Sid Meier’s Civilization is a dangerous game. The series, first released in 1991 on PC, offers players the opportunity to design and build their own human civilizations, frequently losing days of their lives in the process. (I once had to change the icon for Civilization 5 on my desktop to just say “Time Warp” to remind myself there was no way to play for just a few minutes.) Civilization 7, released on February 18, is no different, managing to be just as addicting as its predecessors. Of course, like all new editions, this version of Civ includes a number of small and sometimes frustrating changes to how the game works. A new three-age structure requires you to pick a different civilization to adopt at the dawn of each; you will lose most of your army when the next age dawns (unless you have enough commanders to house them), and you also have to spend money to upgrade your towns into cities. Fans of the series have complained about all of these little tweaks, but it’s actually the lack of change that truly irks me about this release: You can still only play as one of the 21 pre-designed leaders.
This is annoying for a few reasons. For one thing, despite the game’s framing as a simulator for human civilization, little about its gameplay can be considered historically accurate. Just the other day I, as Catherine the Great, founded Catholicism and trained an army of Roman legions that I then used to attack China in the year 500 B.C. (They attacked me first!) This loose approach to facts makes it all the more confusing that I have to be Catherine the Great at all. Why can’t I be Anne the Great? Anne the All-Encompassing? Anita the Bonita? I’m not saying I have good ideas, just that I have them. There’s also the fact that of the 21 leaders available to me, a pitiful six are women, a thing I don’t blame the game for as much as just history in general. Ancient patriarchies be damned, I find it more fun to play games as a character that aligns with my own gender — so sue me. (No, don’t; I fear this may actually be allowed now.)
I’m not alone in wishing custom leaders existed. It’s something other Civ players have been publicly asking for for years, and something one is able to do with unofficial mods. (Alas, they are unavailable to me since I switched to console gaming.) It was a surprise, then, when this hotly anticipated newest version had no such feature. In fact, while you can mix and match existing civilizations more readily (see: my Russian empress training Roman legions), you can no longer do even little customizations like change city names, something you’ve been able to do in every game since Civilization 4. Why take away a feature that players have been pleading for more of?
Given the current state of the world, I started to wonder if the reluctance to allow more customization is because of the entirely rational fear that players would just make Hitler. I reached out to 2K Games — the parent company of Firaxis — to ask why custom leader-making was still not something it was offering. I included my theory that it was perhaps worried about abetting the reanimation of some of history’s baddest guys. The company responded with the following statement:
Just as with past Civilization games, Civilization VII does not support building custom Leaders in-game. We have a diverse selection of Leaders in the game, and the ability to choose a Leader separately from a Civilization also gives players a new level of freedom to create all-new strategies and tell stories.
Custom Leaders is something we know many of our players enjoy exploring in the Civilization franchise, and thanks to the tireless work of our community of modders we’ve been able to see that creativity flourish. While Civilization VII does not feature official mod support at launch, as 2025 unfolds, we’ll be sharing modding tools and tips with these creators so they can get to work bringing their own ideas to life. Any modded content is expected to follow platform guidelines regarding appropriate content.
A quick perusal of the Steam Workshop shows you absolutely can download a mod that includes Hitler as a playable leader in previous versions of the game, which leads me to believe there isn’t an explicit rule or guideline against reanimating the world’s worst totalitarian racist. So while my theory isn’t necessarily correct, I still don’t think it’s completely wrong. Perhaps this is simply not something Firaxis wants to invest in as a feature, as opening this door would invite the public to hold it somewhat responsible for the way the tool is used. While researching this very topic on Reddit, it was disheartening to see more than one Civ player seemingly eager to argue that Hitler wasn’t as bad as other leaders who’ve graced Civ’s ranks, like Genghis Khan. Obviously, none of the leaders in Civ — or, arguably, in world history — are completely innocent of crimes against humanity, but there’s much less room for nuance when you’re talking about a relatively contemporary person whose ideology was wholly rooted in racism and whose salute was recently performed twice by our current shadow president.
I can’t say I blame Firaxis and 2K for wanting to avoid opening this particular can of worms, on top of whatever it might cost to actually add this level of customization to the game. Regardless, it seems entirely reasonable to blame the lack of fun we’re all having right now on those among us who refuse to have ideas, or any imagination for the future, and so remain forever stuck idealizing a rotten past. Civilization is such a dangerous game.