Civilization 7 is a big, complicated mess of a game with intricacies so delicate you and I couldn’t possibly understand at a glance how or why they were decided upon. So, to shed some light on the design process, Firaxis has put out a big ole post answering a load of community questions digging into things like controversial historic figures, whether there’ll be more 20th century era leaders coming in the future, and more besides.

Right, first up that tidbit about 20th century leaders. This question asked whether you can expect any more leaders from that era, given that it might be a bit harder to get “(relatively) recently deceased people into the game for legal reasons.” Bottom line is, yes, there are more, with senior historian at the studio Emily explaining, “The 20th century was long, and we haven’t fully explored it. Yet.”

Another question that came up was around figures in history that have controversial legacies, and how the team decides as to whether they should include them or not, with fellow senior historian Andrew providing a thoughtful answer: “A good rule of thumb is ‘does the memory of this person still cause harm?’ Are there movements in this person’s name that actively hurt people today?” Andrew used Genghis Khan as an example of someone who enacted a lot of violence, but notes that he doesn’t “know of anyone using his name as a pretext for violence today. We can think of other figures for whom this isn’t the case, and who as a result don’t appear in the series.”

Andrew had a fairly interesting answer regarding a question over how the devs approached “risks of presenting colonial expansion primarily through a gameplay lens,” and whether or not there were discussions over moving “further away from a linear ‘progress’ narrative and toward more plural, contested, or non-European understandings of historical development.”

Here’s what Andrew had to say: “The honest answer is that there’s a few competing pulls, and a few limitations. To really get into the breadth of what is possible in alt-history (including not doing colonialism) would require creating alternate systems – not gold, not expansion, not profit, not exploitation, but prestige, coexistence, sustainability, etc. This would have required designers to design whole new games based on non-exploitative worlds, which would have been a huge lift. And this would have been a bit too big of a shock to a player base wanting a 4X experience.”

This one’s a tricky one. How does one design an anti-colonial 4X strategy game? They are often based on colonial structures of expansion, as those same structures are often the ones that have built the world we live in today. It certainly seems like a task worth undertaking, given how prolific the issue is in the genre, though I take umbrage with that bit about it being a shock for some people. Screw the people! Push back a little. Still, a generally thoughtful answer. The full Q&A is worth a read, and you can do so here.