Civilization 7’s maps are so badly designed that it’s actually funny. I’ve had multiple maps that feel weirdly similar, and when you take a closer look at the minimap, you start to see why. There are bizarre straight edges, islands that spawn in a perfectly straight line, and occasionally just a perfectly rectangular island.
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I’ve got no idea why this is happening or what changes would’ve been made from previous games to cause this, but there are a few theories floating around that might carry some weight.
Distant Lands
The new Distant Lands in Civilization 7 is a forced game mechanic that splits the map in half with a line of rough ocean and islands between two continents. You can’t explore rough oceans or these islands until the Exploration Age. The other continent is also unavailable until then, though civilizations do develop independently on that side of the world.
This new mechanic means the map generator needs to create a thin strip of islands and ocean between the two continents, otherwise it wouldn’t work. It appears that the map generator is very lazy when it comes to making the gap between continents at all interesting. There’s never any variation to the shape, size, or angles of these islands. Just a perfectly straight line. Game after game, it’s exactly the same.
Combine this with the Archipelago or Fractal map type and the results get even worse. Archipelago is a cluttered mess where the map just doesn’t feel big enough. I love Archipelago maps, particularly in Civilization 5, where all the civs are spread out over the ocean.
In Civ 7, everything is crammed together to make room for the Distant Lands and separating islands. You often start right next to another player’s capital. Fractal is similar, where the islands and continents are even more blocky. It’s not the truly random, shard-like islands we’re used to.
It often feels like the map just isn’t big enough to make space for all the civs and have natural map generation. In fact, these maps feel much, much smaller than in previous games. There seems like an easy enough fix just to make the maps bigger, but that needs to be properly balanced for the new mechanics, as well as for multiplayer. The AI might also need tweaks, as the opponents already have some pretty borked patterns when it comes to settling cities in random places across the map. This might just get worse if bigger maps are implemented immediately.
Start Bias
Starting bias is a system in Civilization that skews your starting location in favor of your civilization’s certain bonuses, tile bonuses, and more.
Start bias has always been a thing in Civilization, but it feels different in Civ 7, and it might be one of the reasons the maps have these bizarre blocky shapes. It appears as if the map is generated to fit certain civs’ starting biases and resource distribution, rather than just slamming down starting spots at random. While this means you often don’t end up with a terrible start in Civ 7, it does lead to some wacky and blocky splodges where the map generator has tried to provide ample land and resources around a starting spot.
In previous games, you had more control over what sort of starting biases you had, including changing the resource distribution and randomized biases. A lack of customization means you aren’t able to tweak these. It’s likely we’ll see mod support to address this before we get anything concrete from Firaxis.
While the developer’s vision for fair starts and the Distant Land mechanics are definitely interesting, it feels like it needs much longer in the oven before it is properly ready.
- Released
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February 11, 2025
- ESRB
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