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This month we go behind the scenes with Designer Jon Shafer, and ask him about the spawning of Final Frontier, one of the most surprising scenarios in Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword.
 Back during mid-2006, I was brainstorming ideas for new mods to include with Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword and the first thing I did was pick a theme. One genre that always gets people (well, me at least) excited is Sci-Fi. You can find a wide variety of highly detailed and polished fan created mods for Civ 4 but there's a definite gap in the Sci-Fi lineup. There have been a number of strategy Civ-style games in outer space before, but all of them stray at least somewhat (purposely or not) from the essence of Civ's gameplay. I hoped to make a mod that would take the greatest strengths of Civ and translate them into a new environment that players would find unique and interesting, but was still just as much fun as playing on Earth.
I began my work on what would become Final Frontier with the intention of making the gameplay of my mod similar to how an "Islands" map from the core game works. Essentially, Planets would represent the land and the ocean would be space. Players would utilize starships like Earth-based navies to colonize and battle over the contiguous grouping of land tiles which would make up the Planets on the map. As I began working with this system, I realized that the gameplay was simply too close to being a normal game of Civ. In many ways it was just like playing on a map with a lot of ocean and islands, only with different names for everything. So I opted to craft the mod with a different style in mind.
What I ended up settling on was something more radical: There would be self-contained Star Systems located on individual tiles and the rest of the map would be space with various features added to the map to give a sense of geography. All units would now be Starships and they would explore the map, build Improvements and fight one another in the great void between the valuable Star Systems. Orbiting these Star Systems would be a handful of Planets which would act a little like terrain tiles do in the core game. Players could place population and construct Buildings on them to increase their Food, Production and Commerce yield or provide other benefits. I felt these sorts of strategic decisions were close enough to Civ while the contrast in developing Star Systems and interacting with the map were different enough to provide the best of both worlds.
Then came the task of constructing the rest of the gameplay around the core concepts I had developed. I designed a unique Tech Tree, unique Civics, "Values" (Religions), a new set of Units and Buildings and more. All of these elements were given a new twist (for example, one Civic type increases the amount of Population a Planet can sustain) and helped to breathe some fresh life into the mechanics found in the core game. Along with adapting existing gameplay systems, I added new features like the aforementioned Planet-based development, Starbases and Hostile Terrain (stay away from Black Holes!) to amp the game up.
The final piece of the overall design was to develop the story. I wanted to present a believable and compelling foundation for this new universe I had created, so I dedicated a couple weeks to authoring its history. From detailing the lives of important characters to tragic wars to new technological advances, I tried to flesh-out a background that would bring life to the game. As players advance through the Tech Tree they will uncover elements of the story via excerpts from articles, journals, speeches, etc. This encourages players to explore as much of the game as they can in order to learn about the history of Final Frontier.
Design aside, one of the most impressive aspects of Final Frontier is the artwork. Our graphics team here at Firaxis has really gone out of their way to create something awesome. All said, the mod looks nothing like the core game and everything players will see on-map was made from scratch to fit the new theme. The immersion this provides really adds a lot to the experience, and helps to complete the package.
Hopefully everyone will have as much fun playing this mod as I did working on it. There's a lot there to learn and experience. Are you ready to discover what lies within the Final Frontier?
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