If you’ve spent the last few weeks grinding Civ 7 runs and looking for fresh ways to shake up your gameplay, the Civilization 7 Crossroads of the World Collection is easily one of the best upgrades you can grab right now. I picked it up last week on a whim after growing bored of my usual Roman and Egyptian playthroughs, and I’ve already logged 12 hours testing every new piece of content it includes. It’s not just a random pack of reskinned civs either—every addition feels intentional, with unique mechanics that force you to adjust your usual strategy instead of just reusing the same win condition tricks you’ve mastered. I’ve put together all my notes from testing so you don’t have to waste hours figuring out which bonuses are worth chasing and which civs are best for your preferred playstyle.
What’s Included in the Civilization 7 Crossroads of the World Collection?
First, let’s break down exactly what you get when you buy the pack, because the official store page leaves out a lot of small, useful details. You get 6 fully unique playable civs, 2 new government types, 4 exclusive wonders, 10 new city-state variants, and 3 scenario maps that are only accessible if you own the collection. None of this content is available in the base game, so you can’t unlock it through regular gameplay progression, even if you grind for hundreds of hours. Every civ added in the Civilization 7 Crossroads of the World Collection has a unique quirk that makes it stand out from base game options, which is a big improvement over past Civ DLC packs that often relied on reskinned versions of existing civs to pad out their content lists.
All new civs come with 3 unique bonuses each—a leader ability, a unique unit, and a unique infrastructure piece that replaces a standard building or improvement. None of these bonuses overlap with base game civ abilities, so you won’t run into situations where a new civ feels like a slightly different version of one you already know. The pack also includes 3 new scenario maps that let you test the new civs in historically inspired settings, like the Indian Ocean trade routes of the 14th century, if you don’t feel like doing a full random map run.
Top 3 Civs in the Collection for Every Playstyle
Not every new civ in the pack is going to fit how you like to play, but after testing each one across 2 full playthroughs minimum, I’ve narrowed down the best picks for the three most common win conditions. None of these picks are overpowered to the point of breaking the game, but they do give you a noticeable edge if you play to their strengths. The list below breaks down my top picks and exactly why they work:
- Culture win: Mali – Mali's leader ability gives you +2 culture for every trade route you run originating from a city with a market, and their unique mine improvement gives +1 gold and +1 culture to every adjacent desert tile. I pulled off a culture win on turn 387 on Emperor difficulty with them, which is almost 50 turns faster than my average base game culture run.
- Domination win: Khmer – Khmer's unique battle elephant unit replaces the knight, has +3 combat strength against ranged units, and doesn't require horses to build. Their leader ability also gives +1 combat strength to all units for every city you have with a majority religion, making them absolutely brutal for late-game conquests.
- Science win: Songhai – Songhai's leader ability gives you +3 science for every city you own that is built on a river, and their unique university replacement gives an extra +2 science if the city is connected to a trade route. I barely had to build any campus districts to hit all my science milestones when I played as them last weekend.
If you prefer diplomacy or religion wins, the Inca and Siam civs included in the pack are also solid picks, but they have a slightly steeper learning curve than the three I listed above. I wouldn't recommend them for new players, but if you've got 50+ hours of Civ 7 under your belt, they're a lot of fun to experiment with. I’m currently working on a religion win run with Siam, and their ability to spread religion through trade routes has made the playthrough feel completely different from any base game religion run I’ve done before.
Hidden Bonuses Most Players Miss in the Pack
I almost missed half of the smaller, unadvertised bonuses included in the pack during my first two runs, so I want to call them out explicitly here. These bonuses aren't game-breaking, but they do add a lot of extra value if you know how to use them properly. First, all new civs get a free diplomatic favor bonus when they first meet another civ from the same collection, which can give you a huge early edge in world congress votes. That's a huge help if you're going for a diplomacy win, or if you just want to block other players from passing resolutions that hurt your playthrough.
Second, the new 'Trade League' government type gives you +1 trade route capacity for every city-state you are suzerain of, which stacks with all other trade route bonuses you might have from civ abilities or policy cards. I ran 12 active trade routes at once when I paired this government type with Mali, which made me so much gold I could basically buy every building I needed instead of building them manually. Third, the new 'Great Bazaar' wonder gives you a free copy of every luxury resource within 6 tiles of the city you build it in, which means you never have to trade for luxury resources to keep your amenities high for the rest of the game. I built this on my second Mali run and didn't have a single amenity deficit for the last 200 turns of the game. Just note that you can only build the Great Bazaar if you're playing as one of the civs from the collection, so you won't see it as an option if you're running a base game civ run. The Civilization 7 Crossroads of the World Collection also gets regular small updates to balance civ abilities, so you don't have to worry about any one civ being overpowered for too long.
Is the Collection Worth the Price for Casual Players?
I get this question a lot from friends who only play Civ 7 once or twice a month, and the answer really depends on how much variety you want from your runs. If you only ever play as 1 or 2 civs and stick to the same win condition every time, you probably won't get enough use out of it to justify the cost. But if you like experimenting with new playstyles and get bored of running the same builds every time, it's 100% worth the money. The average playtime for a single Civ 7 run is about 8 hours, and I've already gotten 12 hours of new content out of the pack with 4 more civs I haven't fully tested yet, so the value per hour is way higher than most other game DLCs right now.
The only caveat is that you should make sure you've finished at least 3 full base game runs before you buy it, so you understand the core mechanics well enough to take advantage of the unique bonuses the new civs offer. If you're a brand new player still learning how districts work, the extra mechanics from the collection will probably just overwhelm you. I made the mistake of buying too many DLCs for Civ 6 when I was a new player, and I ended up ignoring most of the extra content because I didn't understand how to use it. Another thing to keep in mind is that all the content from the collection works in multiplayer, so if you regularly play with friends, you can all try out new civs together without having to worry about anyone being locked out as long as the host owns the pack. That's a nice touch that a lot of other strategy games don't offer, so it adds extra value if multiplayer is a big part of how you play Civ 7.
At the end of the day, the Civilization 7 Crossroads of the World Collection is one of the most polished, well-thought-out Civ DLC releases we've gotten in years. It doesn't rely on cheap gimmicks or reskinned content to justify its price, and every new addition adds real, meaningful variety to your runs. Whether you're a casual player looking for a fresh way to play or a hardcore grinder chasing new world records, there's something in the pack for you. I haven't been this excited to log into Civ 7 in months, and I'm already planning my next run as Siam to test out their religion-focused bonuses. If you've been on the fence about picking it up, I'd say go for it—you won't regret it.