Hey, Civ fans! Early Access has finally arrived, and it's great to see both franchise veterans and new players begin to jump in with Sid Meier's Civilization VII!
From the entire team at Firaxis Games, we want to share a heartfelt thank you to the best fans in the world. From our tease back at Summer Games Fest to the upcoming Civ World Summit, bringing a game like Civilization VII to life takes a herculean effort that can't be done without a passionate community.
Over the last few days, the team has been poring over your feedback, including our most recent Steam Reviews during the Early Access period. As stewards of the Civilization franchise, we hold ourselves to a high standard and always strive to create the best game possible. Civ would not have come this far without you, and your opinions matter greatly to us.
In response to your feedback, we’ve identified three key areas that we’re prioritizing work against as quickly as possible. We will share a development roadmap as soon as we can, but our focus is on the following:
- Prioritizing UI Improvements: Our top priority is improving the UI. We need some time to digest all of your feedback, but some areas that we're already looking into include making UI interactions more intuitive, improving map readability, fixing areas of polish like formatting, and more. We're committed to getting this right, and will share more details as soon as we can.
- Implementing Community-Requested Features: Several key features that we've seen you ask for will be included in upcoming patches as free updates, and we'll continue to work with the community to improve and add to the game. We're still working on exact timing, but can share the following items are being prioritized:
- Adding Teams to multiplayer games so you can play cooperatively
- Allowing full player counts in multiplayer in all three Ages through refinements to our Distant Lands system.
- Allowing you to pick your starting and ending Age to allow for single or double Age games
- Providing a wider variety of map types
- Enabling city and religion names to be customized
- Adding in hotseat multiplayer
- Rolling Out Quality-of-Life Updates in Patch 1.1.0 (Deploying in March): Work is already well underway on Patch 1.1.0, which includes fixes and adjustments that were already on our radar. This list includes quality-of-life UI adjustments, ongoing AI balance and improvement, adjustments to diplomacy and crises, plus additional bug fixes.
We will support Civilization VII for years to come, and your feedback remains critical in helping us grow and build the future of Civ. If you have feedback you’d like to share, please do so in the Steam Discussion forums or drop a thread in our official Civilization Discord Server. Thank you for being the best fans in the world. We're excited to be on this journey with you - see you in the game!
