The Column
What do we know about Civilization IV (Civ4 from now on)? Not much. We've only seen any development process images, though the game itself should be out in less than 10 months. When we heard that Atari had sold the Civilization franchise for about $22 million, we became both surprised (perhaps shocked would be more accurate) and hopeful.
Of course, everybody knew that whoever had bougth the franchise, Firaxis would develop it: the "Sid Meier's" label is still an impressive asset for any game and nobody would ever dare to release a Civilization! without permission of the legendary designer.
When Microprose collapsed and Meier created his own studios, Firaxis, he only developed the innovative projects. For example, Alpha Centauri was created by Brian Reynolds (the man behind Civ2), Jeff Briggs and Soren Johson designed Civ3, Soren is currently the lead designer for Civ4, and so on... Of course, Meier oversaw every creative process, but he acted just like a consultant. He only took charge of a few very special projects: his "Simgolf" attempt to defeat Maxis in their own territory (of course it was a failure), his cancelled "Dinosaurs" dream that resembled "Jurassic Park" not just in the idea but in the results, and the remake of his old classic "Pirates!".
Will Soren John be able to create a good heir for the Civ series? Maybe. Now we only know that Civ4 will have a 3-D graphic englina and that it will be programmed using the XML standard (as Brian Reynolds did with Rise of Nations) and the Python scripting language, that could be a fantastic tool for the scenario creation.
Caius Julius Caesar, 21st February 2005.