Civilization VII is a considerably different game compared to Civ V and Civ VI. As such, the leader guides that I wrote for those games won't quite work for Civ VII. Instead, I'm going to be experimenting with a slightly different format of doing independent guides for civilizations and for leaders separately. Leader guides will be complicated, so I'm starting with civilization guides while I figure out how I want to tackle the problem of creating guides for leaders that can change civs 3 times in a single game. Unfortunately, the lack of Hot Seat multiplayer severely limits my ability to do specific testing of things like the damage dealt by unique units in different circumstances, certain diplomatic actions, pillage effects, and other things. Hopefully, Hot Seat will be added soon.

As always, I welcome feedback. I will probably need a lot of feedback as I learn the new game and experiment with the format of these guides. Of course, you can also support the creation of this content by becoming a Patron.

As has been my tradition with these guides, I plan to start by focusing my attention on civilizations and leaders who have never been playable in Civilization games before.

The early life of Chandragupta Maurya is steeped in legend with few historical facts known. What is known is that around 322 BCE, after the death of Alexander the Great, Chandragupta raised an army to overthrow the Nanda Empire and Greek occupiers of India. He was the first to unify most of the Indian subcontinent, and may have abdicated his throne after converting from the Brahmanism religion to Jainism late in his life. One of his successors, Ashoka, would go on to convert to Buddhism, and declare Buddhism to be the official state religion of the increasingly-urban empire. Ashoka would go on to oversee the construction of many stupas and temples across India and expanded the influence of the religion into Afghanistan and Thailand.

Maurya gets to adopt multiple pantheons, and it excels in keeping its citizens happy. That happiness can then be converted into other yields, or be used to support military conquest.

DISCLAIMER:

Civilization VII is a "live service" game, which means it will be periodically updated with new content, new features, and balance changes. I may update this guide if Firaxis updates the game such that it considerably impacts this civilization, or if new strategies are discovered by the community. This guide is up to date as of the 1.2.5 patch on 30 September 2025.

I welcome any feedback or suggestions that readers wish to offer. Feel free to post on the linked forums, or by posting a comment at the bottom of the page.

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After the disappointment of College Football 26, I wasn't sure if I would care enough to play this year's Madden. If the college game that everyone was excited about and praising last year somehow managed to get worse this year, that didn't bode well for Madden. As usual, I waited a couple weeks and bought it used, then still put off playing it for another week or so. After having to click through multiple advertisements for Ultimate Team and the stupid Season Pass, getting into the actual game didn't make me feel any better.

Just like with College Football 26, my single, biggest problem with Madden 26 (at release) is the inability to run the ball. Just like with the college game, blockers seem incapable of holding blocks, and defensive pursuit is uncanny good. There's like 3 run plays that even seem viable: draws from shotgun, read option keepers, and 01 Trap. With almost every other run play that I call, there is always a defender in the gap. Unless you are able to quickly react to cut back, or you have the stick skills to make a move or break a tackle in the gap, you'll be lucky to average more than a single yard per run.

That's the case for the user, anyway. For the CPU, every inside running play seems to break for 20 yards, and the CPU running back will successfully juke at least 2 defenders every play.

People online are saying that in order to run the ball, you need to utilize the new "Untarget Defender" feature in order to force your blockers to ignore backside defenders in favor of sending an extra blocker to the play-side. There are a few problems with this. First and foremost, as a matter of principle, I should not have to change the blocking assignments every single play in order to get competent blocking!

Running the ball was borderline impossible when the game launched.

Madden also doesn't bother to teach or explain this new "Untarget defender" mechanic. Unless you pay attention to pre-release promotional material, you probably won't know that this option is even available. It isn't documented anywhere, and there's no tutorials for it. I had no idea about it until I went online looking for advice on how to run the ball. Worse yet, this option is located under the "Pass Protection" pre-play menu, which means that a lot of users might not even realize that this feature can be used to modify run blocking assignments.

Almost as important is the fact that, unlike College Football, Madden does not show the actual individual blocking assignments of your blockers on running plays. It does for [most] pass plays, but not for run plays. I have no idea who the offensive line is actually going to try to block, so how am I even supposed to know that I should be modifying the blocking assignments? Or how am I supposed to know that the Untarget Defender command is even working?

The coach cam can show pass blocking assignments,
but not specific run blocking assignments.

If it ain't broke, break it!

Or at least, that was the case when the game released. In mid-September an update was released that seems to have inverted that problem so that running the ball is easy for the user, but the CPU cannot run the ball to save its life. I've had to reduce my Run Blocking sliders down to 20 or below in Franchise just to make CPU run defense competent, while tuning CPU Run Blocking into the 70s or higher just to make it so that the CPU running backs can gain positive yards.

Unfortunately, setting this slider so low leads to recurring problems where my own blockers will cut right in front of my running back right as he hits the hole. This is particularly annoying with receivers or tight ends who go in motion across the formation, away from the run, only to U-turn as soon as the ball is snapped and run through the hole as if to lead block. Despite there being a huge hole, my running back runs right into the back of one of my own players, has all his momentum stopped, and gets dragged down by a backside defender. It doesn't happen every time, but it happens frequently enough to really get on my nerves.

Maybe I would be able to fix some of these problems if the game would only let me see who each of my blockers is supposed to block on running plays. Then, maybe I could use the "Untarget Defender" function to force my pullers to block someone else, so that they don't get in my running back's way. But I can't do that because I have no idea who each of my blockers is actually supposed to block!

It would be really nice if publishers would stop being so reliant on post-release updates, and would actually put some QA effort into their games before they launch. That way, I wouldn't keep feeling like I have to write 2 fucking reviews for every one of these damn things!

After coming off of playing Foundation, and while jonesing for the Manor Lords castle update, I picked up another medieval village-builder: Farthest Frontier. I played this game while it was still technically in Early Access (and cheaper to buy), but its 1.0 release was only a month away, so I was basically playing (and reviewing) the release version. So for once, I'll actually have a review of a game out on the game's release! (Instead of weeks or months later, when everybody has stopped caring).

Farthest Frontier is another city-builder that's been on my radar for a long time, but I always figured that it would have a hard time competing with Manor Lords. Sure enough, I don't think Farthest Frontier is a good as Manor Lords, but it does have a lot of features and ideas that I really like, and which I would love to see ported or adopted into Manor Lords (and to other medieval survival city-builders.

I feel like the winters in Farthest Frontier look worse than they actually are.

Frontier fog

If anything, I think that fans of Banished should really like Farthest Frontier, as it feels very similar to that game. Both are grid-based city-builders, which stubbornly refuse to allow building on diagonals. One of my pet peeves with grid city-builders is when they generate maps that have diagonal features, and allow road-building on diagonals, but do not allow buildings to be placed on diagonals.

Both Banished and Farthest Frontier also put a large emphasis on logistics and trade. They also both have harsh winters -- though I did not find Farthest Frontier's weather or winters to be nearly as threatening as I remember them being in Banished.

Instead, Farthest Frontier plays up its "frontier" nature by including a fog of war that conceals potential threats and hazards. Even though the weather never posed as much of a threat to my village as I expected it to, I always had to be careful about exploring or expanding into the fog of war. You just never know what's out in that fog. Builders, loggers, hunters, or foragers who wander out into unexplored territory may run into bandit camps or wild predatory animals. If you send them out at the wrong time of year, they can also potentially get caught in a summer drought or winter blizzard, which could kill them from dehydration or cold if they can't get back to the village quickly enough.

The fog of war can hide dangerous wild animals or bandit camps.

Bandits and predators can also wander into your village or outposts from the fog of war, and can attack villagers, plunder resources, or damage or destroy buildings. You need to be sure to keep visibility of the perimeter of your village and satellite hamlets, and be prepared to defend it on a moment's notice. Watchtowers are therefore very important, but keeping them staffed takes precious population away from other jobs.

Villages in Farthest Frontier also never feel like they turn into full-blown cities or metropolises, like they can in Banished (and other games). Farthest Frontier actually has a hard cap on how high the population can get. This cap can be configured in the game's options (based on your computer's specs), implying that it's a technical and performance limitation (rather than a stylistic choice), and it defaults to 500 people. So unlike other games, you'll never fill up the map in Farthest Frontier (though you may have satellite villages all over the map). This limit may be a technical concession, but it does also contribute towards the "frontier" feeling of the game.

Last month, I had 2 choices for retro indie survival horror games to play. I could play Tormented Souls or Crow Country. I chose to play Tormented Souls first, since it has a sequel coming out soon, and I wanted to play the first in order to determine how interested I will be in the sequel. I was a bit underwhelmed with Tormented Souls, and was still on the fence about whether to check out its sequel. Thankfully, the developers of the game might have made that choice easier by offering a free playable demo. So I guess I'll play that and see how it goes.

In any case, I came out of Tormented Souls still itching for some retro survival horror, and I was still waiting for a used copy of Silent Hill f (because Konami isn't getting a penny of my money after fucking up Silent Hill so thoroughly for 2 decades). I wasted no time and jumped right into Crow Country.

Crow Country is a different, but familiar take on retro survival horror.

Retro style; not-so-retro gameplay

Crow Country takes a very different approach to its retro stylings than Tormented Souls. For one thing, it comes up with an original story, instead of ripping off the story of one of the survival horror classics. It also eschews classic survival horror gameplay staples, such as the fixed camera angles, in favor of rotatable camera. Even though the camera can rotate around the character, it cannot pan up or down, so it does maintain the sense of claustrophobia and limited visibility of the old fixed-camera games. Threats can always be just off-screen, waiting for you, and enemies frequently respawn, which makes sprinting across the map very risky.

It has tank controls on the left analog stick, but I found that they were never really useful. Since the camera can rotate, and there aren't cuts to different angles as you walk around a room or down a hallway, it was easy enough to navigate with the analog stick. The analog stick is also more reactive, which made it easier to duck and dodge around enemies slinking around in the darkness just off-screen.

Instead of fixed cameras and tank controls, the retro aesthetic of Crow Country comes almost entirely from its art style, map design, and emphasis on resource-management. The graphics are very low-def. Characters look like they were pulled straight out of NPC crowds in the original PS1 Final Fantasy VII. Crow Country expertly evokes the visuals of a PS1 classic, but it also takes advantage of technical upgrades that were impossible for the PS1. For one thing, you can aim your gun freely, and targeting different body parts of enemies will have different results.

The free aim is integral to resource management.

The free aim is also an essential part of the game's novel resource-management. The maps are littered with crates and plastic bottles that may or may not contain resources. But you aren't given a melee weapon at all, and so if you want to smash these containers, you have to shoot them with a gun (and hope that you don't miss due to poor aim). You can see what resource is contained within a breakable plastic bottle, but you have no idea what (if anything) might be inside a wooden crate. There's always a cost-benefit analysis going on. Will you get something that is more valuable than the bullet you will spend to have to acquire it?

Alien: Earth on Hulu.

Boy, this show was a roller coaster of good ideas, bad ideas, and hit-or-miss execution. I absolutely hated the first 2 episodes, to the point that I really didn't want to watch any more of the show. But my partner was liking it (I guess?) and she wanted to keep watching, so I watched it with her. I'm not sure if I'm happy that I stuck it out, or not. It does get a little bit better -- for a little bit -- but then it completely shits the bed.

I wasn't keen on the show being about children's minds being implanted into android bodies. Going on to treat them like a super hero team was one of the cringiest things I've ever seen in this franchise (and that includes Alien: Resurrection and Prometheus).

But then the show starts to get into the ethics, morality, and metaphysics of putting someone's consciousness into an android body (and other questions regarding trans-humanism), and the mind-body dilemma that is inherent to such an idea. Here Alien: Earth starts to get genuinely good. Are the androids really the same people? Are the original people dead? Are the androids property of the company that manufactured them? Does that company have the right to control what that android does? Does that company have the right to wipe parts of that android's memory, or change the android's personality, in order to fix a "glitch"?

Of course, all of these questions can be adequately explored without having the gimmick of implanting children's minds into the androids. The writers could just as easily have written a story about regular androids becoming sentient, and pose the exact same questions about whether they are "property" or "people". It's been done a billion times before in science fiction, so even though these are all interesting questions, it's nothing particularly new or innovative. I think the use of children was done to make the audience more sympathetic and "human-like", because the people in charge don't have any respect for the intelligence of their audience. It could also have been a decision made in order to justify the characters doing stupid, illogical things, but I'll get to that later.

At the same time, there are completely new aliens that have never been seen in this franchise before, that get a lot of screen time. There's a creepy, parasitic eyeball alien thing that is probably the single best idea that this entire show has going for it. It's gross and disturbing on a visceral level, but also the idea of it tunneling into your brain and taking control of your body is terrifying on an existential level. Honestly, an entire show (without the Alien title and branding) about that eyeball parasite probably could have been worth watching on its own. But Hollywood is averse to new IPs and can't make anything that doesn't have a recognizable brand attached to it -- again, because executives have no respect for the intelligence of their audiences.

Alien: Earth season 1, episode 1 - © Walt Disney, Hulu

Treating these cyborg children like a superhero team was so stupid.