Civilization V: Gods and Kings – Into the Smokey Skies

We interview the team at Firaxis about their unique scenario in Gods and Kings.

Imagine a world divided into empires obsessed with steam power. In this world Empires ruthlessly undercut and smash their peers into oblivion – not in the name of god, but because such actions are considered valid for the sake of “progress.”

This is exactly the sort of world you’re dropped into when you start up the Empires of the Smokey Skies scenario in the upcoming Civilization V expansion, Gods and Kings. Only instead of the typical civilizations you’re given a set of fresh ones to choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Alongside new leaders come a slew of reworked features, including alternate victory conditions, new steampunk-inspired units, and lots of new information to absorb in the fleshed out civilopedia entries for Smokey Skies. To get a bit more information on the design process and learn more about this unique scenario for Gods and Kings, we hopped on the phone with Civilization V Ed Beach and Anton Strenger, designers on Gods and Kings.

Empires of the Smokey Skies came about because the team at Firaxis wanted to do something cool that presented an alternate history. Marketing Associate Pete Murray came up with the idea originally, and Strenger was “attracted to the steampunk scenario and the setting because Civilization V is the ultimate history simulator.” Strenger loves how Civilization allows you to play through totally implausible situations, such as “when you win a space victory as the Mongols.” He wanted to design a scenario that takes fundamental game concepts like the tech tree and come up “with an alternate path.”

Smokey Skies is also shorter than a typical game of Civilization, something Strenger says was intentional. “The paradigm for a Civ scenario is something that is an interesting but short variation on the stuff that Civilization offers. Whereas a base game of Civ can take up to 10 hours, the scenarios are kind of an interesting peek into another very focused kind of experience.” “The other two scenarios that are shipping with the expansion are also kind of long ones,” added Ed Beach, “those do take probably five or six hours to play through. So we just wanted a good mix…keeping the steampunk scenario fit in with that.”

Despite being a shorter experience, the team at Firaxis didn’t shy away from spending the time developing the world of Smokey Skies. Included with the expansion are civilopedia entries for each faction, with lengthy quotes that give insight into the minds of their leaders. “We actually found out that internally the team got more and more into it the more we developed it,” said Beach. Strenger himself developed a lot of the base ideas for the civilopedia early on as well, because “establishing what the world was would be important. As a steampunk scenario it’s kind of in-between true history of the base game, and kind of something crazy left-field science fantasy.” Thus to place it properly Strenger developed a more fleshed out backstory, something he hopes will help players get into it since it rides the line between fantasy and reality.

With the world fleshed out, the real challenge was creating victory conditions that fit in with the scenario. To do this Strenger sat down with the rest of the design team to and figured out a system of five titles. To win players have to earn three of five titles and hold them for three turns. Each of the five titles is unlocked after certain technologies have been unlocked, and players constantly knock one another out of position. It results in a constant tug-of-war between civilizations, where one empire can go from fifth place to first in a matter of a few turns if they play just right. It’s also “the most open-ended of our scenarios” said Beach, adding that “there’s a lot of replayability” because of the various victory conditions and how they work on an array of map types instead of a specific land mass.

While religion is probably the biggest gameplay component of the Gods and Kings expansion, you won’t see it in Empires of the Smokey Skies. “Our religious game is focused up through the renaissance, and this is a scenario that occurs in an alternate industrial age, so it’s sort of after religion,” said Strenger. Espionage does make an appearance, though, and can directly affect your chances for victory since clever spy use can net you additional technologies, resulting in faster unlocks of victory conditions.

Empires of the Smokey Skies is only one component of Gods and Kings, which includes two additional scenarios and the ability to set up your own maps starting from the dawn of time. For a more detailed dive into what the base game of Gods and Kings brings to the franchise, check out our initial breakdown. For our review, check in sometime next week after Gods and Kings releases on June 19th.