Review: Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth

Civilization: Beyond Earth is pretty good. Too bad I’m awful at it.

It’s one of those games that requires something I’ve always been short on: patience. That said, I understand while some people will sink hours and hours into this game, whereas I’d never say that about something like Football Manager.

Sorry, Football Manager.

Using the Civilization V engine and a bit closer in initial setup to Sid Meyer’s Alpha Centauri –  and only know this now because I went and had a play with it afterward — Beyond Earth is pretty easy to play, regardless of your familiarity with the franchise. I’m a bit of a noob, to be honest, only playing Civ V before this. Thankfully, the game’s ADVISR can be used to walk you through the ins and outs of, well, everything.

That said, my prior gameplay experience made it easy to understand that Beyond Earth plays like a re-skinned version of Civ V, only with a sh*t-ton more science fiction. I’m very okay with that. In fact, I think the thing I embraced the most in Beyond Earth was its sci-fi nature. I feel like Firaxis could have delved deeper into that; as an example, there are many different factions you’ll encounter on each planet, but apart from a different faction name, I really didn’t walk away knowing anything of anyone’s backstory. Opportunity lost.

At any rate, we’ve basically screwed over Earth in this game, and as such, have set off across the cosmos in a quest to survive. Landing on one of any number of largely neon planets, you’re basically tasked to survive. This is achieved using one of three mentalities, otherwise known as Affinities. You can terraform and continue on like we did on Earth, transcend and dominate the new planet or evolve humanity to live harmoniously in your new surroundings.

As you set off to forge your destiny, Civilization’s game mechanics work their way in. You of course build objects and citizens to grow your city. You research new technologies to push towards your ideal utopia. You engage in diplomacy where you can, and try to decimate opponents when that doesn’t work. As I expected from my preview, orbital lazers remain the single-awesomest way to destory things.

In short, it’s very Civilization. But in space!

The game’s map, like V, allows you to move hexagonally, which means you can go more places in less time. As you put hours into a world, this becomes very important; in my ADVISR-took-me-by-the-hand (by choice) game, I had ages to set myself up, and every single opportunity in the world to fail later on due to some poor decisions as I progressed. Despite being awful at the game, I always knew where I went wrong; can’t fault the game on that.

Said lack of patience means I didn’t cope very well with the slow-burn of the game. New tech trees mean you really need to research things just to see what they can really do. Each game, accordingly, is almost a testing bed; you’ve really got to be in for the long run with Beyond Earth. You can gain more materials via quests, but they’re largely uneventful and don’t really impact the story I was forging between my colony and those I encountered while exploring.

When it comes to winning, you’ve a couple options – one for each of the game’s Affinities, a research win and the one I usually go for due to lack of finesse: the military victory. The Affinity victories are akin to the space victories of old; you’ll need to build a structure and then perform additional tasks from there.

All up, Civilization: Beyond Earth is a highly-polished and well-planned game that will be fun if you’re a strategy gamer. For others on the fence, I’d almost recommend Civilization V if you haven’t played it. In addition to being cheaper, these two titles are almost the same game, if you’re happy to ignore the science-fiction nature of Beyond Earth. I’m clearly not a Civ expert, but these two latest games felt so closely intertwined that I wondered if Beyond Earth could have been presented as DLC inside V instead – or, even as suggested by the game’s main menu, a simple mod.

Civilization: Beyond Earth was reviewed using a promotional copy of the game on PC, as provided by the publisher.

 

Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth

The good All that’s good about Civilization V, but in space! New tech trees mean there’s a bit of the unknown.

The bad Sometimes a little too like Civ V. Definitely a game for the patient.

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