★★★★★ Mid at best from 1000+ hrs of Civ played
Wed Feb 11 2026 R1pkenI’ve played well over 1000 hours of Civ games over the years. Love Civ 6 for iOS - it was deep and evolved through DLC. This is a regression. They break up the game into eras, penalizing those in front. They cap the amount of cities you have and make it intentionally slow. Pieces move slow across the board, XP is only for generals, aircraft is almost useless. Worst thing I hated was after you crush an enemy and negotiate peace, the only thing you can negotiate for is cities,which is stupid since they cap penalize you for having more cities. Send me your gold and resources or relics. I also hate that if you build out a city badly in the first era, you are stuck with the bad decisions. You can’t even raze a city easily - it takes 10 turns so the enemy has a chance to reconquer. You basically have to defend a city you are throwing away because your city cap.
★★★★★ Makes Me Act Uncivilized
Sun Feb 15 2026 70g1kHuge shoutout to the developers and teams releasing this. Let’s start off by saying this is a deep game, so it might not be for everyone. I’ve played titles like this before and it still took me a while to get used to all the mechanics of this game. If you put in the time and learn it there is a beautiful complexity and balance of skill and chaos to a standard play-through You can also tweak the settings to be a sandbox, or more brutal. A flaw I found is that the controls can be downright frustrating at times, and in larger games that fact coupled with the scale can feel almost overwhelming (in particular, moving planes from a base onto a carrier can often require you to click again more precisely for no good reason, and a few other minor gripes maybe). That being said, the overall polish and depth here as a free offering for Apple Arcade subscribers rivals some of the best strategy games of all time. Graphics 5/5 Sound 5/5 Controls 3/5 Gameplay 5/5 Overall 7/7 (+2 adjacency bonus from history nerd)
★★★★★ Plays great
Wed Feb 11 2026 JoepezI’ve been playing Civ since the first game. This is not traditional Civ, it’s Civ arcade strategy. Everything has been simplified. You’re supposed to pick a victory path from the leader screen an then speed rush that win condition. The old systems are there, but in some cases play in a more simplified form (tech tree) and in others are meaningless. For example religion is pointless. You make one, it confers some bonuses and then in the next age it’s gone. Literally gone from the UI. The UI is also stripped down. Gone are lens or even unit lists. Again if you’re planning to play like Civ 1-6, don’t. Play like it’s an arcade game with a fairly dumb AI. If you play for completeness or to feel like you’re building something gran then you’ll be disappointed. It’s a DLC selling arcade game.
On the plus side, the performance is solid. I played on an M1 Air at low graphics and it’s as smooth as my M4 4K at high. The graphics are pretty but like most civ games not core to the game.
★★★★★ An Amazing addition to the hundreds of games on Apple Arcade!
Mon Feb 09 2026 Realdreg of societyI have played this game literally the same hour it came out. It’s a very well coded game and is incredibly addictive. However if you have a life outside of gaming I genuinely recommend you *Start* playing at the quickest pace the game allows. This game is amazing.. but it does have some issues . Firstly is the UI issue the top options look a bit cluttered.. you can combine the religion, resources, and Great works into one menu like you did with Government. Secondly is the commanders.. why can’t they fight? I mean for a unit that takes on average 6 times as long as a regular unit to recruit, you would expect them to fight? And speaking of units please add a deselect button and a multi select button.. sometimes double clicking on a unit does not deselect it and after a war the whole map looks like a mess and it’s a hassle to get rid of units. Thank you!
★★★★★ Issue: Enemy Action Icons Have No Information
Sun Feb 08 2026 Lost in TacticsWILL UPDATE STARS WHEN FIXED:
Playing on iPad mini 7th gen (2025 model)
game works excellent when doing (long loading issues) outside of this..
playing Harriet Tubman running 1st level espionage, noticed the following:
In the diplomacy screen, under “Their Actions”, the icons representing another leader’s diplomatic/espionage actions are not interactive on iOS. Tapping these icons produces no tooltip or explanation, while the player’s own actions under “My Actions” correctly show detailed info when tapped.
Because of this:
• Players cannot tell what the enemy actions represent
• There is no way to identify the effect, duration, or category of those actions
• This creates confusion, since the UI implies the icons should be readable
On PC, these icons appear to be informational (hover-based), but on iOS there is no equivalent tap or long-press behavior. This feels like a missing tooltip implementation or UI inconsistency rather than intended design.
Suggestion:
Add tap or long-press tooltips for “Their Actions” icons on iOS, consistent with how “My Actions” work, or otherwise clarify that these icons are non-interactive indicators.
★★★★★ Solid start
Fri Feb 06 2026 beat flatulence(Note, I’m posting this the day after it first released on Apple Arcade.) So far, this is a pretty solid effort. I’m a fan of the game on PC (I primarily play on Steam Deck) and this is mostly up to date from what I can tell. The lack of multiplayer is a disappointment, but I hope that comes later. For this iPad-specific version, I’ve run into some bugs involving the keyboard disappearing, and this game direly needs some updated Magic Keyboard support. Not being able to scroll menus with the trackpad or even type properly with the keyboard is a big omission. But otherwise, this runs great, and it looks pretty solid on the 13” iPad Pro M4.
★★★★★ M4 IPad Pro 1TB
Mon Feb 09 2026 SirGodfrey41Works really well! Amazing upgrade over the ailing Civ VI mobile port. I wish the older game would get the same TLC as this port does. Graphics are fully featured and near PC quality IMO. Leader animations work, fast load time into game. I will note I have a very high end iPad 1TB which has 16TB of RAM, which likely makes for a smooth gaming experience over any other iOS or iPAD OS platform. I don’t really love Civ VII though, I find it hard to understand. I liked CIV VI’s districts as it was in many ways more simplified than the convoluted system in VII. Hopefully we see some refinements, but I think CIV VII will ultimately be forgotten.
★★★★★ +1 star for the haters
Sun Feb 15 2026 HagcrcusnvkgThe game does something different than the last Civs and I like it. I quit playing Civ 6 pretty fast because it was just too full of fiddly little mechanics and systems and I just got bored. I’ve played Civs since the first one, and to me the most fun part was always the beginning, the first 100 turns or so, and from there it quickly got bogged down with managing dozens of of cities, etc. To me this version seems like they’re trying really hard not to have the game collapse under its own weight and I really like it.
