14 DAY TRIAL // It's been a while since the venerable Civilization series made headlines. The most recent release has been that of Civilization Revolution, which brought the unique mechanics of 4X turn-based world domination to handhelds to some success.
Civilization IV, helped by its two expansions, Warlords and Beyond the Sword, is still superbly replayable, while the Colonization remake, based on the same engine and thought to be somewhat flawed, remains a must for nostalgics. But Sid Meier seems to be more interested in creating something entirely new than iterating on old franchises and he has announced that he aims to bring the strategy franchise to the new medium of social networks, more specifically Facebook.
In a post on the official forums, his first one, Sid Meier says that, “I wanted to let you know we’ll soon be looking for beta testers to help us develop a unique new way to play Civilization. Ever since we finished Civilization® Revolution™ last year, I’ve been looking at ways of expanding the Civ gameplay experience to include solo, competitive and cooperative play to take advantage of the uniqueness of social networks. We’re calling this project Civilization® Network™ and the full game will be available next year on Facebook.”
He goes on to detail the project by saying that the collaboration with the friends and a larger social group will be the key to success in Cvilization Network. Players will need to band together to win battles, share technologies, win elections and develop their civ in any way they like. All the staples of the series, like city management, spying, happiness management and the Wonders of World, will be present in the Facebook game.
Sid Meier says that the closed beta stage is set to be released soon to those accepted in the program and that the full game will be launched at some point in 2010. It will be free to play and will likely attract all those Civilization fans who are craving for something new.