Civilization VII gets added to the Apple Arcade with a few caveats

While there have been so many amazing strategy series throughout the years, Civilization just grabs you in a way few others do. Growing from nothing to heading into space, managing diplomacy and development every step of the way.

It is captivating, and now, Apple Arcade has added Civilization VII, or 7, for that mobile hit of domination.

Civilization VII Apple Arcade gameplay

As usual with the series, your goal is to guide your fledgling civilisation on its rise to power, and achieve victory through means such as crushing all your opposition, to being very cultured, but come on, who didn’t go military? You build your museums, I'll come stomp all over them with my massive army.

Civilization 7 continued this trend whilst adding a few new features, but not all of them went over too well. Chief amongst these was the Ages system. You had to pick between three Ages, which limited what civilizations you could use and what gameplay mechanics there were.  

Want to take your Han army and conquer England? Sorry, not this time. Still, it had its perks, and it is a decent game.

However, there are one or two issues that kind of blunt this announcement. First of all, Large or Huge maps are only available on devices with 8GB or more of RAM. Whilst that is not necessarily the biggest issue, and a small map might work well for mobile play when you have a minute nature, it still sucks that you might be locked out of epic campaigns.

Second, the Apple Arcade version does not support multiplayer at this current time. It also will not be receiving any of the DLC that has been released up to this point. So if you were hoping to create a naval legacy with Edward Teach, you may be out of luck. Also, any future updates to Civilization 7 on other platforms may either be delayed on Apple Arcade or flat out not arrive.

It might be best to look at this as Civilization 7 lite in many ways. You can definitely have fun, but you may not have as grand an adventure as you would with, say, a Total War on mobile. Still, if you have Apple Arcade already, why not give Civilization 7 a shot?