After the first wave of great colony ships departed Earth, the jubilation of humanity was short-lived. Those left behind fell into a violent struggle over the quickly-diminishing resources on their barren home world. From this tumultuous time, two new factions arose.
These newcomers were grounded not in the idealism of their predecessors, but on opportunism, resilience, ruthlessness, and above all a commitment to their own survival.Now, many decades after their first landfall on a new planet, the proud survivors of the first expeditions beyond Earth look up to see the skies darkened by a new breed of pioneers.Beyond Earth extended the Civilization franchise from its historical setting into the possible futures of science fiction. Rising Tide extends Beyond Earth to new frontiers on the planet’s surface and beneath its seas, adding even more choices and diplomatic options as you continue to build “just one more turn” toward a new vision for the future of humanity.
Highlights. Colonize the Ocean: Build floating settlements and access natural resources hidden beneath the seas of the alien planet. Alien beasts with unique abilities inhabit the water and challenge the player in new ways. The ocean provides a fully replayable map, new gameplay mechanics and strategic possibilities for players to reign supreme on their new world. Dynamic Leader Traits: Players and AI Leaders alike unlock new Traits through gameplay and activate different combinations to respond to the changing world.
Contents.Setting In the aftermath of the first wave of colonies, the people of Earth continue to struggle for existence. New factions have arisen and have launched a new wave of colonies off planet. Gameplay Rising Tide brings new features including expanded water gameplay (which includes floating cities), hybrid affinities, a completely revamped system, and an expanded exploration system.The expansion adds several new dimensions to aquatic gameplay. Unlike land based cities, or even ocean cities in previous iterations of the game, aquatic based cities can move. Movement, rather than culture, is the way aquatic cities expand their borders. Aquatic cities produce less unhealth, produce more energy and culture, and can create naval units much faster than land based cities. However, they are much harder to defend, and are less efficient at producing land and air units as land based cities would.
On top of these differences several wonders and buildings are exclusive to either land or aquatic cities. Workers in RT can build farms on aquatic tiles, and they have an expanded number of aquatic tile types they can improve. When viewing at ocean tiles, water is transparent rather than blue allowing players to see the ocean floor. This graphical enhancement allows for players to see resources under the ocean.Hybrid affinities add another twist to the Beyond Earth experience. In the original game, players are encouraged to earn points toward one of the affinities: Supremacy, Harmony, or Purity. The game favored choosing one affinity to level up while ignoring the other two. In Rising Tide, players are now also rewarded for leveling up multiple affinities at the same time.
Several new units of the game can only be built if the player has points from multiple affinities.While the base Beyond Earth game used a diplomatic system derived straight from Civilization V, diplomacy in Rising Tide is described as 'completely rebuilt from scratch'. Players can earn a new type of currency, diplomatic capital. Factions can earn this capital with certain buildings and wonders, and they can earn it trading with other factions. Each faction can use this capital to buy personality trait bonuses. Diplomatic capital can also be used to build new units and buildings but it can not be used to buy new tiles. The AI has a respect and fear factor. Players who the AI deems high in respect or fear may enter more beneficial relationships.
Players with low fear or respect ratings are more likely to go to war. When entering a war, players now earn a war score. When entering peace negotiations, the higher the war score a player earns, the more concessions a player may get from the losing faction.Exploration has an expanded role in Rising Tide. Players can find three types of artifacts: Old World Relics, Alien Biology Artifacts, and Progenitor Artifacts. When a player receives an artifact they may cash in these artifacts early for quick bonuses, or they can combine different artifacts to unlock different wonders, buildings or unit bonuses.
Players may also discover Planetary Marvels. When a Marvel is discovered a planetwide quest is unlocked, which when completed provides many bonuses. Each biome has a different marvel.On top of these changes to exploration, explorers can perform expeditions on water tiles. Players can now leash Aliens using explorers, allowing players to capture armies of aliens to fight for them.Rising Tide adds two new biomes: frigid, an ice world, and primordial, a geologically active world.
Aliens have different color patterns in each biome and will behave differently depending on what biome they are in. For example, aliens in a frigid biome tend to be fewer in number but stronger while those in a lush biome would be larger in number yet weaker.Four new sponsors have also been added: Chungsu, Al Falah, the North Sea Alliance, and INTEGR. Chungsu comes from the. This faction excels at and can build its founding city on water tiles. Al Falah comes from.
Unlike the rest of the colonists, Al Falah colonists lived in rather than being frozen on. The colonists from this faction have never seen Earth, and its culture has evolved as such.
This faction gets bonuses in City development. The North Sea Alliance comes from the and the. This faction gets bonuses in water tiles, and can build its founding city on water tiles. INTEGR comes from. It gains bonuses in the new diplomacy system. The Beyond Earth spinoff game, does not include the new sponsors introduced in Rising Tide.Development The development of Rising Tide was announced on May 18, 2015. The game was released on October 9, 2015.
Several new features have been added post launch. A spoils of war system has been added to allow victors in war to pick what they want from the defeated foes.
A black market has been added to allow players to buy or sell resources for diplomatic capital. The AI is much more aggressive toward players close to the completion of wonders or to victory.
Reception gave it an 80.56% rating while rated it 81/100.ReceptionAggregate scoresAggregatorScore80.56%81/100Review scoresPublicationScore9/107.1/1073/100. Tack, Daniel (May 18, 2015). Retrieved May 18, 2015. Civilization Beyond Earth- Rising Tide.
Firaxis Games. Retrieved 21 October 2015. ^ McCormick, Rich (16 October 2015).
Retrieved 21 October 2015. Looney, Russ. The GameAgent Blog. Retrieved 12 July 2016. Meer, Alec (30 October 2015). Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
Retrieved 12 July 2016. Meer, Alec. Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 12 July 2016. Savage, Phil (18 May 2015).
Retrieved 12 July 2016. Retrieved 12 July 2016. Retrieved October 18, 2015. Retrieved October 18, 2015.
Retrieved July 11, 2016. Retrieved July 11, 2016. Retrieved July 11, 2016.External links.
Remember this game? You know, that one Civ game that no-one seems to remember ever existed, even though it had a phenomenal trailer, pleasing aesthetics, a great soundtrack(in my opinion) and a promising cast of leaders and nations, with many people likening it to Alpha Centauri(which I personally have never played, though from the sounds of things, it was a pretty good game.)I have been playing it recently with the Rising Tide expansion, since I got it in a Humble Bundle and I have come to some conclusions. Balance is all over the goddamn place. I always find myself steam-rolling the AI, just because I decided to do nothing but amass gold and purchase an army with it, with no drawbacks to this strategy.
If Firaxis had spent more time managing the nightmarish amount of buildings they added to this game, they would have had, perhaps not good gameplay per say, but at least have made it seem more understandable and interesting. The Tech web is.quite simply cancerous. I never have any idea what technologies I should choose, because of how overwhelming it is, and I tend to find myself without a basic unit for the entirety of the game(I once spent right up until the end game without fighter planes.). The diplomacy system with Rising Tide is intriguing, even if experimental and lackluster. It provides an interesting concept that perhaps could have been implemented into a future Civ game and expanded upon.
Trading powerful bonuses for 'political capital' is a system I am a big fan of, and makes the game feel like a lot more of a power-struggle. Problem is, AI gets very angry at every little thing you do, or nonsensically ecstatic with you just for having a good production output.
This could be better, I must say. Late-game is awful. It is a pure slog to pull through, and could have been so much better. This is the point in the game were 3/4 of all the civilisations are conquered by me, yet the last few are on aquatic cities on the other side of the world, and I have no navy. There are certain units, like Armour units which can upgrade to levitate on water and fight as normal, but they are useless against modestly powerful ships. The AI is below average.
Some of their actions make sense, such as their surprisingly intelligent military manoeuvres; understanding how unit synergy works, making me attack their units with defensive bonuses, hiding artillery at the back of their lines etc. They even seem to have a vague understanding of unit upgrades(looking at you, Civilisation VI) and how the affinity system works. This would be effective had the AI understood how the Tech Web works, which is where it all collapses. On Medium difficulty, the AI falls behind and stops growing at about the 300 score mark, no matter what sponsor they are playing as.
I don't know why this is, but my theory is because of the Tech Web and how it works, the AI has difficulty with their prioritisation, and they start getting techs all over the place which they don't really need, like a tech that only really benefits aquatic cities, even though they are on land. They are very keen on building defensive buildings, but they neglect their civil buildings in the process. I think that the AI is very close to being a challenging opponent, it's just that, unfortunately, they are hampered by the game's own design. I believe that that Tech Web was hands-down game-breakingThose are the few things I noticed about 30 hours game time.So.
Do you think that Beyond Earth could have been a decent, if not great game?Do you think that Firaxis should have abandoned it?These are the questions I would like answered.Discuss. Could Beyond Earth have been a decent game? Sure- if it had been an expansion-pack sequel to Civ 4 (or possibly 6; I haven't played that).
But it wasn't. It was an expansion-pack sequel (hereafter EPS) to Civ 5, made without fixing any of the massive problems underlying Civ 5.
4 was a departure for the series; it made some big changes and clearly wasn't afraid to wake waves. More than once, reading through the manual, I winced at some of the implications of what I'd read, afraid that the relatively lackluster 3 had inspired some very stupid alterations- and I was wrong. Boy howdy, was I wrong.
Codex Mod
5 made even bigger changes, altering core gameplay elements that had been in place since the dawn of the series. Going in, I was concerned, but confident. I quickly became bemused and baffled; the change from squares to hexes (which doesn't actually affect much, since the series has never had spherical maps) is the one and only change that wasn't for the worse. Even the seemingly-harmless 'have the leader splash text spoken in the leader's language' idea backfired when they used Arabic for both the Persians (which almost makes sense- or would, if Washington spoke French) and the Egyptians (which is a massive extended middle finger to the Copts).
I mean, they found someone- they found a voice actor- who spoke Nahuatl, but Avestan was just too much to ask?You didn't ask about Civ 5, I know; you asked about Beyond Earth. But Beyond Earth was to Civ 5 what Alpha Centauri was to Civ 2- an EPS.
The difference was that Civ 2 was basically just a refinement of the original, and Alpha Centauri expanded on that with depth, character, story, a fascinating tech tree based on projected real-world science coupled with absolutely horrifying real-world implications, and a sizable increase in in-game abilities (don't have a navy to reach your enemy on another continent? Just send out your formers and build a land bridge! Lost your last land-based city and forced back to your aquatic holdings? Pump up your industry to cause global warming, then melt the ice caps and flood the world! Can't reach the enemy production city that's swarming with aircraft that keep destroying your formers and their escorts?
Wipe them all out with quantum laser helicopters launched from your submersible aircraft carriers!). Alpha Centauri was a 'pretty good game' in the same sense that the surface of the sun is 'hot'.Beyond Earth, on the other hand, took ideas that didn't work. Didn't actually do much to change them. They took a combat engine that didn't work, and was only allowed in because the AI went from being 'easy to exploit and defeat' in the earlier games to 'cataclysmically retarded', so it didn't matter.
Beyond Earth Rising Tide Sponsors
They did bring in the quest events from Beyond the Sword, and expanded on them- a little. They fired more consistently, but were always the same, and the rewards were laughably unbalanced. The AI nations still reliably behaved like lunatics, so there was no real point in even trying to work with them.
The Wonder-equivalents (I don't remember what they're called) don't do anything interesting, aren't worth the cost, and have lousy movies. The exploits were still exploitable, the combat still didn't work, and the 'builder' part of empire-building still doesn't work when you keep a running cost to actually have buildings. What Beyond Earth deserves is to be taken out and shot.And for pity's sake, the tech tree sucks. Say it with me. It is not 'cancerous'. 'Cancerous' describes several medical conditions that cripple and kill people in horrible ways.
Watch someone you care about die from cancer and you would happily play through 'Master of Spore-ion 3: Big Rigs Over-The-One-Percent Racing' to get them back- or even just to let them go quicker and more peacefully. Save the hyperbolic bullshit for things that deserve it.
It actually has a few interesting stuff going for it, but overall, no it's not worth it.The most interesting aspect is the late game unit are super interesting, especially the hybrid unit, they all have some special function, like stealth or AoE damage and things like that. It's stuff you'll never get in Civ so it's fun to play with them. Unfortunately they come in really late and the AI is quite simply too trash to make it interesting, I'm used to civ AI being bad, but beyond earth take it to ridiculous level.The artifact system is also pretty cool, it give you incentive to explore and keep producing scout ASAP, so it's place some pressure on you not to slack off with your build order. Some of the stuff you can make with it is incredibly strong.Rising tide actually introduced a huge problem, with aquatic city you never actually run out of place to build city, so there's never much pressure to attack each others and you'll quite often find yourself in a situation where you literally have no border with another faction.
It's kinda weird cause it feel like your just playing alone and just occasionally have a war declared on you, but the AI is just so bad at them, they'll usually declare war before they moved there unit to you, so they'll spend 3-4 turn getting to you and they'll pick fight the alien on the way there so they show weaken and over a few turn.The tech tree was a dumb idea, by having it sprawling there wasn't a real feeling of progression you just get random stuff here and there. Instead progression is supposed to come from the alignment system, but it's terrible, if you get lucky with the discovery you can rocket pass everybody else and have upgraded unit while everyone is using old unit. Because there's only three tier upgrading a unit is like going from classical to renaissance, it can completely shift the balance of power in a war. Especially since all unit upgrade as soon as you pass the threshold, so you can double or triple your army power in a single turn for no cost. Beyond Earth was a failed experiment, and should have been learned from.
Instead, they doubled down on taking a great thing (Civ games up to V) and completely ruined it with Civ VI. From the childish, distracting art style, to the broken AI, to the lack of basic features such as road building, they have completely ruined the Civ franchise, possibly irreparably. BE should be relegated to the history books, not revisited, and if they don't seriously fix the damage they did to the franchise with the shitpile that is Civ VI, then Civ V will be the last Civ game I ever buy. And for pity's sake, the tech tree sucks. Say it with me. It is not 'cancerous'.
'Cancerous' describes several medical conditions that cripple and kill people in horrible ways. Watch someone you care about die from cancer and you would happily play through 'Master of Spore-ion 3: Big Rigs Over-The-One-Percent Racing' to get them back- or even just to let them go quicker and more peacefully. Save the hyperbolic bullshit for things that deserve it.As someone who has watched loved ones (and strangers) die from cancer, I think cancerous is an apt word for describing the effect Borty feels the tech web had on BE. The term implies an aberrant mutation that festers and slowly destroys the functional organs around it, which is a valid way to watch the tech web.
I wouldn't be quite that harsh in my criticism of it, but the tech web is clearly at the core of many of BE's shortcomings. The idea of a web of techs where you work your way towards the better techs at the edges can allow for a lot of tailoring your civ, but the poor execution and bad UI in BE means that the tech web feels more like a hindrance then a cool system. You can, as Borty notes, go through an entire playthrough and not have vital units or buildings, because you failed to spot the tech that gave them or because it was on the wrong edge compared to what you were prioritizing.The AI seems unable to grasp the tech web and many of the BE patches were explicitly aimed at getting rid of the Tech Web abuse that allowed people to unlock late game units around turn 100, effectively breaking all notions of balance. Had it been more focused and offered some kind of pathing it might have been salvaged. Even in its' current iteration it could have been decent for the player, at least, had the UI not been atrociously bad, which meant that you had to memorize what each tech unlocked or be forced to spend way too much time searching the tech web for what you wanted to research.As much as I want to like the tech web, I can't. However, I still think that BE's biggest failing was that it wanted to be different and alien, yet didn't dare take the step fully.
BE wants to have a mood of exploration, wonder and mystery, yet as soon as you realize the basic systems are all Civ 5 it all evaporates. BE could have been so much better had more resources been poured into making Beyond Earth seem less like Re-skinned Earth and with mechanics that actually reinforced this notion.
As it was, it was not a good Civ game, nor was it a very good sci-fi game. Alpha Centauri prospered because it dared to be Not-Civ, BE faltered because it tried to be Civ IN SPACE!
From a 'bottom-up' perspective, as Gethsemani said, the game is just poorly designed.From a 'top-down' perspective, the game is completely soulless. Nothing about the game stays with you; the factions are interchangeable, with no defining personality worth speaking of; none of the writing is memorable, much less quotable; the f.ing wonders are a massive step down from Alpha Centauri, with the replaced with a read aloud by someone freebasing sleeping pills; the Affinities just feel like you're ticking off boxes on a checklist.It's sad that Alpha Centauri still manages to be a more memorable game, despite all the advantages in tech, experience and money that CivBE had over it. I actually quite liked the game.
It's far from perfect but I've got got around 120 hours of generally enjoyable gameplay out of it.I think the game universe was well thought out and quite original. I liked how they considered how scientific developments in the future may influence political ideology. It made warfare more interesting mid to late game. You weren't just fighting war over territory, you were fighting for a political cause and your own civilisations way of life. My grievances with the vanilla game was that the 'health' system was kind of broken and it forced me to research technologies focusing around genetics to keep my population healthy. The Rising Tide update fixed that to an extent and added some more factions that were badly needed and also increased the number of resources in game.
I'm not a fan of the new diplomacy system they forced on you- it doesn't really add anything interesting to the game. I've personally never really had any problems with the tech-tree though- but I would complain about the shallow 'virtues' tree and the lack of impact wonders seem to have on the game.The game isn't as good as the other Civ games though I can see that, which is why perhaps the game gets a lot of bad press. I actually quite liked the game. It's far from perfect but I've got got around 120 hours of generally enjoyable gameplay out of it.I think the game universe was well thought out and quite original. I liked how they considered how scientific developments in the future may influence political ideology. It made warfare more interesting mid to late game.
You weren't just fighting war over territory, you were fighting for a political cause and your own civilisations way of life. My grievances with the vanilla game was that the 'health' system was kind of broken and it forced me to research technologies focusing around genetics to keep my population healthy. The Rising Tide update fixed that to an extent and added some more factions that were badly needed and also increased the number of resources in game. I'm not a fan of the new diplomacy system they forced on you- it doesn't really add anything interesting to the game. I've personally never really had any problems with the tech-tree though- but I would complain about the shallow 'virtues' tree and the lack of impact wonders seem to have on the game.The game isn't as good as the other Civ games though I can see that, which is why perhaps the game gets a lot of bad press.There's a mod on Steam, Echoes of Earth (the author is called Machiavelli) it fixes alot of the balancing problems. I think you need Rising Tide to play it though, but there might be a version for the vanilla game. There's a mod on Steam, Echoes of Earth (the author is called Machiavelli) it fixes alot of the balancing problems.
I think you need Rising Tide to play it though, but there might be a version for the vanilla game.Thanks for the tip. It's a game that certainly benefits from mod support. Another good one I like is the 'social engineering' mod that does away with the virtues tree and instead gives you more detailed way of shaping your civilisation, so you can role-play it as anything from, say, a socialist state to corporate autocracy to a fascist police state or boring old liberal democracy. There's a mod on Steam, Echoes of Earth (the author is called Machiavelli) it fixes alot of the balancing problems. I think you need Rising Tide to play it though, but there might be a version for the vanilla game.Thanks for the tip.
It's a game that certainly benefits from mod support. Another good one I like is the 'social engineering' mod that does away with the virtues tree and instead gives you more detailed way of shaping your civilisation, so you can role-play it as anything from, say, a socialist state to corporate autocracy to a fascist police state or boring old liberal democracy.Played it before, wasn't really a fan, and I can't really use it anyway because I tend to have overhaul mods on which conflict with the social tree. I like Echoes of Earth, mostly because it feels challenging regardless of the AI's shortcomings.
I have yet to get out of 0 gold per turn, despite constantly growing my economy, because the more I grow my economy, the more buildings I end up making, and it all goes downhill from there. I really have no restraint when it comes to Civ.
Let's Play Beyond Earth: Rising Tide! In this new DLC we are playing as the North Sea Alliance sponsor, which gets a bonus when founding aquatic cities. I did not read up on all the different features that Rising Tide adds to Civilization Beyond Earth's gameplay, so this series will be me finding out about them. Enjoy!Series Playlist:Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/iinus117 (not a typo)In this series I will be playing Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth: Rising Tide, which is a stupidly long name for a video game. In the first game I will be playing as the North Sea Alliance, and we shall focus on exploring the worlds oceans and Rising Tide's new mechanics.New sponsors:Al FalahINTEGRNorth Sea AllianceChungsuOther Playlists:Civilization Wei Playlist:Civilization Finland Playlist:Fallout 3 with Mods Playlist:Arkham Knight Playlist:Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth: Rising Tide is the first expansion pack set to be released for Civilization: Beyond Earth on October 9th, 2015.
In addition to new factions, biomes and units, the major new features in this expansion include a brand new diplomacy system, expanded aquatic gameplay, expanded exploration options, and hybrid affinities.Diplomacy has been rebuilt 'from scratch' in Rising Tide. Players can trade for traits that can improve how a civilization functions. A new diplomatic capital system has been added to facilitate diplomacy. Establishing deals with the AI will be much more transparent. Players will know where they stand with other civilizations because of the new fear and respect system found in the game. Finally, the progress of wars are now tallied with a new war score system.In addition to a slew of new naval units such as the submarine, Rising Tide players can build floating cities that can move around the map. Previously land based resources such as Firaxite can be found in the water.
Explorers can also now find resource pods and conduct expeditions in the ocean.Explorers have much more to do in Rising Tide. Players can now find artifacts that give large bonuses to players.
Combining artifacts can lead to buildings and wonders that would not have been available any other way.Finding marvels has can lead to planet wide quests.Harmony explorers also can leash aliens, allowing them to build armies of Aliens to fight for a civilization.Earning different affinity points in Rising Tide has a synergistic effect. Units can now be built that require multiple affinity points. Standard units can also be upgraded to new hybrid forms.
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