- Joined
- Apr 19, 2012
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| System Name | HP Omen 17 |
|---|---|
| Processor | i7 7700HQ |
| Memory | 16GB 2400Mhz DDR4 |
| Video Card(s) | GTX 1060 |
| Storage | Samsung SM961 256GB + HGST 1TB |
| Display(s) | 1080p IPS G-SYNC 75Hz |
| Audio Device(s) | Bang & Olufsen |
| Power Supply | 230W |
| Mouse | Roccat Kone XTD+ |
| Software | Win 10 Pro |
Introduction
Civilization: Beyond Earth is a 4X Turn Based Strategy game developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K. Being the 6th game in the series, it is still using the Civilization engine. Beyond Earth is the first game in the series where the player is set elsewhere other than planet Earth, and begins with typical modern units from prior games and ending with 24th Century style units. Standard games are fairly small scale, and it follows the single unit per tile brought in in recent games.
Storyline
With no particular rigid campaign, and such a number of different factions with respective affinities, the story is anything you want it to be. It will probably be slightly different with each play through, or perhaps in various play throughs you’d like to try out a different perspective of play. The general idea of the game is to be victorious through various means. One possible story outcome is that you devastate every other faction through military or espionage means. You could crush a city with a robot army and long range missiles, or cause a collapse of a civilisation through espionage. This kind of mass success is a few ways of winning. Beyond this, there are also default Victories, usually associated with creating a link, portal or communication with Earth through the creation of one off “Wonders” and becoming essentially the master race of human beings. This master race quest victory can be achieved through each affinity. Purity is the belief that you should shape everything on your new planet like earth, and humans should be the only pure inhabitants. Supremacy is the ideal that humans should better themselves through whatever means necessary, and landscape the surface similarly. This is usually turning your city and army into robotic sentient beings, creating supercomputers and generally teching up with no regard for natural life. The third is Harmony, where respect of the nature of the planet often ends up with you controlling enormous alien units and finding enlightenment with alien species.
Basically, the storyline is, you’re either Nazi’s, Cyborgs, or Hippies. Beat everyone that’s not you with a different coloured stick.
Gameplay
At the beginning of a typical standard match, you’re given a few options on how you begin the game. You begin with choices such as which faction you’re going to play as, who sponsored you, what initial benefits you get, and general options that allow you to choose passive bonuses that remain throughout the game. You’ll also get to choose what kind of map you’re liable to spawn on. From here you choose from a small area of where to settle your colonization ship, and you’ll have a single explorer unit to move around with. The nice thing about the game is that at the beginning of planetary landing, Mr Jeeves I shall call him begins his dialogue. This is your tutorial guide or general source of hints and useful information. The first time around I found him extremely useful and an ideal guide for new players. I was frightfully in over my head having never played Civ games before, and it was a bit much. Jeeves’ hand holding was much appreciated. After my first to games/failures, I set him to no longer bombard me with tutorials and just to advise, let me know things I had otherwise forgotten about, and he remained to be useful. Seasoned Civ players will inevitably find him annoying and immediately turn him off, but I’d like to point out he was useful as a new player.
Straight off the bat, you’re given a basic quest to establish a clinic, a colonist to make a new city, and create trade routes between your city and another you’ve discovered. You’ll also be given an introductory quest in every game to go and find some supplies that have been dropped to the planet for you filled with useful gubbins. There are initially 2 for you explorer (or soldier if you chose that perk) to find. Once you’ve done this quest it will expand into another. Once you’ve done that you then get badgered about Affinities and Virtues and Science, what I think is the general lifeblood of the game. Affinities aren’t something you just put a point in, and can only be attained through science and building certain Affinity XP providing buildings within the city. There are a number of various points on the Science web that will increase your Affinity in a certain area, as well as provide you some buildings and/or units to improve your cities. They may even unlock buildings which will increase your XP within a certain Affinity too. Certain units can only be built when you’ve achieved a certain level of Affinity, for example the CNDR unit is not available at Supremacy Lvl 1, but 4. Most units that Affinities unlock require certain rare materials too. I’ve noted that Supremacy usually requires Firaxite, Purity required Titanium, and Harmony requires Xenomass. At certain levels of Affinity you’ll also be able to upgrade units down different trees. Each tier 1 units (soldiers, rangers, rovers) have 1 universal upgrade, and 2 upgrades based on each affinity, providing specific bonuses, usually related to damage and flanking.
Beyond the Science web and Affinity techs, the virtues tree is a little more general for most players. I’ve found that in each of my games I’ve dabbled in a number of trees slightly, but usually preferring one over the others based on my gameplay. Your Affinity doesn’t really affect your choice of Virtues, only your game plan does. If you’re intending on demolishing all opponents, you’d probably want to spend your virtues into Might. If you want to build up your cities, or engage in mass trade, you’d look into Prosperity or Knowledge. There are four trees, with the final being industrial, that will give you some passive bonuses usually based on existing production. For example, you’ll get an addition 20% science for each health above 0 in your civilization.
All civilizations have Health. The health isn’t specific in each city, but rather map wide, which is different to some of the older games. There are a number of buildings, most which need to be researched that can improve population Health, but an equal number of factors that will reduce the number. Each point in population reduces the overall Health of the civilization, so I recommend spending some science turns or two getting the Pharmalabs etc. There’s also a number of virtues which increase Health based on other factors, one of my favourite being +0.25 Health for each Military unit. The science tree does not note that these buildings provide health however, so I had to do some googling to discover this. However, if I had been sensible and listened to Jeeves, there is a filter option on the science tree which lets you highlight what upgrades provide Health buildings or provide Affinity XP etc. If you’re new, I recommend you listen to him and follow his steps, even if you don’t intend to go through with the act.
There are primary resources to be had, Food, which is necessary to keep the population healthy, production, Science, which decreases the turns it takes to do research, production, which speeds up building things in cities, and energy. If food is in short supply, you get negative Health. If energy is in negative supply, your units will spontaneously bugger off and tell you where to stick it, and if production is low things just build very slowly. If your civilization in general has less than 0 health, then production and science in general gets a reduction in speed, but otherwise you could happily operate in negative Health in a whole game. These resources can be obtained by setting your tiny population to work on the land, you can build tile improvements (many require research) to improve the resources they provide. You need to spend energy to obtain tiles to work on though, and there’s a maximum amount of area a single city can acquire, so you do eventually need to build a new colony to work more tiles to get both primary and rare resources.
New tile advancements include the very irritating and much hated by me, Miasma. Bane of my life during the game at the beginning, and bane at the end when I decimate it from existence and the Harmony Hippies complain at me for ruining the natural balance of life. Pffft, it takes 10 hp from my units per turn, I’m not dealing with that when I’m trying to obliterate your city. The Harmony Hippies can use it to their advantage however, so if you’re into that, you might not want to research the clearing process. Each tile tends to have some special property to it, it might be a good mine for rare resources, it might be of a certain type of land (dessert, marsh etc.), or it might be a good archaeological dig site to work for additional Science or Production gain.
The trading is where most people accelerate in the mid game, and pretty much all anyone does to get resources. It’s a pain though, because you can’t create trade routes with miasma in the way, so you either make big zigzag roads to cities or clear the damn stuff. You can also only have 2 trade vessels in a city as per the Trading Post stats (which can be increased, WITH SCIENCE!). Beware though! I was not aware each tile of road requires 1 energy per turn to maintain, so unless you’ve got reactors and geo-plants in every city, don’t go building a vast network of roads. It is worth noting however you get bonuses for connecting you cities to the capitol via roads. All I could ever trade was production and food between my cities, I haven’t yet figured out how to trade energy and science with myself, if that’s even possible.
There’s also spying tomfoolery, which is available after researching it WITH SCIENCE. You can get really into it, or merely dabble for some extra resources, but it will affect the political landscape if you’re caught doing it, or heaven forbid, kill an enemy spy. You can establish networks, protect your own city, steal energy, science, technology, and even convert enemy units to join your side. You can also get extra spies from enemy (or friendly enemy) cities. If you get the Intrigue level exceptionally high, and get extremely lucky, you can also stage a coup and gain control of the city and turn it into a puppet. Puppet cities are under you faction, but cannot be controlled, the advantage being you only receive half of their negative health. If you take over them entirely, you’ll receive the full health penalty (or gain if they’re health researched) to your civilization. Fail all this however, and that faction might not look on you so highly, and may even wage war if they’re in a position to do so.
Speaking of waging war, if you’re not ready for it, I recommend you don’t completely line the enemy’s border with Rocket vehicles. They give you a warning at first, and then invade. Luckily for me I had the better military, so he begged for peace and offered me a fat chunk of energy which I then proceeded to use to buy infinite land. War is hard, so I learnt from Jeeves. Taking over cities requires at least 4 upgraded units, and good ones. 4 soldiers won’t cut it, and if they have an army, or if their friends have an army, it’s nigh impossible. One thing I have learnt is that I’ve never won a game through war. Every single game I’ve played, I’ve lost because all the AI rushes for the Quest Victory endings. Randomly at about 475 turns in, I lost without being given any reason whatsoever, and after going to my profile, discovered it was always because of Victory Quest achievements by enemy AI. Couldn’t help but feel a little cheated. It does say in game, as I’ve learnt through the diplomacy and Quest tabs what the other factions are working towards. It felt a little cheap that I’d worked hard to build my military for 400 turns, crushed all who opposed my cyborg civilization, only to lose by some kind of timed default victory. Even more irritating when the enemy that’s doing it is on the other side of the map, making an invasion take too many turns, and begging other factions to let me pass through their land otherwise I can’t go without waging more war.
There’s politics, although I think the politics side needs a lot of work. I literally could never broker anything besides Open Borders and Declare war with any faction without filling their pockets with stupendous amounts of energy I didn’t have, or rare resources I desperately needed. It seemed like the politics was there for the AI’s benefit, and I didn’t get anything good out of it unless they approached me with it first. I only successfully managed to get 2 Petroleum from one opponent in all 5 of my games, and that was because I agreed to wage war with the Brazilians. Besides that spot of luck, no diplomatic discussions or deals could be brokered within a fair margin. It seemed like the game forced you to spend over the top amounts of resources for marginal gain, and to me that didn’t seem worth it in the long run at all. The only time it swung in my favour was when a Faction was begging for peace because I decimated their puny army after I harassed their borders and trade.
Despite the upgrades to units, all the soldiers and vehicles are largely the same, with tiny little differences. Combat itself is slightly frustrating and menial, and because there is such little diversity for the first half of the game, it’s whoever isn’t stood in miasma and has more units wins. If you’re on a coastal island map, surrounding a city is very difficult, and even moving units into battle is finicky and often ends up tipping the balance in your enemy’s favour. Often going to war with a faction that’s being a real pain isn’t worth it, despite your self-justifications that that smarmy CEO needs the smile blowing off his face with some SABR laser artillery.
Controls
Nothing particularly fancy here, the “Enter” key is probably the most important key to bear in mind, as you’ll be hitting “Next Turn” as often as an old hound passes wind. The general idea is, if you want to find a menu, click on the UI section that most relates to it. I found this was the case with basically everything. What Jeeves couldn’t tell me, some blind clicking did, and didn’t break too much either. Within 2 short 250 turn matches (I lost horribly) I knew my way around the UI without any problems. One issue I take with the gameplay/controls is that you can’t click on a specific trade unit route without finding it fist (often stuck inside a city block) and clicking on its floating trade icon above it. You also don’t seem to be able to cancel them until after their 10 turn period which seemed partially strange to me.
Video Settings
You’ve got an interesting foray of options on the advanced menu, plenty that makes you think “eye candy galore!”, but when you get in game the Engine just doesn’t have anything graphically amazing. This is probably to hit a larger target audience with basic machines; I imagine it runs on just about anything. I almost expected a bit more pazaz in game for a future based game on a different planet, but I don’t really see any real graphical improvement or fidelity. Good news for those with low to midrange gaming rigs, and not too much of a hindrance for those with high end rigs, as you eventually stop looking at the graphics and tend to be staring more at the numbers late game.
System Performance
CPU: i5 4670 (Stock)
GPU: MSI GTX 970 (Stock)
RAM: 16GB 2133mhz
Storage: WD 1TB 7200RPM
Display: 2560 x 1440
The Engine seems an optimised one, even on maxed out settings I was getting stupendous frame rates and not a lot of use of the processor beyond 2 cores. I imagine this game would run on almost any modern dual core processor with extremely respectable frame rates, and with VSync on I imagine I would have seen much lower GPU usage figures.
1440p
1080p
Conclusion
I have to say, after a week of dabbling in the game, I kept going back. Every time my friends asked me to go and play something else, I found myself saying “Yeah, just a few more turns”. The ease of passing a turn with the “Enter” key becomes disturbingly easy to rely on, and gets you slightly hooked on the game. I couldn’t help but feel slightly bored in my obsession though. While the game is certainly captivating my attention, the whole experience felt slightly hollow in all. Every faction gets the same units for the first half of the game, and with only minor variations end game. By the time you get to the end game, it feels like those units are completely worthless. On an average difficulty, I decided to go straight for a Victory Quest and focus all tech and units on getting more Science and Affinity XP. I managed to win within 350 turns without really playing the game. There’s a fair amount of content to explore, but it all becomes worthless when you and every other enemy is more interested in Victory Quests than any kind of skirmish or alliance battle.
Some of the key features are interesting for sure. I think in general Beyond Earth is a great way for new players to get into the game. It only took 2 matches for me to figure out the general basis for the game, but because the game is so lacking in actual explorable content due to Victory Quest wins, you basically get bored once you’ve learnt to play. It hooks you, gives you the power to win faster than the AI, and then becomes a little lacklustre afterwards. Sure, you won, but you won the cheap way. Combat is so awkward and slow, and the units are so weak and blank from early to mid-game, it makes it impossible to win through conquering as early as the Victory Quests. I feel like the game needs more units, and the win conditions need tweaking for the standard game. Winning through war is slightly easier on the longer game modes, but they take days to complete. I also can’t help but feel that there are literally staple Science nodes that pretty much everyone is going to take. Because you can’t possibly get all tech and Virtues in a single game, those bread and butter nodes tend to limit the scope which you can expand into.
It seems like the game requires the player to have a pre-existing intention on how they are going to play and win. If you start the game with an open mind, and dabble here and there, you lose because of the time limit before the AI hits a win condition. Obviously there’s going to be DLC or expansions, as it’s typical of Civilization games to get that, but this game most definitely needs it. The game could easily be set on Earth in the late 21st to 22nd Century in terms of technological advancements and units. The miasma is a nuisance, as are the aliens, but they do make the Harmony Affinity a relevant affinity. If you’ve never played Civilization before and want to try, Beyond Earth in its current state is an excellent tutorial bridge game, and I feel confident enough to play the others. Those of you who’ve played every other Civilization game and know them well probably won’t find it all that interesting due to the hollowness of the base game. It may get more interesting with expansions, but you will have to wait and see what they bring to the table. It’s certainly an addictive game, and has the potential to be super interesting, but besides the aliens, you don’t really realise you’re not on Earth.
Now if you’ll excuse me, nanotechnology only has 34 more turns to complete, which is just 34 more “Enters” before I win and teach those filthy humans who’s the cyborg boss.
