Civilization VII patch lets you turn off some controversial new features

Players can now disable Legacy Paths, Crisis, and quite a bit more.

It has been just over 130 days since Civilization VII launched to mostly positive reviews—but quite a bit of disappointment for series traditionalists. At first, developer Firaxis was releasing primarily bug, balance, and UI fixes, but today saw the release of version 1.2.2—possibly the biggest yet in terms of adding features to the game.

Available for all platforms except Switch and Switch 2—which will get it later—the update adds several tweaks that allow the game's players to customize games in a more granular way, with a particular emphasis on the ability to disable controversial new additions that a subset of players felt took things too far from the traditional Civ experience.

Many of the new options are available in the advanced settings menu during game setup, though one of the major additions is in the standard setup screen: large and huge map sizes. (Both of these new sizes have a default civilization/player count of 10.)

RIP Legacy Paths and Crisis (if you want)

The biggest change is the option to disable Legacy Paths.

Legacy Paths are structured sequences of objectives that lead to major rewards as the player transitions from one Age of history to another. They add some fun new gameplay approaches and dovetail nicely with the other systems in the game, but traditionalists felt they added a bit too much structure to the game, which has roots in a more sandbox-style design.

You can now disable any specific Legacy Path for any Age, or you can just turn them all off, which makes the game more open-ended, akin to earlier entries in the franchise. Civilization VII's radical Age transitions are still in place, though.

Some fans are also calling for Firaxis to allow players to disable the new Ages system entirely, but the developers haven't said they're working on that—and we'd be surprised if they did, frankly, as distinct Ages are foundational to the game's design in a way not even Legacy Paths are.

That's not where the options to turn off tentpole Civilization VII features end, though. You can also individually or completely turn off Crisis, the urgency mechanics that kick in near the end of Ages.

While I know many Civilization VII players who like Legacy Paths, I've hardly spoken to anyone who enjoys Crisis (though I'm sure they exist somewhere), so this will be a particularly welcome change for many.

The last tentpole Civilization VII feature you can now turn off is Civ unlocks during age transitions. A key design choice of Civilization VII that contrasts with prior titles is the fact that you pick a new civilization when you transition between Ages. At launch, your options for which civ to pick were limited by the choices you'd made in the previous age. That's still the default, but now you can set the game up from the start to not have that limitation, meaning you can switch to any civ you want each time the Age changes.

As a bonus, you can also disable score victory at the end of the Modern Age, which allows for infinite play, similar to the "one more turn" option in prior Civ titles. That's something players on the Civilization subreddit have been requesting for months. Previously, the game would abruptly end as soon as the Modern Age ended and scores were tallied.

More granular difficulty options

There are two more things of note that Firaxis has added to the advanced settings during game setup. First, you can fine-tune the difficulty settings by picking a different difficulty level for each aspect of the game. For example, you can set combat strength for AI players to Viceroy difficulty, while using the Happiness rules for Settler.

There has already been some confusion about this feature, though, as it's hard to find. It was promised in the patch notes, then players took to Reddit and YouTube to complain that it's not actually present in the patch. It is, but you have to set the top-level difficulty to the newly available "custom" value before you can see these options.

The last game setup addition is the option to change how friendly or hostile independent powers tend to be, which is welcome for players who prefer building to fighting, especially in the Antiquity Age.

Mod support and other gameplay changes

The Civilization VII community has already been modding, but that required the old-school approach of mucking around in files and folders. Now, Firaxis has introduced official mod support, including distribution via Steam Workshop, documentation, and some example mods made by the dev team.

There's also a new loading screen with more detailed information and more interactive elements, which Firaxis says is a hint at other major UI overhauls to come. That said, players have already complained that it doesn't look very nice because the 2D leader assets that appear on it have been scaled awkwardly and look fuzzy.

The remaining changes are largely balance and systems-related. Trade convoys can now travel over land, which means treasure ships will no longer get stuck in lakes, and there are broader strategic options for tackling the economic path in the Exploration Age. There has been a significant effort to overhaul town focuses, including the addition of a couple new ones, and the much-anticipated nerf of the Hub Town focus; it now provides +1 influence per connected town instead of two, though that may still not be quite enough to make the Hub Town, well, not overpowered.

You can find a bunch of other small balance tweaks in the patch notes, including new city-state bonuses, pantheons, and religious beliefs, among other things.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly to some, you can now issue a command to pet the scout unit's dog.

Next steps

As far as I can tell, there are still two major traditional features fans are waiting on: autoexplore for scout units and hotseat multiplayer support. Firaxis says it's working on both, but neither made it into 1.2.2. Players have also been asking for further UI overhauls. Firaxis says those are coming, too.

When Civilization VII launched, I wrote that I quite liked it, but I also pointed out bugs and balance changes and noted that it won't please traditionalists. For some players, the review said it might be better to wait. We did a follow-up article about a month in, interviewing the developers. But that was still during the "fix things that are on fire stage."

More than any previous update, today's 1.2.2 is the first one that seems like a natural jumping-on point for people who have been taking a wait-and-see approach.

It's quite common for strategy games like this to not really fully hit their stride until weeks or even months of updates. Civilization VII's UI problems made it a particularly notable example of that trend, but the good news is that it's also following the same path as the games before it that got good post-launch support: slowly, it's becoming a game a broader range of Civ fans can enjoy.