Civilization 7 Aims to Simplify Resources and Trade Routes

One of the biggest aspects of building your empire in Civilization 7 will, as always, be the gathering of resources. This has long been a staple of Civ games, but they'll be making some big changes in the next installment. With diplomacy evolving, trade is going to have to do without one of Civ 6's biggest mechanics in Civilization 7.

Civ 7 takes resources out of diplomacy to simplify trade routes

Among the key feature changes coming to Civilization 7, diplomacy will become far more about larger decisions and offers than the minutiae the last game in this franchise was. In Civ 6, resources acquired through trade with other civilizations was down to making a specific deal. You might trade resources of your own, gold, or artwork for the necessary commodities.

In Civ 7, that item by item management has been taken out of diplomacy entirely. Instead, the latest dev diary outlined three primary ways that players acquire resources:

• Growth Event: When your Settlement expands due to population growth, selecting a tile with a resource on it automatically builds an Improvement that acquires that resource.
• Trade Route: Sending a merchant Unit to a nearby Settlement will set up a Trade Route, giving you a copy of each of the resources produced locally there.
• City States: A few City-States in each Age have a unique resource that can only be obtained by being their Suzerain.

The most straightforward method will still be expanding your empire onto resources to claim them for yourself, but your other path will be trade routes to other settlements. In Civ 6, trade routes never directly impacted resources and instead only earned things like base Science, Culture, Faith, Gold, Food, or Production. Now, you'll gain copies of resources with trade routes or by establishing your own empire as suzerain of a City-State.

There are three different categories of resources, and these differ from how things were handled in the past. Empire Resources will mostly be what were once called strategic resources such as iron or horses. City Resources are about increasing Science, Culture, and Gold, but the last category combines two from the past.

Bonus Resources will now look like a combination of Civ 6's bonus and luxury resources. These can be slotted into settlements for bonuses, and they'll impact happiness not unlike how luxury resources used to provide amenities to improve city happiness. We'll have to wait for the Civilization 7 release date to learn how these changes will feel in action, but so far it looks like a promising change that could help keep focus on some of the game's more exciting mechanics.