Civilization-building PC games are not a novel concept, of course. Firaxis' Civilization franchise itself, for one, is an established IP with hundreds of thousands of fans across the globe. If you played Civ, however, then you know what you don't really start from the bottom there. Even in the very first turn, you already have a squad of warriors and a single settler unit who can establish an entire town right then and there. Clearly, stuff went down before that moment in your Civ's history.
What if we told you that, with a tiny bit of out-of-game role-playing, you could track your Civ from the earliest stages of pre-human history all the way to exoplanet exploration? It occurred to us that, if we put a few vaguely-related games together, we'll get a comprehensive civilization-building experience that some of us have been waiting for. How? Simple! It all begins with Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey...
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey - Inception of Mankind
Starting from the beginning, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey won't quite get us from the discovery of tools all the way to the establishment of villages of towns, but it's an invaluable experience regardless. In this aptly-titled game, you get to control and - indeed - evolve your very own variant of hominid. Now, it doesn't make much sense for us to go into the nitty-gritty of things here. Each and every player of Ancestors will choose how their tribe of fast-learning apes changes over the course of centuries and generations, after all. What we will mention instead is that Ancestors delivers an almost entirely unique look at mankind's potential prehistoric progenitors. Since we're establishing a series of games that lead us from zero to hero here, this article could never have been made without The Humankind Odyssey as its point of inception.
The game takes place over the course of eight-ish millions of years, and though you'll never really turn your apes into actual humans, you'll get a unique insight into what your future Civ's peoples may have gone through. It's worth pointing out that we do have a fair bit of downtime between Ancestors and Civilization VI, but that's precisely where your imagination will come in. The next step, after all, will be to found a City!
Civilization VI - Historical Development
Not much needs to be said about Civilization VI at this point in time, we feel. This franchise of civilization-building PC games continues to proliferate as time goes on, and Firaxis' latest and greatest is nothing if not genre-defining. For the purpose of this article, however, it plays the highly-specific role of showcasing the "modern" development of civilization. It takes a few million years for your Civ's genetic ancestors to become actual humans, and then a long while until something like civilization is established, but eventually, it happens, and your peoples set out to make a carve a little slice of heaven with naught but a Warrior and a Settler.
Anybody who's ever played Civ will know that what comes next is a pandemonium of decision-making. Whether it's the internal policy or external warfare, you'll need to fight tooth and nail for your Civ to progress further and further. We're not going to go into specific game settings and tweaks, because we'd spend a full week before we went through everything Civ VI has got to offer. Most important, however, is that it serves as a wonderful capstone for modern-day civilization-building. Your Civ will go from building the Pyramids all the way to flirting with space exploration. Now, sure, there's a bit of sci-fi towards the end of any given Civ match, but we said before that there's no such thing as a perfect overlap between these titles.
What makes the most amount of sense is for us to move onto the next game with the introduction of the space program in Civilization VI.
Kerbal Space Program - Proliferation of the Space Program
The obvious issue here is that Kerbals aren't humans. Well, you'll have to bear with us for a bit, and pretend that Kerbals are gamified representations of human beings. No way of going around that, we're afraid. And really, there's simply no better space program sim on the market than Kerbal Space Program. The stepping stone between developing a civilization on Earth and doing so on another planet, KSB lets you go ham with designing and organizing space vehicles and test flights. Of course, Kerbal Space Program's niche but extremely dedicated audience goes to show that the game is no slouch. Quite the opposite! It's a phenomenal way for us to learn more about space and physics in general. Who'd have thought, right?
We'll go out on a limb and admit that Kerbal is likely the most technical of games on this list. Ancestors is an RPG-lite with adventure game elements. Civilization is a pretty streamlined 4X turn-based strategy. Kerbal, on the other hand, is a fully-fledged sim. Albeit one that's wrapped in a cute-looking blanket from head to toe. Regardless, it's a very approachable game in general. Just keep in mind that it does get a tad technical at times, and you'll be good to go!
Anyhow, once you've got space travel down to a pat, we've got another time-jump into the future: space colonization awaits!
Civilization: Beyond Earth - Space Colonization
Perhaps the least popular Civilization game currently in existence, Beyond Earth is a thing to behold. Built on top of the Civ V framework and with a few design choices that might seem strange coming from Civ VI, Beyond Earth is still a sci-fi 4X masterclass title. Here, players get to establish cutting-edge colonies on different planets. There, they need to contend not only with alien flora and fauna but also with other competing colonies: some more cutthroat than the others.
It goes without saying that Beyond Earth is a massive change from Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, but playing these titles back-to-back may well give you a new appreciation for their respective niches. PC gaming has come far enough for us to be able to play through entire histories: and ones of our own making, too. Note that we're not even going into nearly as much depth as we could. If you add all the ridiculously detailed Paradox RPGs and grand strategy games, you could easily spend literal years going through a single "playthrough". This isn't for everyone, but merely having the option is crazy.
Civilization-building PC games we've mentioned here come together to form an incredibly comprehensive, yet approachable package. If the idea of playing through a virtual civilization's whole history tickles your fancy, give these titles a go!
Civilization-Building PC Games are a treasure
Of course, we're very well-aware of the fact that none of the above has actual official support between the different titles. Some transitions will work better than others. That, however, was a sacrifice we were willing to make to come up with this fascinating topic. The notion of keeping track of an all-new civilization from its very inception is nothing if not magical. And sure, what you do in, say, Civilization VI, will have absolutely no bearing whatsoever in Kerbal Space Program. It's really fun to think about, though, and with just a bit of headcanon, you can get the civilization-building PC game experience you've always dreamed about. All it really takes is the tiniest bit of imagination, and you'll be half-way there already.
Civilization-building PC games are not a novel concept, of course. Firaxis’ Civilization franchise itself, for one, is an established IP with hundreds of thousands of fans across the globe. If you played Civ, however, then you know what you don’t really start from the bottom there. Even in the very first turn, you already have a squad […]
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