Civilization (video Game) - Legacy

Legacy

There have been several sequels to Civilization, including Civilization II, Civilization III, Civilization IV, Civilization Revolution, and Civilization V. The last of these was released in North America on September 21, 2010 and internationally on September 24, 2010.

An open source clone of Civilization has been developed under the name of Freeciv, with the slogan "'Cause civilization should be free". Currently it can be configured to match the rules of either Civilization or Civilization II. Another game that partially clones it is a public domain game called C-evo.

In 1994, MicroProse published Master of Magic, a similar game but embedded in a medieval-fantasy setting where instead of technologies the player (a powerful wizard) develops spells, among other things. The game also shared many things with the popular fantasy card-trading game Magic: The Gathering.

Also in 1994, Meier produced a similar game called Colonization. Colonization, while very similar to Civilization, never became as popular. It has been criticized on several theoretical grounds, particularly because it allows the player to exterminate native tribes and because it ignores slavery and other historically important features in the creation of many nations and empires.

The 1999 game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri was also created by Meier and is in the same genre, but with a futuristic/space theme. Many of the interface and gameplay innovations in this game eventually made their way into Civilization III and IV. Alpha Centauri is not actually a sequel to Civilization, despite beginning with the same event that ends Civilization and Civilization II: a manned spacecraft from Earth arrives in the Alpha Centauri star system.

In 1999, Activision released Civilization: Call to Power, a sequel of sorts to Civilization II but created by a completely different design team. Gamers that year had a choice between a new game with the Civilization name but no involvement of Sid Meier; and a "space"-themed civilization game without the name but clearly designed by the same team (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri). Call to Power spawned a sequel in 2000, but by then Activision had lost the rights to the Civilization name and could only call it Call to Power II.