Sid Meier’s Civilization heads to the stars

SINGAPORE — Sid Meier’s Civilization — throughout its five iterations — has always been grounded by Earth’s history (as much as George Washington taking on Genghis Khan in diplomatic discussions can be). Now, the turn-based strategy game is breaking free of Earth’s gravity and is reaching for the stars with a new game, Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth (Civ:BE).

A new, science-fiction themed, entry in the Civilization franchise, Civ:BE will also be developed by the folks behind majority of the Civilization series, Firaxis. In Civ:BE, players will get to lead their people onto a new planet to explore and colonise, creating a new civilisation and exploring humanity’s future on an alien world.

“The Civ team was excited about the opportunity to continue the story of Civilization into the future, because it allows the team to break free of historical context,” said Sid Meier, director of creative development at Firaxis Games in a statement. “We’ve always let our fans create the history of mankind, and Civilization: Beyond Earth will now let them create the future.”

“We’re starting with a backstory where Earth has been shaken by some great and terrible event and the surviving nations and international groups realise there is a limited window of time where they can leave the Earth,” said Will Miller and David McDonough, lead designers of Civilization: Beyond Earth, in an email interview. “They begin creating hundreds of thousands of colony ships and sending them towards new planets, where humanity can try to continue.”

If you’re worried that Civ:BE is just another Civilization game with a futuristic skin over it, Firaxis and publishers 2K Games would like to allay your fears, with some changes made to the core Civilization experience. Players will get to lead expeditions based on the type of culture he wishes to shape them in, and also experience what the lead designers call a “nonlinear tech web”, compared to the more linear tech web seen in other Civilization games.

“This new tech web feels like you are making new discoveries,” said the lead designers. “In (the old) Civilization, you progress through technology following pretty closely in the path of historical history.”

“There are many other changes as well, from the look of the alien world to the way military units upgrade, to the quests that provide story and guidance to the player,” add the duo, who previously worked on other Firaxis games such as Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and mobile game Haunted Hollow.

With Civ:BE taking place on an alien world, one might expect quirky alien technology that you might have seen in XCOM, but the developers also promise this isn’t the case.

“The game is definitely grounded in hard science,” they said. “We wanted it to be plausible for players when the game began, and we wanted even our most extreme technologies to make sense scientifically, given the direction your culture has developed in the game.”

For long-time turn-based strategy fans, the premise of Civ:BE might sound familiar: Firaxis released Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri 15 years ago, and Beyond Earth’s premise isn’t too different from this classic, well-loved strategy game. For Miller and McDonough, the similarities are clear, but for good reason.

“For both of us, (Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri) was one of the games that shaped us and made us want to be game designers,” said the duo. “But we see Beyond Earth as its own game, drawing on some of the same ideas, but taking them in a new direction.”

In Alpha Centauri, humankind escapes Earth in 2016 on a spaceship, finally landing on a faraway planet and splitting into factions based not on nationality, but ideology. While Civ:BE, on the surface, sounds somewhat similar, this actually makes me even more excited to experience Civ:BE, and possibly re-live, or even better the experience from years ago.

Admittedly, it would have been nice to revive the Alpha Centauri name, but both Miller and McDonough say that that is really something for publisher 2K Games to answer. Alpha Centauri was published 15 years ago by Electronic Arts, so it might just be a simple issue of rights. Still, Alpha Centauri or not, this is going to be a new Civilization game, and the duo is focused on the game they’re developing.

“We want to make the best future Civilization game that we can, and we’re confident Beyond Earth will be able to stand on its own,” said the duo.

Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth will be released this Fall for S$63.90 on PC, Mac and Linux.