I’m Niccolò Machiavelli, emperor of the Han Dynasty, and Harriet Tubman’s archers are menacing the farmers on my southern border. What a pickle. I ought to stand up for myself, but can I really denounce the hero of the Underground Railroad? It doesn’t feel right, so instead I spend Civilization VII’s new Influence currency to steal a piece of technology from the famous abolitionist. Is that problematic? Stealing the idea for bronze working from Harriet Tubman?

More to the point: has Civilization jumped the shark? The turn-based grand strategy games have always been abstractions, allowing players to, say, found the United States in 10,000 BC as immortal autocrat George Washington, but this meeting of ancient China, Renaissance political philosophy, and the American Civil War was still a little jarring. There are so many other changes in the seventh main entry in the series—including a new three-act structure—that I can understand the reaction some had to Civ VII’s announcement, “We just wanted new graphics, what’s this?”

The option to mix-and-match civs and leaders, who aren’t necessarily historical heads of state anymore, can generate some odd situations, but after playing for several hours and speaking to the developers, one thing I can say for sure is that Firaxis’ passion for history is undiminished.

Firaxis senior historian Dr Andrew Johnson told me that the whole reason he works on Civilization is to spread appreciation for history. “I teach undergraduates in my other life, and my God, man, they don’t read,” he told me. “If [playing Civilization] can provoke somebody into an interest in history, that is what’s important here.”