How Civilization VII’s worthy account system helps players trip abnormal substances of history
By Firaxis had tremendous aspirations to fulfill with Civilization VII, as previous versions had been beloved by enthusiasts of the 4X genre, and the development team believed that prioritizing the organization of narrative events throughout gameplay would once again captivate players with both their flourishing civilization and the actual history that inspired the game.
This approach was elaborated upon during a Game Developers Conference presentation by three narrative designers and one historian who contributed to Firaxis’s latest 4X strategy game. The discussion, like the game itself, featured a wealth of content that examined unique stories within the game and the techniques used to incorporate them.
Narrative director Cat Manning commenced the presentation by explaining how Civilization VII‘s overarching narrative framework—comprising elements such as storylets and narrative tags—enabled writers to narrate stories across different eras during each playthrough. The system was so comprehensive and expansive that, upon its release, Civilization VII included 1,262 narrative events.
An Impressive Narrative System
“We aimed for enough events so players would have a substantial variety,” Manning remarked. “We also desired those events to be pertinent to the player’s current game status.”
These narrative events hinged on how well Civilization VII would track player actions, noting the choices they made, the natural disasters their civilizations faced, the units that perished, and numerous other factors that this narrative framework deemed essential. Each writer on the Firaxis team could potentially attach narrative tags to specific events, which could subsequently trigger further events that might lead to additional stories, and so forth.
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This structure enabled Firaxis storytellers to engage players with compelling narratives drawn from throughout history, including intriguing tales like The Great Republic of Rough and Ready, a California town that voted to secede from the U.S. during the gold rush, and a fictional character in Roman history referred to by Firaxis as “the first wife guy.”
The first wife guy is a narrative event in Civilization VII that involves a man erecting a memorial stone to honor his wife, who managed his affairs during his exile. This monument became “a flashpoint in the discussion on civic virtue,” as noted in the game’s description. The player could then choose to “reclaim the exile’s property, relocate the stone to a place of honor, or even leverage the inscription on the stone as rhetoric” to their people.
Civilization VII‘s narrative system permitted this story to endure for much longer if the player decided to engage with it. Alterations to the series’ archaeology system often resulted in players unearthing artifacts that originated from events that occurred earlier in their gameplay.
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Unearthing the Past
Players engaging with the “first wife guy” narrative event could utilize the game’s archaeology system to uncover a large slab of stone, described as a “funerary monument to a long-deceased woman.” This is the same monument that had been established years earlier by the wife guy.
“Archaeology is storytelling; it’s not a cold [recounting] but a perspective on a series of deliberately selected events,” stated narrative designer Nell Raban. “When we employ the narrative system to create a story with the player in Civ 7, we’re constructing that history, layer by layer. With archaeology, we can excavate that history.”
Civilization has consistently had a humorous relationship with history—as players often shared screenshots of Mahatma Gandhi threatening their Civilization with warfare. Narrative designers and historians working on Civilization VII sought a deeper relationship with world history this time. While it was unlikely to resemble reality most of the time, it could still present a narrative that contained elements of truth within it.
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“When we mention fiction, the term derives from a meaning of being fabricated,” stated senior historian Andrew Johnson. “Here I prefer to consider fiction not merely as something that’s untrue, but as stories that bridge the gaps between images, snapshots, and data points. They are what we utilize in our daily lives to ascribe meaning to how the world operates.”
Pausing to Remember
Gameplay in Civilization