Civilization 7 marks a significant shift from previous titles, primarily due to its innovative emergent narratives. Interestingly, the strategy game’s narrative director revealed that it has drawn substantial influence from another iconic franchise: Warhammer.
During a session at the Game Developer’s Conference, Cat Manning, the narrative director for Civ 7, shared insights about the narrative systems in strategy games. She noted, “There’s a long history of successful narrative systems in strategy games, particularly when they’re tied pretty closely to the game’s mechanics.” Manning referenced examples like FTL [Faster Than Light], stating, “That was a huge touch point for us.” She also mentioned other influences including Paradox titles, Amplitude games, Battletech, and notably Warhammer Chaos. “Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate was a huge touch point as we were beginning to talk about what the system could look like,” she added.
Manning elaborated, “The way all of Civ’s basic systems operate is that the game sends signals to various components.” She explained, “It’s just kind of this constant back and forth.” She provided an example, stating, “If you purchase, say, a unit with gold, you might immediately get a narrative event tied to that unit,” indicating that the system operates continuously in the background.
The choice to abandon Civ 6’s Gossip System in favor of a fresh approach was made due to the former’s tendency to inundate players with repetitive pop-ups, which were often easily discernible from the gameplay itself.
As the game receives mixed reviews on Steam, the developers of Civilization 7 have stated that they are committed to forthcoming updates and maintaining a “high standard to create the best game possible.”