Civilization 7 Makes a Big Improvement for Console Players

For the longest time, it was believed that big, sprawling grand strategy games were just too complex to be ported properly to home consoles. Many believed that the market just wasn’t there on consoles, and as such, there was no reason to try and make these strategy games work on consoles. That’s likely the reason why there wasn’t a mainline Civilization entry seen on a console for 20 years.

Civilization 6 was the first mainline entry since 1999’s Civilization 2 to be ported to consoles, and though its control scheme didn’t feel as innately intuitive as a mouse and keyboard setup, it worked well enough. Civilization 7 has decided to take a leap and be the first entry in series history to release simultaneously on all platforms, and generally speaking, that seems to have been a smart decision, with the console experience feeling really solid on day-one thanks to some key improvements to controller support.

Civilization 7 Might Be The Best The Franchise Has Felt on Console

Civilization 7’s Action-Cycling Mechanic Adds a Sense of Fluidity to Turns

It might take a little bit of getting used to for those who have never played a large-scale strategy game on console before, but Civilization 7‘s control scheme is about as intuitive as it can be, with it making some great refinements and additions to Civ 6‘s console controller layout.

One key point of improvement is Civilization 7‘s action-cycling mechanic. Players are presented with a prompt in the bottom right of the screen that allows them to automatically cycle through every action that’s available to them during that turn, such as commanding units, choosing a Civic, responding to a crisis, and growing a city. This action-cycling mechanic is comprehensive, ensuring that players have gotten the very most out of their turn every time.

This mechanic also means that the vast majority of Civilization 7 can be played with just a few buttons. Players simply need to press “Y”/triangle to cycle through their actions one at a time, use the left stick to select an option, and press “A”/cross to select it. This loop feels intuitive and fluid, giving Civilization 7‘s gameplay a faster pace than past entries.

But Civilization 7‘s best console control scheme improvement is its introduction of a radial menu. By pressing LB, players can bring up a new radial menu. One half of this radial menu lets players access most of the game’s menus, such as policy screens, tech trees, and Legacy Path pages. The other half of the radial menu lets players select an opposing leader and go straight to their diplomacy page. It’s a simple addition, but a very effective one that continues to help streamline Civilization 7, something that’s especially useful for newcomers to the series and the 4X strategy genre as a whole.

That all being said, Civilization 7 is missing one or two of Civ 6‘s console-specific features, and it’d be nice to see them return. The most notable absence is Civ 6‘s ability to click the right stick and summon the cursor directly to the tile the camera is pointing at. In Civ 7, clicking the right stick re-centers the camera back to where the cursor is, which isn’t nearly as useful.

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Grand Strategy

Turn-Based Strategy

4X

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Released

February 11, 2025

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