Civilization 7 Dev opens up on the Absence of Gandhi

Indian historical leader Gandhi has been one of the staple in-game characters in all previous Civilization titles, since the franchise’s first release back in 1991. But the famous character is completely and suspiciously absent in Civilization 7, the latest entry in the long running strategy game series. And when asked about the current whereabouts of this in-game character by IGN, Firaxis Games’ lead designer Ed Beach acknowledged his absence while suggesting that Gandhi might eventually make his way to Civilization 7 via one of the post-release DLC’s of the game.

“So I would say we haven’t forgotten about anybody who’s been in our game before,” Beach stated. “Certainly civilizations, there’s a lot of consternation right now about where’s Great Britain or England, why aren’t they in our game?”

“But there’s sort of a big, longer picture roadmap that we have, and some pieces fit better in the long picture roadmap they do in the short picture one”.

“One thing I always think about is, we’ve had the same situation where iconic civilizations haven’t been in our base game before,” he said. “We had both Mongolia and Persia missing from the base game of either Civ 5 or Civ 6, and both of those were just massive conquerors who ruled huge chunks of Asia during their time period. “

“So we always have to leave somebody out. There’re just too many popular choices and we always want to have a few fresh ones that sound really new and exciting to people. So things are getting left behind, but we always are looking at the big picture, when we’re going to bring leaders or civs into the fold. So there’s hope for Gandhi, yet.”

Civilization 7 was released on February 11 for the Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One and Series X and S, Nintendo Switch, and the PC platform (which includes both macOS and Linux). A VR port of the game will be available in spring 2025 for the Quest 3 and 3S platform, but no price or specific release date has been announced as of yet.