Civilization 7 launched in a bit of a state. There’s plenty to love – the new three-ages system lends a certain dynamism to the game, just to name one – but there are elements that feel somewhat unfinished as well.
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Civilization 7: How Adjacency Works
Adjacency makes a big return in Civilization 7. It’s more important than ever to plan out your cities as you expand.
Since we got our copies for PC, we were eager to see what the Civilization series’ stellar modding community would drum up in the first weeks of Civ 7’s launch. True to form, they’ve already done plenty, and it’s well worth checking it out. While this will unfortunately be unavailable if you’re playing the game on consoles, PC owners may want to check these out.
As of right now, there is no Steam Workshop support for Civilization 7. We’ve been downloading every mod on this list via CivFanatics, and we’ll include links to each of our picks. Huge shoutout to the team over there for their passionate commitment to the franchise!
YnAMP – Larger Map, TSL, Continents++
We’ve been big fans of Gedemon’s YnAMP map series for three Civilization games and counting, and their early efforts for Civ 7 are no exception. If you still play 5 and/or 6, and you’ve not yet checked them out, do so posthaste!
YnAMP is a comprehensive map pack that adds larger-sized map options and a gargantuan Earth-styled map with true-start locations for every civ. Right now, Civilization 7 only supports Tiny, Small, and Standard-sized maps, leaving folks like us feeling cramped.
We recommend the YnAMP – Larger Map, TSL, Continents++ mod at least until Firaxis puts out official maps of decent sizes, but even if you’re not interested in height and width, we thoroughly recommend their Continents++ style map.
This generator is a dramatic improvement over both Continents and Continents++. Gedemon has served us up a world of possibilities with this mod.
Sukritact’s Simple UI Adjustments
Sukritact’s name is legendary in Civilization fan circles. For years, they’ve been improving the heck out of these games, and we’re darn glad to see they won’t be letting up for Civilization 7.
Sukritact’s Simple UI Adjustments is the name of this mod, but if anything, Sukritact is underselling it. Civ 7 launched with a rather rough UI that frequently feels at-odds with itself.
With this mod, improvements, wonders, adjacency bonuses, everything is crystal-clear – or, at least, as clear as it can be given the current framework. At the time of writing, it has the most downloads of any Civ 7 mod on CivFanatics, so yeah, its quality speaks for itself!
We’re going to let you in on a bit of a secret: it’s occasionally been a bit of a struggle making sure the screenshots we’ve used for other Civ 7 coverage doesn’t potentially bewilder people with mod-related aspects.
TCS Improved Plot Tooltip is the biggest “offender”; we can no longer imagine playing the game without it, and you’ll see the magic behind this mod every time you hover over a tile. The information on display is far more robust than the vanilla version.
Even more impressive is the overhauled settlement information display screen. Huge props to the creator, thecrazyscot, for this!
As noted on this mod’s page (and as personally verified by our repeated playthroughs!), TCS Improved Plot Tooltip is fully compatible with Sukritact’s Simple UI Adjustments, so by all means, mix-and-match.
More Natural Wonders
Right now, there are only 12 Natural Wonders available in Civilization 7. Needless to say, that number will expand over time, but it does mean pokiehl’s excellent More Natural Wonders mod can only kick things up to 12.
That’s still a big deal. These are the boosts you’ll receive on the official map sizes, per the mod’s page:
- From three to six on Tiny maps.
- From four to eight on Small maps.
- From five to ten on Standard maps.
If you’re using YnAMP for larger sizes, you’ll get the full 12 – and you’ll doubtless have room for more through future updates. Natural Wonders are just too sparse in vanilla Civ 7, making More Natural Wonders one of our must-grabs.
We’ll continually update this guide as more terrific mods emerge for Civilization 7, but don’t just stop with our favorites. There are plenty of other very spiffy mods available over at CivFanatics. Oh, and we’ll let you know if and when Steam Workshop picks up on all these!
