Senior producer explains how Civ: Beyond Earth works

Senior producer on the latest Civilization game, Beyond Earth, Denis Shirk explains in detail how colonies are set up at the start of this new type of Civ game.

In an interview with ArabicGamers at GamesCom, Shirk explains that you set up your colony before you even leave Earth.

He says that it won’t be “countries that are going into space”, but rather “countries or corporations and entities that banded together to fund these expeditions” into space.

And you set up your leader traits and colony type before embarking on your galactic journey.

“When you actually start, when you go in to set up your game, you’re going to be choosing, let’s say you choose ARC to start out, and they have a set bonus; the next might be your cargo, so you can choose to bring like a worker, or a marine, or something else. You’re going to choose your type of spaceship, which is mainly for information…there’s many options to choose from. The type of colonists, whether they’re scientists, whether they’re culturally rich. And then you can choose the type of planet that you really want to focus on.”

Unlike with previous leaders in Civ games which developers could draw historical stories and facts from to form a playable character type, Shirk says this was completely new and allowing players to set their own agenda was something that would appeal to Civ players. Each player will have a unique colony type as a result.

“So you actually build in your own customised trait set for your colony before you even leave. That’s something that’s really exciting.”

We’ll have more on Civ later this week and a full video interview some time next week.