For the first time in franchise history, Sid Meier's Civilization VII lets you choose your leader separately from your civilization, giving you the freedom to create all-new strategies by mixing and matching gameplay bonuses. Each leader possesses a unique ability and can further be improved with customizable attributes earned through gameplay, empowering you to reinforce or pivot your strategy from one Age into the next.

As explained on the Game Guide page for Ages, each Age offers a unique set of available civilizations to play as—but your choice of leader remains the same for the entire match. For multi-Age campaigns, your leader will always stay the same, even as you choose new civilizations for each Age Transition. Having leaders in a match stay consistent across Ages helps bring a sense of 'who' you're playing as or against.

In past games, civs and leaders were always tied together and came as a "package deal" of agendas, abilities, units, and more. Civilization VII lets you mix and match to create new strategic possibilities, staying true to Civ's spirit of experimentation. It's an unprecedented level of depth for how you choose to build your empire, as you discover your favorite combinations for how each leader's Unique Ability can combine with and empower each civilization's Unique Trait, along with their Unique Infrastructure, Unique Military and Civilian Units, and Associated Wonders.

Civilization VII also offers one of Civilization's most diverse rosters yet, from traditional heads of state known for their militaristic might or political prowess, to visionary leaders who made everlasting impacts in philosophy, science, human rights, and more. For players who want to stick to more historical pairings of leaders and civs, an indicator on the civilization selection screen will help make the connection.

As your empire evolves from one Age to the next, it's important that your leader grows as well. In Civilization VII, all leaders have attributes that can further specialize their skills. We'll share more details about these attributes in the future, along with deep-dives on the leaders themselves and their Unique Abilities!