A couple of majorCivilization 7 updates this year have transformed the 4X game, mostly for the better, and reignited my hope for its future. Firaxis launched the hefty Test of Time update in late May with dramatic changes to how the game plays. At the end of June, it pushed a smaller update with tweaks to the happiness system and how governments work. It's not quite reaching its full potential yet. Some elements, like diplomacy, still feel like shadows of what they're meant to be. But for the first time in a long time, it looks like Firaxis has a strong vision forCiv 7 and a way to translate that into gameplay.

Civ 7's Test of Time update changed a lot, and one of the big differences is how your civilization changes through the ages, or not. At launch, Firaxis made you swap civs at the start of a new age, and new civs unlocked based on how you behaved in the previous age. It was an inventive way to meld the flow of history with your strategic choices, but it was also very unpopular — perhaps unsurprisingly. When you've spent decades letting people make Isabella of Castile besties with Gandhi, suddenly switching to a higher level of historical realism (and one that curbed player choice) would inevitably create discord.

Anyway, now you have choices. You stick with your original leader for the whole game and can carry on with your starting civ if you want. Its historical heyday is its Apex Age, where you can select special units, buildings, and other bonuses — e.g., antiquity is the time when Greece shines. They turn into time-tested civs outside the Apex Age, which is fancy-speak for saying "they just keep functioning." But during time-tested ages, you get the benefits of syncretism, a new thing where you pick a special feature from a civ in its Apex Age that has some historical relevance to your civ and incorporate it. Or you can skip that and "affirm" your traditions, which........

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