Before you even launch Civilization 7, there's a choice that's perplexing many gamers – the choice between DX12 or Vulkan. On the Steam version of the game, launching the game for the first time will display a pop-up window asking players to make a choice, and optionally hide this option when launching the game in the future.

Related

With this guide, gamers can learn how to change autosave settings and load back into a previous game at any time in Civ 7.

Ultimately, there isn't much difference between the two except for certain situations. This guide explains the basics of DX12 vs Vulkan in Civ 7, and why you might want to play the game with one or the other API enabled.

DirectX 12 and Vulkan are both perform essentially the same job, but tuned for different systems.

DirectX 12 is developed by Microsoft and is used primarily on Windows systems

Vulkan is an open-source API that can be used for multiple different operating systems.

When it comes to choosing Vulkan vs DX12, the differences are negligible if you are on a Windows PC and have good hardware.But if you are running the game on Linux, or have a budget PC build that's around the Civ 7 minimum specs, you may want to swap between the two to figure out which is more stable.