Civilization 7 Difficulty Options And How To Change The Difficulty

Sid Meier’s Civilization is known for being one of the most brutal strategy games you can play at the highest difficulty level. Of course, if you’re looking for a more laid-back experience or you’re a new player, the franchise has always let you swap to a lower difficulty. Civilization VII has brought back the difficulty levels and options from previous games, but they’re not a copy-and-paste list of settings.

There are several difficulty levels, different map types and lengths, and other advanced settings that you’ll want to know about before hopping into Civilization VII. The guide below explains how to change your difficulty level and everything about customizing your game.

How to change difficulty in Civilization 7

First and foremost, let’s go over how and where to change between the game’s various difficulty levels. Unlike other games, this can’t be done by going to the settings menu and flipping between the different levels. Instead, you have to start up a new game and go through a few menus before you’re able to customize the difficulty level and other options in Civilization VII.

However, there’s also a massive caveat with the difficulty level. In our version of the game on PC, we were not able to change the difficulty or set any other game options until after our first game was over. Once we beat one run, we could start a new game and access all the difficulty options. It’s unclear if this is a bug or an intended feature.

To change the difficulty level, follow the steps below:

• Launch Civilization VII and press “New Game” from the main menu
• Choose your desired Leader and Age and Civilization. It’s highly recommended to always start from the Antiquity Age, as that’s the formal beginning of the game.
• Click “Continue” at the bottom of the screen to go to the “Confirm” tab
• Here, you can access all the difficulty settings
• The top option is your overall difficulty, and here are the different levels:
  • Scribe
  • Governor
  • Viceroy
  • Sovereign
  • Immortal
  • Deity
• The levels go from easiest to strongest, so for a standard playthrough, select either Governor or Viceroy
• Once you’re done with the difficulty level, you can customize the options below it before officially starting your game
• Be warned, once you launch your game, you can’t change the difficulty level or game options again unless you start a new save

As we mentioned before, if you’re loading up your first game of Civilization VII, the option to select your difficulty level might not be there. If what we experienced is intended, then it should take you roughly 10-15 hours of playtime to beat one run of the game on standard difficulty. After that point, you can make a new game and choose your difficulty options.

All difficulty options in Civilization VII

In addition to the difficulty levels in Civilization VII, you can also change a variety of game options. These include map type, game length, age length, and more. We’ll go more in depth with each of those settings below:

Game Speed

• Online
• Quick
• Standard
• Epic
• Marathon

This determines how long every game takes in turns and the number of overall turns per age. If you want a massive campaign that drags on for 30 hours, choose Marathon. However, most players will likely feel comfortable with Standard or Epic.

Map Type

• Continents Plus
• Continents
• Archipelago
• Fractal
• Shuffle
• Terra Incognita

Your map type is an important choice, as it controls what lands you’ll be able to traverse. The standard option is Continents Plus, which gives you two continents to explore and some islands in between them. Continents takes out the islands while Archipelago makes it so your continents are broken up by islands. Fractal makes the continents more connected and offers less water between them. Then, Shuffle makes your map type random while Terra Incognita gives you one normal continent and a random second one.

Map Size

Finally, your map size determines the overall scale of the map you get to explore. Naturally, tiny and small sizes make for quicker games, as there’s less to traverse and do. So, it’s usually recommended for players to stick to the standard map size.

Advanced Options

• Age Length: Abbreviated, Standard, Long
• Disaster Intensity: Light, Moderate, Catastrophic
• Crises: Yes or No

Advanced Options further customizes your game. The age length setting allows you to make your games shorter or longer depending on what game speed you set. Disasters and crises offer the chance to make things easier or harder on yourself. If you want a harder experience, turn crises on and pump disasters up to catastrophic level. However, neither of these settings will have too big of an effect on the difficulty unless you’re playing on the higher difficulty levels.

You can also change the “Player Settings” within the Advanced Options menu. This allows you to set the world leaders you’ll meet during a game and what civilizations they control. While this doesn’t have a huge impact on difficulty, you can make your experience tougher by selecting leaders that are “militaristic.” This makes them more prone to war, which is generally what difficulty levels are based on.