You could buy a third point with credits, at which point you’d receive 100% of those resources. If you help that same planet out by defeating a local band of space pirates or bringing a rogue space station under control, take another point, and begin to receive 50% of that planet’s resource production. If you’re first to find a planet, you get a point of influence, and you gain the ability to see every adjacent star sector. Instead, you (and your opponents, the other starfaring races of the galaxy) compete for the attention, loyalty and resources of these planets. But you aren’t out to conquer these worlds-not exactly. Instead: they exist on already-inhabited planets, spread as nodes across a galactic map, with the occasional asteroid field or empty space sector to break them up. The same could be said for Civilization, of course, but three major things differentiate Starships from its earthly predecessors.įirst, these resources are not simply strewn around, ready and waiting for your manifest destiny to lead you to them. Getting access to these resources leads to victory, and as in Civilization, victory can come in a handful of forms: Control 51% of the galactic population, eliminate every other opponent from the map, fully develop three of the nine available technological research paths, or develop seven “Wonders.” Whichever path you pursue, each victory condition revolves around the accumulation of these resources.
#Sid meiers starships upgrade#
Starships keeps things abstract: “Energy” and “Science” are used to build and upgrade your ships “Food” pays for new cities “Metals” let you develop game-changing Wonders and other planetary improvements.
In Starships, that conflict centers around who controls the galaxy’s resources. If Beyond Earth argues that we’ll find conflict no matter where we’ll go, Starships argues that on a long enough timeline, conflict will find us (and disrupt our utopia in the process.) It’s only when scientists receive and decode a galactic cry for help that your civilization turns to the stars, eager to aid those in need. In Starships, you play as a society that has chosen to deal with its earthly (or Canis Majoris 39-ly) problems instead of fleeing from them.
Sid Meier’s Starships takes a different route in subverting this myth. There may be Beyond Earth, but there’s no beyond history. With 1999’s Alpha Centauri and last year’s Civilization: Beyond Earth, they complicate (and ground, literally) the happy ending of that story by reminding us that wherever we find ourselves in this vast galaxy, there will still be conflict, scarcity and struggle. What makes Firaxis’ (and Meier’s) output so interesting is that they aren’t content to leave the “escape to the stars” myth alone. Even if that means destroying our home in the process. Even if that means ignoring real, material problems. It is an empty ideology that assures us that if we just stay the course, we’ll be fine. And hey, don’t worry, the way to the stars is to double down on industry, technology, and (in our contemporary moment) the private sector.
The problem with this myth is that it promises us that in leaving Earth, we’ll escape our problems, too. And he is, of course, the science victory in Firaxis’ Sid Meier’s Civilization series: Build the space ship, set off into the stars, and leave the soil behind. He’s Zefram Cochrane, inventor of the warp drive in Star Trek: First Contact. He’s Mobile Suit Gundam’s Zeon Zum Deikun, with his philosophy of “spacenoid” supremacy. He’s Ray Kurzweil, with his dream of interstellar transhumanism. “We’re not meant to save the world,” says Professor John Brand (Michael Caine) in Interstellar, “We’re meant to leave it.” Brand echoes dozens of other futurists, real and fictional. The universe is massive and it is ours to conquer. The myth normally goes like this: Things on our home planet get bad. I can’t think about Sid Meier’s Starships, Firaxis Games’ latest game of sci-fi strategy and tactics, without thinking of the modern myth of planetary escape.
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