Conclusion

Civilization is one of my all-time favorite game series—I can't remember how often I disappeared for a few hours, or more, trying to build an empire and conquer the world. Just like its predecessors, Civilization VII is a turn-based strategy game where players lead a civilization from its early beginnings to global supremacy across multiple eras of history. Through exploration, diplomacy, warfare, and technological advancement, players shape their empire's destiny while competing or cooperating with rival leaders. Cities expand dynamically, reflecting cultural and scientific progress. Strategic decision-making is key, as players balance resource management, military power, and diplomatic relations to achieve victory through domination, science, culture, or diplomacy.

I have to say, at this point I'm really disappointed by Civilization VII. The biggest issue is the UI, which feels like it was made for some entry-level strategy game that runs on iPad. We have screens with millions of pixels these days and the UI feels extremely unpolished. No doubt, many gameplay mechanics are new, and can see how they make sense and create a new "experience," but some choices are really questionable. Read the various reviews for more details. Still, despite all this, I can feel the "one more turn" itch, very strongly. I have tons of work, but I'm already thinking about how I can play more—so not all hope is lost.

Graphics
Graphics are alright, but they definitely look dated. There's nothing that makes this feel next-gen. It's basically CIV 6 with a slightly changed art style, which doesn't have to be a bad thing—graphics aren't the most important thing in Civilization. Still, it feels like a missed opportunity, a major graphics upgrade would have been good.

Shader Stutter and Accessibility
The game uses an in-house engine, there is no shader compilation or shader stutter—very nice. Accessibility is alright, there are options for colorblind people and the font sizes can be adjusted. A lot of keyboard shortcuts were removed, no more auto-explore for units. Sometimes the game doesn't react to clicks, like when ranged units are supposed to attack an enemy unit.

Upscaling & Ray Tracing
Civilization VII has support for AMD FSR 1 and FSR 3 upscaling, but no frame generation. For NVIDIA, there is no love at all—no DLSS, no Framegen, nothing. Considering that this is a AAA game, this almost feels like a repeat of the Starfield drama, which had AMD exclusive support at first and the developer gave in later, after community uproar. Especially for older systems, frame generation support would result in a smoother experience and any latency differences wouldn't matter, because you'd not notice them anyway. Gameplay feels kinda slow, there is no fast unit move setting by the way.

Hardware Requirements
Hardware requirements are very manageable, even at max settings. Every single card in our test group was able to run at over 60 FPS at 1080p without upscaling. Even 1440p is in reach with virtually all cards. Only 4K requires slightly stronger hardware, RTX 3070 or RX 6800 have you covered—no problem. Enabling the MSAA antialiasing mode brings FPS down a bit more, but the image quality differences are negligible, FSR 3 is the better solution in my opinion. Wouldn't it be awesome to have DLAA?

VRAM
VRAM at lower settings is a total non-issue, hitting around 4 GB. If you dial up the settings to max you better have an 8 GB class card, which a lot of people will have, at least when they target higher resolutions.