A look at the first 80 turns of Civilization: Beyond Earth
Youtuber Northernlion has uploaded footage of the the first 80 turns of Civilization: Beyond Earth, and you may be disappointed to learn that its going to be more Civ 5 than Alpha Centauri.
Northernlion recorded the footage at an event held by 2K a few weeks ago, where he also recorded the Evolve footage. He, like everyone else who attended the event, was only allowed to record the first 100 turns of Civilization: Beyond Earth but even then, we can already get a feel for what the game will be like.
In Civilization: Beyond Earth, you’ll be colonising planets on behalf of one of a group of Federations, each of which has their own bonuses, which will support a specific gameplay style just like the Civs in other games.
Complete quests to earn rewards like bonus units and energy.
However, unlike the other games, you’ll have more say over what bonuses you’ll start with since you will also be choosing your spacecraft type as well as what type of colonists you want to bring with you.
This will give you more control over how you start, allowing you to theme your start to how you want to play, and not just pick a pre-built Civ that best suits what you want to do.
On most single-player games you’ll play, you’ll be the first group to land on the planet. This will give you a small head start against the AI, but when they do eventually land, you see where and will meet their leader start away.
So it looks like the first 100 turns of Civilization: Beyond Earth will have more of a focus on diplomacy then previous Civilization games, and thankfully how you interact with them has been improved. For starters, you can now bank favours with them, which you can later use for leverage in deals that they may otherwise disagree too.
One thing that will definitely have an effect on how you interact with other leaders are what virtues you choose. These virtues are kind of like the Social Policies from Civ 5, but now there are only four of them and they will have a bigger effect on how the AI treats you, I mean could you really imagine a group with a the virtue of peace siding with a warmonger.
Okay so it’s only the first 100 turns of Civilization: Beyond Earth
You’re not the first sentient beings on these planets either and how you treat the wildlife will have and effect for the rest of the game.
If you constantly attack them, then they’ll grow more distrustful and hostile towards humanity.However the reverse is also true so if you leave them along then they’ll eventually leave you alone too.
How you treat the wildlife can also have an effect on your relationships with the AI too, since some of them will have a live and let live opinion of them, while others will have a this planet belongs to humans mentality.
Killing them all will be be pretty hard though especially with the siege worms, who can and will attack your outposts/cities, and are strong enough to take them down in four or five hits early on. You can build force fields to keep them away from your territories but that takes time as you need to research the proper tech first and build them.
Something you may have noticed throughout this article is all the comparisons made to Civilization, and not Alpha Centauri. This is because the game (at least at the moment) looks a lot like Civ 5.
Avoid fighting enemies in the miasma or you’ll be in for a nasty surprise.
Everything you could do with gold, or in this case energy in Civ 5 can be done in Beyond Earth. There are even research pods scattered across the map like the ruins and village huts from previous Civ games.
The UI also looks very similar, and from what was shown combat is the exact same as it was in Civilization 5, including the hex grids and one unit per title combat that has divided fans.
Northernlion said in the video that Civilization: Beyond Earth feels more like an evolution to Civilization 5 then the spiritual sequel to Alpha Centauri like some fans where hoping for.
However he also wanted to stress that despite only being allowed to play the first 100 turns of Civilization: Beyond Earth, his looking forward to wasting many more hours in the game when it comes out.
I need to point out again that the footage is of the first 100 turns of Civilization: Beyond Earth, and some of what was shown may be changed for the official release.
Civilization: Beyond Earth is due out on October 24th for the PC but what are your opinions on what you’ve seen? Are you happy to be getting more Civilization or where you hoping this would be a spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri. Either way tell us your opinion in the comment section below.
If you like what you’ve seen from these first 100 turns of Civilization: Beyond Earth, then you can pre-order it on Steam and on the official Civilization website.