Trade routes can be established for efficient expansion and economical gain, and leaders can be met with diplomatically or with aggression.īeyond Earth, being rooted in the Civilization series, clearly has a solid foundation for the game it wants to be. You’ll get a solid footing in a tech tree, now structured in a circular fashion, and develop workers to build improvements, along with creating policies which will dictate the type of government you run. It’s otherwise all very familiar, with changes such as different nationalities, sometimes re-envisioned as a corporation or future equivalent to government, or your early settlement having to ward off aliens, rather than barbarians. You’ll even be given a few bonuses to utilize in beginning your new civilization, giving a more personal flavor to the opening hours.

It starts out on a good enough foot, introducing players to the new planet they’ve discovered, now in a spaceship rather than a primordial stew or something, along with the slow drip of other factions as their vessels land in the opening moments of a game - this time announcing themselves on arrival, rather than the medieval on-foot discovery needed in the past.

It’s a shame, in that case, that this new, official, non-expansion of Civilization isn’t resonating with me at all. I never played Alpha Centuri, so my only expectations were based on seeing some fringe topics in a Civilization setting. It’s got Civ V basics, and it’s taking us into its vision of the future. Well, enough to understand what I’d played and reach a verdict: I really liked it.įor someone who’s more of a science fiction fan than history buff, Beyond Earth should be right up my alley. I got my feet wet, found out the water was fine, and became a decent navigator of history. The streamlined UI, accessibility, and massively improved tutorial in Civilization V, however, were perfect for someone like myself who needed less of a history lesson and more of a primer for the game. Civilization 3 also sits in my Steam library, still yet to be played. Sure, I once tried to get into Civilization IV, but its dense nature repelled me and I wasn’t in the mood to be resilient. Reviewing Civilization V a few years ago was interesting as a newcomer to the series.

Civilization beyond earth review