Following its developer panel at PAX West 2026, Firaxis Games revealed the free update that will bring the long-awaited Atomic Age to Civilization 7. It’s called Arc of Tomorrow and will launch in 2017, roughly two years after the game first arrived. The developers are pitching it as the 4X strategy game’s biggest overhaul yet as it struggles to stay above the 50 percent positive rating threshold on Steam.
“Our shared proximity to the recent past makes it a unique and fascinating period of history to explore with Civ,” wrote creative director Ed Beach on Valve’s storefront. “There’s a compelling need to honor the uncertainty and fear present in that history, where proxy warfare became the new norm by which global conflict was conducted and the specter of nuclear war loomed, as it still does today. But there were also moments of light, triumph, and hope. Things once thought impossible, like spaceflight, were challenged and overcome as technology advanced at a rapid pace, while marginalized peoples rallied together to fight for justice and equality.”
Here’s what Arc of Tomorrow is set to contain, though it’s still early in development and things might shift:
The Atomic Age: a new, fourth Age that extends the playable timeline of history from 1950s to 2050s.
As with all Ages, this will include period-specific gameplay, along with new Buildings, Units, visuals, and more.
New Atomic Age gameplay systems:
Expanded Nuclear gameplay, with new offensive and defensive options and Units, plus a fun twist on mutually assured destruction.
Multilateral Agreements, allowing you and other leaders to collectively react to developing situations like a growing stockpile of nuclear warheads with calls for disarmament… or escalation.
New empire management tools, like the ability to transform your own Settlements into new City-States, to have finer control over your Settlement Limit and ensure you always have a path to engage in enhanced City-State abilities.
Enhanced City-State interactions & Proxy Warfare, allowing you to avoid all-out empire vs empire war by focusing your attention and resources into smaller City-State conflicts as proxies.
Great Works of Film, where your Film Crews will hunt for the perfect filming location that differs depending on desired genre, and gives variable benefits depending on the quality of Film produced.
Manufactured Goods, allowing you to follow recipes that combine specific commodities to produce brand new, powerful resources like Enriched Uranium.
New civilizations and leaders – more info to come in the future!
Firaxis also revealed the game’s first paid expansion, Civilization 7: Earthrise. It’ll revolve around humanity setting its sights on the stars with space-based objectives for each age, including the eventual launch of extraterrestrial expeditions. The developers are promising new unit abilities, technologies, civil engineering structures, and more. Firaxis will have to get Arc of Tomorrow right first, though.
Originally released in February of 2025, Civilization 7‘s post-launch journey has been bumpy. Despite a steady cadence of fixes and new features, players, including long-time fans of the franchise, have remained extremely mixed on it, with ongoing complaints about its UI and how dumbed-down certain parts of the game feel. The missing Atomic Age is top of the list for many of those underwhelmed players, so delivering on that will be the biggest test yet of whether Civilization 7 can ever fully turn things around.
In the meantime, it’s currently free-to-play until September 10 on Steam. Update 1.5.0 is also just around the corner, with tweaks to diplomacy, resource generation, and the addition of some new maps.
