14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier today, Firaxis announced Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth to be their next triple A game, no doubt starting ripples of excitement throughout the gaming world.
Fans of strategy games will no doubt pop the champagne open, as the upcoming Civ game is said to be a spiritual successor to the 1999 masterpiece Alpha Centauri, a game which is regarded to be one of the best turn based strategies ever made.
Fans of science fiction are still rumored to enjoy the 15 year old game from time to time. Its superbly crafted speculative technology tree is a real treat to read through, especially since each new discovery comes with its own great flavor text.
The upcoming game aims to explore a similar area, with humankind’s childhood on Earth complete and all eyes looking to the stars.
A great thing about this is that the development team will no longer be constrained by whether a certain notion fits with humanity’s history, but will be able to do a lot of things which would not be possible in a historically accurate setting.
Beyond Earth starts with the massive exodus that follows a grand global catastrophe, with the various factions of humanity setting forth in search of a new home for the species.
Players will be able to not only choose their faction, but also the type of spaceship they leave Earth in, what cargo to carry and which people to bring, as well as the type of planet they want to inhabit, all of which will greatly impact the start of the game.
When other players start showing up to the party, it will most likely result in warfare, and the developers have opted against unit stacking. As such, any one hex can only be occupied by a single military unit, which the developers felt was very elegant.
Additionally, the game will benefit from some layers (such as the orbital realm of satellites) which will allow players to slightly bend the no stacking rule by making certain units affect what’s happening on the planet’s surface.
Players will be able to choose how they respond when they encounter alien species, and opting to harmonize with the indigenous life will result in your people re-writing the human genome so that they can fully integrate with the new lifeforms.
Research will focus on alien sciences, geology and genetic engineering, and most likely different players will all be researching different subject, the new non-linear technology tree allowing them to evolve in various directions.
Players will be able to achieve victory in five ways, by reaching a new level of consciousness, by terraforming the new planet into a copy of Earth, by embracing cybernetic augmentations and returning to Earth, by establishing first contact with another sentient intelligence or by plain old fashioned domination, as in every other Civilization game.
Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth is scheduled to come out this fall on PC.