It’s been a rocky launch for Civilization 7 so far. The long-anticipated latest entry in the strategy series went live for Deluxe Edition owners last week and complaints about the game feeling “unfinished” immediately started pouring in. A new patch, no doubt the first of many, aims to address some of the issues ahead of the full launch across PC and console today.
“First off, a big thank you to all of the players that have reached out to us with bugs, comments, and suggestions during the Advanced Access period for Civilization VII,” developer Firaxis Games wrote on Steam. “We are reading and collecting all of your feedback, and will continue to do so as we roll out improvements going forward. Today’s 1.0.1 Patch 2 for PC/Mac/Linux/Steam Deck addresses some player feedback received during Advanced Access and is the first in a series of upcoming patches intended to do so. Stay tuned for larger, more substantive updates to come in the future.”
The patch notes call out fixes to naval units as well as to a bug that caused city states to disappear during age transitions and some other gameplay issues. On the UI front, which has been a particular source of frustration for fans so far, the update tweaks alignment on certain menus and fixes cut-off text, missing icons, and spacing between certain descriptions. “Fixed an issue where the background color remains the default color when the user changes it in the Player Customize tab,” reads one of the specific bugs addressed.
To “expedite updates to the PC experience,” cross-play has been disabled for the time being. Firaxis has already promised bigger updates to address more player feedback, including a deeper overhaul of some of the UI issues currently being shared by fans. In the meantime, players are debating whether Civilization 7 is actually worse than other games in the series or is just suffering from the usual growing pains compared to entries that have had years out in the wild to be updated, balanced, and refined.
It’s currently sitting at a rating of “mixed” on Steam with just 52 percent positive reviews so far. Some players are being cautioned to wait for further updates to address match length and map variety, or for eventual sales, before diving in. But others are confident Civilization 7 will be the next great Civ game and don’t want to hold off on getting to know its ins and outs. “The bones of an amazing game are there,” wrote one fan on Reddit. “If you liked Civ 5 at launch and civ 6 at launch, you’ll like this. If you started playing Civ with Civ 6 after [expansion pack Gathering Storm], you’ll find that this is an incomplete mess.”
One thing that would almost certainly push Civ 7 to the next level is the addition of a fourth age. Sure enough, players are already buzzing about datamined leaks that appear to point to an Atomic Age getting added to the game sometime in the future. Currently, the game brushes up against the Cold War with thermonuclear devices but stops short of fully embracing it.
“You can imagine the possibilities with this, honestly,” Civ 7 executive producer Dennis Shirk said in a recent interview with IGN. “The way that the design team set it up so that each age is chock-full of systems, visuals, units, Civs, all specific to that age, and what you could do with that and where you could take it…we can’t talk about the specifics. We can just talk about it in generalities. We’re excited for where this is going to go.”
.