A First Look at Civitas, A 4X City Building Strategy Game

Civitas is an upcoming community-driven city-building play-to-earn game developed by Directive Games. The project recently raised $20 million and aims to develop the first 4X city-building strategy game using blockchain technology. The game will allow players to own lands in a large city, compete or cooperate with other cities, form alliances, and battle against enemies. The game’s special feature is a subDAO system that gives citizens the freedom to decide on matters like governance of a city, banking systems, social structure, and other capabilities that help evolve a city.

The name Civitas is derived from the Latin word “Citizen.” Civitas is a 4X strategy game built on blockchain technology. The four strategies of a 4X game are Explore, Exploit, Expand and Exterminate. The game focuses on community-driven architecture where thousands of players cooperate to build a player-controlled city. Players can own lands, build their resources, create their own banking systems, harvest crops, and help evolve the cities both socially and economically. 

Building on your land will earn you CITI tokens – the official token of Civitas. Citizens of a city have the right to vote on governance decisions of the city, financial models, treasury issues, trading, and rewards. Civitas is a fully decentralized game built on Ethereum and powered by a L2 solution for in-game assets. The game is still in its very early stage of development and there are no detailed roadmap available yet.

The whole virtual world will be made up of multiple cities, and each city can be governed independently through a subDAO. In addition, each city will have a tower that will display statistics about city performance, global diplomacy, resource yield rates, business stats, and other progress parameters. The game also has augmented reality facilities, and players can experience the world of Civitas through the AR portal on AR-enabled mobile devices. This portal will allow you to play mini-games, collect resources and earn CITI tokens. This makes Civitas the first blockchain game that will allow both in-game and IRL gameplay. The game’s beta version is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2023.

Gameplay

The Civitas game has a top-down strategy with an option to zoom in on micro lands. There will be multiple lands across cities. Through real-world geolocation technology, players can utilize the map to locate assets or resources worldwide and participate in activities. Each city will have unique looks, and multiple styles will coexist. Players can play mini-games, collect and craft items, locate, buy or stake lands inside the game. You are free to build your structures, produce items, gather resources, and do anything that will help develop the city. The game will have a PvP system in which cities compete against other cities over specific objectives. You can form alliances and battle with players from other cities.

 Unlike games like Clash of Clans, you cannot completely loot a city, and there is no pay-to-win mechanics. This is because the developers don’t want a situation in which one city completely dominates over all others. Each character in the game will be a warrior-looking NFT with different traits and abilities useful for combat. Players have to craft tools and items which will increase the strength of their character NFTs. The NFTs are currently in production, and the developers have not yet announced a release date. The game will be available both on mobile devices and PC.

Citizen or Nomad?

You can either play as a Citizen or as a Nomad in Civitas. Once you hold CITI tokens and acquire a land NFT, you will become a Citizen. As a citizen, you will have the exclusive power to participate in subDAO governance, vote for council members, and access Towers. On the other hand, you can customize your plot of land without being a citizen. In that case, you will be called a Nomad. However, in the future, you can own a plot of land and become a citizen. Players will be Nomad in the free version of the game with access to the land building, harvesting, crafting, and all other features except that you won’t be a part of the subDAO. In short, you would not hold any voting power.

What is subDAO in Civitas?

The subDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization that is the governance model for each city in Civitas. Players can participate in the DAO if they hold CITI tokens and vote on important decisions made by the city council. The subDAO is an independent government of a city consisting of the Jus Honorum Council made up of players voted into position by citizens. The subDAO will allow citizens to vote out these members, become a member themselves, and vote against the council’s financial, social, or economic decisions. It will also hold the treasury to reward citizens for contributions. The subDAO will also be able to do its own staking within the city.

Tokenomics

CITI is an ERC-20 compatible token that serves as the governance and utility token of Civitas. Owners of CITI tokens will have the right to vote on governance proposals of the game. The sole currency of the subDAO is the CITI token. Since a subDAO governs each city, the citizens can decide on staking mechanisms and how rewards will be distributed. Players can earn CITI by playing mini-games and participating in in-game activities.

The Team

Civitas is developed by Directive Games, a gaming studio founded in 2014 consisting of talented gaming veterans from renowned gaming companies like Ubisoft, Square Enix, Tencent, DICE, and CCP games. Kent Byers is the game director and project lead, while Andreas Axelsson is the CTO. The team has three offices in Shanghai, Los Angeles, and Reykjavik, besides collaborators and contractors worldwide. 

Directive Games is a pioneer in AR games and has showcased the technology at various events. Civitas is Directive Games’ first blockchain game, which will be the primary focus in the future.