After playing Civilization 7, it’s clear Firaxis still rules the 4X game world

The past 18 months have heralded a small renaissance for strategy games. Manor Lords takes the municipal organization of Cities Skylines and crosses it with Age of Empires’ feudalism. Frostpunk 2 explodes the bleak survivalism of the original into a high-level political drama. Ara History Untold is a more flexible alternative to 4X traditions. Millennia is playful, eccentric - an attempt at ventilating the genre’s stuffy historicism. All these games have particular qualities, but after several hours playing Civilization 7 it’s hard to imagine that Firaxis and its decades-old series will ever face a serious challenge. If you have to choose one strategy game (and given the amount of learning they demand, and the time that they consume, you probably do), Civ 7, right now, feels like the only real choice.