SPARKS, Md. — Sid Meier’s Civilization VII, the upcoming game in the popular 4X strategy series will be shaking things with the addition of the ‘Senile’ leader trait as confirmed by Firaxis Games.
While the game, which was announced at Summer Game Fest, is still a ways off, Firaxis CEO Frank Kirkland gave fans a tease of the upcoming entry on Twitter by revealing the new trait.
“I can’t say too much since we’re still hard at work but we’re adding a new leader trait to make the series a bit more relatable to the contemporary world. Select leaders in 7 will have the senile trait and that will offer players a whole new dimension of strategy,” Kirkland tweeted.
Sid Meier was asked about the new trait and gave the reason for its addition in an interview
“We want this game to be as accurate with the times as possible, so we looked at current world leaders to add the most common traits among them to the game,” said Meier. ‘Senile’ was by far the most common. This trait will affect the actions of leaders in a variety of ways. It will give a random chance of making the leader wander around aimlessly, it may also force the player to waste turns making long and insane social media posts. Stuff like that.”
Lead gameplay designer Debra Hudley says that the team is still struggling to implement the trait in a way that doesn’t break the game.
“A major consequence of the trait is that leaders with it have consistently low approval rates among in-game citizens,” Hudley stated. “But for some reason, they keep picking leaders with this trait. It essentially means that the player can never win if they have the trait. It just completely bottlenecks the progress of the player’s civilization so we need to spend some time to fix the system.”
At press time, Firaxis also plans on implementing the possibility that leaders with the trait may die of old age before games reach their natural conclusion.
