In an interview Civilization: Beyond Earth designers Will Miller and David McDonough discuss the scientific basis behind the game's tech trees and background lore.,
In Beyond Earth the human race is desperately in need of new resources, and as a result needs to colonise as many habitable planets as possible. Without getting devoured by aliens, if at all possible.
Eventually humanity will lack the resources to be able to support any more colonisation efforts of course, a moment known as "the inflection point". You take control of a group of colonists sent into space in the key period before that occurs.
"Instead of taking control of Stone Age settlers as they would in Civ," the designers explain, "players in "Beyond Earth" will be leading one of the expeditions that leave Earth during the Seeding, before the hard reality of the Inflection Point makes it hard to do so. The next chapter of humanity will be defined in terms of what humans do when they leave this planet and start to spread out through the universe."
To represent the modern world's more open, less straightforward scientific development, the tech trees of Beyond Earth will no longer be linear. Early techs will be loosely based on research currently being carried out by Earth's various space programmes, but after that it'll get a lot more speculative.
"In designing "Beyond Earth," we recognized early on that a linear technology tree felt too certain, so in "Beyond Earth," technologies are arranged in a web, showing that humanity might pursue any number of technological directions in the future, and leaving those discrete choices in the player's hands."
When Beyond Earth comes out in October this year players will find a game that incorporates as many elements from current scientific theory as from outlandish laser-gunning, alien-mind-probing sci-fi. Those who have an interest in modern science should find a number of interesting little references and inspirations.
"As designers, our main goal is for people to enjoy playing Beyond Earth, but if our players run across something in the game, and they're curious enough to look into it a bit more, then we'll be ecstatic to have done our part to raise a little more love for space and science," say Miller and David McDonough.