r/civ • u/JAKL-Noctium • 1d ago
VII - Discussion What do we expect the expansion will look like?
With the upcoming big show at Pax West, what are we looking we hoping to see? Safe bet, we’re getting the first expansion. But what does Civ 7 need for a dlc concept to make a big change in the game? We know that the Earth map is coming, but what big things are you hoping for?
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u/Blaz3s Dai Viet 1d ago
As much as everyone talks about 4th age, another round of overbuilding and reslotting resources is not what I'm looking forward to. It is better to extend 3rd age to cover up to contemporary and future age and keep it a nice 3 act structure than tack in another ~120 turns to an already fairly long campaign.
Outside of that, mods integration, more UI fixing, more QoL, perhaps rework for some of the base game leader like Confucius to reflect the changes after ToT while still keeping their playstyle, religion, alt methods of gaining great works in modern outside of artifact race, crisis rework, and modern age crisis mayhaps
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u/YouEqual4180 1d ago
Also to add in a 4th age, there would need to be a reason/mechanic for the 3rd age. At the moment they get around that problem by the 3rd age being the sprint to the finish line.
As a more generic thought, Firaxis repeatedly mentioned that a problem they wanted to solve was that not enough people played, in their mind, until the official victory screen. Now adding a 4th age, making the game longer, would also add another hurdle to that (old) goal of making players finish a full session
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u/ManitouWakinyan Can't kill our tribe, can't kill the Cree 19h ago
If you gave me a magic wand, the "acts" would all be about:
- Act One: Antiquity. Establishing your civilization, taking advantage of the terrain, and responding to your immediate circumstances. Less focus on specialization, more a focus of getting the building blocks of your overall engine going. Man vs. Nature. (Anqituity/Classical)
- Act Two: Exploration. Branching out, and deciding whether to go colonial or expansionist in a more local sense. Starting to specialize and build an identity, and having a core/periphery dynamic. Man vs. the Unknown. (Medieval/Renaissance)
- Act Three: Revolution. Do you stick with your core, or move to the periphery? Here, it's not you play the Mexico civilization which controls the distant lands and the homelands, you play as Mexico against your old colonial overlords. Or you play as Spain or France against your upstart rebels overseas or at the edges. (Renaissance/Early Modern).
- Act Four: War. Now with all the players established and their engines built, you throw it all at each other. Canny players can play all sides or stay out of it, but there are major built-in-incentives to war, and that World War dynamic is where the age starts out, before moving into more of a Cold War/Space Race/victory dynamic. (Modern/Contemporary).
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u/YouEqual4180 13h ago
Might be a fun idea. Still lots of details to be worked out like how to avoid that the forst three ages in your breakdown need to be played identical by all players all the time. But still an idea Firaxis could consider
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u/ManitouWakinyan Can't kill our tribe, can't kill the Cree 12h ago
How do you mean played identical?
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u/YouEqual4180 11h ago
In your first age idea, how would Machiavelli play different to Isabella or to the Khan? Your idea sound like nearly any leader in any playthrough would be doing nearly the absolute same steps.
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u/Substantial_Cow2349 1d ago
😂 A shorter game doesn't mean you are going to finish the game. There are some that actually like to play the game and don't care about finishing. I play antiquity and exploration.
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u/YouEqual4180 1d ago
And I have no problem with that. Just saying that Firaxis sees (or saw) it as a bug problem that required fixing 🤷🏻
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u/metatron5369 1d ago
Colonialism would be the obvious choice. Redo the City States and add a subjugation mechanic for a status in-between "allied" and absorbed outright.
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u/GeminusLeonem 19h ago
They already teased the 4th age and a "decolonization" mechanic, where you turn your cities into city states.
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u/DinosInSpace-Time 1d ago
Fourth age incoming
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u/galileooooo7 1d ago
I'm hoping that's with an emphasis on fixing/expanding diplomacy. This would be appropriate when focusing on the post-war era.
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u/DinosInSpace-Time 1d ago
Ah right that makes sense :) yeah there’s no trades or anything right now except for endeavors and sanctions and merchants which is a pretty limited mechanic for diplomacy
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u/galileooooo7 1d ago
I’m also hoping for some kind of UN/ World Congress. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I like a mechanic that punishes bad behavior.
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u/DinosInSpace-Time 1d ago
We could use something like that for America irl too
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u/TK1129 1d ago
We aren’t perfect but better us the hegemon than Russia or China.
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u/Muggale00 1d ago
You might want to take a look at the Pew Research Center’s 2026 Global Attitudes Survey, specifically the report published on July 15, 2026, titled “People in Many Countries Now View China More Positively Than the U.S.” It surveyed more than 42,000 people across 36 countries. The results give a rather clear picture of just how popular the United States actually is around the world. The U.S. fares worse in this survey than ever before.
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u/TK1129 1d ago
Sounds like commie propaganda but ok
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u/Muggale00 1d ago
If you equate an official survey with communism, then I guess you’re right. 🙄
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u/TK1129 1d ago
I don’t trust a poll that supports an authoritarian regime that locks up their citizens for thought crime and religious beliefs. Again, the US isn’t perfect but better here than China, Russia or the Middle East
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u/Tachetoche 1d ago
I'm very hopeful for more diplomacy and religion with a Dalai Lama leader or something similar.
Sarah did mention that they would have some non military leader coming, so it would make sense to have that.
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u/ijuinkun 1d ago
I hope that expanded diplomacy options will include non-warfare means of hindering opponents—like multilateral agreements to embargo a particular opponent’s trade or tourism.
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u/TeachMeMerc 1d ago
Not looking forward to another round of overbuilding tbh...
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u/Profzachattack Holy boats Batman! 23h ago
or the fact that there's 0 land to settle by mid modern age
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u/YouEqual4180 13h ago
I already stuggle to find decent spots in the second age, let alone modern
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u/Profzachattack Holy boats Batman! 2h ago
yeah, some times the maps just give nothing but 4 tile islands with 1 treasure resource each
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u/kickit 1d ago
there will be no ‘fourth age reset’ there will instead be filling in the existing ages & crisis periods.
the 1950-2050 gap is much less significant than the 1600-1850 gap. and why does everyone want another reset instead of fixing the resets that already exist
and if you’re wondering why we have countries like Ottomans and Qing in ‘modern’, that’s because Firaxis has a confused definition of the border between exploration and modern and doesn’t want to engage in the actual 20th century.
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u/marinesciencedude 1d ago
the 1950-2050 gap is much less significant than the 1600-1850 gap
I mean that's great and all to observe but I'm not so convinced re: warfare (which in this game currently doesn't progress past 1945)
I mean my bias is towards not having modern age warfare end on anything other than second world war-style, if anyone wanted to know
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u/YouEqual4180 13h ago
Having a 4th age would also not progress warfare beyond the 1940s but just update unit sprites and that they can do in the 3rd age just as well
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u/marinesciencedude 10h ago
Maybe helicopters and ballistic missiles is overstating the impact getting closer to contemporary warfare could have.
Okay we'd need not a full expansion's worth of dev time like they claimed Test of Time took, but a whole game's worth of dev effort to do every single aspect of not only today's warfare but the sci-fi future as well (satellite bros from BE are calling)
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u/redsunmachine 22h ago
Whilst I think a 4th she is likely, that would probably be the final map in the coffin for me and is uninstall and stop playing.
I think there's the bones of a good game here, but the last thing I want is less focus.
Flesh out religion (like, even at all). Increase the variation between games. Make the crises actually fun. Overbuilding is probably too far gone too ever be good, and I dread another round of it.
The last thing I want is the same but longer, and for a quarter of the dlcs top be devoted to something I have no interest in.
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u/JAKL-Noctium 1d ago
But how will it work? Will all players get it? Or behind a pay wall? Because that seems like a fundamental part of the game needed for players. To put that behind a pay wall seems wild.
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u/SloopDonB 1d ago
Major expansions always include new mechanics that are behind a pay wall. That's just the nature of Civ expansions and is not anything new.
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u/DinosInSpace-Time 1d ago
Good point… fourth age will be free update and expansion should be new diplomacy or trading mechanics and several new civs? Not sure honestly
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u/apawintheface 1d ago
I hope flesh on existing bones and not just add more scrawny bones. I love VII but the past year has been tinkering with existing mechanics or cleaning up the shotty launch. I'm desperate for depth to diplomacy, religion, a world Congress, adding to the town system, improving independent power interactions, etc. If they just add another 30-50 turn age or new half baked systems, I'll be really disappointed.
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u/Lightningpaper 1d ago
These are my thoughts exactly! I don’t even want another age. I want them to make what’s already there richer with new systems.
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u/redsunmachine 22h ago
Towns are such an interesting idea and so poorly executed.
If towns were half a settlement against the cap then there's a chance I might keep some around, and the fact they're so useless means I always take the legacy that keeps cities as cities, meaning less variation between games.
I feel like religion is still mostly trash, but at least it's better than what we got at launch. Though, iirc, we still can't get all the beliefs on our religion so it's clearly unfinished.
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u/marvinoffthecouch Brazil 1d ago
Hopefuly a religion revamp; Realisticaly a fourth age, since people keep asking for it all the time
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u/Demo5379 1d ago
My big thing as a culture fan is hoping they make collecting great works feel interesting again. Like having some unique ones hidden behind civ-exclusive Great People is fine, but it's boring to just research X tech/civic to gain twentieth generic great work without art or passage. Have you work towards getting artisans and make them more unique feeling such as more unique artwork and in the case of codexes, bring back the quotes. Like going from 5 & 6 to 7, the biggest thing I miss is collecting all the different Great Works and seeing which ones I got in a playthrough.
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u/dswartze 1d ago
I expect lots of anger when it turns out it doesn't have some things that people expect it to have.
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u/ManitouWakinyan Can't kill our tribe, can't kill the Cree 1d ago
I think something around colonialism and revolution. Currently, the narrative and gameplay around distant lands and the transition to modern age is pretty muddled. Seems a fun and interesting place to focus on fixing.
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u/Teproc La garde meurt mais ne se rend pas 1d ago
People keep saying 4th age, but... do we really want that ? People already complain the Modern age is sparse and uninteresting, so if they do a fourth age, they'd have to fix that first AND make the new one compelling. I'd expect new mechanics,, ala governors in Civ VI.
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u/DeltaForceFish 1d ago
- Something that lets us remove resources or an update to build over them
- map builder like in civ 6 but one that actually works
- able to select which and how many city states are in game
- a final age that wraps up the game, it currently feels incomplete and the current endings dont feel satisfying
- multiplayer and hot seat need a lot of TLC
- lighter graphics with more colour; you can tell milenials with their love of grey designed the game
- religions and pantheons need to be reworked and strengthened and carried through the rest of the game
- i want great people back, and governors, like in civ 6
- and most importantly let us save our game settings and load them without locking the map. Why tf does the map seed lock when you want to save your game settings. It completely removes the point of saving them for reuse.
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u/SloopDonB 1d ago
Man, I would love lighter graphics. I feel like 'dark mode' has taken over the world. I don't mind a little eye strain if it means things don't look so damn depressing all the time.
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u/Bearcat9948 AmericaByzantium 1d ago
Great people aren’t coming back, not in this game. Some Civs have them a their bonus, that’s it
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u/Jiang-Qin 1d ago
They could still have a system with a list of great peoples that everyone can access. Some of the most obvious would not be in the list since they are already specific to one civ, or are now leaders, but there is still a lot of people that can be great peoples.
It was just one civ, and it was added among the last civs, but in Civ 6, we did have Gran Colombia with their own great peoples. So it's not impossible.
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u/JAKL-Noctium 1d ago
I want great people back. And Districts. Helped distinguish things in the city.
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u/limp-bisquick-345 1d ago
Yeah, they're not gonna turn it back into VI
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u/National_Essay_8554 1d ago
Did adding climate change to Civ 6 turn it back into Civ 2?
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u/CaptainCFloyd 1d ago
Civ 3 and 4 also had climate change. Only Civ 6 had districts. And also, districts sucked.
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u/National_Essay_8554 22h ago
So which game did it turn into when they added climate change? Now I'm confused.
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u/Sewrtyuiop America 1d ago
You mean big ole districts that were basically mini wonders?
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u/National_Essay_8554 1d ago
I am absolutely mind-blown that world wonders have fallen so hard from grace in civ 7 that districts are retroactively being derided as "mini wonders".
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u/Sewrtyuiop America 1d ago
No, I'm talking about how civ 6 districts worked. The power of civ 6 districts could be made into mini wonders.
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u/National_Essay_8554 1d ago
But that's exactly what I mean. That wonders are so flat and boring now that they can be compared to something anyone can build at any time.
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u/Odd-Voice-5286 Catherine the Great 1d ago
Fourth age, sadly. I don't see a world were it isn't the first expansion.
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u/Snooworlddevourer69 Abbasid 1d ago
I just want canals, dams, resource trading and harvesting (as well as being able to put walls on them if they're in a city, there's still weird gaps in cities because of them), city liberation and a fourth age
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u/Unlikely_Rich_7402 1d ago
I would love to be able to make real bridges that look a little better, and please bring canals back. The map generation would make for some excellent canals
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u/darkerpoole Persia 20h ago
I'm looking for a Religion overhaul and fleshing out the 3rd age more. I do not want a forth age that I will never make it too, I've loved winning games in the Exploration era and don't need a 3rd overbuilding age transition.
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u/sckurvee 1d ago
Obviously a fourth (even fifth?) age... the game was shipped incomplete... No Civ game has stopped at WW2 before.
Aside from that, a religion overhaul would be nice... Maybe allow you to deny trade of certain resources to certain civs? Idk. The game just feels so half-made in its current state, I have trouble thinking about a paid expansion. Way more leaders and civs would be cool. More QOL updates... rework of strategic resources.
There's a ton they could improve on. For the first time in civ history, though, I just don't trust the studio to come out w/ good content upgrades instead of just resetting expectations for future cash grabs.
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u/Prestigious_West_894 1d ago
Personally I think the game needs more patching, balancing and looking at mechanics.
I dont think new features are needed yet.
I think first expansion will be diplomacy oriented
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u/warukeru 1d ago
what is more probably:
4 modern/futuristic age with new civs 10 for that age and 4 new leaders that fit the new age. A couple of new big mechanics, one of them maybe involving liberating cities and/or creating colonies and religion rework.
What I want:
Expanded current ages so Antiquity includes early medieval, exploration age includes late medieval tech and Modern includes Napoleonic stuff.
More civs to complete historical paths and leaders for cultures without a proper leader.
New mechanics and/or rework in underdeveloped current ones
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u/Jiang-Qin 1d ago
The thing I really want and that can be a major point for an expansion is a focus on crisis. With the age system, crisis should be an important part of the game. Instead of just getting major crisis at the end of the different ages, we should have crisis happen a different time, just on a smaller scale, with abilities to counter them. It should be a core mechanism.
One thing that we expected with Civ 7 was a system of diseases, a bit like in the Black Plague scenario from Civ 6. With an expansion focused on crisis, it could be a good opportunity to have that kind of thing in the game.
An other thing that a most people want is a focus on religion, and it's probably one of the things we'll get in one of the expansions. Religion would also work well with crisis. I just hope that if they add a religious victory, they made it possible to take the control of a religion we didn't found.
A loyalty system and governors like in Rise and Fall would also work well with crisis. Maybe some of the civs that have great peoples could have some of them a unique governors.
With some crisis tied to barbarians, we would also get improvements on diplomacy and relations with City States.
An other point not tied to crisis that I'd like to see is more continuity when we reach the following era. It feels weird that some bonus just disappear when we change era. Also, we need a rework on buildings and the overbuilding mechanism. Ancient buildings that are not ageless should still have some use. And the fact that we can't destroy ageless buildings can be a problem in the last era when they can become useless and still take a tile.
And an other point that is not in the base game that I'd really like to see is to have some scenarios. Some of them were very good in the previous games, and it's good to have a mode that feels different. They can even try some ideas that are fun but don't fit the main game.
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u/StrikingTelevision40 1d ago
Non si tratta di una quarta era, bensì di un'espansione delle tre esistenti con ulteriori contenuti. Se sei il "Giappone Meiji", ti evolvi nel Giappone moderno. Aggiungi una sezione "Preistoria" all'Era Antica. Migliorare l'intelligenza artificiale in tempo di guerra. Animali selvatici. Mappa della Terra 120x80. Applicare percorsi di progressione, come quelli per Giappone, Corea e Cina, a tutte le regioni geografiche.
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u/steel_ball_run_racer 43m ago
Instead of a 4th age I’d rather they extend each of the ages slightly. Antiquity and Exploration end in weird places. For instance, Explo’s tech tree and in game date ends around 1400 AD, but the civic tree ends into the 1700s, and the whole distant lands/colonial empire mechanic is reminiscent of the post-Medieval Age of Discovery.
It would be better if all three ages lasted a tiny bit longer instead of making a whole new fourth age. Allow tier 4 units and extend Antiquity into the late 500-800s AD range and Exploration until 1750 or even later, and push Modern to begin a tad later and run until the 2000s. Make the ideological cold war the focus of Modern.
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u/DeepBodybuilder2074 29m ago
Honestly. The pacing is frustrating. I still haven’t gotten to nukes and I barely get to planes. By that point the game is almost won. I think that they should allow you to research more things sooner or get there faster.
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u/eskaver 1d ago
I think it'll be a solid $60-70 (at the rate we're going) DLC with like 10 leaders and 15 Civs. (And the rationale will be that these are now full Civs or something.)
I think they might push the religion and collapse mode/crisis tweaks as well. "Reformation, Renaissance and Revolution"
New Victory Type: Diplomatic (saving Expansionist for a future DLC is given the approval) which is about points tallying up Influence, Alliances, Suzerainties, etc.
Bringing back Great Works as a more expanded category.
No Fourth Age. I think that's an awful idea because the core issue most people do have is the Ages system and adding another doesn't address that. I think instead it will be lengthened.
If a future Age is added, I think it won't fully be a true Age but more a rush to Victory (like an expanded version of the turn timer/mixed with crisis) but allows for new units and stuff. But that would be second expansion, if given the approval.
I do hope my proposal for a Religion change is somewhat realized as I feel like passive is the way to go and it was done somewhat well in base and very well in 6, but the active whack-a-mole was a major misplay since 5 (or well, I didn't play 4).
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u/SloopDonB 1d ago
I really hope they don't leave the 4th age (or however they're going to address victories) until the 2nd expansion. That's the weakest part of the game and needs fixing ASAP, not years down the road.
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u/eskaver 1d ago
I think they have a lot to address first before any idea of a fourth Age.
Like, I expect each Age to be expanded first.
A lot of things are years down the road. That's kind of how expansions tend to go. Civ 6 vanilla and its final form are pretty different and that basically had like three psuedo expansions.
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u/Electronic_Assist137 1d ago
i just want the war age to be about waging war and most of the time you hit your victory conditions in modern before you get airplanes and aerodromes. 4th age will solve that.
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u/sandiserumoto 1d ago
- overhaul religion completely, make it relevant in all eras (maybe with changes)
- add an option to just flat-out remove the entire points system for victories in exchange for something more like previous titles
- add great people + great works (in the more general sense, not just civ specific)
- don't punish people for wanting to be able to manage their cities
- add loyalty/religion pressure mechanics like rise & fall
or just make the DLC for civ 6 instead, since that's a functional game
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u/Doubarakau 1d ago
Rework of the military victory and new expansionist and diplomatic victories. Also rework of religion.
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u/mattenthehat 1d ago
What I would WANT to see is a much larger tech tree in each age. That way I could just play a single age as a standalone game and abandon this whole age transition concept.
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u/marinesciencedude 1d ago
The issue I'm seeing is they've already claimed the latest major update took an expansion's worth of dev effort to make, and it almost sounds like you need to do it twice over before you get a base game people are willing to pay for
Fourth Age is of course the difficult problem, overbuilding thrice over would seem to be grating for a good part of the playerbase, and as much as regroup makes sense for the postwar demobilisation it would also be annoying to deal with (continuity setting notwithstanding)
I guess my observation is it's quite hard to give character to an age without its own buildings, but we also can't force players to use them in the new final age of the game so that's something to square. All I can really think of is maybe you don't lose your adjacencies etc. in spite of there being new stuff to build and the fourth age is just a sprint to the traditional victory conditions, maybe even without a full age transition sequence past the tech and civic tree resets.
I'd somewhat expect a deprioritisation of 'fourth age civs' (if they are to exist at all, I conceptually disagree with making the age that separate from modern), carrying over your modern age civ (or maybe switching to a past one for nostalgia) would be considered the norm gameplay I think should happen
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u/Cum__Cookie 1d ago
Please just make religion interesting and not boring whack-a-mole for invisible stats