Sid Meier's Civilization needs to keep reinventing itself to stay relevant

When I first got to sit down and play a couple dozen turns of Civilization 7 last year, I had one key takeaway: It was a lot more different from its predecessors than I was expecting. And for me, that was definitely a good thing. Leaders and civs have been divorced from each other on the startup screen—you can have Ben Franklin lead Egypt or Cleopatra lead Rome. You pick a new civ for each of its three historical ages, similar to Humankind. Each civ has its own perk tree. Districts have been significantly reworked from Civ 7.