You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Civilization 7 makes some rather huge and controversial changes to the Civ formula. With a focus on a new narrative system, the latest Civilization game’s major changes were inspired by an underrated Warhammer 40K strategy game.  Speaking at the 2025 Game Developers Conference, via GamesRadar, Civilization 7 narrative designer Cat Manning explained that the team looked to a bunch of other strategy games for inspiration, including Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate.  Civilization 7 was inspired by Warhammer 40K Chaos Gate  At the GDC panel, Manning explained that the new Civ game looked at other strategy games that did narratives right. Alongside titles like FTL and BattleTech, Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate was the key point of inspiration.  “There’s a long history of successful narrative systems in strategy games, particularly when they’re tied pretty closely to the game’s mechanics…Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate was a huge touch point as we were beginning to talk about what the system could look like,” Manning said.  Even with all of this inspiration, it was still incredibly challenging to make every other system in Civilization 7 talk to the narrative system. After all, in a great strategy game, everything is interconnected and everything plays together. “The way all of Civ’s basic systems run is that the game sends signals to other parts of the game,” Manning said. “It’s just kind of this constant back and forth. If you purchase, say, a unit with gold, you might immediately get a narrative event tied to that unit. And that’s because the system is just always in the background listening.” Civilization 7 hasn’t released to great acclaim, but there’s still years of improvements coming… just like every Civ game. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see just what inspired the developer to make such sweeping changes to the Civ formula.  For more Warhammer coverage, read about the upcoming Space Marine 3 game in development at Saber Interactive.  Related Topics Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share