Civ 7: Experts Should Still Use the Tutorial

Firaxis Games' creative director, Ed Beach, encourages even veteran Civilization players to utilize the tutorial for their first full campaign in Civilization 7. His Steam post highlights the game's significant changes, particularly the new Ages system (Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern), which introduces Age Transitions impacting civilization selection, Legacy retention, and world evolution—a departure from previous titles. A full campaign encompasses all three Ages.

Beach explains the rationale behind the default "Small" map size. While seasoned players prefer larger maps, "Small" offers a more manageable learning curve with fewer empires, simplifying the new Diplomacy system and ocean exploration crucial to the Exploration Age. He recommends the "Continents Plus" map type for its helpful offshore islands.

The tutorial is automatically enabled on the first launch and is strongly recommended, even for experienced players, due to the numerous system upgrades and revisions. Four Advisors offer guided quests, and Beach suggests focusing on one at a time initially. Even after mastering the game, he advises using the "Only Warnings" setting, allowing Advisors to alert players to potential setbacks—a practice even the Firaxis team uses.

Firaxis recently revealed Civilization 7's post-launch roadmap during a livestream, noting Great Britain's status as DLC. The game launches on PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on February 11th, with Deluxe Edition access beginning February 6th.