Firaxis released update 1.5.0 for Civilization 7 on September 15, adding new maps, changes to how alliances handle war, and a new interface overlay, Rock Paper Shotgun reported. The studio's paid Hall of History collection launched the same day.
The largest addition is a True Start Location Earth map, which places each civilization at its real-world starting point. Senior game designer Taymoor Rehman said in a video that the map includes twists unique to Civilization 7, such as magnifying areas like Japan and Hawaii so they can fit multiple civilizations. The map also adds navigable rivers.
In a separate post on the map's design, Rehman said earlier Earth maps spent a lot of space on empty northern tundra and southern ocean.
While these were accurate to the planet, they took up space on an already-busy map. We’ve truncated both the top and bottom of the map as much as possible to free up space for more interesting gameplay.
According to Rehman, the northern tundra is still recognizable but shorter, most of the open ocean in the south has been removed, and central regions near Europe, Persia, China and North America are now more open. Separately, the update moves the Terra Incognita and Shuffle map types onto the studio's Voronoi map generation algorithm.
On the diplomacy side, players can now spend influence to avoid being pulled into a war declared by an ally. Rock Paper Shotgun reported that allies can keep pressing the request, so staying out of a conflict repeatedly costs more influence. When two of a player's allies go to war with each other, the player must now choose a side. Rehman said mechanics such as liberation, which returns a settlement to its original owner, are planned for a later update.
Update 1.5.0 also adds a radial ruler overlay that shows which tiles fall within set distances of one another, a factor in bonuses tied to locations, buildings and wonders.
The Hall of History collection adds two leaders, Elizabeth I and George Washington, and three civilizations: England, Babylon and the Gauls. Firaxis has also announced the Arc of Tomorrow update, which adds a new age in 2027, and a paid expansion called Earthrise.