My hands-on demo for Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 ended at the turning point of a decisive military operation. At arm’s length from the station, I continued clicking the mouse as I stood and packed my bag, desperately trying to claim the capital of Ashoka, leader of the Maurya Empire. Like in any promising Civilization campaign, I didn’t want to stop playing, but this particularly bullish rampage was an effort to get closer to the most profound change Firaxis Games has made to the Civilization formula in some time: the introduction of Ages.

Civilization 7 campaigns occur across three distinct Ages — Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern — a change made to better represent the undulating tide of history. Each player’s actions contribute towards an Age Progression metric, and at a certain point, this will result in an Age Transition, a crisis-laden period where you’ll decide what to inherit from your existing empire and deal with barbarians at the gates. You’ll keep the same leader across all three ages, but the civilization they control will change at each transition, your options determined by your choices so far, as well as geographical and historical connections.

For example, players may pair the Pharaoh Hatshepsut with Egypt to begin, but if they amass three horse resources during Antiquity, they can transition to Mongolia for the Exploration Age. Specific resources, civics, technologies, buildings, units, wonders, and even game systems are age-specific, and the map will expand as you enter a new age, allowing for the introduction of new Independent Powers: Civilization 7’s humanizing take on barbarians. They’re now villages scattered across the world which can grow into formidable city-states, potentially creating a buffer between your civilization and a hostile empire.

“The thesis is history is built in layers,” said Dennis Shirk, executive producer at Firaxis Games. “With Rome, for example, the entire world, especially in North Africa and Europe, has seeds of Rome woven into their societies, culture, and people. Eventually, people change, absorb, and grow, and that’s just the natural state of things. But instead of having a straight line from Point A to Point B at the end, Ed [Beach, creative director on Civilization 7] wanted to try exploring that space.”

Across the river from my appointment at Gamescom, the ruins of a Roman villa could be found in a car park underneath the distinctly Gothic Cologne Cathedral — a compelling real-world example of the Firaxis theory in action. In that sense, Civilization 7’s layered approach is thoughtfully archaeological, and, in theory, it will allow players to finish a game with a unique stratigraphic profile of their empire, one that speaks to their choices across history both visually and mechanically. A presentation pained to illuminate all of this tantalizing historical interplay, but unfortunately, I couldn’t get a sense of how this works in practice, as my demo was limited to the Antiquity Age.

Playing as Augustus, I could have chosen Egypt, but I picked Rome instead and built my capital a few hexagons from the coast — a cute and bountiful geographical coincidence. My scouts charged into the unknown, causing hexagonal monoliths to rise and fall, revealing glossy sea tiles blooming with underwater flora. The plant life painted a delicate mirage on the water’s surface, one of many visual flourishes I noticed in the game, details that reflect what the game’s art director, Jason Johnson, calls ‘readable realism’. Another example was a glut of bubbling mud spreading through my farmlands, resulting from an inclement flood that arrived on the turn I discovered Irrigation.

The next thing that caught my eye was the lack of builder units. As Rome expanded, I physically chose the next tiles to grow towards and the associated improvements. This change helped streamline turn time, at least compared to Civilization 6. On the other hand, there’s Influence, a new diplomatic currency I spent on frequent pace-hindering pop-up chats with other empires and sanctions during the war, explicitly targeting Ashoka’s agriculture. Broadly, Civilization 7 is partial to an interruptive dialogue box, far more than its predecessor, with narrative events evocative of Crusader Kings 3 confronting you as you play. Similarly, the ‘goody huts’ of yore now prompt a choice that decides the type of reward you will receive.

Throughout the 30 or so turns I managed, I heard the soothing voice of Gwendoline Christie, who continues the Game of Thrones dynasty of Civilization narrators, taking over duties from Sean Bean, who lent his Yorkshire tones to Civilization 6. Initially, Civilization 7 was going to have different narrators for each age, but Christie’s early line reads made such an impression that Firaxis scrapped the idea.“ The thing that popped for us was when we were getting the first sessions back — and it didn’t matter how small, like a five-word quote — everything was read with heart and feeling; it was like she was performing for an audience every time she read something,” said Shirk.

Rounding out the major changes in Civilization 7 is the introduction of Commanders, military leaders with skill trees that soak up all of the previously demarcated unit XP. You can stack six units onto a commander tile like a Trojan Horse and deploy them in a specified direction to set up a devastating gank on an opposing civ’s border. Or, at least, that’s what I did to begin my tyrannical siege of Ashoka’s capital. “We did it because we hated managing armies in [Civilization] 6,” Shirk said. “An army’s biggest enemy was not the opponent; it’s that one hex mountain tile pass that you have to get them all through.”

Shirk said the team at Firaxis internally refers to the Civilization 4/5/6 style of combat as ‘Fish Slap’, in that one unit usually runs up and slaps the other with a proverbial fish, only to run away after and end the engagement. This led to the development of Civilization 7’s ‘continuous combat’ under combat designer Brian Feldges. When units engage, they smash together and scrap on the face of the hexagon they’re situated in, and the fighting doesn’t stop until you’ve issued all of your commands. “We wanted to establish facing so that flanking would look and feel right, and when the battles are joined, you actually have battle lines fighting in your game as you’re going through and doing all of your combat,” Shirk said. “And then you end turn, and only then do they return to their paths.”

In addition to bringing a new strategic dynamic to Civilization 7, the death of Fish Slap has also allowed Firaxis to level up the contextual visual design of each unit. Quite rightly, Roman archers don’t look the same as Egyptian archers this time. The visual variance extends to the individual, with certain members of each unit sporting alternative headgear, outfits, and, eventually, unique battle damage. It’s a reactive approach that deepens the immersion and speaks to the core ambition of Civilization 7: to stand out compared to its familiar forerunners.

“When you look at [Civilization 4, 5, and 6], they’re all relatively similar to each other,” Shirk said. “We change the rooms, put up new wallpaper, add on a couple of different things or extensions to the house, but they’re iterative, and our fans have gotten so good at guessing what we’re doing. They know the order we’re going to do it in, what’s going to be in the first expansion… and Ed [Beach] didn’t want to make a Civ 6.5; he wanted to do something that would make our fans have to start over. The old strategies aren’t gonna work. They have to open up and look at it with fresh eyes to understand how to play this game.”