Civilization V: Armageddon

What is it?: Civilization V is the most recent incarnation of one of the most popular strategy games of all time. Civ allows you to control a country beginning with a single settler founding a single city and expanding outward. The game has a technology tree with various base techs that grant you more/better weaponry, units, social policies, and diplomatic solutions. You use all of these to deal with other developing nations as you battle for control of your randomly generated world. The game is won in a few ways. You can dominate your enemies to wrest control of the world. You can take the diplomatic route and win the general election once the UN is created. You can achieve a scientific victory by being the first to create and launch a spaceship headed for Alpha Centauri. You can best your neighbors with culture by completing the Utopia Project. Or you simply run out of time and the country with the most accumulated points wins.

Traditionally when a nation wins, Civ gives you the option to either quit or choose, “Wait! just… one… more… turn…”. Choosing the later option allows you to continue playing the game for as long as you would like except you can no longer win by any of the other methods.

Civ5: Armageddon would be an expansion that runs its course exactly the same except, once you run out of time or win the game by any other means, you get an additional option: “Advance to a New Beginning”. Choosing this option would play a cut-scene setting the stage and explaining that even after all of the achievements of man, armageddon was inevitable. The concept is that you now play in post-apocalyptica. The game will give you a single unit placed randomly in the same world you just finished building. The cities will now be ruins controlled by tribes of what is left of society (essentially barbarians) with a few stragglers (new settlers) like yourself trying to rebuild.

The gameplay would be very similar to a traditional Civ game except that the goal is focused more on finding “lost technology” instead of researching new tech. Likewise, instead of founding new cities, old cities would be recaptured from tribes and rebuilt. Recapturing a city that has a world wonder leftover from the first half of the scenario would grant you special privileges and possibly advanced tech.

Why it should exist: Everyone loves thinking about the apocalypse these days. The end of the first world is appearing more and more often in literature, film, and other games. People love to imagine how they would fair if they were to live through the end of days. It only makes sense that a game focused on the fates of a digital world would incorporate the actual fate of said digital world. Until now, Civilization has always been played up to the fate (victory) and I think it would be fun to play out the consequences.

What I would like to see: There could be an option straight from the menu to play a prebuilt scenario instead of playing through the world building stage, but I really like the idea of creating the world through gameplay. Also, once a victory is achieved in standard play, users should still have the “one more turn” option to finish a war or build their spaceship or whatnot. When they decide they are ready to “Advance to a New Beginning,” it should just be a menu item away. The ultimate goal of Armageddon would be to rebuild the world to a similar state as it was at the point of victory. Therefore, I think Armageddon could be loopable and infinite. Each time you achieve the new set of goals, you can “Advance to a New Beginning” again and start again; though it may get old eventually. I sometimes feel disappointed after winning a domination victory and having nothing left to achieve. This would give the user a whole new slew of gameplay options time and time again.

Other Possibilities: The possibilities are pretty endless. While I have the concept in my head, it is far from fleshed out. I think Fireaxis and 2K could do something great if they had the interest.

*Mushroom cloud image found here.