We Answered 35 of Your Civ VII History Questions

We recently opened the floor for your most pressing history questions about Civilization VII. Over the last couple days, we’ve been sorting through and gathering your questions from Reddit, Discord, Steam, and more. 

While we couldn't answer every question - particularly those looking to uncover future content or venturing outside the realm of history - we tackled as many as we could!

To help answer them, our senior historians at Firaxis - Finn, Emily, and Andrew - took a break from researching, writing, and helping shape Civilization VII's leaders and civilizations to sit down for a history-focused Q&A. The result is a collection of 35 questions covering everything from how civilizations and leaders are selected, to the research behind leader attire, unique abilities, historical representation, and more.

We also want to thank everyone who took the time to submit a question! The enthusiasm for history is one of the things that makes the Civ community so special, and seeing the variety of questions come in was a lot of fun for the team. If you enjoy this format, let us know - it's something we'd love to do more of in the future! 

Now, grab a cup of coffee, queue up the Civilization VII soundtrack, and dive in.

1. "How do you choose leaders? How do you do the research for the leaders? How do you make the leaders culturally appropriate?"

   Andrew: There are a few different factors for me:

   • Is there someone fans will know and love? Maybe from a past game, maybe from popular history? Maybe not all fans, but some fans will definitely love them (José Rizal comes to mind!).

   • If we've been leaning heavily on one leader in the history of Civ, is there another that might have a slightly different take on a similar situation? E.g. Hatshepsut gives a slightly more Egyptian Egypt than Cleopatra; Hideyoshi is the last of the "Three Unifiers" that we had yet to include in the game; Franklin gives a slightly different "Founding Father" persona than Washington; Tubman tells an American story that is vital to American history, but hasn't yet been in Civ.

   • Is there someone that we've found that we think is cool, and think you might think is cool, too? Amina fits this for me. Rizal as well - showing an Asian leader who isn't a king.

   • Is there someone that really balances the roster? Battuta and writing/exploration, for instance.

   On the research side, we read a lot of biographies of these people, written works by them or about them if we can, and we try to get a sense of their personalities. Sometimes this means altering what is historically accurate to be simple enough to be a character. I'm thinking of Machiavelli here - in reality, he was much more of a humanist philosopher; his evil, scheming Prince isn't him, but it's become associated with him, and is just too much fun to ignore.

2. "What determines which civilizations make it into the game? Is it their history, achievements, uniqueness or something else? Also, can you detail the process of how the leaders' dialogues get made?"

   Emily: For civs, so many factors go into this. What are people asking for? What is interesting that we haven't done before? What could fill in gameplay gaps? Etc. 

   For scripts,  I imagine we all have a slightly different process. For me, I read a lot. I prefer their own writings whenever possible. I try to really dive into them to where I feel like I've gotten to know them and could have a conversation over coffee. It's easier then to try to write lines for them in various gameplay situations. How would they think about this event? How would they interpret a particular situation? When we don't have their own writings, I read a lot of history about their culture and period. What was it like to live in that society? What were their values? How would those translate to dialogue? My goal is to put words in their mouth that could have come out.

   Finn: For the script's translation, we hire a consultant, someone who is an expert in the leader in question and regularly works in, or is a native speaker of, the target language. Initially we talk with them to determine the nature of the language. Sometimes this means choosing which language we’re going to use - Trung Trac’s language, Lac, doesn’t exist anymore, so we needed to find an alternative; Gilgamesh was historically Sumerian, but his epic, and the hero we know today, has been preserved in Akkadian. We also review the time period, dialect/accent, and register.

   The translation itself is collaborative between the writer and the translator. The original script is written in English, but sometimes the lines don’t translate well into the target language, or the translator recommends a more authentic way of phrasing something, or there is a particularly relevant quote or idiom that is true to the leader and replaces the original line. At the same time, the lines fire in specific gameplay scenarios, so we need to ensure that the final line makes sense in context and communicates the correct sentiment to the player. The translator is also present in the recording session to coach the voice actor on anything from character to pronunciation. This is especially crucial for ancient languages!

3. "When picking Hideyoshi, was there ever a moment where you considered a non-military alternative? He had many other accomplishments after all."

   Andrew: It's true - Hideyoshi had a profound influence on theater as well! He even wrote his own plays and sometimes would leap up and act - something that wasn't very common among high-ranking people at the time. But you cannot ignore Hideyoshi's military conquests - his successful ones and his failed ones. These were also enormous undertakings. This is why his design is sort of both art and war.

4. "At what point do you consider a historic figure or certain eras too controversial? Especially when it comes to certain figures who are beloved on one side of the spectrum but hated on the other side?"

   Andrew: A good rule of thumb is "does the memory of this person still cause harm?" Are there movements in this person's name that actively hurt people today? Genghis Khan may have embarked on a system of mass violence (though his conquest led to an era of peace and prosperity), but I don't know of anyone using his name as a pretext for violence today. We can think of other figures for whom this isn't the case, and who as a result don't appear in the series.

5. "Filipino here, I'm happy we finally got some representation in Civ VII (Filipino civilization pls, Rizal's kinda homeless). I am curious about Rizal's inclusion in the game. In college we have a subject all about Jose Rizal's life and works. I've recently finished this course and was wondering what made you choose Rizal out of all available Filipinos. I'm also curious on how you landed on his abilities etc. Was it also intentional to not give Rizal his own civilization and assign Hawaii to him just because of proximity?"

   Andrew: Rizal had it all, as a figure - political conviction, literature skills, and could highlight a more recent Asian figure than we typically have. He's a figure that I admire, and I wanted to get him out in front of players who might not know much about Southeast Asian history. As for civs, we can’t confirm anything, but we’re excited to keep expanding the roster!

6. "Why was the choice made to have the Ming dynasty represent Exploration Age China and not the Tang (or even Song) dynasty? I think the jump from Han to Ming in-game is a little sudden, so I'm curious as to how this looked on the development side! More broadly, how do the devs go about selecting the Civs for a 'stack' of Civs that correlate to a modern nation (Maurya/Chola/Mughal, Silla/Goryeo/Joseon and Heian/Sengoku/Meiji)?"

   Andrew: Clearly there are a lot of good choices for Exploration China or India. I think with Ming, Ming is just too powerful and significant to ignore. Personally, I'd love to have seen Song as well, with a focus on steel production. As far as Chola, I thought maritime India and South India needed some light, and was really happy to get them in. 

   The missing link in the Japanese "stack" is Edo. Edo was significant, powerful, stable, prosperous, unique... but we knew players were going to demand samurai, and Edo-era samurai were bureaucrats. Players needed to see samurai wielding katanas, not writing policy.

7. "What goes into selecting Wonders? Civ VII has featured several new, very original Wonders to the franchise. Similarly to how this game is broadening who can be a leader, is there a similar ethos behind Wonder selection, or what do you look for in a Wonder? Nirayama Reverberatory Furnace is a very cool and unique wonder choice that I wasn't expecting at all, so I'm curious what motivates selections like that!"

   Andrew: Sometimes we try to think if we've been hitting the same note again and again, especially within a region. If you find yourself doing Buddhist pagodas over and over, it's time to search for something else. Also, thinking of things that might give Production or another yield can help you think a bit outside of the box. That's the history of the Furnace!

   Emily: Another way to think of Wonders is to consider what was wondrous to those people at that time. I’m thinking of something particular in the pipeline, but if we open our minds to what could be wonder-full outside of architectural feats, we find ourselves discovering many more parts of the world worth celebrating.

8. "Now that the civ and leader have been separated, you can theoretically make content for cultures with little or no written history such as the Dorset or even go pre-agriculture if you want to. Is there any self-imposed limit to what civs you consider, or have you extended your candidates up to the days of Neanderthals?"

   Emily: I don't think we have a self-imposed limit, but it becomes incredibly difficult to historically represent “civilizations” at some point. We'd have to consider what benefits to gameplay that would give us in exchange.

   Andrew: It becomes useful to separate out what we mean by "civilization" with "culture" or "people." There has to be a sense of unity to make a civilization a civilization - a linguistic group (e.g. "the Bantu" or "the Celts") is a bit too broad. By "a culture," I mean this in the archaeological sense (like Dorset): a way of producing things along a shared aesthetic and functional line. "Mississippian" refers to a culture in this sense, but it fulfills our criteria by also having what appears archaeologically to be a shared political system. This might not have been a unity (so, like Maya or Greece), or it might have, or it might have at some times, and not others.

9. "Are there any civilizations that you really root for being included in the game but due to a lack of historical record or evidence keeps them out?"

   Andrew: Srivijaya.

   Finn: The Sea Peoples.

   Emily: The Trojans. If I could answer this with Leaders, having Euripides as a Leader would make my heart soar. So many authors. Dante. Virgil. Livia (not an author but so influential).

10. "Could we expect more leaders from the 20th century in Civ VII? I know it's harder to get more (relatively) recently deceased people into the game for legal reasons, but I know it's been done in older Civ games."

    Emily: Yes. ???? The 20th century was long, and we haven't fully explored it. Yet.

    On Timelines & Mechanics

11. "You’ve talked a bit about the “themes” of each Age, and how civs are placed by that and not by exact timeline. For some of the outliers like Khmer, Hawaii, Tonga, Ottomans, and the upcoming Joseon; could you talk about how they aligned with the theme? Could you also talk about what civs are “emblematic” of the theme? I imagine Rome is emblematic of Antiquity, but for example, are Normans or Spain closer to the “theme” of Exploration? Or perhaps they bookend it?"

    Andrew: For me, the decision to place a civ in Antiquity is based on a couple of things. First of all, the civ's relationship with its territory - is it expanding, does it see itself as a "galactic center"? Secondly, how do local historians divide history? For Khmer and Heian, two "late" civs put into Antiquity, these are definitely early, "Classical"-era civs, distinguished from later "medieval" periods.

    For Joseon, the answer is a little more complicated. Joseon is just so stable, and lasts so long. It certainly would have worked for Exploration, but then there simply wasn't a good Modern alternative (looking at something with a peak in the 18th-19th centuries). The Empire of Korea was talked about briefly, but this was a very short-lived outgrowth of Joseon. After this, Korea fell to Japan. It's a similar situation to the Mughals.

    For me, Antiquity is a broad range: Egypt and Assyria are in their own time period, with their own things happening; Rome in another. But these would be "classic" Antiquity. Similarly, Chola for me is "classic" Exploration.

12. "Don't know if this has been ever asked before, but as historians, how challenging was it to frame human history in just 3 macro eras, in which you kind of feel some chunks missing from one Age to the other?"

    Andrew: Of course, it's a challenge! So much of history is interconnection. On the other side, there are the technical limitations, and the idea that if you include everything, everything gets a shallow treatment. Three seemed a decent balance point between too much coverage and too little depth, and too much focus and not enough coverage.
    
    Emily: I think the positive of a huge era is that we can be creative with how we represent a civ, possibly blending different aspects of their history into a single playable version. This might be less “historical” if you’re thinking linearly, but sometimes games resist linearity!

13. "Why did you decide to place the Ottomans in the \[Modern] Age? Janissaries fighting tanks feels a bit out of place to me. Could you explain the reasoning behind that decision? I'm from the Balkans, and here we mostly associate the Ottoman Empire with the late medieval and early modern periods—things like the wars against the Byzantines, the conquest of Constantinople, and their expansion into Southeastern Europe. Seeing them represented in \[Modern] caught me by surprise, so I'd be interested to hear the design logic behind it."

    Finn: The decision to put the Ottomans in Modern rather than Exploration was a much-discussed topic behind the scenes. Here are the main points that contributed to the final call:

    • A lot of where a civilization lands on our timeline comes down to the big picture - how we look at the broader global roster, how regions connect across eras, and the progression paths we want to map out for players over the course of the whole game.

    • From a specific narrative standpoint, we thought it would be interesting to play the alt-history version of the Ottomans - what if they hadn't fallen? We have a similar theme with Qajar Iran and the Qing Dynasty. These empires held great potential, and still can in the world of Civ VII.

    • Although the Ottomans were certainly in decline compared to themselves, they were still a major power compared to surrounding states until fairly late in their history. So they were still extremely relevant and influential on the world stage for much of our modern period, even though they were diminished within their own timeline. 

    • As for Janissaries, we used them because they are the iconic Ottoman unit, and they were still in use until 1826. They may have struggled against tanks, but they are fairly in line with other Modern Age unique infantry units.

14. "Thematically, how do you like to think about playing as a Time-Tested civ? For instance, what does it “mean” to you (in terms of narrative or historical feel) to play as Meiji Japan in antiquity versus as Heian? Thanks devs and historians for hosting this! Looking forward to reading all the responses."

    Andrew: For the civs that are eras, moving them out of their "home" time period really changes them. I like to think about boiling down each era into some general themes. Meiji, for instance, is about rapid modernization, opening up to the world, adopting what is good from the outside (and leaving out what is not). This is a very different feel from Heian, so even if the time period has changed, we can take this underlying philosophy and project it backward.

    Emily: I love playing Time-Tested. In Civ VII, it can be a bigger challenge. I played Ada/Abbasids and they are just not set up for Antiquity, and that combo doesn't get Mayan syncretism. But it was fun! Maybe I think of a civ like a family or dynasty so taking them from antiquity to modern feels rewarding to me. (I'm also a huge fan of CK3 as you can imagine).

    On the Historian Team's Choices & Favorites

15. "What are each of the historians' white whales in history, what historic mystery do you wish you had the answer to, such as: where are the remains of Amelia Earhart's plane?"

    Andrew: I wish I knew just a fraction of the poetry and stories that have been lost over the years. I saw a temple painting once in Lampang that showed the details of a story that no one remembered anymore, something about a town menaced by a cholera demon and the villagers' revenge. It's gone, now. No one remembers it. More game-related - who are the descendants of the Mississippians?

    Finn: What happened to the Norse settlements in Greenland? They were established beginning in the 10th century, but were abandoned during the 15th century. Theories abound, but we still don’t know where their inhabitants went or why. Also - just like today, Iceland’s volcanoes erupted throughout the Viking and Middle Ages. But volcanoes are hardly mentioned in medieval Icelandic literature. Why? These events must have been a big deal, so the lack of written record about them, and volcanic phenomena in general, is bizarre.

    Emily: What was Plato thinking about when he used Atlantis as an allegory? Was there something real behind this or was it just imagination? Possibly related, can someone please tell me more about the Sea Peoples?? What made the Mycenaeans fall? My brain works like a Wikipedia rabbit hole - never know where you’ll end up!

16. "Did video games play a role in your love for history growing up? What were your favorite games (other than Civ, of course!)?"

    Andrew: I think I mostly liked RPGs growing up - Ultima, the D&D titles. My absolute favorite game was a dungeon-crawler, rather uncreatively called Dungeon Master. I did play a lot of Age of Empires. And of course Civ was a huge influence! I should mention my other favorites: Master of Orion, Star Control 2, and Thief. I still "play" Thief in the apartment. Especially good when I had a partner and/or a dog and I wanted to see how close I could get without being noticed.

    Finn: I didn't really play video games growing up, but at some point I acquired Pharaoh, which I loved. Civ VII's Egypt has a narrative event inspired by a Pharaoh mechanic that I found particularly amusing as a kid - sometimes lions would wander in from the desert and eat your townsfolk. When I started seriously playing video games in high school and college, the Assassin's Creed series was (and still is) my go-to for history games. There have been many others since, but those were foundational. 

    Emily: I grew up in a very conservative household and was homeschooled so video games were the primary way I learned about forbidden things. For me, that was Greek myth. I played King’s Quest VI, and that game really set me on the path I still walk today. The mix of cultural references and mythologies was so new and interesting to me. It was around this time I also started playing Civilization (the first one!). From the two, I just fell in love with stories and history. In general, I played games with my dad as a kiddo. I remember playing Burger Time on the Intellivision! My brother and I played a lot of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 among so many other great games. Age of Empires 2. Lords of the Realm 2. We loved history and strategy. 

    My academic interest in games came from two primary titles: Tales of Symphonia and Dragon Age: Origins. I realized how the story structures were so different from the novel but had many similarities to oral storytelling. And voila, my dissertation was born. 

    These days I still play a lot. Stellaris has been eating my life lately. I played a ton of Against the Storm last quarter. I like playing heavily-modded Sims games, puzzlers like Blue Prince, and various other genres. I just love games!

17. "What are your most favorite Tech and Civic of each Age? Not just gameplay but historical flavor too."

    Andrew: Techs and Civics are a little hard to separate. So much has to do with the organization of society, the creation of "a public" as an audience in dialogue with government. There's so many Civics that are like "the social question" or "society," which seem similar, but are actually pretty different. "The Social Question," for instance, is "whose responsibility are those former peasants that are displaced from traditional farms?" We assume today that states are responsible for their poor, but this wasn't an assumption in the transition from medieval to modern times.

    Finn: I enjoy the flavor of the civ-specific Civics. Off the top of my head, as a Persia-war-machine fan, I always look forward to unlocking Spada, and I love Great Britain’s Society of Antiquaries because of the Howard Carter quote and its perfectly named tradition, the hilariously stuffy “Proceedings.” My favorite Civic is completely self-serving - Iceland's Væringjar, because my academic research centers on the Varangian Guard and this was my way of getting them into the game. Its quote, from an Icelandic king's saga, describes the return of Harald Hardrada from Byzantium, arriving on a ship so laden with gold that all who saw it were amazed. The sequence was influential to later saga writers, who mimicked it in their own (often fictional) Varangian stories.

18. "What's a little detail you're really proud of that no one will notice?"

    Andrew: For me, a lot of the narrative events are references to historical events. There is one, "Puputan", that I've never seen trigger. It refers to a tragic and strangely beautiful moment during the Dutch takeover of Bali (where the last of the Majapahit royalty had - centuries earlier - retreated). As the Dutch set up their machine guns, the monarchs came out, dancing, in royal splendor. And with pikes. The Dutch mowed them down, again and again, and again they came out. What I love about this story is that it is about how there are some things (beauty) that are more important than other things (life, control). There is a storylet about it that requires that you be losing badly as Majapahit - probably meaning that a player at this point would have quit the game long ago.

    Finn: In the background of Ada Lovelace’s victory painting, there's a blackboard with mathematical equations. The equations are real and from her own work - they're part of the computation diagram from her famous Note G.

    On Personal Experience & Role at Firaxis

19. "Is being a historian at Firaxis a fulltime job? What does your work look like?"

    Emily: I love these questions because they remind me of my students! This is a full-time job for me! It turns out that researching and representing cultures and individuals from the past is a lot of work and takes a lot of time. My days are split with reading (so much reading), concepting (ideas for stories, scripts, etc.), writing actual words, advising (e.g., art reviews), and collaborating. I love to work with my design colleagues so I’m often talking with them about new features, updates, and giving feedback on designs in progress. I also hold an appointment at the University of Chicago where I teach in our Media, Arts, Data, and Design Center. My academic work is something I just couldn't give up. On the research side, I focus primarily on narrative theory, especially transmedia characters, and historical game studies. 

    Andrew: I have always balanced being a professor and working at Firaxis. For the last two or so years, I've been a full-time academic and part-time on Civ. From 2020-2023 I was full-time at Firaxis and part-time at a few places. In terms of job titles, I’d describe myself as Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, and for Firaxis I'm a consultant. For me (currently on a research trip in Thailand), work looks like a day full of teaching, research and academic writing (today, for instance, I’m spending in interviews in canal communities in Bangkok, submitting final grades to my students, and checking article proofs), and then a night where I'm tackling Civ questions: reading for narrative events, writing them, maybe answering questions from art and design. Does it leave time for, like, a personal life? No, not really. But I signed up for this. I did manage to publish a book while I was working on Civ VI. But I also do not recommend this as a lifestyle path if you are interested in peace and contentment.

    Finn: Like Emily, I am a full-time Firaxis historian. The job varies widely day to day, which is part of what makes it so fun. There are the big tasks that require longer stretches of protected time, like initial research phases, writing leader scripts, creating narrative events, recording sessions. Then there are shorter tasks that get sprinkled in between - naming things, finding quotes, reviewing content from other teams. And then there are the pop-up events, when a question comes through that needs historical review or recommendation, which can take five seconds or an hour depending on how much research is needed to answer it with the correct level of certainty.

    Being able to balance these different demands on our time is critical, as is knowing when to stop the research process. Working on Civ requires a solid understanding of its historical content, but it doesn’t need the depth of a dissertation. It’s easy to get sucked in when you’re handling all this interesting material, but there is always more to tackle, so we have to keep moving.

    Something I really enjoy about the position is how centralized our team has become within the studio. We interface with many different departments on a regular basis - art, design, animation, audio, UI, etc. It’s a wonderful opportunity to work with so many talented people in so many disciplines, and it’s a testament to how thoroughly history permeates Civ VII’s development.

20. "What did you major in college and how has that impacted your career overall and at Firaxis?"

    Andrew: I think we're all PhDs here! My college major was in biology and anthropology, and went on to do anthropology with a sub-focus on Southeast Asian history. I think for me, anthropology focuses on stepping outside of the taken-for-granted way that we see the world. For Civ, I understand the story of world history as world history, meaning not focused around Europe, but what might work elsewhere as well.

    Finn: I majored in Medieval Studies as an undergraduate, then did my MA and PhD in Scandinavian and Medieval Studies, focusing on Old Norse and the Viking Age. On career impact: I have always approached history through the lens of literature, reconstructing the past and its inhabitants via sagas, poetry, myths. During grad school, I also started working on Norse representation in video games using a similar methodology - how do we use the Norse world to reflect on today’s world? So the jump to writing history for games was not too big, because I had already spent many years thinking about how we as humans express and experience history through media. On degrees: These smaller humanities fields sometimes get looked down upon - what can you do with a Medieval Studies BA that isn’t grad school? But the value of these degrees isn’t really the specialization (unless you are going into academia). Instead, the topic is a means to developing crucial skills that are useful in so many careers. You learn to write, research, think critically, synthesize complex arguments, articulate independent thinking; you gain a broader understanding of history as context for today’s world, and you often study at least one foreign language. And you get to do all of this via a topic that you really care about, making the learning process more enjoyable and effective. So don’t be afraid to pick a major you love. There is value in every degree.

    Emily: I went from Music (piano) to Astrophysics to Medieval Studies to finally Classical Languages and Literature. My PhD is in Classics.  I'm someone who loves to learn everything, and my career shows that. I've swapped fields many times, most recently working in behavioral science and machine learning before coming back to my roots. Don't let a major or a focus limit you. It's a way to learn transferable skills like critical thinking, analysis, and communication. Those are applicable in every field, and being open to new ideas and aware of your own ignorance are key to seeing opportunities and seizing them.

    On the Research Process

21. "One thing I really appreciate about my experience with the game is it sparked an interest in certain civilizations' history I otherwise knew little about. For example, I would have never started a rabbit hole of exploring Dr. Irving Finkel's research on cuneiform and Mesopotamia had it not been for Civilization VII and wanting to know more about Gilgamesh (a leader I enjoy playing). As a historian what's one civilization or culture that you didn't much about at first, but ended up enjoying learning about the most whilst working on Civilization?"

    Finn: I knew very little about Tonga’s long history before working on the Tides of Power DLC, but I became completely hooked. The story of its settlement and the layers of people who lived and thrived there is remarkable, and the Tuʻi Tonga Empire that eventually stretched across the ocean was quite unique among other historic thalassocracies. The field of Tonga scholarship is also fascinating. For most of its history, Tonga didn’t have a written language, so archaeology, post-European narratives, and oral storytelling are critical for reconstructing its history. As a result, there are large gaps in the narrative and significant challenges to filling them, pushing scholars to think outside the box to make the most of the sources.

    Emily: I worked on Yi Sun-sin, and it was so rewarding to read his diaries and learn about his period. I am a Classicist so both the time period and the region are outside my speciality, but that's a great part about this job. I'm constantly learning which is really all a historian (or humanist generally) could ask for.

22. "Who was the most challenging civ or leader to research, due to lack of sources, contradictions, etc?"

    Andrew: Himiko. She's referred to in very different ways in different sources, and sometimes conflated with the Empress Jingu. In the first writing, we had her speaking in two different voices (as befits a shaman) - her own, and the goddess Amaterasu. But this didn't work when we tried to animate; it wasn't really coming across correctly. So we moved that idea into the two personas.

    But, definitely, Himiko is the most mashed-up of the leaders: a bit Chinese-source Himiko, a bit Japanese-sourced, a bit Jingu, and a bit Amaterasu.

    Finn: Sayyida al Hurra. Very few contemporary sources about her have survived, they are quite contradictory, and they are primarily European. She’s also obscured by a lot of modern myth - she is popularly characterized as a pirate queen, but she was actually far more than that. So there was a lot of deep digging on my end to sort things out, and we also relied heavily on the expertise of an external consultant. We had to find the right balance of acknowledging the popular connection between her and the pirates, and celebrating her historical achievements as a sole woman governor of a major city and a bastion against Spanish and Portuguese expansion.

23. "How do you balance fantasy with history? There are so many larger-than-life, exciting stories / themes behind these figures - I gotta imagine it's so tempting to use those, but striking a clean balance between actual, confirmed history is tough! Does it change by leader/how well they were documented (i.e. Gilgamesh vs. Benjamin Franklin)?"

    Andrew: For me, it's a lot easier with fantasy. Machiavelli in this game is fantasy, and was much easier to write as "Machiavelli" than as a historical Machiavelli. Gilgamesh and Blackbeard were a lot of fun to write for this reason. A historically-based, well-documented person can be a lot more fun to make entertaining!

    Emily: For narrative events, this is much easier. For attributes, abilities, I try to stay close to what we can confirm. But in narrative, we can be creative and playful. I echo Andrew here that fantastical/legendary characters are far easier to be playful with. Some leaders need to be treated with a lot of gravitas. It really depends on the person/character we are trying to represent.

24. "Did you have to do a lot of research to come up with all the narrative events for the Heian Shijin, or does a member of the team have a Japanese Literature degree burning a hole in their pocket?"

    Andrew: The answer is that I read a lot of Heian poetry in preparation for this. The narrative events are based on the "poetry game," a court game where players would match famous poems with their next line. What I like about these narrative events is how they push you not necessarily to memorize the right answer, but to understand how Heian poetry works - what is a good image for a Heian reader? My tips might be: focus on the cloud-obscured moon, bitterness in love, loss in love, the beauty of temporary moments, a twist of the metaphorical knife in the heart. The "sadness of things" \[mono no aware], how we experience emotion in observing things around us. But a Japanese literature degree? No. My degree is in Southeast Asian anthropology.

25. "In terms of ancient rulers, who would your historians define as the most underappreciated and who is over-gratified?"

    Andrew: Overhyped: Julius Caesar (Augustus kind of deserves his reputation, I think). He's the template for every military dictator that follows. I'm with Cassius on this one. Underhyped: Ashoka. The decision to renounce conquest and embrace peace is far more courageous than the opposite.

    Emily: I hesitate on this one just because I tend to think of historical figures as real people, so it feels a little mean to say they’re overhyped. I’m a softie, I guess. Underhyped though, maybe Philip II. Alexander would have had so much more work to do without his dad having laid all the groundwork for both Greece and Persia. I love Alexander, don’t get me wrong, but he did have help like all great people. Everyone builds on (or resists against) what came before.

26. "I've seen how the generic Civic tree has been trying to be more generic and less Eurocentric than the previous Civ games (with policies that are fully representative of other culture's ideas, like Uposatha or Heqin). So my question is, are there any points where you regretted making something a generic all civ policy when you realized it would work great for a civ specific bonus?"

    Emily: When we are making Civics for individual civs, it's a collaborative process with design. We try to find gameplay that supports the fuller kit theme while also fitting their historical experience and values. This is usually much more specific than the general Civic tree, so I haven't run into this issue personally. I imagine that if I did, we could find something else. Cultures and civilizations are so rich to study and try to represent. We do not lack material and often have to make hard choices about which aspects or which period of a civ we want to highlight.

27. "I’d love to hear more about the making of the soundtrack. Which civs’ music involves the most and least speculation/extrapolation? What do you do for the civs who left behind very little or no evidence for their music? Are there any interesting instruments that have been procured or made for the soundtrack? Are there any real historical songs that have been included or have influenced the soundtrack? Another similar question would be about the leaders’ clothes. Generally it seems like they’re a lot more authentic than in previous installments but it’d be nice to hear some specifics about the research/process behind it all. Any weird anecdotes or underappreciated details too would be nice. Thanks!"

    Andrew: I know the Siamese theme is Kangkao Kin Kluay, a popular classical piece. The Shawnee theme was done in close collaboration with the Shawnee. I think Sengoku is "Moonlight over the Ruined Castle," a personal favorite. My personal favorite is Maurya, as there's a Buddhist chant in there that I like a lot.

    Finn: As you might imagine, a lot of work and thought goes into the leaders’ clothes. Their appearance is an important tool for communicating their personality and characterization within Civ VII. Many factors go into designing them, requiring close collaboration with art and animation. Things to consider include: Is the outfit historically authentic, in both material and theme? Is the leader visually distinct, in style and color, from other leaders? What are the technological constraints from the animation side? Sometimes we have to sacrifice authenticity because something won't animate correctly, or it's not visually distinct in the way that's needed in our context, in which case we look for a suitable alternative.

    On the historical side, we advise on the concept to determine what a leader would wear - not only for their time period, but also for their role within the game. For instance, if we take two militaristic leaders, one expects to see Genghis Khan wearing armor, but Xerxes is more suited to imperial regalia. For each leader, we also hire external consultants, often academics, to translate the script and advise on their appearance, so we typically have a scholar on hand to help us out.

    I really love working on leader outfits. You have to consider every detail of their costume, not just the larger pieces, but sometimes down to the placing of buttons or how a sword hangs off a belt. Every piece of the outfit is hand-modeled and animated, so we get a lot of extremely specific questions. I remember coming back from lunch one day to find a message from art: “What kind of shoes did Blackbeard wear?” Cue a dive into footwear of early 18th century sailors. Sometimes you have to get creative to answer these questions. Each leader also gets a prop, and those are fun to recommend, like Ada Lovelace’s book with the punch card bookmark. My favorite leader detail is Blackbeard’s smoking beard. He was the first leader that used VFX in his model, and a lot of hard work went into making it happen. It looks amazing.

28. "I’d be interested in hearing more about the historical framing of the Exploration Age. Why was a strongly colonial narrative chosen for the game’s second Age, and how did the team approach the risks of presenting colonial expansion primarily through a gameplay lens? Relatedly, what criteria guided the selection of civilizations and leaders, especially regarding whose perspectives, agency, and historical experiences are represented? More broadly, were postcolonial theories or historical approaches considered during development? Given that Civilization’s progression systems can shape players’ historical imagination, did the team discuss ways to move further away from a linear “progress” narrative and toward more plural, contested, or non-European understandings of historical development?"

    Andrew: The honest answer is that there's a few competing pulls, and a few limitations. To really get into the breadth of what is possible in alt-history (including not doing colonialism) would require creating alternate systems - not gold, not expansion, not profit, not exploitation, but prestige, coexistence, sustainability, etc. This would have required designers to design whole new games based on non-exploitative worlds, which would have been a huge lift. And this would have been a bit too big of a shock to a player base wanting a 4X experience.

29. "Civilization VII is no stranger to including and respecting indigenous cultures, however many core staples of the Civilization franchise are anathema to many indigenous groups' ways of life. Some staples such as mandatory industrialisation, urbanism, and cultural hegemony are baked into the identity of the game itself. As it stands, much of the game's progression and victories are still very Eurocentric, but each new iteration appears to be widening its cultural scope. My question here is, has Civilization considered including indigenous ways of life and perspectives of progress and victory into the game? And if so, what ideas have been discussed?"

    Andrew: My previous answer kind of fits this one as well. The bullet points would be: I would love this idea, and looking into alternate systems of urbanism (for instance) is what I do in my academic work. But how to do this with a limited design/art team is a question, and how to engage with players for whom a 4X experience is taken for granted is a bit of a challenge (one that I would be excited to take up).

    While, yes, the scope in Civ VII is wider than it has been before, it's gone to other imperialisms - Inca or Chola empires, for instance, were still expansive and at times exploitative. What would a game be that focused on those who resisted? That would be really interesting.

    Emily: This answer applies to the previous question as well, but there is a strong tension between what players expect to see in a 4X game (and in a Civ game in particular) vs what the historians and other folks would maybe love to see in the game. We have to balance that tension, and we don't always get it right.

    Questions like this help to show there is a desire for more innovative gameplay that would depict experiences in the world that Civ has not traditionally engaged with. It's always good food for thought for the team to see what aspects of history resonate with players and the kinds of stories they'd like to see represented.

    On Designing Game Elements

30. "What has been the hardest part about staying true to the history and culture of each leader or civ while allowing the game to be so free form in how the player progresses through the ages and changes their nation as time moves forward?"

    Finn: When crafting civs, we are providing pieces of history for the player to play with - units, buildings, civics, traditions, narrative events - all of which are united by and designed after a civ’s history and culture. But although they are inspired by the past, they don’t dictate how the story unfolds in the game. That’s for the player to decide. So determining what these pieces are, how they inspire the feel of the culture in question, and how they can empower the player to either recreate history or design alternative narratives is a tricky but exciting part of the job.

    Civ VII presents a particularly interesting challenge for leaders - they are not only separated from their time periods, but also their cultural contexts since they can lead any civ. As a result, we have to stay relatively general with historical references to support the experience of all leaders being able to lead all civs. But it’s also crucial that they each have a distinct and authentic character, much of which was shaped by their context. A lot of this process involves digging deep into who they were as people: their values, worldviews, philosophies, and motivations that inspired them to greatness. But there are other ways we can slip in qualities that shaped them historically. For instance, the languages they speak in the game - Napoleon was a proud Corsican and maintained his accent his whole life; Tecumseh purposely spoke almost exclusively in Shawnee, to the extent that many didn’t realize he was fluent in English. 

31. "As someone who used to do a great deal of Mesoamerican history research in the UC system, I have to ask - how do you evaluate the current consensus to build off of in the field? For example, for the Maya there are new discoveries coming to light every day so it’s a moving target. Also, what elements go into making the unique units, buildings, or improvements? Is this driven primarily by gameplay designers, or do you have input? One could easily see a world where, for example, there was a “great person” scribe unit for the Maya (since we have many of their autographs on their vases and murals) instead of an archer UU. Why one and not the other?"

    Finn: Much of history is subjective - we have names and dates and events (though sometimes these too are debatable), but the narrative of the past is always shifting, and it is the job of historians, academic or otherwise, to interpret what has survived. When we approach a civ or leader for Civ VII, we immerse ourselves not only in the subject itself, but also in the field of scholarship that surrounds it, both established and emerging. This means finding the prominent voices who have shaped the standing discourse, and also the current voices who are bringing new discoveries and perspectives to the table. We aim to be up to date with our work, and recent scholarship often informs narrative events and Civilopedia entries. At the same time, we try to future-proof our content as well, so more experimental views are unlikely to find their way into the game.

    Unique units, buildings, and improvements are usually jointly decided upon by design and narrative. Designers have ideas about what a civ might look like when they start their work, but we recommend choices as well, especially for civs that are more challenging to research. As for why one and not the other, this is usually down to gameplay requirements that we have to meet. Not every civ can have great people, or a unique merchant, or a unique commander, so we have to make decisions about how to distribute different types of uniques while making sure that they suit their respective civs both historically and mechanically.

32. "Were there any particular civ and leader abilities that didn’t make the cut before the final stage that you wish did?"

    Emily: I really wanted to make Bucephalus a unique general for Alex. Alas, that one didn't make it.

33. "Can I ask about the current implementation of Ideologies in the game? I'm curious why the civic progression has communism unlocked before socialism."

    Andrew: For Marx, there's a clear progress (dialectical materialism) - ancient systems, feudalism, capitalism, communism. Socialism isn't clearly defined in Marx. Instead, communism emerges out of revolution sparked by the contradictions of capitalism.

    Later communist theory (Lenin, for instance) looked at social democracy or socialism as a way that capitalist systems could stay in power. Giving benefits to people means that the pains of capitalism are eased, without dismantling the system.

    In neither case is socialism a path into communism - rather, for Lenin, it's a distraction. Though we might imagine a path where socialism is partially-implemented communism. But when social-democratic parties did not go for the revolution during the early 20th century, they lost Lenin, and he saw them as just more capitalist patsies.

    But the real answer about why the path is how it is is more simple - signposting the ideology. Choosing "Communism" means you're headed down that path. It's not really a simulation of how Marx or Lenin would have envisioned that progress (they'd put "social democracy" on the capitalist track).

34. "What are some historical things you wish you could include but the dev team said no because it would be too strong or mess with too many game mechanics."

    Andrew: There is a lot that goes into abstracting historical situations for a game. Prestige, gifts, internal politics, dynasties - all of these things are influential, but Civ doesn't really have the mechanics for this.

35. "How do you decide Tech and Civic quotes? Especially for civs like Mississippi that we have no contemporary writing from or about."

    Andrew: We all have different strategies for the quotes. For me, I have a kind of a checklist:

    • Do I have something cool about the thing itself from a local source?

    • Do I have something cool about the thing itself?

    • Do I have something cool from the civilization that kind of says something about the thing?

    • Do I have something cool that kind of says something about the thing?

    As you see, the harder something is to source, the more abstract I have to be. The Eiffel Tower is easy. Cah-nah-ha is hard. I tend to be a little more abstract than the others, I think, going for vibe and philosophy more than direct relevance. 

    Now, let's get to the Mississippians. They have no written language, but a few possible descendants - the Caddo, the Osage, the Choctaw, etc. Other non-direct-descendants inherited some of their cultural features (e.g. the Natchez). Some of the civic names come from these languages. For "Earthworks," I used an explorer's account of a mound in the Natchez territory. For "Cah-nah-ha," I was referencing old anthropological work on sacrifice, from Emile Durkheim. There's widespread evidence of sacrifice in the Mississippian period. For Monk's Mound, I used the poet Zitkala-Ša, a Lakota poet. The quote isn't about the mound at all, but you could see how it references age, and the earth, and heritage.

    Emily: Like my colleagues, I prioritize texts from the culture whenever possible. My favorites tend to be those that express a way of seeing the world that was specific to that culture. This often means poetry, but sometimes inscriptions or small statements I find in a commentary.

    I tend to allow for a broader time period when doing quotes. Cultures don’t necessarily have clear start and end points, and sometimes you find really beautiful things outside the period we focus on. I’m open to including those to help give a sense of the breadth of a culture, ignoring the linearity of time if it makes sense.

    Finn: My process is in the same vein. I prioritize quotes that are immediately relevant to the topic when possible, and then work outwards from there. If there’s a suitable quote that sounds good and is about the tech or civic, great. If not, I’ll look for something elsewhere that taps into the theme. For civ-specific civics, I prefer to stay within the civ’s culture for quote sources, but this is not always possible, as with the Mississippians and, in part, Carthage.

    For wonders, again, I like quotes that are immediately associated with the wonders when they are available, either about the wonder (Great Lighthouse) or inscribed in the wonder (Sultanahmet Camii) or by someone associated with the wonder (Rila Monastery). But at the end of the day if nothing is hitting the right note, I will broaden my search. Overall, quotes should evoke something when they are heard and read.