Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 is finally here! The game is officially available to everyone, and Firaxis took the opportunity to release a major update to fix several issues reported by early access players. And this is just the beginning, as many more patches are expected in the coming weeks and months.

Official Release and Early Access

Civilization 7 launched worldwide on February 11 at midnight ET. However, those who purchased the Deluxe or Founders editions had the chance to start playing up to five days early.

During this early access period, Firaxis actively worked on fixing issues reported by the community, releasing three updates before the official debut. The most recent of these, the 1.0.1 Patch 2, arrived on February 10 and introduced numerous improvements, particularly to the user interface, which many players had criticized as unpolished.

Among the fixes, yield icons now appear correctly when transforming a town into a city, and the Settlement menu no longer crashes when clicking on the banner of a settlement that does not belong to the player. Another important improvement was made to the espionage system, which now displays notifications to inform players when an action is completed, making it easier to track these missions.

Gameplay Changes in Update 1.0.1 Patch 2

In addition to UI fixes, the update also brought significant gameplay changes. One of the most notable improvements is that City-States no longer disappear during an Age Transition. Instead, they become friendly independent powers rather than vanishing from the map.

Another area that received adjustments was naval combat. Units now behave more consistently, and after defeating an enemy, players can move their units into the defeated opponent’s tile. Additionally, the Antiquity Age Loyalty Crisis has been eased, allowing players to increase settlement happiness through town villa purchases.

Cross-Platform Multiplayer Temporarily Unavailable

For now, the 1.0.1 Patch 2 update is only available for PC, macOS, and Linux. Since the console versions of Civilization 7 have not yet received this patch, Firaxis has temporarily disabled cross-platform multiplayer to avoid compatibility issues.

According to the studio, the priority is to improve the desktop experience as quickly as possible. Once the console versions are properly updated, cross-platform multiplayer support is expected to return.

Civilization 7 Off to a Strong Start

Despite initial criticism regarding its rough edges, Civilization 7 has maintained strong momentum leading up to its release. By February 2025, the game was already topping Steam’s best-sellers list, and even after being briefly dethroned by Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, it reclaimed the top spot on February 11.

With such a strong start, Civilization 7 looks to have a promising future, especially with Firaxis committing to ongoing patches and improvements.

Civilization 7 1.0.1 Patch 2 Changelog

Gameplay Changes

• Fixed an issue causing Ages in Epic and Marathon speed games to be shorter than intended.
• City States will now turn into Friendly Independent Powers on Age Transition instead of disappearing completely. They will also now start with more units in Exploration and Modern Ages.
• Fixed inconsistencies with Naval Combat.
• Naval Units will use the correct Combat Strength values when attacking another Naval Unit in all instances.
• Naval Units will properly take reciprocal damage after attacking another Naval Unit.
• Naval Units will more consistently move into the attacked tile after defeating another Naval Unit.
• Completing the final milestone of a Legacy Path no longer adds Age Progress in the Modern Age to ensure you have more time to complete a Victory.
• Towns will now switch their focus back to Growing town automatically if they are no longer eligible for their chosen Focus (for example, if their population decreases) until they are eligible again.
• Future Civic is now repeatable in all Ages. The cost of Future Tech and Future Civic will now increase more when repeated.
• Fixed an issue after too many bonuses to Growth where Food needed for the next growth event became negative.
• Improvements to Rail Networks aimed at increasing the reliability of Settlements connecting to the Rail Network over water by building Ports. This should apply as long as the Capital either has a Port or is connected by rail to a settlement with a Port.
• Made improvements to the Loyalty Crisis in the Antiquity Age, including giving the ability to purchase Villas in towns during this crisis, giving another way to manage the happiness of your settlements.
• A note about cross-play multiplayer: To expedite updates to the PC experience, we will sometimes deploy patches to PC at a different cadence than we do on consoles – including today’s Patch 1.0.1. As a result, cross-play between PC players and console players is temporarily disabled. This will have no impact on console players attempting cross-platform play with other console players, nor on PC-to-PC multiplayer.

AI Changes

• AI will now offer high-value Cities less often during Peace Deals.
• In Modern, AI will now declare war less often at the start of the age.
• In Modern, AI will now consider Ideology more before Declaring War or offering Peace.
• Other Leaders now have a decreased desire for war if neither party has an Ideology.
• Other Leaders now have an increased desire for war with players of Opposing ideologies.
• Other Leaders now have a decreased desire for Peace with players of opposing Ideologies.

Camera Changes

• Fixed an issue on native-resolutions where the camera would focus on the lower end of the map when clicking on the minimap.

UI Changes

Improved the spacing between Civ descriptions, unique units and building icons on loading screen.

Replaced the Simplified Chinese font with the font used in Civilization VI while we work on additional improvements for future patches.

Fixed an issue where the Settlement menu fails to open when clicking on a non-player’s Settlement Banner in gameplay.

Fixed an issue where yield icons fail to populate on the now available buildings when converting a town to city.

Fixed an issue where some text was cut off on the Global Yields Breakdown screen.

Added a notification for completed Espionage actions, so that you can more easily check the results of their Espionage actions.

City projects no longer appear to be purchasable.

Your current religion is now displayed first in the belief picker tabs.

Fixed an issue where a District’s health bar would remain on-screen after being fully healed.

Fixed an issue where Leaders fail to have a portrait when the relationship has changed during gameplay.

Improved the alignment of leader names and portraits on the Age Summary, when viewing the Overview screen of the Victories Rankings.

Fixed an issue where the background color remains the default color when the user changes it in the Player Customize tab.