Narrative Events

By Matt Goodsell , Marloes Valentina Stella , Jen Rothery

Updated: Mar 9, 2025 6:27am UTC

Narrative Events in Civilization 7 are a system that constantly tracks the things you do and brings up certain events once conditions are met. The things that influence this can range from which Leader you are, which Civilization, fighting battles, or technology. The game is tallying the things you do and offering a story segment as a result of those actions. Once an event is triggered, you will be given choices, each with a reward to choose from, which progresses that "story."

Narrative Choices

Narrative Events can be tied to which Civilization you are or which Leader you are playing as. The rest are the game tallying the things you do and triggering Narrative Events at certain milestones within that tracker. Because of this, some of the early events will still trigger even when starting in later Ages, while ones made irrelevant will be skipped.

There are branching paths that can guide your Civilization and add even more choices to make on your turn to achieve your desired short-term and long-term goals. Each choice will typically reward you with resources just for making a choice, but some even offer a quest to give you more goals as you pass the turns.

These choices can occasionally be built upon in later ages to give your Civilization a throughline story across history while also incentivizing you with rewards to get an upper hand in your desired area of specialization. There are overall a lot more choices per turn; even the goodie huts found around the map now offer a choice between two rewards rather than something random to further encapsulate the feeling of a narrative.

Construct Your Own Narrative

The choices you make throughout the game will determine the flavor of your Narrative Events. Actions like making your first Alliance, becoming a Suzerain of an Independent Power, Declaring War, completing the Writing Technology, obtaining your first Codex, and more! No matter how you are playing, you will likely be encountering a lot of Narrative Events no matter what, but the rewards your choices contain will usually be related to the thing that triggered them, even awarding relevant Leader Attribute Points to further aid you along that track.

Crisis Events

Near the end of every age, a Crisis develops over the last 30% of the age that you must endure. The Crisis will throw a massive wrench in the late game of every age and seek to destabilize overzealous players. The types of Crisis differ slightly by the Age you are in but they are all different in the way you need to react to them.

As a Crisis develops further at 80% and 90% Age progression, you will be given more Crisis slots to put more policies into. Choosing the policies that cripple your empire the least are preferred but it will be impossible to avoid everything that goes wrong so damage control is important, namely, keeping Happiness high while keeping your empire afloat.

Antiquity Age Crisis Events

Plague A disease spreads that can tank Happiness, Population, and Production, which can't be cured. Avoid having Units in the infected Cities to prevent spreading it.

Revolt A widespread revolt causes Unhappiness. The Crisis Policies direct where the brunt of the unhappiness goes between your Cities and your Towns.

Invasion Hostile Independent Powers appear all around the empty spaces on the map. They grow stronger as the Crisis develops, attacking everyone around them. The Crisis Policies suppress your yields.

Exploration Age Crisis Events

Plague Similarly to the Antiquity Age, a disease spreads around your Settlements, but it can now be combated with the Physician Unit, which can combat it.

Revolution Your people take up pitchforks and seek to overthrow the Government. Once again, your yields are threatened here but a lot more flexible options appear to direct your empire safely through these turbulent times.

War of Religion A huge push for Religion beit your own or others. You must decide on your stance between religious intolerance or being firm in your own beliefs.