Space Satan
Arcane
Some stuff came out
Escapist
Gamecrate
Polygon
Escapist
Gamecrate
Polygon
- A new tech-web spreads out from a central point, offering 360 degrees of choices that softens the old game's propensity towards predictable upgrade paths.
- The technologies themselves do that Civ thing of improving the player's capabilities as a resource gatherer, military force, tech researcher and builder. They offer a layman's guide to the potentiality of the future, blending fairly obvious advancements with the esoteric and bizarre.
- For Civ 5 fans, the most frustrating part of the fantasy has been diplomacy, during which players seek to manipulate and manage seemingly sociopath, deranged, moronic rivals. It is, by far, the weakest part of the game, often coming across as a thinly veiled front for gameplay exigencies, rather than as a simulation of stone cold international relations.
According to McDonough, work has been done to tweak the diplomacy section, although a thorough overhaul doesn't look likely. "Yes, we have been endeavoring to make diplomacy more interesting," he said. "The leaders are fictitious and not historical characters so that gives us a little more room to work with, to make them change over time and gain perspectives based on activities in the game. We want them to be a lot less predictable and more sophisticated." - You may have your next 15 moves planned out but when a siege worm shows up on the border it changes the entire calculus and you really have to stay on your toes," added Miller
- Players can build futuristic wonders with evocative names like “The Gene Vault” and “The Panopticon,” the latter of which is a sort of super-spy system that provides a variety of bonuses.
- One map type, called “Vulcan,” was described as “the opposite of an archipelago,” which means there are no oceans, just lakes and small seas.
- The most dramatic of these new terrain features is the glowing green mist known as the “miasma.” In the early game, you’ll mainly be concerned with keeping your forces out of the alien gas, since the miasma will inflict damage to units that end their turn in it. As you advance through the tech web and upgrade your Workers you’ll have the option to remove the miasma, making your territory a bit more hospitable and Earth-like.
- For players who follow the Harmony Affinity, however, there’s a dramatically different option. You can work on adapting your people to the new planetary environment to such an extent that the miasma clouds actually provide healing, rather than damage
- At that point it can become advantageous to research the “Restore Miasma” ability for your Workers, which will allow you to begin flooding every spare hex of your territory with the green clouds — toxic to other players, but life-giving to your new human-alien hybrid soldiers.
- Unique units and buildings are one feature from past Civ games that won’t be showing up in Beyond Earth
- Most of the differentiation between civilizations at the game’s outset comes from the pre-game options you choose for your colonists, cargo, and spacecraft — a system Pete described as “almost like deckbuilding” — while later in the game your units will be distinct from those of your neighbors thanks to the technology and Affinity you’ve chosen to pursue.
- There are no Great People in Civilization: Beyond Earth, so you won’t be seeing some futuristic version of Elvis Presley culture-bombing your borders
- Much of the in-game functionality of the Great People system has instead been shifted into the sky with the new Orbital Layer, where, for example, military satellites provide the area bonuses previously found on Great Generals.
- Satellites come with a whole slew of interesting strategic options, since they can’t be moved once placed and their lives are temporary, meaning their orbits will eventually decay and they’ll crash down to the surface, depositing wreckage that can be excavated by Explorers for tech or resource bonuses.
- City-states are also gone in Beyond Earth, but much of the role they played in Civ 5 is now the domain of “stations.” Stations are independent businesses that take up a single tile (no more city-states hogging the best territory, hooray!) that establish themselves throughout the map over the early stages of the game. Stations offer opportunities for trade (via vulnerable trader units that will travel back and forth from your cities to the station) of particular kinds of resources and bonuses.
- For those stations closest to your first cities, you’ll often have a chance to choose which type of station they will be, so you’ll be able to tailor them to your interests and play-style, somewhat. Your active trade routes aren’t unlimited however, and stations will only trade with one civilization at a time — and they may become less friendly towards you if you neglect them for too long. In this way stations function as something “halfway between city-states and shared tile improvements,” according to Pete
