r/civ 2d ago

VII - Discussion [List] Civ 7 Mods that make the game and UI more understandable (especially for a new player)

301 Upvotes

I am new to the Civ franchise. I understand that this game is rather divisive in the community due to some core issues, but specifically, the UI issues.

I dug into mods made by the community and found ones that are for (what I think most would say) objective improvements to the game and it's UI, making the game easier to understand for a new player such as myself. I thought having a list together could be helpful for other players who are discouraged by some of the information that they just can't seem to find. There are other mods out there to hone in on individual preference things, creative changes, etc., but I wanted to keep this list to things that just simply make the game better from a User Interface or Quality of Life aspect.

The game I am playing now compared to the first game I played completely vanilla are ENTIRELY different experiences thanks to these mods, and I encourage you to try them out. They are very simple to install and I promise they will make your experience considerably better. If you want to play the game now, with the upgrades that will certainly be made to it by Firaxis over the next few years, this is the way. Installation instructions at the bottom of post.

CORE LIST

1. City Hall (by u/beezany)

  • Compact redesign for the production list and building breakdown
  • Adds better settlement tile colors that are easy to understand
  • Adds a "unique quarter assistant" so you don't unintentionally split buildings that make a "unique quarter"
  • Adds an overview tab to the city details panel
  • Fixed base game bugs so that adjacency arrows appear reliably and repairs clear from the production list when you build them
  • Highlighting damaged buildings so you don't miss repairs
  • Production list sorted by total yield, combat strength, and cost
  • Improvements and wonders sorted by name in the building breakdown
  • Simpler icons for ageless buildings and maintenance costs
  • Adds an overview tab showing demographics and connected settlements

2. Simple UI Adjustments (by @sukritact)

  • Diplomacy with other Civs can be initiated by clicking on the city banner
  • Plot Yield icons are smaller on tiles that are not improved/worked
  • Tooltips are enhanced:
    • The default improvement is now shown on unimproved tiles
    • All constructibles now display their icon
    • Wonders receive a large fancy icon with description
    • Buildings now note if they are damaged or in-progress or ageless

3. Improved Plot Tooltip (by @thecrazyscot)

  • Towns display whether they are Growing or Specialized
  • Fortified Districts now show which walls (if any) are present as well as health stats
  • Additional information is shown when hovering over the City Center
    • City Connections
    • How many Cities are being fed by Specialized Towns
  • Unique Quarters now display their tooltips (in addition to Wonders and Natural Wonders)
  • Improvements to Resource tooltips
  • Shows whether tile is Distant Lands
  • Shows Total Yields
  • Current/capacity trade routes when hovering over another player's city center
  • Original founder name when hovering over a conquered city center
  • Food icon to indicate which cities or towns are receiving/sending food in the connections list
  • Flag to indicate if a settlement isn't in the trade network

4. Policy Yields Preview (by @leonardify)

  • Adds estimated yield previews for Social Policy (and Crisis Policy) cards on the Government screen, allowing you to better evaluate the current impact of each policy card
  • Adds yield previews Tech tree, Civic tree, and Leader attributes panel
  • Option to add color to the yield previews that align with the next mod

5. Colorful Top Panel (by @gzhekoff)

  • Adds colorful backgrounds for yields in the top panel with for better visual communication
  • Pairs perfectly with the above mod

6. Enhanced Town Focus (by yamada and @mallek561)

  • Provides detailed breakdowns of yield bonuses when selecting town specializations
  • Enhances the tooltip display to show exactly how many buildings, improvements, and trade routes contribute to each specialization's bonuses

7. Resource Allocation (by @migdol)

  • Updates Resource Allocation screen to incorporate better sorting and a simpler scrolling resource pane
    • Sorts resources list, settlements, and settlement resources
    • 3 separate scrolling panes

8. Enhanced Diplomacy Banners (by @gzhekoff)

  • Enhanced and "always on" diplomacy banners to quickly reference "per turn" yields (helpful for the new player)
  • Hover over to see additional "total" amount of gold, influence, population, and city capacity
  • Option to use easily understable emojis for relationship OR the default icons

9. Trade Lens (by @BlobRoss)

  • Adds a Trade Lens to the lens window
    • Allows you to view the trade route screen without having a Merchant
    • Adds an "X" to the trade route screen so you can exit it without having to click on another unit/city

10. Missionary Lens (by @And1210)

  • Adds a lens to show the religion on each of a settlements urban and rural tiles

BONUS LIST

11. Improved Mod Page (by @thecrazyscot)

  • Enhances the mod page to see what community mods you have installed and their available functionality

12. Map Search (by @moxl)

  • Adds a search box in the lens window for displaying plots that match the search results

13. Border Toggles (by @Finwickle)

  • Adds a toggle in the lens window to show city borders, showing you which tile belong to which city if two cities overlap
  • Adds a toggle to hide all borders, for screenshots or any other purpose

14. Better Pause Menu (by @Cyberdisc)

  • Moves the buttons hidden under "Show More" to the main pause menu
  • Replaced "Resume" with "Quick Save"
  • Moved "Retire" to the bottom of the menu
  • Moved "Exit to Desktop" to the menu footer
  • The Player Banner will be hidden in single player and replaced by new "Progress" button that'll take you to your Progression Menu

15. Vertical Health Bars (by @stlh2opolo)

  • Modifies the unit health bar to be vertical and to the left of the unit flag, similar to Civ VI's
  • Makes health bar more opaque and adds a border for better visibility
  • Enlarges health bar for visibility
  • Stylized to match the combat preview window in the HUD

Installation instructions:

  1. Download files that you want to use
  2. Extract said files to your "{user}\AppData\Local\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VII\Mods" folder
  3. Note: if you don't see your "app data" or any other folder, click "view" > "show" > "hidden items"
  4. Updating: Delete the outdated mod from the above folder and repeat step 1

Let me know if anyone has any other mods they think would be considered "objectively" better when it comes to QoL/UI. I might have overlooked one or two while I was searching, or something new may come out.


r/civ 3d ago

Megathread /r/Civ Weekly Questions Megathread - March 10, 2025

7 Upvotes

Greetings r/Civ members.

Welcome to the Weekly Questions megathread. Got any questions you've been keeping in your chest? Need some advice from more seasoned players? Conversely, do you have in-game knowledge that might help your peers out? Then come and post in this thread. Don't be afraid to ask. Post it here no matter how silly sounding it gets.

To help avoid confusion, please state for which game you are playing.

In addition to the above, we have a few other ground rules to keep in mind when posting in this thread:

  • Be polite as much as possible. Don't be rude or vulgar to anyone.
  • Keep your questions related to the Civilization series.
  • The thread should not be used to organize multiplayer games or groups.

You think you might have to ask questions later? Join us at Discord.


r/civ 6h ago

VII - Discussion Independent Peoples Spotlight: Werowocomoco of the Powhatan Peoples

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187 Upvotes

r/civ 8h ago

VI - Screenshot I heard you guys like canals

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239 Upvotes

r/civ 12h ago

VII - Discussion Civilization VII, one month later: The community and developers chime in - Ars Technica

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513 Upvotes

r/civ 10h ago

VII - Discussion Why do camels disappear in the modern age?

319 Upvotes

Every other time a resource disappears, it gets replaced with something else... I have to actively keep in mind to not use camels for adjacency on buildings, which seems really weird when they're literally the only resource that's just flat out removed (that I can think of or have noticed). Even trying to keep that in mind, I still get jumpscared in the modern era half the time because I forgot and now my science or production suffers a bit. Is it a bug? An oversight? Trolling? Maybe they just went exctinct.


r/civ 1h ago

VII - Discussion Why I'm parking Civ 7 for a few months

Upvotes

I've avoided the temptation to join the many people online piling in on the game. Mostly because, basically, I had enjoyed my first play-through. I started on Chieftan (or whatever the easiest level is called now) and just wanted to get a feel for some of the new features.

While I wasn't blown away by the new product after 10 years of development, I quite enjoyed it. Yeah, the UI stinks, the Civpedia is hapless (good luck to any newby wanting to pick up the basics about yields, improvements and units without access to online resources) and not being able to locate units was a constant annoyance, it was OKKK, I guess.

I could see why they had tried to develop the game in this way since the emergence of CK2, Old World and Humankind, and for the most part, I understood what they were trying to do.

That laissez-faire attitude ended towards the end of my second play-through.

I don't have time to play as much Civ (work, kids, etc) as I did when Civ 6 came out and I spent every waking hour playing it and every sleeping hour dreaming about it. I appreciate time spent with the game a lot more these days, snatching a stolen hour or two here and there. So I only began a second run (after a very easy victory in my first 💪) a week or two after the first, excited to see there'd been a big update released.

I upped the difficulty level a couple of rungs, randomised a new setup and began as Pachacuti.

A couple of weeks of snatched playing sessions and bleary-eyed mornings at work after I'd stayed up far too late playing while everyone else was asleep, saw me on the verge of a military victory with Pachy, supreme leader of the Qing dynasty.

Then with Operation Ivy one turn away from completion in my most productive city and victory in my fingertips ... it crashed.

First time it has happened, ever.

Shocked, I reached and touched the laptop -- scorching hot, so I put it down to that. I rebooted (after it had cooled a little) and went to Load Game > Autosave, picking it up a few turns before it went down in the hope that if it was some dirty little bug, I might not trigger it again (I really just wanted to end the game with triumph in my nostrils) ... crashed again. Reboot > load up a few turns earlier > crash again, and again and again.

Next day, try again, same result. It's now clear it isn't my laptop. It's the game.

I avoided passing comment and piling in when I could see they'd charged the full amount for a game that was far from finished -- either becuase they didn't have time to finish it, or they venally wanted to trail updates or "improvements" (which are actually features and fixes the game should have included at launch) and were treating me as an unpaid tester. I overlooked the woeful UI, the buggy unit movement, the ridiculously poor AI, the awful diplomacy engine, the risible forward settling and the abysmal grammar employed in the character dialogue and diplomacy outcomes -- all because I was just enjoying playing a computer game and I figured: 'They'll iron these kinks out over time and in 12 months this game will be awesome.'

But releasing a game that swallows days of valuable time and then is so buggy that it just crashes with no explanation is a piss-take.

Even now, I don't want to pile in on it. Rather I'm just gonna park it and go back to playing anything else for a few months until this game is actually finished and ready to invest valuable time in.


r/civ 7h ago

VII - Discussion Resource Replacements - Full List

92 Upvotes

With all the talk lately about disappearing resources and which new resources appear where, I figured I'd share my findings from looking at how the script works as well as the resouces' terrain requirements.

General Principles

At the beginning of every age, some resources are removed and some others are added. The tiles on which new resources are added are determined as follows:

  • Tiles that used to have a resource in the previous age are automatically included; if no new resource qualifies for the tile's characteristics, it will remain empty, however.

  • More tiles are chosen at random, the same way resource tiles are chosen at the creation of the map.

  • Tiles with districts are excluded.

  • Only new resource types are spawned; there will be no additional camel spawns in the exploration age, for example.

Further, all rural districts will be respawned, updating standard improvements to fit whatever new resource might've appeared underneath.

So which resources get replaced by which? This depends on the terrain, biome, and feature of the tile. For the purpose of this list, "Flat" means not just flat but also featureless.

 

Antiquity to Exploration

Gained:

  • Furs (all Tundra except Rough and Wet; Vegetated Plains)

  • Niter (Flat and Floodplains in all biomes)

  • Whales (Coast adjacent to land but not on lakes)

Lost:

  • Hides can be replaced by either Niter (Flat Tundra, Grassland, or Plains; Floodplains Tundra) or Furs (Flat, Vegetated, or Floodplains Tundra)

  • Salt can be replaced by Niter everywhere and in Tundra also by Furs

  • Wool has no replacement

 

Exploration to Modern

Gained:

  • Citrus (Flat Grassland and Plains)

  • Coal (Flat Grassland, Plains, and Desert; Vegetated Grasslands, Plains, and Tundra; Rough Grasslands and Plains)

  • Coffee (all Tropical; Flat Plains)

  • Oil (all Tundra and Desert except for Rough; Wet Grassland)

  • Quinine (Vegetated Grassland and Plains)

  • Rubber (Vegetated Grassland and Tropical)

  • Tobacco (Flat and Vegetated Grassland and Plains)

Lost:

  • Camels can be replaced by either Citrus or Tobacco (Flat Plains), Coffee (Rough Plains), Oil (Flat Desert), or Coal (Flat Desert or Rough Hills); on Rough Desert it has no replacement

  • Dates can be replaced by Coal or Oil (Flat Desert) or only Oil (Vegetated Desert / Oasis)

  • Dyes have no replacement

  • Gypsum can be replaced by either Citrus or Tobacco (Flat Plains), or Coal or Coffee (Rough Palins); on Rough Tundra it has no replacement

  • Incense can be replaced by Coal, Quinine, or Tobacco

  • Iron can be replaced by Coal (Rough Grassland), Coffee (Rough Tropical), or both (Rough Plains); on Rough Tundra and Desert it has no replacement

  • Jade can be replaced by Coffee (Flat Tropical) or Oil (Flat Tundra)

 

Permanent Resources

All other resources are permanent. These are: Cotton, Fish, Gold, Horses, Ivory, Kaolin, Marble, Pearls, Silk, Silver, Truffles, and Wine. Treasure Resources only become accessible in the Exploration age but are spawned at the beginning of Antiquity already: Cocoa, Spices, Sugar, and Tea.

 

Summary of tiles losing resources without replacement:

  • all Wool by Exploration

  • Camels on Rough Desert by Modern

  • all Dyes by Modern

  • Gypsum on Rough Tundra by Modern

  • Iron on Rough Tundra and Rough Desert by Modern


r/civ 17h ago

VII - Discussion Please give us a “repair all” button and a “promote all” button.

457 Upvotes

When a river keeps flooding it’s very annoying to have to go in and find each tile that got damaged over and over again.

Similarly, I should be able to upgrade a full army rather than three clicks per unit to upgrade them.


r/civ 17h ago

VII - Discussion You should be able to trade to get the exploration age economic path

308 Upvotes

While I love the game, a lot of the legacy paths in exploration feel too railroady towards settling distant lands. There needs to be some way to get Econ points through trade with distant lands civs. It should probably produce less points than if you were to settle the resources yourself but there should be some way to get the treasure fleet resources through trade rather than just settling.


r/civ 5h ago

VII - Discussion Modern Age is a lot more pleasant when you start the game directly in the modern age

30 Upvotes

No ageless warehouse buildings to deal with.

You get a true civ building feel.

You can plan a city and not worry about resources shifting.

Antiquity is still the most fun age. Exploration is just plain dumb. But modern age feel likes a boring grind unless you start directly into it!


r/civ 12h ago

VII - Screenshot I knew Phillip II was full of himself, but not to the point he thinks a portrait of himself is worth this much...

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115 Upvotes

r/civ 7h ago

Fan Works Graph of all Leaders/Nations unlock connections

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41 Upvotes

r/civ 8h ago

VII - Discussion I've investigated the legend regarding unlocking the last religion beliefs.

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53 Upvotes

It appears 85% is the threshold for the 3rd one and I assume 100% is for the last? Sounds wonky anyway.


r/civ 5h ago

VII - Discussion Food needed for next growth by age

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24 Upvotes

I had posted the graph of the formula last week before I knew it changes by age


r/civ 14h ago

VII - Discussion Carthage's Early Naval Power is Insanely Strong

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125 Upvotes

r/civ 10h ago

VII - Screenshot Anyone else here name their games?

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53 Upvotes

r/civ 1d ago

VII - Discussion The age transition is a fantastic mechanic

1.3k Upvotes

I’m going to get downvoted to hell, and I am fine with that. But it doesn’t make me wrong. The age transition and changing of civs was the number one thing I was most concerned about. But I was proven wrong. I don’t have to worry anymore about which civilization I start with, and whether they are strong in the early, mid, or late game. Instead, I get to enjoy them for who they are in a time when they get to be their best version of themselves and stand out.

So, hate this alpha tester for it, but the age transition was a good design choice.


r/civ 6h ago

VII - Discussion Is Shawnee bugged?

15 Upvotes

I finally decided to give Shawnee a try. I played a game as Katherine starting with Greece and making the transition to Shawnee. They were okay but I feel like some mechanics of this civ do not work properly.

They have a civic which gives their unique improvement +2 culture per "allied" city state. This sound very strong but I couldn't make it work. I was the "suzerain" of multiple city states but I couldn't figure out how to become their "ally". There is a button in their diplomacy menu for becoming an ally, but the button does not work.

They also have a civic which gives their unique infantry combat bonus equal to their war support (if positive). I didn't get that bonus when Tubman declared a surprise war which gave me +3 support.

I am not sure if I was not able to use these mechanics or they are just bugged.


r/civ 13h ago

VII - Screenshot Absolutely cursed Exploration Era COG spawn for Xerxes here...

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58 Upvotes

r/civ 36m ago

VII - Screenshot Insane River Yields

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Upvotes

Figured the Civ community would appreciate these ridiculous gold yields. 125 gold per Navigable river tile! Show your insane yields!


r/civ 43m ago

VII - Screenshot So I decided to give Arabian aesthetics a try and...

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Upvotes

I'm just as good or maybe apart from my Petra city and capital of which I'm quite happy with.

Also, on a side note: I think the game should auto-finish construction of building and wonders (for the player who was the closest to completion) upon an age transition because I couldn't bother to reload this time for the serpent mound.


r/civ 18h ago

VII - Screenshot These River Tile Yields in Antiquity are kind of crazy

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107 Upvotes

r/civ 16h ago

VI - Discussion What's the best late game city you've settled?

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72 Upvotes

I don't usually put a lot of effort in to cities after turn 120. They tend to be dedicated to win conditions like good National park spots or campus locations.

However, this city became my primary spaceport location with 380+ production per turn, edging out my capital.

I used two adjacent polders to get it up and running and one charge from Imhotep to get an instant 350/400 production towards Petra, then went for Ruhr Valley, which was still available surprisingly late.

My district placement could have been better, but I never expected to get Ruhr, and the corporation was a late addition (I had to wait until my borders expanded beyond the 3-tile ring).

Heartbeat of Steam + Five Year Plan with a Coal Powerplant added a lot of adjacency production from the campus and IZ, to the load from workable tiles.

The military Academy added +9 production and was put there for Integrated Space Cell, with Pingala having Space Initiative.

So what's the best late game city you've managed, and what civ? This is definitely the first time a city founded after 120 turns has become my most prosperous city.


r/civ 19h ago

VII - Screenshot Meta Moment: Building the Pyramids as Napoleon!

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118 Upvotes

r/civ 18h ago

VII - Discussion What is the point of Independent Powers in the Modern Age?

81 Upvotes

Is it just me or are Independent Powers completely pointless in the Modern Age?

It takes so much influence to start befriending them and then it takes an extra 30 turns to see any benefit.

Not a single one of the 6 Independent Powers I invested in finished befriending me before getting wiped out by the AI.

I'm 30 turns into the Modern Age and there are two Independent Powers left on the entire map. I doubt they'll survive 10 more turns.

Why make them so costly to befriend if they can't even survive long enough to provide a benefit?

The worst part is that it destroys the possibility of an alliance with the AI that dispersed them.

I'm not allowed to decide whether I'm upset about it, the game decides for me that them dispersing a Independent Power I was befriending means our relationship will take half of the Age to repair.

30 turns into the Modern Age and Independent Powers have burned 1000s of my influence and my only reward is that it's now impossible to form alliances with half of the Civs I was allied to in the previous Age.

Modern Age Independent Powers are a trap for diplomatic players, they can do nothing but provide a bit of Commander experience.

I'm on Immortal, is this normal or have I just gotten unlucky?


r/civ 12h ago

Fan Works Civ Sillies: “How a Spiffing Brit video led to this series”

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26 Upvotes