Welcome back, Civ fans! The studio is abuzz with excitement as we now begin the final few weeks toward the upcoming launch of Sid Meier's Civilization VII, and what better way to kick things off than a new Dev Diary on some of our biggest topics: Diplomacy, Influence, and Trade! Here's game designer Bill Anderson with more details on these much-requested topics and, as always, drop a comment or question in our social channels!

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Hi everyone, my name is Bill Anderson. I am a relatively new game designer who just started on Civilization VII, but I have been playing Civilization, many other 4X games, and board games for as long as I can remember. Today, I'm really excited to share details about all of the upcoming changes to Diplomacy and Trade in Civilization VII and some of the goals of the new system.

Diplomacy and Trade have been a core part of the Civilization franchise for many years, whether it's establishing trade networks, managing your relationships with other civs, exchanging resources, or declaring war. The two systems have often been intertwined, but in Civilization VII, we're introducing some additions and adjustments that really shake up gameplay in cool new ways. So let's get into it! 

Diplomacy

In Civilization, the main goal of diplomacy is to provide you ways to interact directly with other empires, shaping your relationships with them in a way that suits your strategy. These interactions include a wide range of possibilities, from declaring alliances to establishing open borders – all brought to life through negotiations with a renowned world leader. 

From past Civ games, players are probably most familiar with diplomacy when it takes the form of making a deal. You make an offer – which could be any combination of things like Gold, resources, agreements, Great Works, etc. – and see if the AI or other player accepts, rejects, or renegotiates the offer. Internally, we likened this system to a "bartering table," as the back-and-forth process of accepting, rejecting, and amending offers was similar to what it's like to haggle for something.

For Civilization VII, we wanted to elevate diplomacy where it's less about the minutia and more about empowering you to make decisions on a grand scale. What if – instead of trying to calculate how much Gold is worth trading for some horses – you instead increase your overall trade relations with another leader and let the merchants of your empire do the actual bartering? With leaders persisting across Ages, how do we make sure those relationships have lasting impact? How can we give you the tools to counter outside aggression and influence other leaders' decisions during conflict? 

All of these questions, and our central goal of making diplomacy matter more than ever, led us to the introduction of a brand new yield to Civilization VII: Influence! 

Influence: The Diplomacy Yield

Influence is a new yield in Civilization VII and the primary currency of the diplomacy system. Similar to Gold, you accumulate Influence on a per-turn basis; over the course of the game, you spend Influence on various things related to diplomacy. There are four main types of diplomacy actions between empires that require Influence:

• Endeavors: These are mutually beneficial actions between two empires. For example, you can initiate a "Research Collaboration" request, giving both players Science per turn.
• Sanctions: These are negative actions against another empire. If you choose to "Hinder Military Production," you decrease the other player's military production output (and incur a Relationship penalty).
• Treaties: Longer-lasting decisions that have utility, such as a treaty to have "Open Borders" or to "Improve Trade Relations."
• Espionage: High-risk, high-reward actions that give you a bonus or inflict a negative effect on another empire, with a chance for your actions to be revealed. Getting caught engaging in espionage reduces your relation with your target and decreases how much Influence you earn for a time. An example of this is to "Steal Technology."

Each of these diplomatic actions requires a certain amount of Influence to get started, and can be initiated by you to another leader or vice versa. When an action is taken, as long as it isn’t an espionage action, the other player will get a chance to respond. There are three types of responses:

• Support: Supporting an action allows it to be successful, as well as mutually beneficial. Supporting an action requires some amount of Influence to be spent.
• Accept: Accepting an action allows it to be successful, with more benefit toward the leader that started the action. There is no Influence cost to accepting an action.
• Reject: Rejecting an action blocks the action, but costs some amount of Influence depending on the action you are rejecting. The leader that initiated the action gets a refund for the Influence they spent to initiate the action.

Influence is also used to interact with Independent Powers. You can befriend these entities on the map to improve your relationship over time, eventually transforming them into a City-State with you as Suzerain. But other leaders can spend Influence to befriend them as well and may become Suzerain before you, locking you out of those powerful bonuses! 

When an Independent Power becomes a City-State, you'll have even more options for diplomacy. Using Influence, you can promote their border growth and build up their military – potentially applying regional pressure to their neighbors. You can levy their Units, which are permanently yours afterward, and even incorporate them into your empire to become one of your Settlements. And for more dastardly players, you can incite an Independent Power to raid someone other than yourself!

Acquiring Influence is very similar to how other yields in Civilization VII work. Influence comes from Buildings, social policies, attributes, leaders, civ abilities, Wonders, and more. Some narrative events include Influence as a bonus outcome, and certain actions in the game world can result in a windfall of Influence. Triggering these events, such as settling too close to another player's Capital, can result in a relationship penalty and surplus Influence for them to spend against you. 

There are also things that can cause a reduction in Influence. Doing something negative on the world stage, such as conquering or razing Settlements, can negatively impact how much Influence you earn per turn, adding another dimension of strategy.

Relationships, Agendas and War

Another key element of diplomacy is relationships, which visibly represent how favorably or poorly leaders view one another over the course of an Age. Relationships come in different stages: Helpful, Friendly, Neutral, Unfriendly, and Hostile. Your relationship stage with another leader determines a variety of things, including the type of diplomacy actions you can take with them. For example, military alliances can only be enacted between two leaders with a Helpful relationship.

Tied to relationships are leader agendas. Similar to Civilization VI, agendas represent the specific likes and dislikes of a leader and provide players an understanding of what type of actions they should take to curry favor. For example, Tecumseh's* "Suzerain of the World" agenda results in a big decrease in relationship if you choose to disperse an Independent Power, and a small increase in relationship if you aren't actively befriending any Independent Powers. 

*Tecumseh is available as part of the Tecumseh and Shawnee Pack, which is included as part of the Deluxe and Founders Editions. It is also available as a pre-order offer for the Standard Edition until February 11, 2025 and will be available for separate purchase (exact release date to be confirmed). Terms apply. 

You can change your relationship with fellow leaders through a wide variety of actions. Starting endeavors or sanctions are a major way to move your relationship forward or backward, as well as diplomatic events such as settling too closely to another's territory or creating a Trade Route. Working toward or against another leader's agenda is also a predictable way to affect your relationship with them.

Which brings us to war. New to Civilization VII is the mechanic of War Support. Whichever party has less War Support suffers from War Weariness, which causes Happiness penalties for all of that player's Settlements and a combat penalty when fighting against their opponent. 

Declaring a formal war, which can only happen if your relationship is Hostile with another leader, results in no advantage or disadvantage. However, choosing to engage in a surprise war – when your relationship hasn't fallen to Hostile – will result in more War Support for the other side and a penalty for yourself. It can be very difficult to fight a war when you're suffering from War Weariness but have enough Influence and you'll be able to acquire War Support for yourself, possibly flipping the tables on your opponent! In addition, you can spend Influence to add War Support to conflicts between other empires!

Trade

In Civilization, trade has typically revolved around the exchange of resources – limited commodities on the map that have powerful bonuses – and through the establishment of Trade Routes, which grant per-turn yield buffs for your empire. With the removal of the deal table from diplomacy and our overall goal of having you focus on making big decisions, we decided to make a few important changes to how trade functions in Civilization VII.

First, acquiring resources has been streamlined in Civ VII. There are three ways to gain a resource:

• Growth Event: When your Settlement expands due to population growth, selecting a tile with a resource on it automatically builds an Improvement that acquires that resource.
• Trade Route: Sending a merchant Unit to a nearby Settlement will set up a Trade Route, giving you a copy of each of the resources produced locally there.
• City States: A few City-States in each Age have a unique resource that can only be obtained by being their Suzerain.

Practically speaking, this means that if you want to acquire a specific resource, you just need to look for it on the map. From there, you can either grow your Settlement to acquire it or send a merchant to establish a Trade Route. 

Resources in Civilization VII are split into three categories: 

• Empire Resources: Bonuses that assist you anywhere on the map. Many of these are the old strategic resources from previous Civ games, like Iron.
• City Resources: Bonuses that help you specialize the yields and abilities of a specific City (not a Town!). City Resources enable you to create Cities that are especially good at Science, Culture, or Gold output.
• Bonus Resources: Flat yield buffs that you can move to any Settlement, including Towns. These are very useful in boosting Settlements that are getting unhappy, or for accelerating growth.

As noted above, you can assign certain types of resources to your Cities and Settlements. Each Settlement has a starting number of slots to hold resources based on their importance: Capitals have the most slots, Cities have multiple slots, and Towns have just one. Depending on a variety of factors, you can expand the amount of slots you have. Certain Buildings increase your resource capacity if built in that Settlement; the camel resource also increases your City capacity! Check out this short clip to see resources in action: 

On Trade Routes in particular, these are critical and likely the primary way of getting you extra resources – especially if you hit the Settlement Limit. To create a Trade Route, you need to unlock the merchant Unit – typically by studying a supporting Civic – and then sending the merchant to the Settlement. Generally, you can form either a land route or sea route. Land routes have a shorter maximum distance but create a road between the foreign Settlement and the nearest Settlement in your trade network; sea routes can be twice as distant as a land route. 

If someone sends a merchant to initiate a Trade Route to you, you automatically share your resources in that Settlement while profiting with Gold, receiving more if there are more resources provided and double if it is a sea route. During the Antiquity Age and Exploration Age, merchants need to travel directly to Settlements to initiate the Trade Route; in the Modern Age, they can do so from anywhere on the map. Once a Trade Route has been established, a trade caravan or ship is created. This Unit gets generated continuously so you won't need to reinitiate a Trade Route once complete – but watch out, as they can also get plundered by enemy forces!

Economic Legacy Path

From our first Dev Diary, Legacy Paths are a new feature in Civilization VII that essentially act as Age-specific objectives for you to accomplish. Every Age in Civilization VII has a unique economic Legacy Path, which will encourage you to adapt your strategy and evolve your economy. As part of these paths, two more resource types make their debut: Treasure resources and Factory resources. Treasure resources are exclusive to the Exploration Age, and represent resources specific to Distant Lands. Factory resources are exclusive to the Modern Age, and are ones that can be processed at a Factory to be turned into a strong, empire-wide effect.

Here's a brief look at how each Economic Legacy path works: 

• Silk Roads (Antiquity Age): Slot enough resources into your Settlements to finish this path. To do so, you'll need to have both access to those resources and enough slots to support them.
• Treasure Fleet (Exploration Age): Acquire special Treasure resources that are found exclusively in Distant Lands. After you research Shipbuilding, you gain treasure fleets from these Settlements. Return them to your Homeland to finish this path.
• Railroad Tycoon (Modern Age): Connect your Settlements back to your Capital with a network of Railroads and Ports. These connected Settlements can add Factories, giving each Factory Settlement the chance to process a single Factory resource that provides a unique empire-wide bonus and pushes you down this Legacy Path.

Looking Ahead

As we head toward launch, we're looking forward to seeing the many friendships, betrayals, and alliances you'll create in your Civ VII games, whether you're playing against AI in single-player or squaring off against real players in multiplayer. And this is just the beginning – these systems are designed to evolve, opening the door to new possibilities for expansion and refinement down the road. 

Happy playing, Civ fans!