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Describing Civilization Beyond Earth as ‘Civ 5 in space’ feels monstrously unfair at times. From the moment you set up your own game with all those lovely custom settings (something I’d always recommend), it feels like you’re shaping a civilisation in a way that even past Civ games haven’t quite managed.
Before now, I’ve decided that Stonehenge was actually built in Beijing, or that Attila the Hun wasn’t really that big on the whole war thing, but I never felt like I was really creating something new. Instead, the Civ series becomes this unusual pick ‘n’ mix through human history, in which you try to cram as many important, culture-defining structures into your civilisation, before somebody else comes along and pinches all the good ones.
In this respect, Beyond Earth benefits greatly from going somewhere brand new. Humanity is yet to have a proper go at colonizing new worlds, nor have we had the chance to encounter new and interesting alien lifeforms to befriend/insult/exploit, so there aren’t too many signposts to follow. Thankfully this means there’s a good deal more freedom involved in what kind of civilisation you end up playing, starting with a decision about your people’s ‘affinity’ towards their new planet and the indigenous bugs that have been scuttling around on its surface since well before you arrived. This ideology will likely dictate how you interact with the other civilisations, what kind of technology you’ll want to research, and whether you prefer to exterminate that local wildlife (purity), live alongside it (harmony), or just do whatever gives the greatest military advantage (supremacy).
It’s a really interesting decision to face, even outside of the obvious impact it will have upon your campaign. How humanity will potentially react to an intelligent alien species is a scary question, and Beyond Earth does a pretty decent job at letting you answer that for yourself. Although the various alien creatures are presented as neutral units on the map as you begin, they behave quite differently to the Civ 5 barbarians that you might want to compare them with.
Whereas the barbarians would attack your forces if you venture too close to their encampments, the aliens in Beyond Earth may want to actively hunt your units, or even ignore them completely, depending on how they feel towards humans at the time.
The alien units are part of a larger faction that will react to the hostilities of civilisations and potentially become distrustful of all humans as a result. This can create some interesting scenarios in the early game, where peaceful civs are punished for the actions of their alien-stomping neighbours. Later on down the tech tree (it’s actually a ‘tech web’ in Beyond Earth), you’ll find those which have pursued the harmony affinity can avoid this dilemma and may even be fighting alongside the aliens against those that would do them harm.
Depending on which affinity you align yourself with you’re going to end up with a civilisation that looks and acts very differently to its counterparts. This extends to the victory conditions as well, with each affinity chasing goals that are only available to them. It’s interesting to note that there are a further two victory states (capturing the capitals of other nations and contacting Earth), that can be achieved by civilisations of any affinity.
This means that there are several additional ways to approach a campaign compared to Civ 5: it’s entirely possible to play an alien-loving people that fully embrace their new home, but wish to destroy all other civilisations on the map. That’s actually a rather interesting way to approach a game if you care to, as the harmony affinity gains access to a few really cool units that are unique to them and their way of life – we’re talking human soldiers riding alien bugs into battle levels of cool.
However it’s also important to point out that although there are a real mix of ways to play a campaign in Beyond Earth, not all of them are that much fun. My very first single-player game that I saw through to completion was centred around a civilisation that pursued an economical advantage. I wanted to focus the early game building a real income of resources, expanding my territory with new cities and at all costs, avoiding unnecessary conflict. With only a single border to worry about, this proved remarkably easy and I was careful to keep everyone happy with multiple trade routes to other nations and cooperation agreements (I won’t attack you, if you don’t attack me).
With no real benefit to be gained from messing with the local wildlife either, I ended up falling quite comfortably into the Harmony affinity – it just made sense. I quietly prospered in my own small corner of the world. 250 turns later, with no major conflicts to worry about, I completed the research and built the structures to achieve a ‘Transcendence Victory’ and that was that. I’m more than happy to see a Civilization game that doesn’t involve the AI-controlled nations declaring wars unpredictably every few turns, but it ended up being an incredibly passive game and a rather boring one at that. It was a game of six civilisations (admittedly on the normal difficulty setting) and I won without really worrying about anybody else.
While it may well feel unfair to use the phrase ‘Civ 5 in space’, there’s still plenty of that title here. Civilization: Beyond Earth, like its predecessor, is still a game that can see you rushing through multiple turns almost on auto-pilot, something which becomes particularly obvious in campaigns like the one I just described.
The Civilization series is one of the biggest names in strategy for a very good reason, and Beyond Earth adds some wonderful ideas on top of all that, but the underlying systems have remained largely untouched. That’s either exactly what you wanted to hear, or reason enough to hold fire on this one. Of course, I still find it almost impossible to play this game in anything smaller than three hour increments, but I’ve been surprised to find myself just a little tired of the same Civilization formula this time around.