Civilization VII dev recommends tutorials for new and returning players

Sid Meier’s Civilization VII is right around the corner, with its release coming Feb. 11th, 2025 on Switch. When a series is as storied and celebrated as Civilization, you can expect there will be a lot of veterans returning for a new entry. At the same time, there will of course be some new players joining in on the action for the first time. No matter which camp you’re in, Firaxis Games’ creative director Ed Beach recommends you start Civilization VII with the tutorials.

In a new dev diary shared on Steam, Beach gave some tips to players preparing to dive into Civilization VII for the first time. Although longtime Civ players may think they can start without any tutorials, Beach recommends otherwise:

When you launch into your first game of Civilization VII, we’ll turn the Tutorial on for you. The Tutorial is designed to provide tips and explanations exactly when you first encounter something new. Fans experienced with earlier Civ titles may scoff at the idea of playing with the Tutorial on, but with so many of our game systems having received upgrades and revisions, we really do recommend sticking with the Tutorial for your first full campaign through our three Ages. Keep in mind that the game has four different Advisors, and you can control which ones are actively leading you through a series of quests to teach you their portion of the game. If it’s too much to take in all at once, we suggest listening to only a single Advisor at a time.

Eventually you’ll have mastered enough systems to turn the Tutorial off. But when you do, strongly consider switching to the setting Only Warnings. This setting allows these same Advisors to jump in and warn you if your empire’s progress is about to undergo a major setback. Even our internal team at Firaxis that knows this game so well plays with these warnings enabled!

[Ed Beach]

It sounds like Civilization VII will be more than a simple upgrade over past Civ titles, but has several new and overhauled systems included. We’ll see how those changes land with new and returning players when the game launches on Feb. 11th.

Click here to read the full post, which includes more detail about game mechanics, map sizes, and post-launch content.