Despite various levels of tutorial guidance and a massive in-game Civilopedia that outlines all of the game’s concepts, I sometimes found it difficult to get an answer to a basic question I had. Where Beyond Earth falters is in the way it communicates some of its core ideas. Do not start playing this game if you have somewhere to be – work, school, surgery, your wedding – in the next several hours. This franchise is the granddaddy of “just one more turn and then I’ll go to bed” games, but with the constant drip-feed of cool new technologies to research, buildings to construct, military units to deploy, quests to fulfill, covert operations to undertake… seriously, it’s lethal.
The most Civilization-y aspect of Beyond Earth, though, is its addictiveness. And you will likely make a lot of dumb mistakes as you learn from your actions and decisions. The sheer enormity of Beyond Earth can be daunting, and you’ll likely start then abandon several matches as you learn how game’s many layers and systems and cogs all mesh together, sussing out the best technologies to pursue, the best buildings to work on and victory conditions that suit your play style. Victory can be achieved by exterminating all opponents, or through a host of less drastic means, ranging from making contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence to creating a stargate that brings the rest of humankind to your new promised land.īeyond Earth is very much cut from the Civilization cloth, but with new tweaks that include a sprawling, non-linear technology web with a dizzying array of stuff to research, and three so-called affinities – purity, harmony and supremacy – that unlock valuable perks when levelled up.
The basic premise of Beyond Earth – as spelled out in a lovely if implausible opening cinematic – is that our world is in dire economic and environmental straits, and various nations and consortiums have launched starfaring craft to land on another planet in the hopes of reshaping it into a new home for humankind.Īfter building your first colony on this new planet, you’re tasked with growing your settlement into a city, establishing more colonies and cities, harvesting resources, researching technologies, battling or mollifying alien species, establishing diplomatic and commercial ties with other empires and much more.
And I’ve cleared my calendar for the next million days.īeyond Earth is both the follow-up to 2010’s Civilization V and a spiritual successor to 1999’s Alpha Centauri, which took the fundamentals of creator/producer Sid Meier’s beloved Civilization series – explore, expand, exploit, exterminate – and set it on an exotic, hostile new planet. Except this time, the emperors and centurions and barbarians have been replaced by conglomerates, space marines and acid-spitting aliens in Civilization: Beyond Earth.
Which feels like roughly the same amount of time I’ve spent playing the legendary and long-running Civilization series of strategy games. In fact, if you assume Rome is still in the process of being built, it’s taken a little over a million days so far.