Not Too Alien - A Bad Civilization: Beyond Earth Review

For years, the Civilization series has allowed players to play as various leaders guiding their civilizations from the dawn of man to just through ages. Players had to manage construction, culture, diplomacy, economics, military, and technology. Most of the games allowed players to progress technologically to just a little beyond modern day. Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth is the newest entry into the series and is centered towards the era most Civilization games missed: The Future.

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Starting off, the game gives an intro of a mass exodus of Earth because of an event called "The Great Mistake". It's never really told what exactly it was but it seems bad enough that many nations have banded together to launch colonies of people off to different worlds. Your job is the same as most of the other Civilization games: Manage your empire and become the best one on the planet.

Now, since this is the future, it would be hard to place some of the ancient civilizations that were so prevalent in the past installments. Players are presented instead with somewhat customizable civilization, most referred to as a Colony. Players choose their sponsor (Which decidedly chooses the leader and city names), the type of people they bring along, their ship, and their cargo. These help establish starting bonuses that may make or break your fledgling colony.

Each Sponsor comes with with a special bonus, so pick wisely.

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Selecting a new world to play is different too. Instead of being given some general options like Terra, Pangaea, Continents, etc, you're offered Terran, Protean, Altantean. There's a random option if you're feeling risky and specialized planets that specialized in making the game harder with scarcity or terrain.

Once everything is ready to start, you'll be the first one on your new planet. Other colonies, which you'll be instantly greeted by, will join in slowly after a couple of turns. This where the biggest, glaring issue is: You'll be doing the same thing you've done at the start of every Civ game. You'll explore, you'll research, you'll make polices. It starts out essentially like starting a game in one of previous installments on the last era.

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Normally, it wouldn't be much of an issue but many mechanics feel dragged over from Civ V. Even the UI mostly the same, save for a few changed placements of icons. Most of the things have been just been renamed. Instead of gold, its energy. Instead of happiness, it's health. Units still can't be stacked like previous games but they could also be considered helpful against massive "doomstacks". City States are back but are renamed to Stations and their purpose has been limited to merely trading points for convoys. The most recycled element of the game is diplomacy of the game.

Some features were even gutted from the game entirely. Great people no longer appear, taking away that random ace-in-the-hole everyone so desperately built and waited for. The World Congress/ UN concept is nonexistent too, eliminating that sense of global cooperation later on.

Now, while there's quite a few gutted or recycled elements, some returned refined along with new set of concepts. The policy tree from V has returns as virtues. Virtues are divided under four varying elements that start opened up to the player. Espionage comes back as Covert Ops, which now allows for more options to undermine your enemies, protect your secrets, and even provide some bonuses with idle spies. Satellites add an extra level of production and warfare but can be somewhat tiresome having to build a satellite after the the other eventually falls from orbit. The quests from city states are now just regulars quests with little time limit. They vary from simple "take out these aliens" to massive research, excavate, and secure quests to the common narrative quests on an extra bonus for building a building for the first time.

Due it being the future and there being no certain path of technology, the tech tree has remade into a web. Each technology branches into another. Under each branch some a special leaf. The Tech allows for more freedom in research but is extremely annoying to navigate.

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Barbarians have replaced with aliens native to the planet your on. The main difference between them and their human counter-part is how you approach them. If refrain from murdering them, they'll leave your borders alone most of the time and will probably only attack you if you go near their hives (spawn points). Murder evey alien you see and you'll have some highly experienced soldiers but are going to find yourself knee-deep in aliens.

The main addition, and probably the part you'd care the most about is concepts affinity. Beyond Earth offers three certain affinities: Harmony, Purity, and Supremacy. Each three of the affinities help determine your foreign polcy with the aliens on the planet, narrative, appearance of your colony, and the victories you can achieve. Harmony is obviously about being peaceful with the aliens adopting some of genes, Purity is about preserving the Human race and it's history, while Supremacy is becoming more cybernetic and evolving with machines. Players progress in an affinity by doing quests and researching affinity specific technologies, earning points to level up through an affinity. It is possible to work on two affinities at a time but in the end, one will still null out the other in bonuses.
Unit upgrades are mostly dependent on affinity levels. Promotions have been limited to increase attack or heal. Upgrading your unit will require you to obtain a certain affinity rank, unlocking a new unit and a new promotion. Getting high ranks unlocks special units and abilities but will slowly lock out the rest that are not part of your affinity.

The effects of Harmony, Purity, and Supremacy on leaders, respectively. Changes are more subtle through the game. This is just the end products.

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There 5 types of victories so far, 3 of which are affinity specific. Harmony offers the Transcendence victory which to build a giant mind flower to bring peace by creating a hive mind, Purity gives the Promised Land victory which is to build a giant teleporter on the planet and bring settlers from Earth to the planet, Supremacy is like Purity but instead of bringing people to your planet, you send your troops Earth to take over. Domination is still present and can be switched between taking capitals and taking EVERY CITY. The last victory is available to all called the Contact victory, where players decode a mysterious signal before CONTACTING THE MOTHER SHIP. I'm not joking.

Would I recommend this game? Yes. While it is lacking for a new entry, it is still pretty solid. Veterans of the Civ series would find themselves in some familiar turf for the game while the new people might be pulled on for the new time era the series has jumped too. Mod support is up though mostly clumsily handled by the Steam Workshop.