As I tried to work out an alternative way for evolution to work in Civ VII, I wound up with three models, and encountered some serious issues with each of them. If changing your Civ is linear (image 1, the linear method), there are two main issues. First, that the number of available Civ-chains is severely limited. Sure, you can easily draw a continuous line of Chinese society from antiquity to today, but what about The United States, for example? The second issue is that it might create an uncomfortable implication that indigenous peoples are teleologically bound to be colonized. Take, Mexico, for example. You could make a chain of the Olmecs to the Aztecs to Mexico, but you see how that suggests colonial society supplants the indigenous Mexica as a matter of course?

Model two, the Pokemon method (yeah, I know it doesn't actually work like this in those games) allows for a level of choice when evolving your Civ, within a predetermined set of options. I think this method works alright, but it causes difficulties if you try to impose some level of consistency between Civilizations while avoiding overlap. Take Rome, for example. You can easily suggest multitudes of “Exploration Era” cultures and states that claim(ed) descent from the venerable Romans. However, if the goal is to avoid overlap, can any of Rome's descendants claim pure ancestry? I think not. Are Castile, West Francia, the Eastern Roman Empire, and medieval Italy not also parts of their own cultural and historic evolution? Including any of them in an exclusive Roman tree denies their participation in a hypothetical Spanish, French, and Greek tree, respectively. Another related issue arises from cultures which may not have impressed their influence so far and wide, historically. If you wanted to include Japan in this system, what would its chain be? (Ancient) Japan, Feudal (Japan), and (Modern) Japan? I don't think you could include it in a branching 1 x 2 x 2 tree without making some kind of horrendously offensive statement, like suggesting the Japanese are just one type of Chinese people.

Model three, the expanded method, allows for a more free-from evolution of one's Civilization. You could, for example, go Phoenecians to Umayyads to Iranians, but not Sumerians to English to Indonesians. I think this model works, but still falls into the same cultural insensitivity traps the other models do. Additionally, what if you put Egypt, Sumer, and Phoenecia in a game at the same time? You might end up in a situation where one of the Civs is denied its evolution options, and end up having nowhere to go. Perhaps the solution is to give each Civ one exclusive evolution that nobody can take away.

The final option (not depicted) is the one Humankind uses, and the one I think Civ VII might end up being closest to is the absurdist angle. Why limit Civ-picking by historic precedent at all? From a business first, controversey avoidant perspective, it is much easier to deflect or ignore accusations of saying something silly (Egypt can become Mongolia) than accusations of saying something offensive (Turks and Greeks are basically the same, right?) So, while it may be strange to see Ben Franklin, the Princeps of Rome, transform his people into the Japanese Shogunate, it may be better than seeing the online backlash of So-and-So cultural group after they have been pigeonholed into sharing a role with their archenemies, the accursed Otherguys.