Firaxis Explains Map Improvements Coming To Civilization VII

For a game like Civilization VII, its dev team needs to do many things to ensure that the game is fair, fun, and looks good. After all, the team at Firaxis has been doing this for a while, and they need to keep up the love for the franchise with its fans. Sadly, the 7th entry has stumbled quite a bit since its release earlier this year. Despite it being “Grander” than many past titles, fans weren’t happy with several elements, including the DLC and post-launch content, the price of certain things, and, most importantly in certain senses, the way the maps form the world.

Every time you play a new round of Civilization VII, or any game in the series, the map changes, forcing you to adapt on the fly and see what you can do with what’s around you. However, the 7th entry didn’t have the best map generation, so, in an upcoming update, Firaxis will fix this. In a special post, the team broke down how the maps will change going forward based on fan feedback:

“When Civilization VII first shipped, the map generation technique we used focused on ensuring balanced play while following some new gameplay rules around things like Deep Ocean and Distant Lands. This technique, which has its roots in previous Civ games, created fair maps, but also made them predictable. This caused the exploration phase of the game to be potentially less rewarding (which is a problem when the first X in 4X is Explore!) We heard from you that maps felt too repetitive, and we agreed.”

As for how the team will ensure maps will be better this time, they’re going to use an entirely new map generation technique, with one of their engineers explaining the loose concept:

“Without getting too technical, the Voronoi technique completely changes how we approach map generation. Previously, fractal noise had been used to create maps, and it works really well when it can be applied uniformly to the whole map. That said, it can be hard to steer towards specific gameplay needs. Voronoi diagrams, on the other hand, give us structure we can build rules on top of, so maps can stay organic while still meeting the gameplay requirements of Civ VII.”

This technique will apparently help maps feel not only unique but organic, and as such, every “world” you start your game in will be fresh, special, and something to explore. Read the full breakdown on how this update and its maps will affect your gameplay experience going forward.