A guide to Civilization 7’s unexplained rules
Editor’s note: I was surprised the first time I realized that Civilization 7‘s age transitions reverted my cities to towns, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg of things Civ 7 doesn’t tell you about its workings.
This guide to Civ 7’s unexplained rules was originally published on Reddit, and I liked it so much I asked its author, Jordi Taeka, if we could republish it here on PC Gamer. Note that elements may become out of date as Firaxis releases patches (update 1.1.0 just arrived). —Tyler Wilde, US EIC
I started this list to help players understand how Civilization 7 works, and it has since received many contributions from other users. Thank you for this. Most points here cannot be found as information in the game, while the few points here that are explained in the game are far from clear, such as the artefacts.
Age transitions (military)
⚔️ Siege and naval units are always lost at the end of the Antiquity age. You’ll receive one free cog at the start of the second age once you’ve spent your legacy points.
⚔️ Naval units can only be kept at the end of the Exploration age if you have fleet commanders. You’ll keep as many naval units as can be assigned to your fleet commanders.
⚔️ You’ll keep six (Antiquity) or nine (Exploration) of your land units at the end of an age, in addition to the number of units that can be assigned to your army commanders. The only way to easily count how many units you have is by tapping the yield icons on the top of the screen and scrolling all the way down to unit expenses.
⚔️ If you have fewer than six (Antiquity) or nine (Exploration) land units at the end of an age, you will receive the deficit as free infantry units at the start of the new age.
⚔️ Should you have more units than can be kept at the end of an age, all excess units will be deleted. The units that remain are upgraded and either assigned to a commander or one of your most populous settlements—though as of yet it’s unknown what determines which units are prioritised for deletion, and which units are assigned to commanders or settlements.
Age transitions (other)
🗓️ Each player starts the Antiquity Age with a settlement limit of at least three, the Exploration Age with eight, and the Modern Age with 16.
🗓️ If you ended an age with a higher settlement limit than eight (Antiquity) or 16 (Exploration), no matter how that number was achieved or how much you would start the next age with, the excess number carries over.
🗓️ Outside of settlement limit bonuses, none of your research or study in the current age will matter in the next age. Warehouse buildings and traditions will become available regardless of whether or not you had researched or studied them in the previous age. Tile yields and unit combat strengths are redefined at the start of each age.
🗓️ Buildings that aren’t ageless will now grant +2 (from the Antiquity Age) or +3 (from the Exploration Age) of its base yields, and lose their adjacency bonus. While this is generally a debuff and you are nudged to build over them, certain yields will actually be slightly increased this way. For instance, the guildhall will now provide +3 influence per turn instead of its usual +2. Since influence is the scarcest yield, it can be useful to keep all influence buildings from previous ages.
🗓️ All civilian units, except for commanders, are lost upon heading into a new age. This includes scouts and unique civilians.
🗓️ Unique abilities of previous civilizations are also lost. Unique improvements and buildings will remain intact, including improvements gained from city states, as they are ageless.
🗓️ Every city except for your capital will become a town. You are given the option to move your capital to one of two different settlements, effectively allowing you to start the age with two cities.
🗓️ You’ll retain only a certain amount of gold and influence at the start of a new age. This limit is not very clear at the moment, as it varies between game speeds. You’ll however always gain one free turn of gold and influence equal to the income you have at the start of the first turn of the new age.
🗓️ Independent people will always disappear at the end of an age, and you’ll lose any bonuses you gained from city states, including unique resources. Only finished improvements are kept. On the second turn of a new age, a completely new independent people (not yet a city state) will spawn on the location of each independent people lost this way. Having been the suzerain of a city state will mean that the new independent people on that location are neutral to you. Incorporating a city state into your empire is the only way to keep an independent settlement intact.
🗓️ You can see the requirements for unlocking future civilizations, as well as a list of unlocked legacy options for the next age, by tapping the lock icon on the top of the screen.
🗓️ Mementos can be changed in-between the ages when selecting a new civilization. Mementos that grant a leader attribute point will do so at the start of each age that they are selected in.
🗓️ Legacy points not spent at the start of a new age are lost. It’s currently not possible to see which legacies you have chosen.
Settling
🏙️ Having fresh water (a cyan tile) will give a settlement a permanent +5 happiness bonus. Navigable rivers grant fresh water to adjacent tiles, while non-navigable rivers only grant fresh water when settled on. Several other tiles, such as oases, will also grant fresh water.
🏙️ Exceeding the settlement limit will give each settlement a -5 happiness penalty, down to -35. Settlements with negative happiness will lose -2% of their yields for every negative happiness point.
🏙️ Settlers can be trained in any settlement that has at least five population, and will not consume any population.
🏙️ Using a settlement to claim a tile that has a “goody hut” on it will not grant you any benefits, unlike in previous Civilization games. You must walk onto the tile with any unit or raid the tile with a naval unit to trigger the narrative event.
Combat
⚔️ Naval units can attack districts and land units at range, but are forced to engage in melee combat when they attack an embarked unit or another naval unit.
⚔️ War support does not grant you any benefits, but instead penalises the opponent. Per negative point, they lose -1 strength on all units and a static amount of happiness in all of their settlements. The happiness penalty is -3 per negative point in settlements they have founded themselves, -5 in settlements founded by someone they’re not at war with, and -7 in settlements founded by you.
⚔️ You must first gain control of every fortified district in a settlement before it can be conquered. Note that the Dur-Sharrukin wonder also counts as a fortified district, but does not show any walls. Conquered or traded cities will become towns until upgraded again, which cannot be done until the unrest in the settlement passes over.
⚔️ Conquering a settlement with a wonder will reportedly give you all the benefits of that wonder as if you’ve built it. For instance, a settlement with the Terracotta Army will grant you a free army commander. Regardless, conquered wonders do not count towards the cultural legacy path of the first age.
⚔️ When razing a settlement, you’re warned that this will give all your current and future opponents a +1 bonus to their war support. This however only lasts until the end of the current age.
⚔️ Due to an oversight, units heal more health from pillaging tiles at faster game speeds than what is shown, as the displayed number is meant for the standard game speed. On the other hand, less health is gained at slower game speeds.
⚔️ Having a military unit on a tile of a settlement belonging someone you are at war with will prevent that player from constructing anything on it, and halts any on-going construction on that tile. The tile can also not be selected when the settlement expands.
Commanders
🪖 Commander skills and commendations do not stack, with the exception of the Zeal skill in the Leadership tree. With that skill, a commander provides a stackable +5% bonus to all yields of a settlement when occupying any district or worked tile in that settlement.
🪖 Commanders on a city hall or palace will also reduce unhappiness of the settlement they are in by 10%, plus another 10% for each promotion.
🪖 Commanders can’t outright die—they will respawn in the capital after several turns when killed, retaining their promotions and experience. The amount of turns is not yet clear, and may vary per game speed. Reportedly however, any commander who dies close to the end of an age does not return in the next age.
🪖 Experience is always equally shared between all commanders in range. Commanders will only receive experience from the attacks of adjacent units, even with the Merit commendation (+1 command radius). However, if an adjacent melee unit attacks and kills an enemy that’s not adjacent to the commander, thereby walking onto the tile of the killed enemy, the commander will not receive experience. Dispersing independent peoples or taking over a settlement will always give experience to each commander within three tiles of the tribe or settlement centre.
🪖 You can assign either a single settler or scout to each army commander, as long as there’s still a slot available. Commanders also have the “add to army” button, possibly due to an oversight, but they cannot use this ability. Army commanders can have six units assigned to them once they’ve unlocked the Regiments skill in their Logistics tree.
🪖 Units unpacked from a commander will have no movement points left unless the commander has the Initiative (army) or Weather Gage (fleet) skill. With the Initiative skill, land units can even be unpacked in water tiles without their usual movement cost for embarking.
Movement
🚗 Moving over flat terrain or any tile with a road will not affect a unit’s movement. Without a road, all rough terrain, non-navigable rivers, and terrain with trees (woodland, rainforest, taiga, or steppe) will deplete all of a unit’s movement, regardless of how many movement points it had left.
🚗 Not all districts have a road, which is simply strange and inexplicable, and means you’ll have to hover over a district tile to see in its tooltip if it has a road. The district with a city hall will always have one.
🚗 Naval and embarked units can move over navigable rivers and coast tiles without their movement being affected, in addition to ocean tiles once Shipbuilding is researched. Embarking or disembarking will always deplete the unit’s movement, unless the unit is in range of an army commander with the Amphibious skill in their Maneuver tree.
🚗 When a unit enters an ocean tile before Shipbuilding is researched, its movement is depleted and it takes any number of damage between 11 and 20. AI takes slightly less damage from this.
🚗 Moving a unit onto a bridge built over a navigable river will remove its cost of embarking, although moving off the bridge will still deplete the unit’s movement. Bridges built in previous ages lose this strange benefit.
🚗 Scouts are an exception to most movement rules, including embarking and disembarking. Their movement is not affected by anything else than non-navigable river tiles.
🚗 In the Modern Age, all land units will be able to move between connected rail stations that are within 20 tiles of each other. Units can travel between rail stations across an ocean, as long as both settlements with the rail station have a port or are connected by rail to another settlement with a port.
Aircraft
✈️ Aircraft and squadron commanders can travel between suitable locations up to twice their movement speed. Suitable locations to travel to are aerodromes, temporary airbases set up by squadron commanders, and aircraft carriers.
✈️ Squadron commanders can set up airbases on any flat tile within a radius equal to their movement speed. The tile must also be within the borders of your settlement or on neutral territory, no further than a distance equal to their movement speed removed from your nearest settlement centre or aerodrome district.
✈️ Squadron commanders and aircraft carriers will receive +1 movement if they have at least one aircraft assigned to them. Aircraft carriers, although not commanders by name, are also classified as commanders and have their own unique skill trees.
✈️ There’s also a third type of air commander—the aerodrome commander. Each aerodrome will automatically have one, and they cannot be moved from there. They also cannot be trained.
Preferred civilizations
🎆 Each leader has a select few “preferred” civilizations. Those are civilizations that are historically related to the leader, geographically close to them, or considered a strategically good choice. Whenever the game assigns a random civilization to a leader, it has a very high chance on giving that leader a preferred civilization. For instance, selecting a random civilization with Tecumseh in the Antiquity Age will almost guarantee that you’ll get the Mississipians, because that’s his only prefered Antiquity civilization.
🎆 Starting a game in an age beyond the Antiquity Age will always grant you the traditions of such a preferred civilization for each past age. You also gain three (Exploration) or six (Modern) wildcard attribute points, in addition to one (Exploration) or two (Modern) points in both attributes related to the chosen leader (eg, cultural and scientific for Catherine). Having Ibn Battuta as leader will instead give you a total of seven (Exploration) or 12 (Modern) wildcard attribute points.
Claimed tiles and improvements
🧑🌾 Worked tiles not improved by districts are considered rural tiles. Each rural tile equals one rural population, and each building or specialist equals one urban population.
🧑🌾 Unique improvements, such as the Great Wall or Terrace Farm, as well as those from city states, can be built on rural tiles too boost the yields. In short, these improvements will keep all current and future yields of the tile (minus one food or production). For instance, if you replace a farm with a unique improvement and later build a granary, the tile will still be given +1 food.
🧑🌾 Building a unique improvement on a tile that already has one will remove all bonuses of the former improvement.
🧑🌾 Each settlement can only claim a radius of up to three tiles from its centre. There’s currently no way to swap tiles between settlements.
🧑🌾 If a settlement has no available tiles or districts to work on when it grows, a migrant will appear in the settlement. This migrant can be sent to another settlement to improve an unworked tile.
🧑🌾 Natural wonders provide its bonuses to each settlement that owns at least one of its tiles—not just the first settlement.
🧑🌾 The natural happiness of a tile is related to its hidden appeal, which is in some way affected by whatever is on the adjacent tiles. Floods and other natural disasters may also affect yields, but how exactly any natural yields are determined remains a complete mystery.
Buildings
🏛️ The palace building in the capital gains a +1 science and +1 culture adjacency bonus for each adjacent “quarter”, which is any district with two buildings. Quarters with obsolete buildings don’t grant this benefit.
🏛️ Generally, food and gold buildings receive an adjacency bonus from navigable rivers and water tiles, production and science buildings from resources, and culture and happiness buildings from mountains and natural wonders. Constructed wonders grant adjacency bonuses to all buildings except for warehouse buildings, the city hall, and the palace.
🏛️ Without modifiers, each specialist costs -2 food and -2 happiness to maintain, and grants +2 science, +2 culture, and +50% to the adjacency bonus of the buildings in the assigned district.
🏛️ Buildings will usually cost -2/-3/-4 happiness and -2/-3/-4 gold to maintain. Happiness and gold cost increases by one for each age, based on when they were built. Happiness buildings do not have a happiness penalty, and gold buildings have no gold penalty. Warehouse buildings have no maintenance costs at all, but also have no adjacency bonuses.
🏛️ Buildings can be placed next to a finished wonder as if they were a district, as long as the wonder is adjacent to another district in the settlement.
🏛️ When within the settlement details menu (the list icon), all districts and improved tiles will have a coloured outline. In case you forgot where you placed something, you can hover over a building in the list to highlight the tile where it’s built.
🏛️ Population lost due to damage will return when an affected tile or building is repaired.
Policies and diplomacy
✒️ The number of turns remaining until your next celebration is shown in the overview tab of the social policies menu. When you trigger a celebration, any excess happiness is saved up for the next celebration. If a new celebration would happen while you are already in one, it occurs immediately after the current one ends.
✒️ Some civilizations gain bonuses for the use of traditions. These are the only policy cards that remain available between ages and have a noticeable feather icon in the policy menu. Traditions are unique to each civilization and are found in their own civic trees. Once again, traditions not studied in a previous age will still be unlocked.
✒️ Ideologies are chosen in the third age, also in their own unique civic trees. You may only unlock a single ideology of the three given options, and this cannot be changed later. Although each ideology has different benefits, it’s entirely possible to finish the age without ever choosing one, and this may in fact save you from neighbours who would’ve become angry at you for your ideological differences.
✒️ Though you can accept any incoming requests to start an endeavour, certain endeavours can only be requested if they are related to your leader. For instance, you can only request the Research Collaboration endeavour if your leader labelled as Scientific (as seen when selecting your leader at game creation).
✒️ While espionage actions have a strong impact on the game, they’ll also negatively affect your influence. If your espionage action is revealed, your influence per turn will drop for a while. If you are spying someone while they are counter-spying against you, your influence per turn will also greatly decrease, as the cost for finishing the espionage action against them will increase. Exact numbers are unknown.
Trade
📦 You may only trade with foreign settlements that have at least one worked resource, unlike in Civilization 6. Treasure fleet resources in the second age do not count as they cannot be traded.
📦 Effects of all resources stack additively. Having five silver, for instance, will grant you a +100% gold bonus to purchasing units, effectively cutting the cost in half.
📦 Resources can only be assigned to and from cities in range of your trading network. Building any naval building in a settlement will usually add the settlement to the trading network. Trading range may also be increased with a town specialised as a “trade outpost”, or by having a merchant manually connect two of your settlements. It’s not clearly indicated at all why a settlement may not be connected, so you just have to try these things.
📦 Resources cannot be reallocated in-between turns until a new resource is obtained, or the amount of resource slots in any of your settlements increased for whatever reason, such as by building a market or by slotting a certain policy card. Resources can also be reallocated if any resource or resource slot is lost, eg, due to a natural disaster.
📦 Towns turn all of their production into gold. Towns that are not set to “Growing Town” will additionally provide all of its food to each city in its range, causing the town itself to stop growing. This range appears to be shorter than the trading network range, but it’s not known how short. As of yet, you can only use the town details (the list icon visible when you select a town) to see which of your cities the food is sent to. If there are no cities shown to be in range, the town continues to support itself.
Religion
🕌 Your missionaries will only be able to spread your own religion, even if they were created in a settlement that follows another religion.
🕌 Independent people cannot be converted to a religion until they become a city state.
🕌 The second and third founder beliefs of a religion can only be unlocked via very rare random events. It’s completely up to chance whether you’ll ever see these.
🕌 Both the urban and rural population of a settlement must be converted to fully convert that settlement, as explained in the legacy path. If the two populations follow a different religion, the rural symbol is coloured red. However, due to a bug, the red colour unintentionally remains even after both populations follow the same belief. Reloading will fix this confusing issue.
🕌 There’s currently no way to know the share of rural or urban population of a settlement other than counting every tile it has and hoping you got it right. This is detrimental for the Lay Followers and Ecclesiasticism beliefs (relics for settlements with at least ten rural or urban population).
Treasure fleets
🪙 Once you’ve researched Shipbuilding, settlements in distant lands can produce treasure fleets. These settlements require a fishing quay and must be working on any resource that mentions treasure fleets in its tooltip, such as sugar or tea. You’ll also need a fishing quay in your capital or any other settlement on the home continent connected to the capital.
🪙 You can see how many turns it takes to produce the next treasure fleet in the resource menu or in the details of a settlement (the list icon).
🪙 Treasure fleets can be emptied within the borders of any of your settlements on your home continent, providing points on the economic legacy path equal to the amount of treasure fleet resources that the original settlement was working on.
Factories
🏭 Factories can only be built in settlements connected to your capital with rail station, as long as your capital also has a rail station. If your capital has no space left for a rail station, you cannot build factories in any settlement. Settlements with rail stations can be connected to each other across an ocean if both settlements have a port.
🏭 Factory resources must be worked in settlements with a factory, which require both the resources (unless imported) and the factory to be connected to your trade network via a port or rail station.
🏭 Factory resources have empire-wide bonuses, and you’ll receive one economic legacy point per turn for each factory resource slotted to a settlement. You can only slot one type of factory resource to each settlement with a factory, because you are meant to “specialise” each settlement by slotting in multiple copies of the same resource.
Artefacts
🖼️ Selecting an explorer will show an overlay of all known artefact spots (the shovel icons). Explorers can be sent to any museum or university (the vase icons), including foreign ones, to research all yet undiscovered artefact spots on the same continent as that building. Note that the university can no longer be built in the Modern Age, just the museum.
🖼️ Initially, only the artefacts the Exploration Age can researched. You must study the Hegemony civic before explorers can research artefacts from the Antiquity Age as well.
🖼️ Artefacts researched by any player become visible to all players. Even players without the Hegemony civic can dig up revealed Antiquity Artefacts. With Hegemony, being the first player to research artefacts on a continent will grant a free artefact.
🖼️ With the mastery of Natural History, the player may also dig up artefacts next to natural wonders. Only one artefact can be received per natural wonder, no matter how many tiles it has. Sending multiple explorers to dig at a natural wonder has no use.
🖼️ Only one player is able to receive an artefact from an artefact spot or natural wonder. You cannot start digging at a site that is already being dug.
🖼️ Artefacts are also randomly found when overbuilding. Finally, you receive an artefact each time you complete studying the future civic.
Force-ending turns (PC-only)
⌨️ Force-ending a turn is a PC-only mechanic that has also appeared in the previous games, and can be done with Shift + Enter.
⌨️ This mechanic is frowned upon in multiplayer due to its exploitable nature. It allows you to skip everything that’s left to do on your turn, while saving up all your unspent research, culture, and production. For instance, if the civic for a wonder takes three more turns to be studied, you could use this mechanic to save up the production of a certain city for three turns, thereby saving three turns on building the wonder in that city once it can be built. Yields saved this way are only lost on age transition.
⌨️ Force-ending turns can also delay celebrations and several other choice events, including having to support an ally that goes to war. However, you can’t avert crises this way, as a crisis policy slot will automatically be slotted in for you if you try.
Some more useful things to know
💡 “Legend unlocks” seen in the leader attribute trees can only be selected once you reach a certain level with a leader by playing enough games with them. Reaching a higher level with a leader may also unlock more mementos and legacy options selectable at the start of an age. Leader progress and unlockables can be seen at game creation or in the main menu.
💡 On PC, the cutscenes at the end of an age can be skipped with the Escape key, and you can select the “show more” button in the pause menu during a game to quickly exit to desktop.
💡 Also on PC, you are able to recover autosaves lost during an age transition from a backup folder (located under ~\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Civilization VII\Saves\Single\auto\prev). Moving the files out of that folder into the auto folder will show them again in the game.
