Civilization made a strategy game of humanity's past.
Now it's looking to humanity's future.
Everyone who has played a game in the Civilization
series remembers seeing their country nuked by Mahatma Ghandi. In
this historical strategy series, players attempt to guide a nation
through the ages from its humble beginning to its role as a
globe-spanning superpower. Anything can happen along the way,
including being irradiated by one of history's greatest
After five instalments in a series that attempts to capture the
spirit of humanity's ascent from darkness, developer Firaxis has
announced an unexpected follow-up. Instead of beginning in the dirt
and building to the heavens, Civilization: Beyond Earth
begins with a voyage in the sky, one that will send colonists to
begin anew in another star system. Slated for release on PC, Mac
and Linux this fall, Beyond Earth surely will remind fans
of Firaxis' 1999 classic space exploration game Sid Meier's
Alpha Centauri, although the developer seems eager to distance
itself from that comparison.
While the gameplay mechanics will be similar to the previous
Civilization games, this time you're not a human in a
predictable human world. You're an alien on an alien planet. You
don't know this place, nor do you belong here.
"You start out and you're all alone," said Dennis Shirk, a
producer of the series. "So you've got to learn everything all over
Interstellar Oregon Trail
In the game's fiction, humanity has endured some rough times on
Earth due to an ambiguous event known as The Great Mistake. We
survived but were greatly hobbled, and Earth just wasn't the same
anymore. As civilisation recovered, we sent our best and brightest
to create a new home.
This is where you come in.
The game begins with something Firaxis likens to "interstellar
Oregon Trail." Ordinarily in a Civilization game,
you select your leader from a series of historically-based
archetypes like Genghis Khan or Hiawatha. But since Beyond
Earth takes place in the future, the player is given more
freedom to affect how events play out.
That begins as you select not only a leader whose disposition
will affect your Civilization forever, but also which
culture your ship will launch from, what types of colonists you'll
bring, and what type of ship you'll launch. From that point on, how
the future plays out is up to you.
"A lot of our pre-production was spent looking at futurist
writers, and looking into transhumanism and post-humanism," said
Anton Springer, one of the designers. "Not just science fiction
writers, but scientists talking about where humanity is going.
We're leaving that answer in the hands of the players."
Stranger In a Strange Land
Upon arriving on the planet, players will find a game that's very
similar to Civilization 5, the last title in the series.
The gameplay will be largely the same as you explore territory on a
grid of hexagonal tiles, build and improve cities, and navigate
complex diplomacies with other factions.
The original Civilization games gave the player a wide
range of choice in how history would play out, yet remained bound
to historical context. Beyond Earth wants to remove as
many constraints as possible, and make each game more unique.
"When you cast off the shackles of history, you can go to an
amazing number of unknown places," said lead designer Will Miller.
"That's with technology, with the aliens that you discover, the
planet that you land on. You suddenly can go in a million new
directions each time you play."
To that end, there's a new factor in the game: the planet, and
its ecology. No longer are you merely navigating relationships with
other world leaders while you exploit the planet's resources, but
you're also attempting to live in balance with the local
environment. Humanity hasn't yet tamed this world, and ticking off
the wrong species could spell disaster for a fledgling state.
The developers gave the example of something they call the siege
worm, huge roving monsters plucked out of Dune. At the
beginning of the game, they are completely indifferent to your
species. You're just another bug to them, but the catch is that
their indifference can cause them to trample your cities or farms.
If a siege worm is coming, you face a tough choice: Deal with the
potential damage and stay on its good side, or attack it and risk
the wrath of all wormkind.
It's important to note that these alien species don't much care
about your national boundaries, either. To them, a human is a
human. So if a neighbouring faction is slaying siege worms, you're
going to catch the worms' ire as well. Worse, the more you interact
with these species the more they adapt their strategy and strength.
All of this adds an additional wrinkle of complexity to interstate
diplomacy. If your strategy depends on playing nice with the
locals, you'll need to find some way to make your neighbours