systems:
- Expanded Nuclear gameplay, with new offensive and defensive options and Units, plus a fun twist on mutually assured destruction.
- Multilateral Agreements, allowing you and other leaders to collectively react to developing situations like a growing stockpile of nuclear warheads with calls for disarmament… or escalation.
- New empire management tools, like the ability to transform your own Settlements into new City-States, to have finer control over your Settlement Limit and ensure you always have a path to engage in enhanced City-State abilities.
- Enhanced City-State interactions & Proxy Warfare, allowing you to avoid all-out empire vs empire war by focusing your attention and resources into smaller City-State conflicts as proxies.
- Great Works of Film, where your Film Crews will hunt for the perfect filming location that differs depending on desired genre, and gives variable benefits depending on the quality of Film produced.
- Manufactured Goods, allowing you to follow recipes that combine specific commodities to produce brand new, powerful resources like Enriched Uranium.
- New civilizations and leaders – more info to come in the future!
If you’re wondering, one of the leaders mentioned is a fan favorite, Gandhi. If you’re a veteran player, you likely know why he was picked for the Atomic Age.
Arc of Tomorrow will come in 2027, and the first round of playtesting will start later this year.
The paid expansion is titled “Earthrise” and will also come in 2027 after Arc of Tomorrow. For now, we haven’t heard all of the features, but below you can find a few.
- Across the Antiquity and Exploration Ages, chart the night sky and name the celestial bodies above, ultimately gaining insights about the solar system and your planet’s place within it.
- By the Modern Age, you’ll launch early orbital missions around Earth and the Moon, setting the stage for space operations later on.
- Finally, in the Atomic Age, you’ll launch missions across the solar system with your own established space agency, discovering planetary features and untapped resources which feed back into your civilization’s power here on Earth.
You can hear more directly from the developers in the video below and see some of the gameplay.
Incidentally, we also get an overview of update 1.5.0, which is coming this month. Here’s what it’ll include.
- True Start Location Earth map – Just as in Civilization VI, this new map generates the land, features, and resources of our real world, enabling a stronger roleplaying fantasy through history! You’ll start your campaign in a map location representative of where your civ began in the real world, with each game spawning a different set of Natural Wonders in their natural locations, keeping things fresh even on a familiar map.
- New Voronoi maps: Terra Incognita and Shuffle – As we’ve done in previous patches, we’re updating two map types with our Voronoi map generation algorithm. This will help ensure these map types are more varied and look more natural.
- Updates to resource generation – Map loading and generation is speedier, and resource placement should feel more varied.
- Updates to diplomacy – Use your Influence to stay in an alliance without joining your allies’ misguided wars.
- UI updates – additional updates to plot tooltips, Settlement banners, game setup, and a new tile ruler to help with planning Cities and Towns.
The developers also released a trailer to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the franchise. It’s quite nostalgic.
Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 is available for PS5, PS4, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2. If you’d like to learn more, you can check out the Test of Time update, which revolutionized the game for the better.
