Quick Links
Civilization 7 sports the same turn-by-turn strategic gameplay of its predecessors. But in so many ways, it’s flipped the script; your adventure is sliced into three distinct ages, with certain game-long content carrying over, and other elements reset accordingly. All told, then, it can be difficult to determine a Civ 7 campaign’s length from the outside looking in.
After testing each of the game’s speeds, as well as its age length settings, we have arrived at our own conclusions – which we’ll dutifully share with you. We’ve also checked HowLongToBeat, and we’ll be sure to let you know what the broader fanbase has found.
How Long Does It Take To Complete The Game On Default Settings?
Since many players will stick with Civilization 7’s default options – Standard speed and Normal age length – we’ll answer this part first. In our experience, the average time spent on each campaign with these settings is around eight to ten hours.
That’s including each of the game’s three ages; the Antiquity and Exploration ages combine to around 75 percent of it, and the Modern Age is usually swifter.
Per HowLongToBeat, players who have reported their own findings have averaged out to ten-and-a-half hours, which is a bit higher, but not far off.
Game Lengths On Other Settings
If you choose different age lengths, what happens is that the point total per age necessary to transition into the next is raised or lowered per your selection.
This is technically separate from the speed setting, which dictates instead how long it will take to research, build, and so forth. The game will lengthen each age accordingly, such that Marathon, the slowest speed, is thrice as slow as Standard.
With all that out of the way, here are our results:
- At Quick speed, it took us around five hours per campaign
- We mentioned the Standard speed results above
- Epic speed bumped things up to about 12-13 hours
- By far the largest leap, Marathon playthoughs have taken us closer to 20 hours
As for adjustments via age length, that’s something we’re still conducting testing on. The general rule of thumb, though, is to select age lengths that correspond better to your selected speed, or else your gameplay progression will occur at a glacial, or hyper-accelerated, rate.