Civilization 7 Combat Could Feel Very Different With New Flanking Features

The biggest change coming in Civilization 7 is the separation of leaders and civilizations, and that has unsurprisingly been the biggest focus as a release draws near. However, combat changes look primed to significantly change how players will need to think about their battle strategies.

Commanders will change the battlefield in Civ 7, and not just with their unpacking and packing units ability, but that may not end up being the biggest difference. Civilization 7 flanking is set to introduce a whole new layer of combat to consider. 

Civ 7 adding directional combat and flanking features

The last Civilization 7 dev diary of 2024 took a closer look at the combat players can expect from this new installment. Up to this point, the biggest innovations revealed for combat looked to be navigable rivers and the new commander units. Similar to the Great Generals and Great Admirals of the past, Civ 7 commanders will have a new ability to pack and unpack bundles of units.

This essentially means you can store groups with a commander until it's time to deploy and actually go to battle, and that will significantly speed up travel time as you head towards a potential battlefield. As for navigable rivers, naval combat just got a whole new layer as players will need to carefully consider coming for cities or even out-of-city battles with naval units that previously wouldn't have been able to reach those tiles.

Once players are ready to go to battle, they'll now also have to consider flanking and directional warfare. All previous Civilization games with combat would resolve battles without much concern for unit positioning. You could get flanking bonuses in the past, but it was more general and just based on having extra units around your enemies.

Civilization 7 does this by instituting a continuous battle mechanic. Rather than an animation that only happens briefly, units will continue to stay in their battle animations until they reach a conclusion. Any time an attack is made, it locks those two units in a specific direction for their combat. This provides a clear path to strategize attacks from behind or on the side of opposing units.

Unique units and advancements between each age are sure to add more layers to this, but just knowing that direction will matter makes it a must to consider in every combat scenario. You can protect a unit's flank by keeping an extra one outside of combat behind them, or you can risk it all and use offense as the best defense when Civilization 7 arrives.