The expert’s rating
Benefits
- New format makes the game more available
- Native support for Apple Silicon
- Freedom to mix and match leaders and civilizations
- Detailed 3D graphics are running well on Macs
Disadvantages
- Very expensive
- Helpful interface
- No support for Intel Macs
Our judgment
The more streamlined approach to conquering world history may not appeal to veteran fans in the Civ series, but it makes the game more accessible and accessible to the newcomers and relaxed players. However, the developers need to tackle the bad interface design if Civ 7 is to meet its real potential – and justify its very high price.
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The latest game in the long -standing civilization series brings some major changes in the format established in previous matches. Veteran Civ players may feel that this new approach is stupid the game somewhat, although others claim it is a good way to make the game more accessible to newcomers.
Like all previous CIV games, Civilization 7 allows you to choose a leader and a civilization that you control and develop throughout the years, with the aim of either conquering rival civilizations or using ‘soft’ power to appear as a world leader through economic, scientific or cultural domination. But in civilization 7, your leader and your community are now completely separate, so you can mix and match leaders and countries in all kinds of historically inaccurate ways.
See how civilization compares to other Mac games we’ve gone through: Best Mac games.
A recent binge-watch by The Great made me start my first game as Catherine the Great of Russia-self I actually led the armies of ancient Rome rather than Russia from the 18th century. However, it is not a bad combination as the game explains to me that Catherine’s strengths tend to focus on cultural affairs that overlap with the cultural results of Roman society and make her a good strategic choice for this civilization.
Once you have chosen your leader and their civilization, the game allows you to start at one of three different ages – antique, investigation or modern times – with each age representing another historical era. As you progress through each age, you can follow four different paths that lead to success – economic, cultural, scientific or military. You can focus on a particular path if you want, or diversify and explore the benefits of each path, with each path that presents different goals that you can achieve to get victorious.
Selection of leader in civilization VII
Foundry
Another interesting development with Civilization 7 is that your leader remains the same as you progress through all three ages, but you get to choose a new civilization to be led at the beginning of each New Age. In my case, Catherine the Great was able to choose Russia in modern times and restore her to her rightful place in history.
Sharing the game in ages like this makes it feel more accessible as it feels like it is to divide the game into manageable sections, rather than chucifying the whole human history on you and just let you get on with it. However, some players may miss the great depth of the military and political intrigue available in previous matches. It is basically a matter of personal taste, but a criticism that has emerged highly and clearly everywhere is that the game’s user interface is poorly designed with unhelpful menus and tool tips that make it difficult to find the information you need.
Some people have also reported errors in the view of text and fonts, even though we did not experience these problems while running the Mac version of the game. However, we found it annoying that the game is constantly wetting you to create an online account with the publishers, 2K Games, to use online multiplayer mode or to unlock other bonuses. Fortunately, however, the developers have already announced that they are listening to the players and working to fine -tune the interface in future updates.
Foundry
On the Mac page of things, Civilization 7 naturally runs on Apple Silicon – but not on Intel Macs, unfortunately. It also shows Sequoia as the minimal required version of MacOS, though my MacBook Pro is still at Sonoma and had no trouble running the game. The performance is also good, despite the game’s detailed 3D graphics and the large areas of terrain that you need to cover. The game has a built-in benchmarking tool, and my MacBooks M2 Pro Chip was able to sail on a comfortable 55FPS using high graphics settings when set to 2560 × 1440 resolution, so you need to be able to play it even with a humble M1 processor if you don’t mind turning the solution or graphic settings.
Should you buy Civilization 7?
Personally, I tend to lean on more action-oriented strategy games like The Total War: The Warhammer series, so I like the new approach adopted by Civilization 7, with the bite-sized ages that make the game feel less overwhelming. Veteran Civ players may feel that “things are not what they used to be”, but newcomers will find that civilization is a rich and challenging strategy game that will keep them occupied for months.