Fans have waited more than eight years for the new instalment in heavyweight strategy game Civilization, with the release of the seventh instalment on February 11 promising to get budding philosopher-kings thinking more about the consequences of their actions.
At first glance, little has changed since the very first title released in 1991: players are presented with a top-down view of the game world in which they build up their society turn by turn from the Neolithic period to the modern era.
Virtual rulers can exert their will over opponents either by diplomacy or war – a formula that brought sales over the whole series to 73 million by summer 2024, according to Take Two, parent company of publisher 2K Games.
Civilization spawned a whole genre known to gamers as 4X, for its core gameplay activities: Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate.
Comparable titles include Paradox Interactive's starfaring Stellaris (2016) or French developer Amplitude's Humankind (2021).
That range of alternatives is one reason why fans "don't just want the same game with a new coat of paint, with fancier graphics," Ed Beach, creative director for the Civilization franchise, told AFP in August at Germany's Gamescom trade fair.
"We need to do something new each time… something that is going to really improve the game."
Civilization is still developed by US studio Firaxis, which has run the franchise since its third instalment. Its seventh edition, available on PC and console, allows players to set any historically-inspired ruler at the head of any empire – allowing Charlemagne to govern Egypt, for example.
A match is now divided into three acts, each wrapped up with a major crisis such as the collapse of an empire or a foreign invasion. The way players cope with the challenge defines how their civilisation will adapt as they enter the next age. That is one way the developers wanted to confront player-governors with the consequences of their actions.
"We're not trying to say you have to play a certain way," Beach said. "There are times I play as a very bad guy, and that's an interesting way for me to look at the world and look at history as well."
Nevertheless, topics tackled in Civilization such as climate change or the battle of democracy versus autocracy – are hot issues out in the everyday world.
"It's not getting political, it's just we're always thoughtful about what the human journey has been," Beach said.
Firaxis itself brought in historians to advise on keeping gameplay plausible and modelling civilisations in the new structure – all while allowing the player as much freedom as possible.
Source link
