Revisiting Civilization VII after the Test of Time Update

Firaxis releasd the much anticipated Test of Time update earlier in the week. This update introduces a rather fundamental change to the game - allowing you to play with the same Civilization for all three ages. You can still continue with changing Civilization at the end of the era, but you're no longer limited to picking a civilization specific to their age. Given that the entire premise of Civilization 7 is civ-switching, I can only imagine the kind of rework that would have gone in to support this. Civs were locked to specific ages, and they work around this by recommending apex Civs and should you choose to pick a non-Apex civ, a new feature called syncretism lets you pick and choose unique perks (infrastructure, units) from across other civilizations. The patch also brings in some new music and a bunch of other updates. The feature is interesting and has the potential to open up the game quite a bit. Practically though, I didn't find it to be quite that impactful. Once the new…