Civilization for Facebook Beta Delayed until July

Mafia Wars and Farmville fans can begin to prepare themselves now and non-gamers can prepare to hit their 'hide' button because Sid Meier's classic game Civilization is coming to Facebook.

For those who have never played, Civilization is a turn-based simulation game, which would work wonderful in Facebook, where players attempt to build the strongest empire over the course of time. It originated in 1991 being released by MicroProse and has had numerous sequels over the years.

The Facebook version seems to be a perfect fit seeing as Facebook, like Civilization, is rather addictive, gives an ample amount of players, and features tons of people who like to play games instead of doing something productive (like, yours truly).

No real ideas of how the game is going to play out yet as Meier is being rather vague but it appears to be taking a page from Mafia Wars and having friends join together to create the strongest civilization. Those civilizations will then compete against each other.

Now don't get too excited, the beta hit a snag and isn't expected until July and a final version won't be around until next year, after Meier announced he expected a 2010 release in October. Will Facebook still be around in 2011? Probably. Will people still play games on Facebook? Probably. Will people still be annoyed when they get 2593 requests for Civilization Network in 2011? Most definitely.