Both Civ V and VI had 18 base game Civs, so I’ll work off of that.

Rather than purely speculating, I looked at what the previous Civ games included in their base games, and tried to come up with a list of the likely set of base game Civs we’ll see in VII.

This was done by looking at Civ inclusion in previous entries, and looking for other patterns.

First, it’s logical that Civs that have been in every main Civ game *at base* will return. It’s unlikely that they’d not include a Civ that’s been in every previous base game. (Alphabetical):

1. America
2. Aztecs (was initially free DLC for Civ VI but just 90 days later, included at base)
3. China
4. Egypt
5. England
6. France
7. Germany
8. Greece
9. India (probably with Gandhi as leader again)
10. Japan (availability different for Civ 1 depending on platform - is on SNES version)
11. Rome
12. Russia

So that’s 12 that are pretty much guaranteed. We have 6 more slots which are much less obvious (assuming the continuing of the 18-Civs-at-base pattern).

Two Civs that don’t fit the “every base game” criteria but I feel are now staples for the games (as they were included in expansions for early games or were present in code:

13. Arabia
14. Zulu (with Shaka as leader - has become synonymous with the series imo)

So 4 more slots. The interesting thing is that 3 Civs have been present in every previous game, but not necessarily at base. These are
*Babylon
*Persia
*Mongolia

I believe Spain should also be brought up, though it was not featured at all in Civ 1, and was DLC in III and V. It is however quite a signifcant part of the history of real civilization, so perhaps it can be considered a new ‘staple’ to have a place in the base game.

However, despite all of this, I noticed a pattern. Both Civ V and VI included 2 (in V) or 3 (in VI) completely new entries at base. These were Siam and Songhai in V and Kongo, Norway, and Scythia in VII. Iroquois in V and Sumeria in VII also feature as base game Civs returning from previous earlier entries that had a ‘gap’.

So based on this, the final 4 slots are kind of a toss up. They will likely be a mixture of completely new Civs and returners that weren’t present in VI, or even V and VI (probably 1 of these returners as that’s what we have seen). We may also possibly see one or two of Babylon, Persia, Mongolia, and Spain due to their common appearances too.

So the final list is looking to likely be:

1. America
2. Arabia
3. Aztecs
4. China
5. Egypt
6. England
7. France
8. Germany
9. Greece
10. India
11. Japan
12. Rome
13. Russia
14. Zulu
15. Returner from Civ V or ealier
16. New Civ or Babylon/Persia/Mongolia/Spain
17. New Civ
18. New Civ

The images are from Google Image searches