Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

[Erik_Twice]

Civilization V was pretty awful on release, the game had several balance problems and it didn't compare favourably with the previous entry and all the expansions it had.

Of course, the same happened with Civilization IV back when it was released and it turned out to be pretty good.


The great thing about Civilization V is how solid the core mechanics are in it. You don't control too many units or too many cities, each one matters more than in previous games making the choice between producing one or not actually matter instead of the absolute spam of Civilization II. Rough edges, like producing units just to stack them in a city were fixed and downright abusive mechanics like tech trading are gone. Combat is now actually interesting, which was not true of the stack of doom and while the diplomacy was known for its problems when it was first released it's now much more interesting than the manipulable version of Civ IV, now opposing leaders will lie to you and will try to smash you if they can get away with it instead of overlooking your pitiful defenses.

The first expansion made the game better than Civ IV with expansions ever was. The second one has taken it further and it shows. I truly think it's the best edition of Sid Meier's Civ by a significant margin.

[Sload Soap]

Downloading the demo now. Everything crossed that my trusty old laptop can handle it.

[Tanooki]

Hey I have a concern. I have a semi-weak intel hd 3000 laptop that can run civ5 on a mix of low and more med settings, this appaers to be the civ5 engine, could I play this as it looks astoundingly fun. I never got into civ3 and 4 but 5 was a hoot.

[Sload Soap]

Hey I have a concern. I have a semi-weak intel hd 3000 laptop that can run civ5 on a mix of low and more med settings, this appaers to be the civ5 engine, could I play this as it looks astoundingly fun. I never got into civ3 and 4 but 5 was a hoot.

There's a demo to download on Steam. As good a test as any.

[Tanooki]

Well I gave my video card as I'm unsure I'd get anywhere in it if it demands more than CIV5 would.

[Sload Soap]

Well I gave my video card as I'm unsure I'd get anywhere in it if it demands more than CIV5 would.

I can run Civ5 and its expansions on my laptop quite well at the lowest graphical settings and thankfully because Beyond Earth is so similar I can run it too. I think (hope) you'll be okay as well.

I played the demo before bed last night. You get 100 turns as the Brazilian faction. I have to say, it is very Civ 5 like but with, from what I could tell, more emphasis on surviving the environment. There wasn't enough time to get into the affinity or upgrade system so "me versus the aliens" became the narrative.

Since I had so few turns I decided to limit myself to a narrow objective of retrieving a crashed pod placed tantalisingly close (about seven hexes) to my city. This in turn became a bitter and slow struggle to clear out aliens and their nests while progressing gingerly towards the pod. In the end I had to make a dash for it with my rover after a group of thresher maws sandworms siege worms essentially wiped out all my forces.

So, at the very least the aliens aren't just lazy barbarian stand ins which is cool. And while usually I'd dislike a hazard like the miasma the ability to clear it safely with a satellite is also a nice addition. Didn't get to see much of orbital layer aside from that though.

Pretty impressed by what I played although I get the feeling I've only scratched the surface.

[MrPopo]

[ This in turn became a bitter and slow struggle to clear out aliens and their nests while progressing gingerly towards the pod. In the end I had to make a dash for it with my rover after a group of thresher maws sandworms siege worms essentially wiped out all my forces.

[MrPopo]

So I've done two games and got a victory in one. The game has a lot of differences that make it more than just a reskin of Civ V.

Firstly, choosing your faction is much more nuanced than it was in previous games. You actually pick four different values, one of which is your faction and the other three are common to everything. The faction gives you some sort of unique benefit, like a free tech every 10 virtues (civics) or workers do improvements 25% faster. Next you pick a production bonus each city gets (+2 food, +2 energy, etc). The third is a modifier to the start; you can choose things like having resources or coastlines mapped out for you. The fourth is a bonus item at start; this could be a unit, a population, or a tech. It gives you more flexibility in choosing how you start off the game.

When you build a new city you don't get it immediately; instead you claim the tile you're occupying and another adjacent tile, then over time it grows to finish grabbing the rest of the six surrounding tiles. Once it has it finally becomes a city. You also need a tech to be able to build colonists to build a city.

Happiness has been replaced with health. In general it functions the same (gain from improvements, lose from number of cities and citizens), but it's only calculated at the faction level, not the city level. There is no city anarchy; when you get to a negative happiness you have a production hit. There's no we-love-the-king-day either, instead going positive gives you production bonuses, at different amounts depending on how positive you are.

Civics has been replaced with virtues, which is pretty much the same thing, just rebalanced. Throughout the game I was getting a virtue every 10-20 turns. Virtues are organized into four trees of 15 virtues each, and each tree is further subdivided into three tiers with 5 virtues per tier. Every 5 virtues in a particular tree you gain a bonus, and there are also bonuses for having a sufficient number of virtues in a particular tier (which will require you to go into multiple tiers). While the trees are laid out similar to standard skill trees there is one important rule difference; you only need to have one prerequisite to take a virtue, rather than all the prerequisites.

Technology is now in a web, rather than the old tech tree. The web consists of several node technologies, and then each node has one or two leafs under it. Once you've researched a node you can then research any node connected to it. You can also research any of the leafs under a node; you don't need to worry about order. Leaves are always more expensive to research than their parent node. In addition to unlocking production and units, certain techs will give you a large bonus to your affinity.

Affinity is the biggest new thing added. You gain affinity points from researching the tech tree and from doing quests. Reaching various affinity levels unlock bonuses; at the high levels you can use special units and gain access to the specific victory conditions. Your affinity level also ties in to unit upgrades. Once you reach a particular affinity level you get to upgrade a particular unit, which consists of a fixed bonus and a bonus you get to select (similar to veterency bonuses). The first bonus is neutral, but then the next few promotions are specific to a particular affinity, so Purity will have different choices from Harmony. Additionally, the affinity-specific units will have three possible upgrades; one is for going pure one affinity and the other two require a few levels in the other affinities (which you are likely to get anyway from tech researching).

In terms of strategic resources there are three general purposes resources and three affinity specific resources. Units and buildings tend to require more than one of a strategic resource, so you're rewarded for going after them. Most buildings that require a resource merely require you to have an improved resource tile in range, but some use up resources, and the affinity specific units require multiple units of the specific resources depending on unit strength.

Quests are something that was added mostly to help you specify your affinity, though a few also tie in to things that experienced players are going to do anyway (explore for goody huts, get espionage going) and are helpful to get players doing the right stuff.

There are five victory conditions. The first is conquest and the second is essentially the Transcendence victory from Alpha Centauri; the tech/economy victory. The final three are specific to each affinity, but they are also tech/economy victories, but the wrinkle is that they involve a special tile improvement which can make them more susceptible to disruption (easier to pillage than to take a city), and I think you can achieve them faster than the transcendence.

All in all, it's an incredibly fun and addictive game that is rather different from Civ V in the details, and the details are big in this sort of game.

[Jmustang1968]

Nice summary Popo. Ive been playing this the last few days as well and am also really enjoying myself.

[Erik_Twice]

My impression of Beyond Earth was very positive, but it soon becomes apparent that the game is completely unbalanced. Having three trade routes per town is so powerful that building an economic base outside of them is practically uneccesary and wonders (Which don't even have videos) are mostly crap with low yields instead of cool powers. There's one that requires a whole tech dedicated only to it and around 1000 hammers and all it does is give you 4 culture per turn.

I keep thinking, though, that this might be a much better game for multiplayer. So we should try it out! It would be cool to play with other Racketboy folks