It's the year 2600. Humanity is seeking to move on from the 'Great Mistake' of 2064, a mysterious disaster which pushed the world into a new Dark Age.
A motley collection of corporations, pan-national collectives and barely-recognisable nation-states decide the only hope lies in the stars, and try to reboot homo sapiens on an alien planet.
This is the setting for the latest entry in the Civilization series, Beyond Earth. It's not Civilization 6, but nor is it just Civilization V: Can Into Space.
Let's start with the new stuff – or at least, how it differs to Civ V, aside from the fact it picks up where that game usually ends (with the world left uninhabitable thanks to Gandhi's predilection for nuclear warfare).
Firstly, you don't choose a nation or civilization as you would know them from the history books, instead picking from one of eight factions – including future iterations of current geopolitical entities such as Brazilia, Franco-Iberia, Polystralia (I guess that includes us?) and groups whose existence match the game's bleak vision of the next few hundred years, such as the espionage-focused American Reclamation Corporation and the devout Kavithan Protectorate.
After choosing your faction, you get to further customise it by choosing what type of people you're settling, as well as your ship's cargo and upgrades. This kind of makes up for the underwhelming special abilities attributed to each faction, which amount to little more than small bonuses here and there – nothing like the game-changing modifiers found in Civ V, like the Merchant of Venice or the Mayans' Long Count.
Once on the planet the other factions arrive one-by-one every few turns, unlike previous Civ games where everyone starts on turn one. But this doesn't mean you're alone – venture away from your capital and you'll quickly find the planet is already inhabited. Whilst most alien life is even less of a nuisance than the series' trademark barbarians, the same can't be said of the dreaded siege worms, whose immense strength would trouble a Giant Death Robot.
Of particular concern is miasma, a hit point-sucking substance pulled straight of 19th century medical journals which coats much of the planet's surface. It hurts you and heals the aliens – but that doesn't have to be the case.
Replacing Civ V's ideologies is Affinities, which either see you trying to turn the planet into a new Earth (Purity); adapting to the conditions, turning miasma from poison into prescription (Harmony); or ignoring it altogether and putting your trust in technology – essentially hoping to turn humanity into Cylons (Supremacy).
Unlike Ideologies, Affinities are available from the start, and each path's unique modifiers are unlocked through technologies and Quests, which are sometimes genuine missions (build this here, kill this monster, etc) and other times just either/or questions (should we put excess production into mass-producing low quality crap or concentrate on finely crafted goods?). You can also head part-way down each Affinity if you want, unlike Civ V's locked-in ideologies.
Pushing further up each Affinity path also unlocks new units, and this is where Firaxis has done some serious streamlining in a way not seen before in the entire Civilization series. Rather than a bevy of different units in each class – ranged, melee, flight, etc – to start with there's just one of each. As your civilization develops, you unlock units unique to each Affinity.
There also appears to be only two different upgrades triggered by combat experience: healing and a basic combat score boost. Civ V had different modifiers based on things like terrain, for example.
But when you do upgrade a unit from one type to another, you get to choose another upgrade – one that sticks to all units of this type – and this is where your strategy comes into play, rather than choosing from a range of different types of units. Also – and I'm not sure why this is, or the reasoning behind it – when you change one type of unit into another, all your units of that type instantly upgrade, no matter where they are on the map. It's the future, I guess?
Soon into the game you'll find yourself able to build satellites, which sit on a separate orbital layer. Going into the game spoiler-free, I found this completely by accident when I went to look for the strategic layer (a favourite of hardcore Civ V players and those with low-powered computers, which is absent in Beyond Earth). Here you can place satellites to ward off miasma and collect solar energy, for example.
Speaking of energy, here's where Beyond Earth starts to look a bit like a re-skin of Civ V. Despite clearly not existing in a post-scarcity future, humanity no longer deals in currency, but energy. But somewhat paradoxically, energy isn't used to build things – for the most part, it's just gold with a new name. Hammers are now little cogs, culture now buys Virtues instead of social policies, and happiness is now Health – but there's still food.
And Health, said to measure not just your citizens' physical health but also the stability of your society, is nowhere near the break on expansion it was in Civ V. Firstly the penalties for going into negative health are more gradual and much less punishing than the somewhat binary system Civ V had; and with the number of available trade routes linked almost directly to the number of cities you have, so far I'm yet to find a situation in which founding another city is not in my immediate and long-term best interests. The trade routes are so powerful, the benefits of founding a new outpost (which grow into cities in a few turns) virtually always outweigh any hit to your Health.
Other things lifted from Civ V with barely a tweak include Old Earth Relics (monuments), Generators (trading posts) and alien skeletons which double-up as archaeological sites – and the list goes on.
Beyond Earth was built on the Civ V engine and shares about as much of its DNA with that game as humans do chimpanzees, but after nearly four years many players may be feeling a bit burned out and hoping for something more radical.
There are many areas in which Beyond Earth takes something Civ V tried to do and improves on it – most notably espionage, which is now useful for more than just stealing techs. The tech web is also much more realistic than the old linear tree, if somewhat bewildering at first, even for old-timers like me.
It has to be said the game engine also benefits from Civ V's four years in the wild – I experienced no game-breaking technical bugs and it ran smooth as silk on my machine, which I bought around the time Civ V came out (not a coincidence). The UI could do with some work though – my eyes are fine so I have no trouble with the tiny text, but the move from Civ V's bright colour palette to an almost all-blue interface can make it hard to tell at a glance what you're looking at, and many of the icons are fiddly and needlessly detailed.
As for the minimap, it might as well be invisible – it's as dim as the game's combat AI, which still relies more on overwhelming force rather than tactics.
Beyond Earth also has some real balance issues to sort out, such as how some of the wonders are useless.
In my first game I was able to build Gene Gardens in all my cities, giving +3 Health, for 200 hammers each; compare that to wonder the Daedalus Ladder, which gives the same Health boost but cost seven times as much, and there can only be one on the planet. Seriously?
Having unit upgrades linked to Affinities also encourages making a beeline down one technological path, despite the web's non-linear layout.
The aliens are also somewhat disappointing – apparently if you're too aggressive towards the local fauna, they drop their docile nature and turn on you. Could have fooled me – I've spent my games so far farming them for experience points without so much as a peep of protest.
I don't think any of these drawbacks can't be fixed in patches, or worst-case scenario by modders, and it has to be said the game's in a much better state than Civ V was at launch. But four years and two expansion packs later I think I'm close to burning out on this particular iteration of the classic format, and I'm not sure Beyond Earth does enough differently to drag it out much longer.
It'll no doubt get more playtime at my place than Civilization IV's spinoff Colonization, which held little attraction for this born-and-bred Kiwi, and it might appeal to casual Civ fans with a sci-fi bent who haven't already clocked up a couple of thousand hours with V.
Ideally, someone with better modding skills than I will combine the two – Beyond Civilization V, perhaps – and if that happens, I'm not sure I'll ever need another game.
At least until Civilization VI comes around.
Three-and-a-half stars.
3 News
Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth
:: Publisher: 2K Games
:: Developer: Firaxis Games
:: Format: Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux
:: Rating: PG
source: newshub archive
