It’s time to party like it’s 1999 because Sid Meier’s Civilization Beyond Earth may just be the unofficial spiritual successor to the beloved Alpha Centauri we’ve been waiting so long for. Taking place in the distant future, Earth is dried up and has no more natural resources; our only option is to settle beyond the stars for hope of the human race continuing to prosper. ‘Human race’ often becomes subjective in Beyond Earth, though. If you’re transforming all humans into robots or alien hybrids… where is your humanity?
Although many of the game systems play similarly to Civilization V, Beyond Earth stands out in many delightful ways. First off, you’re not playing as an iconic civilization from Earth’s history; you’re playing as a corporate conglomerate sending folks into space for the sake of the future. So instead of playing as say Japan, China or Korea, you can play as the Pan-Asian Cooperative. After all, even in the future it would be difficult for one nation to fund such a program. Building massive space crafts which can support colonies of people comes with a price.
Instead of just picking your civ and difficulty, there are a whole lot of other pre-decisions you need to make before embarking on your flight across the stars. As part of your starting package, you need to decide what sort of people are loaded into your ship, what upgrades your ship has, and what extra cargo is your ship packing. These decisions greatly affect your early game and entire game as a whole. These decisions aren’t just role-play calls, but come with different bonuses attached. They are a bit of extra spice for those players who back the same damn civ every single game.
Speaking of those people who pick the same civ every time, they can also pick a different affinity each game if they so choose. Think of the affinities as being the new system that has replaced ideologies. Affinities are in your face much earlier than Civ V’s ideologies, though. So while you may decide that you want to live harmoniously with the aliens, the native aliens may end up being a huge pain the a@# and you end up eradicating them. In a lot of ways, the events of gameplay affect which affinity to go towards – heavy on emergent storytelling. Others civs will still like or hate you depending which route you go. Hell, if you want to transform humanity into a race of Cybermen to go back, conquer Earth, and upload everyone’s consciousness to a great network, I encourage you.
Other than affinities, the best new feature in this Civ game is by far the technology web. No longer are we dealing with linear technology paths, but more of a get-what-you-want system. You start in the center and branch out whichever way your little heart desires. The techs closer to the center go faster, and the more complicated ones are towards the edges. Do you go for quantity, specific wonders, affinity points… it’s up to you. I have to admit, I love this new system. There is no way they would work in a normal Civ game because, well, you know, history. In the future, though, anything is possible.
Another major new system is how units upgrade. Even though your first military unit is a solider, you will still be using ‘soldiers’ towards the end of the game. I threw air quotes around soldiers because after the affinities kick in, most likely these soldiers are no longer completely human. Instead of older units becoming obsolete, they become more relevant depending on how you’ve been playing. How does it get better than that? Certain techs will unlock new units and certain points in affinities will unlock other upgrades. Although your units are robots, aliens, more human than human… they still play and feel like Civilization V units.
Other things that I found particularly neat were virtues instead of social policies, aliens replaced barbarians (gg siege worm), new resources, and quests. Espionage advanced greatly. Your agents can do so much more than in Civ V – almost like the original Civ’s diplomat levels. All this future mumbo-jumbo leads to more and new victory conditions. While you can still eliminate all the other civs, there is also a winning condition for each of the three affinities. If none of that interests you, why not just make first contact? Each of these possibilities are a race and the first civ to reach these conditions is the victor. Be careful when warmongering though — you’ll make enemies quickly.
The multiplayer played as smooth as could be. The only new aspect I can recall is the ability to save your set up if you and your friends always like playing a certain way. The games still take forever and you better have committed people to seeing it through. I randomly disconnected once, but you’re able to save the game, reconnect, and continue playing like nothing ever happened.
Claiming that Beyond Earth is simply a re-skinned Civilization V or a glorified expansion to their previous title is far-fetched in my eyes. I’m not going to sit here and deny similarities but all in all, the two games are truly standalone titles. If real Earth history isn’t your thing and would rather be in some alien distant future, boy do I have a game for you. You can make the game as difficult or as easy as you want, allowing for any level of player to just jump in, no prior Civ experience required. If my memory serves me correctly, Civilization V only reached ‘perfection’ after gaining both expansions. So while Beyond Earth isn’t quite at Civ V level yet, I say just you wait naysayers – I’mma gonna still enjoy my space Civ until then.
