Civ 7 features proper urban warfare with cities needing to be stormed district by district

A look at some of the combat system changes

Firaxis / 2K Games / Take-Two Interactive

Civilization 7 is making changes to many parts of the series’ formula and that includes combat. A new dev diary by Firaxis’ Brian Feldges revealed some more detail on that front, such as the fact that sieging large cities will become a much more daunting task in the upcoming game than ever before – a change that will make the game more true to history as well.

As you might know, cities will sprawl out in Civilization 7. You place additional districts with your population growing, leading settlements to expand. Some of these expansions consist of urban districts, which can house buildings. Players will be able to erect walls around these districts to fortify them against attacks – though city walls are nothing new for the series, of course.

What’s new is the fact that you can’t simply conquer a settlement by taking its city center. In Civ 7, you’ll need to storm every urban district belonging to a city to conquer it entirely, meaning you have to break through several fortified positions in succession when attacking large cities.

Across history, urban warfare has always been some of the most gruesome forms of combat due to many factors and it’s one of the reasons why taking cities has always been difficult. Civ never really portrayed sieges that way until now.

Another major addition to the combat system in Civ 7 are flanking bonuses. Those are a pretty standard feature for turn-based combat games, but weren’t a thing in Civilization yet – Feldges wrote that the team avoided them in order not to overcomplicate things for players.

Once engaged, units remain locked in combat and become vulnerable to flanking attacks. / Firaxis / 2K Games / Take-Two Interactive

With Civ 7 already cutting down some micromanagement required for military matters, such as through the Commander making maneuvers with large armies easier and automating the supply of reinforcements, that space opened up a bit more.

However, another factor made a crucial contribution to flanking bonuses coming into the game: the new visuals of units being locked in combat. The days in which units advance, hit an enemy, and go back to their previous positions as if nothing had happened are gone. Once engaged, a pair of units now form a battle line with continuous combat animations playing out.

“With the game's overall reduction in micromanagement and our desire to support the Units team's idea of continuous combat visuals, we felt comfortable in implementing proper flanking bonuses – without requiring the player to designate a specific direction each turn,” Feldges explained. “This means that you don't have to pick a direction before battle; engaging an enemy automatically locks the two units toward a front. And now that they have a front, you can attack from the sides and behind. Having continuous combat is a win/win for both the Unit team and for combat design in Civilization 7.”

For more information on Commanders, check out our explainer for how Great People work in Civ 7.