I always felt this game was underappreciated. Sure, it doesn't hit the same nerve as an alt history Earth, but it was well designed and the ideologies were fun.
Would be nice if they made another one with more paths than the 3. Like one involving other alien civilizations, and even exploring and settling any nearby moons. Besides the 3, adding two others would be more varied. Like one focused on living peacefully with other alien civilizations, not the genetic bug one. And the other could be focused on a science fiction supernatural theme while finding ancient alien relics of long gone alien civilizations. It would be like techno magic.
The systems and general design are great. It just lacks a lot of polish. It just feels kind of unfinished to play, control, interface and graphics wise.
@@jefferystafford9657 well the mayans fighting babylon with stealth bombers and nuclear missiles on the icy wastes of the north pole is pretty alt history and it is one of the greatest charmings of civ games
It was abandoned because it never became popular, and the lack of popularity was because of two things. Veteran fans of Alpha Centauri were disappointed that it wasn't Alpha Centauri, and the base game was *terrible*. It's not a good thing when your game needs a DLC to actually become playable.
@@Krishnath.Dragon as an avid paradox game player, this is unbelievably true. When you look at it today, base game EU4, Victoria 2, etc fucking STINK, but when they came out they were absolutely incredible.
@Krishnath.Dragon To be fair, Civilization games follow a trend of the base game being worse than the previous title in its entirety. Civ game need an expansion or two to come into their own.
If your like me ( i dont do this anymore) and bought it day one without waiting for reviews it was a decent mod of civ5 that you paid 60 bucks for.... so that soured quickly
it also just doesn't have the same intuitive appeal that civ has. it's just much harder to wrap my head around what's happening in the game, since it's all scifi non-sense, compared to civ, which is rooted in actual history. building a granary to boost my city's food output is much more intuitive than whatever's happening in this game.
@@henryglennon3864 I remember some of the promotional material saying 'don't worry, it won't just be Alpha Centauri 2.0'. As if that would be a bad thing
Beyond earth was very enjoyable and had some very smart design choices. Having a seperate layer for orbital units was very cool and allowed for some interesting asymetric interations. The affinity system and how that shaped your faction over the long run with how it would tweak buildings, upgrade and evolve units is fantastic and is why I found the game so replayable.
Considering upcoming civ 7 taking huge inspiration from humankind and making you "switch cultures" through the ages, I hope/wished, the civ dev team took more inspiration from BEs affinity system than from humankinds stupid "rush for the op culture" style.
@@ethribin4188 I don't find it stupid, OP rushing actually hurts you in the long run. You don't have the districts others have, you don't have the ecomony your science tanks and you lack units. I tried the rushing strats and it burned me hard in several games. i'd say mix the Civ picking WITH affinity systems of Beyond Earth and you have quite a nice customiser for your situation. The traditional OP Humankind picks only work with flat rivers, or coastal and never ever match well with high production mountains. Civ6 focuses too much on specalisation rather than adapting to the terrian and political situation.
Beyond Earth wasn't bad, per se, but it had a bunch of things working against it; it was massively overpriced for what was basically a Civ V mod, and what an enormous number of people were looking for was "Alpha Centauri, but updated to reflect twenty years of advancement in gameplay, graphics, and UI development" and it wasn't at all that. ACen is a very hard act to follow, granted, but still.
Artists are actually a really, really good loadout because they get you to your first virtue faster than you would otherwise, which can mean getting a free worker really quickly (which in turn can get you the equivalent of that +2 production in terrain improvements) and also a free colony pod. As an aside, if you build your first expansion city in the water, you get a free patrol boat, which can run around the ocean and grab a huge number of supply pods, which can be hugely valuable early game.
Beyond Earth remains one of my favorite civ games. The tech web allows you to actually have some diversity from game to game, and stuff like ocean cities means that you don't get giant dead zones in the map like in earthbound civ. Add to that how the aliens can be either exterminated or befriended, and the various RP choices from the mini quests that allow you to change up your civ and buildings a bit each game, and you have a far more dynamic experience than most civ offers.
Also BE's espionage is actually viable to focus on. Like, if you go one of the espionage focused factions you can get a ton out of it, from units to tech to eco, within a reasonable timeframe.
I'm waiting for a stand alone Sid Meir game focused on civilization building in a fantasy world with eras. Like that Fantastic Worlds addition to Civilization 2 Gold back in the 90s.
@duphasdan Age of Wonders is very loosely similar. More focused on combat than civilisation growing, I would say. But close. There are a few 4x games that could match that description to a degree, but unfortunately, it is not a high degree.
@@Khaim.m Very few games have come close to matching the philosophical type of sci fi of the lore in AC, the Deus Ex series is the only one I can think of that comes close. And I don't know of any other sci fi worlds that describe an entire tech tree that takes us from the present to the far future. I recently replayed AC, and other than the low resolution being a pain to look at, it holds up so well.
@@iyziejane By the main writer of SMAC's own admission, it's unlikely to happen because nowadays no Firaxis project is going to be willing to just hand the keys for an entire game's writing carte blanche to a daydreaming philosophy student and let him just pontificate openly the "juicy bits" of another world. For better or worse, the amount of effort required to produce a modern Firaxis game demands more oversight , a broader target scope, and less _risk._ So they're going to just inherently come out less _weird_ than SMAC or the Sid Meier's Not Civilization games. You can find games that can match AC's philosophical-lore bent, but they're all going to come from smaller developers nowadays, just as Firaxis was a smaller developer when SMAC was made. Like the song says, that's just the way it is.
@@InchonDM I agree with you about the modern Firaxis, and my general observation is that they are a very frugal company that maximizes profits by aiming for very low costs, even when they know the game will sell millions. Part of what makes SMAC unique is the type of lore combined with the overview of civilization (i.e. not just an individual character story). I guess Rimworld captures some of that. If you have any other indie recommendations I'll ceheck them out, thanks. Planetfall mod for Civ 4 is the closest thing I know of to AC in a more modern engine (with import of the original sound files).
@@iyziejane At the risk of bringing modern real-life politics into this discussion, I doubt that modern writers would give leaders like Morgan of Miriam a fair shake, for an example. The intricacies of SMAC would likely be replaced with "capitalism bad" and "religion bad." SMAC has stuff like that quote featuring "Recon Rover Rick" but that's kind of the point - people remember random throwaway character mentioned in a single text sample, I doubt it was because it validated the anti-capitalist stance that players had. Another example is this Miriam quote: "Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?" While you could reasonably argue it's just rambling to deflect from a criticism of religion, TV Tropes has the audacity to have it hyperlink to "DoubleThink" which is a term from 1984 (and a much more key theme than the mass surveillance, party can effectively dictate reality.) Best explanation could actually be derived with the help of Silmarillion (Tolkien was a devout Catholic and he explicitly evoked it in his writing, also nothing is a direct quote of any sort, please no other "evil can't create" - situation:) You could argue that creating Melkor was an evil act, since he inflicted so much evil on people of Middle-Earth and Sauron was his disciple. But the whole point (to my understanding) was that when Eru Iluvatar created the Ainur, he created entities with free will, not automatons or puppets. When Melkor disrupted the Song of Creation, Eru probably could've "restarted" or "rewinded" but that too would arguably ruin the whole point of it. World would be Eru's plaything where nothing that displeases him can happen.
I love Beyond Earth. Absolutely love it. Still play it a lot, and I'm really glad to see someone else playing it too. The biggest problem, I think, is that so much of the lore is hidden away in the Civilopedia, so to get the depth of it, you have to read rather than really see it in-game, which does rob it of character.
loved it back in its day for a while. it did some interesting mechanics that civ 6 could have adopted for building up trade routes and city states. I really liked the tech tree
My college gave us a week grace period after finals week for students to move out. Me and my friends spent that entire week playing Beyond Earth. Such fond memories.
@Alvaro89Rus I loved the fact aerial Units came early and you can Settle off the Coast. Made it real consistent to have 3 Cities around the Capital that were evenly spaced from each other. All in all, the game was about as good as Civ5, but with a different enough flavor to justify being it's own game. I don't play as much, though, because I've got a strategy perfected on there. Civ5 and Civ6 I'm more harassed by enemies. In BE, the fence that repels aliens deals with BE's version of Barbarians, and the other Civs aren't bad until I start up the signal beacon for the BE equivalent of a Science win (I prefer to turtle up and focus on a passive victory, fighting over Cities, Culture, City-States, or Religion seems to much effort to bother, but I liked CivRev for the Gold Victory).
@@jeremybrummel3254 Well I actually remember how first couple games it felt really great, but then it worn off really fast. It didn't have much replaybility which is one good for 4x game. I say Age of Wonders Planetfall latter became Beyond Earth 2.0., as if latter was demo for former.))
Oh my God I never even knew you could replenish your explorers exploration modules. I would always just send them off into the wilderness to get eaten by aliens when they ran out
The research tree makes so much more sense than the linear system in civ. Like, every civilization would concentrate their efforts on a specific branch and become very distinct from one another. It was so motivating to either min max or just enjoy it for rp reasons. So much potential. Imagine it had been implemented into the main game.
"I've always been a 'let's get along kinda guy" Literally last video series he's dominating the world out of spite (the Canadians didn't laugh at his joke)
The Music from the base game and rising tide is amazing. Great listen on its own. Games solid and some mods that make it more fleshed out or alpha centauri like are great too.
If there's one thing this game had over Civ V in spades for me, it was the soundtrack. While the main menu themes and civ specific themes of Civ V were awesome, the music I'd spend most of my in-game time listening to was the bland and forgettable ambient tracks. BE's soundtrack being consistently better overall, and actually being able to hear the best of it frequently, did wonders to take the edge off the game's weaker elements. "The Future of Mankind" in particular is simply musical overkill and I'd have it no other way.
As a starting choice tectonic scanner can be very overpowered due to titanium. The resource itself isn't that important, but it is upgraded with a mine that you can build immediately, and the mine gives 5 production. +5 production in your capital the moment you get a worker is insanely strong and sets you up so well. Sadly you aren't guaranteed titanium in your capital, but it still lets you build your second city in a great location and get it going super fast. Also, if you are playing a water start civ, the free soldier gives a patrol boat. It moves a gazillion tiles per turn and has a high vision range, allowing you to scour the entire ocean for resource pods before the other civs even make planetfall. You can get an early worker though virtues anyway.
The problem i had was that the flavor was presented the exact same as it is in a normal civ game, but a normal civ game has the richness of all of human history to draw upon, and Beyond Earth has a few blurbs here and there with maybe a few write ups hidden in a compendium somewhere nearly inaccessible. Therefore Civ 5 flavor winds up being a gateway into a deep ocean of lore and knowledge and civ beyond earth winds up being a gateway into a puddle.
Just picked up the DLC for $8 as part of of the autumn sale. Thanks for sharing how much fun Beyond Earth can be. I bought the base game at launch for full price and probably only played 2 play throughs.
Omg yes! I confess I didn't really enjoy Beyond Earth on release - but the first DLC fixed most of my issues with it, but I could never convince any of my friends to try again.
It's fun to think about how this is basically the next chapter in a scientific victory. Every time I do a science game it makes me want to play Beyond Earth again.
My favorite part of Beyond Earth is all of the cool sci fi fiction written in into the Civilopedia. Makes it much more immersive when you can learn the practical purposes of an alien bugfarm or a sympathetic brain wave transmitter or whatever
I genuinely forgot about this game, and I love that you started playing this again. I plan on watching every single one of these including any other one you play! beyond earth was such a cool concept, I just think that it was half-baked in some case, but that's just me
Also I forgot how much this game must have influenced Triumph when they made Age of Wonders: Planetfall. Those starting perks looking awfully familiar. :>
If you're keen on Beyond Earth vibes in a more recent game, check out ZEPHON. It's a post-apocalyptic 4X with three affinities (which you can mix, albeit with added costs): Human (conventional miltech hoo rah), Cyber (shiny high tech robots and maybe also crimes against the fabric of reality) and Voice (psychic meat cultists that build everything from the flesh of their faithful). Some have called the game 'Civilization if it was about Skynet vs Cthulhu'. :P
I once played a game of civ 5 space victory, then played a game of beyond earth and then started a stellaris game. Ah back when I had so much damn time
Thanks for reminding me of this classic, one of my Old Faves - just in time to have something different to play while waiting for Civ VII. Re-installing C:BE as I write.
I always liked the core systems of BE, especially once they added mechanics like moving floating cities. The biggest piece in need of improvement, imo, was the specific position of things in the tech web. Those could have used more playtesting and iteration, as they felt a bit rushed and undercooked. The web-like tech design was interesting, much harder to balance properly, but not unsalvageable.
I really enjoyed it. The fact you could truly play the same civ and make different choices and actually feel completely different depending on what was available felt great. I loved the Yellow and Green techs and units more than the purple. But I always seemed to get luckier with those resources. I would love another game in this style especially if you could do more with space and maybe multiple planets.
I am very glad to see some people looking back fondly on Civ BE, as I do. It had huge shoes to fill and did the best it could ‐ while still ending up a good, solid game.
Dude thanks for this video. Civ: BE is my second favorite Civ game after Civ5. It's awesome to see it get a little love. Neat to see how Civ7 is copying the tech tree approach a little, with the main techs and supplemental techs.
I was so hiiiigh when I saw the trailer. And the thing with weed is it numbs the emotions, but I shed a tear. It was beautiful, dramatic, hopeful, and sad all the same time
This game was sooo much fun growing up! I played like over 3k hours of Civ5 and this game hit a sci-fi worldbuilding itch that I just loved. I loved how each of the Affinities played differently and required different resources for their buildings, like going with Purity you would need Floatstone versus going Harmony you need Biomass or whichever one its called
I was in two years of volunteer work when this game was slated to come out. So all i remember is the crazy reveal trailer. It’s fascinating seeing a deep look into this game
I tried BE after years of civ 6 and couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. Maybe just me but it felt like there was a WAY higher barrier to entry. Need to go back and give it another shot.
It's in my opinion a perfectly competent sci-fi Civ. However, it went against the legend of Alpha Centauri. And that game was all that BE is and had a completely enthralling character and spirit, whereas BE felt kind of generic. BE feels really good to play, but only mid at best to *get into*.
I actually played BE before V, so it has a special place in my heart. It needed some touching up to smooth out some issues and I hate that we didn't get a second DLC, but I still come back to it periodically.
Really looking forward to more videos on this from you. It's a shame the game was abandoned so early on, it could have been so much more. That being said.. I'd love to see you play Alpha Centauri on the channel! It's such a unique and wonderful thing.
If you like beyond earth you have to play the inspiration Alpha Centauri. It has a story line and is much more hardcore sci-fi. Plus all the different leaders are fully voiced.
You have to know going in that the UI would now be considered terrible though. It was an amazing game, but the lack of 20 years of QOL improvements makes it a hard play now for me
@@iambicpentakill971 With Thinker and PRACX mods a lot of the annoying things from the UI are fixed. The UI feels aged but it is by no means bad and the game remains the best Civ game to this day, IMO.
A mod I really like is Affinities as Yields. What it does is instead of getting Affinities just from researching tech and events, sometimes locking affinity techs behind other affinity techs, instead affinity is generated by buildings and resources on map. So instead of researching something and getting +50 Supremacy, you build a Colonial Power Grid and now all your generators generate +1 Affinity per turn.
it was always good. i loved the quests, and the choices that would let you go down different tech and culture paths. my stepdad loves it, but cant ever get it to work on steam, can you enlighten us as to how to get it up and running?
BE was my most hyped for game in 2014. I was 17 and addicted to my new smartphone and by extension, the variety of games I could experience through Lets Plays. A major one was Civilization 5. I followed Pete Murray for all the news and was more disappointed than anyone when all the Civ lets players did two games and went back to 5. As for the game, I have two major complaints. No strategic view, and no high colour contrast. The first is because my PC couldn't run 5 outside of strategic mode. The second is because I'm colourblind. I wouldn't mind 2 if there was strategic mode. I really hope they try and overhaul BE with Civ 6 mechanics one day. It would work so much better, I think.
interger is my fav faction because of how insane their diplomatic capital discounts can get. if you accept every deal the AI throws at you you'll have a high enough income that you can settle and heavily develop a city with just a few turns of stockpiling
What I always like is the dual trade routes. The RPS style Tech net, the underlying specialization of "policy cards" with points. The Auto harvest for districts, the hydro districts, and the ability to move cities was great. I Always wanted these to be late game techs in OG CIV.
For an oft forgotten spin-off, Beyond Earth's design has had a surprising amount of influence on mainline Civ. From little details like streamlining land and naval civilian units into embarkable land units, certain music tracks becoming more grandiose as the game goes on, barbarian interactions other than total extermination, and certain tile-based wonders as a precursor to the district mechanic... To major systems like leader agendas and diplomatic currency, major mechanics of Civ VI and VII, debuted and fleshed out in Beyond Earth.
I always liked playing domination only games, covering whole continents in terrascapes, and fighting large scifi-wars. Basically playing as Gladius before that one came out.
Oh my god THANK you, I try to boot this game up about once per year but it hasn't actually successfully launched in a long while. People call the leaders boring relating them to Alpha Centauri but like... yes. They are fairly blank slates that, over the course of the game, develop their policies and preferences. You can prefer AC's leaders pretty reasonably but to completely discredit this game is a bit much. And if you're the type of person who thinks games of Civ start to feel a bit samey this game is great with its quest system slowly shaping what your buildings can do. Definitely not a perfect game but a hell of a lot of fun
It's usually a direct x issue and on steam the integrity constantly breaks. There's options on steam to restore it. Even after a fresh install it'll often be wrong
@@inditsnotdenon922 Appreciate your input and I've returned with both good news and bad news in one: cannot recreate bug. Game is working and it's good to be back. May the potato bless you as he has blessed my computer
Oh, I loved it. Almost immediate access to air defense, and most of all, being able to settle in water. I like to have satellite Cities evenly spaced out around my Capital.
Beyond Earth was really fun. It always seemed like a lot of the hate for it was just because it wasn't Alpha Centauri 2 and a lot of people never really gave it a look as its own thing.
Great start setup, subpar start and priorities. Costal scanner is a must for those early game goodies. Then pushing navy for even more goodies. Heavy-handed nostalgia hit, mourning the loss of the unreleased potential possible.
I like civ games but it always gets more and more tedious as you progress. Moving a lot of military units is also annoying. How do you deal with the late game?
Playing Al Falah for the meme build of an Aquatic city with a Benthic Augur is fun. But I honestly enjoy Civ 6's districts and Wonders that take up whole hexes so much I can't go back. SMAC on the other hand, that's just art.
HOLY SHIT I WAS LOOKING FOR A PLAYTHROUGH OF YOU PLAYING BEYOND EARTH. ITS MY FAV CIV GAME. If you decide to do another playthrough of this game, use the codex mod. it’s such a fire way to play the game.
In a lot of ways Beyond Earth is my favorite Civ game. I definitely wouldn't say it's the best one, but at the same time, there just isn't any other game like it so the things that make it great just don't have any competition.
I always felt this game was underappreciated. Sure, it doesn't hit the same nerve as an alt history Earth, but it was well designed and the ideologies were fun.
Would be nice if they made another one with more paths than the 3. Like one involving other alien civilizations, and even exploring and settling any nearby moons.
Besides the 3, adding two others would be more varied. Like one focused on living peacefully with other alien civilizations, not the genetic bug one. And the other could be focused on a science fiction supernatural theme while finding ancient alien relics of long gone alien civilizations. It would be like techno magic.
The systems and general design are great. It just lacks a lot of polish. It just feels kind of unfinished to play, control, interface and graphics wise.
Civ doesn't even give the feeling of alt history earth
It was definitly one of my favorite civ games. Better than civ 5 IMO. I never expected to like the lore/backstory of a civ game so much
@@jefferystafford9657 well the mayans fighting babylon with stealth bombers and nuclear missiles on the icy wastes of the north pole is pretty alt history and it is one of the greatest charmings of civ games
I always enjoyed Beyond Earth and was disappointed that it was abandoned before it could be expanded upon.
Ooo what I'd give for just one more expansion pack
It was abandoned because it never became popular, and the lack of popularity was because of two things. Veteran fans of Alpha Centauri were disappointed that it wasn't Alpha Centauri, and the base game was *terrible*. It's not a good thing when your game needs a DLC to actually become playable.
@@Krishnath.Dragon as an avid paradox game player, this is unbelievably true. When you look at it today, base game EU4, Victoria 2, etc fucking STINK, but when they came out they were absolutely incredible.
@@Krishnath.Dragonsadly true. The base game just lacked something.
@Krishnath.Dragon To be fair, Civilization games follow a trend of the base game being worse than the previous title in its entirety. Civ game need an expansion or two to come into their own.
BE was never bad, it just felt like a mod of Civ V
yea exactly, it just was underwhelming in comparison, but in comparison to a great game.
If your like me ( i dont do this anymore) and bought it day one without waiting for reviews it was a decent mod of civ5 that you paid 60 bucks for.... so that soured quickly
It's worth buying now, that it's cheap; but at the cost of a full price game, it's a ripoff.
And it sucks compared to Alpha Centauri.
it also just doesn't have the same intuitive appeal that civ has. it's just much harder to wrap my head around what's happening in the game, since it's all scifi non-sense, compared to civ, which is rooted in actual history. building a granary to boost my city's food output is much more intuitive than whatever's happening in this game.
@@henryglennon3864 I remember some of the promotional material saying 'don't worry, it won't just be Alpha Centauri 2.0'. As if that would be a bad thing
Finally some BE appreciation 😭 I swear I love this game so much
Beyond earth was very enjoyable and had some very smart design choices. Having a seperate layer for orbital units was very cool and allowed for some interesting asymetric interations. The affinity system and how that shaped your faction over the long run with how it would tweak buildings, upgrade and evolve units is fantastic and is why I found the game so replayable.
Considering upcoming civ 7 taking huge inspiration from humankind and making you "switch cultures" through the ages, I hope/wished, the civ dev team took more inspiration from BEs affinity system than from humankinds stupid "rush for the op culture" style.
@@ethribin4188 I don't find it stupid, OP rushing actually hurts you in the long run. You don't have the districts others have, you don't have the ecomony your science tanks and you lack units. I tried the rushing strats and it burned me hard in several games. i'd say mix the Civ picking WITH affinity systems of Beyond Earth and you have quite a nice customiser for your situation. The traditional OP Humankind picks only work with flat rivers, or coastal and never ever match well with high production mountains. Civ6 focuses too much on specalisation rather than adapting to the terrian and political situation.
Beyond Earth wasn't bad, per se, but it had a bunch of things working against it; it was massively overpriced for what was basically a Civ V mod, and what an enormous number of people were looking for was "Alpha Centauri, but updated to reflect twenty years of advancement in gameplay, graphics, and UI development" and it wasn't at all that.
ACen is a very hard act to follow, granted, but still.
@@matthewgiglia643 absolutely, I wanted to the drones to beg me to stay in 1080p, this was not that.
Acen? You mean SMAC.
Sid Meier and Firaxis do not hold the rights to Alpha Centauri; Brian Reynolds does. Beyond Earth was never going to be SMAC2.
Artists are actually a really, really good loadout because they get you to your first virtue faster than you would otherwise, which can mean getting a free worker really quickly (which in turn can get you the equivalent of that +2 production in terrain improvements) and also a free colony pod. As an aside, if you build your first expansion city in the water, you get a free patrol boat, which can run around the ocean and grab a huge number of supply pods, which can be hugely valuable early game.
Beyond Earth remains one of my favorite civ games. The tech web allows you to actually have some diversity from game to game, and stuff like ocean cities means that you don't get giant dead zones in the map like in earthbound civ.
Add to that how the aliens can be either exterminated or befriended, and the various RP choices from the mini quests that allow you to change up your civ and buildings a bit each game, and you have a far more dynamic experience than most civ offers.
Also BE's espionage is actually viable to focus on. Like, if you go one of the espionage focused factions you can get a ton out of it, from units to tech to eco, within a reasonable timeframe.
I'm waiting for a stand alone Sid Meir game focused on civilization building in a fantasy world with eras. Like that Fantastic Worlds addition to Civilization 2 Gold back in the 90s.
@duphasdan Age of Wonders is very loosely similar. More focused on combat than civilisation growing, I would say. But close. There are a few 4x games that could match that description to a degree, but unfortunately, it is not a high degree.
Beyond Earth with Rising Tide expansion was actually quite fun and deep, glad to see a video on it!
Did they give out the dlc for free at somepoint? I have it but I know I didn't buy it
The main problem with Beyond Earth is that it has none of the character of Alpha Centauri, the different "civs" all play the same.
Yeah, AC wasn't great because of mechanics (they were fine) it was great because of the story and lore. BE was bland as oatmeal in comparison.
@@Khaim.m Very few games have come close to matching the philosophical type of sci fi of the lore in AC, the Deus Ex series is the only one I can think of that comes close. And I don't know of any other sci fi worlds that describe an entire tech tree that takes us from the present to the far future. I recently replayed AC, and other than the low resolution being a pain to look at, it holds up so well.
@@iyziejane By the main writer of SMAC's own admission, it's unlikely to happen because nowadays no Firaxis project is going to be willing to just hand the keys for an entire game's writing carte blanche to a daydreaming philosophy student and let him just pontificate openly the "juicy bits" of another world. For better or worse, the amount of effort required to produce a modern Firaxis game demands more oversight , a broader target scope, and less _risk._ So they're going to just inherently come out less _weird_ than SMAC or the Sid Meier's Not Civilization games.
You can find games that can match AC's philosophical-lore bent, but they're all going to come from smaller developers nowadays, just as Firaxis was a smaller developer when SMAC was made. Like the song says, that's just the way it is.
@@InchonDM I agree with you about the modern Firaxis, and my general observation is that they are a very frugal company that maximizes profits by aiming for very low costs, even when they know the game will sell millions.
Part of what makes SMAC unique is the type of lore combined with the overview of civilization (i.e. not just an individual character story). I guess Rimworld captures some of that. If you have any other indie recommendations I'll ceheck them out, thanks. Planetfall mod for Civ 4 is the closest thing I know of to AC in a more modern engine (with import of the original sound files).
@@iyziejane At the risk of bringing modern real-life politics into this discussion, I doubt that modern writers would give leaders like Morgan of Miriam a fair shake, for an example. The intricacies of SMAC would likely be replaced with "capitalism bad" and "religion bad."
SMAC has stuff like that quote featuring "Recon Rover Rick" but that's kind of the point - people remember random throwaway character mentioned in a single text sample, I doubt it was because it validated the anti-capitalist stance that players had.
Another example is this Miriam quote: "Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?"
While you could reasonably argue it's just rambling to deflect from a criticism of religion, TV Tropes has the audacity to have it hyperlink to "DoubleThink" which is a term from 1984 (and a much more key theme than the mass surveillance, party can effectively dictate reality.)
Best explanation could actually be derived with the help of Silmarillion (Tolkien was a devout Catholic and he explicitly evoked it in his writing, also nothing is a direct quote of any sort, please no other "evil can't create" - situation:)
You could argue that creating Melkor was an evil act, since he inflicted so much evil on people of Middle-Earth and Sauron was his disciple. But the whole point (to my understanding) was that when Eru Iluvatar created the Ainur, he created entities with free will, not automatons or puppets. When Melkor disrupted the Song of Creation, Eru probably could've "restarted" or "rewinded" but that too would arguably ruin the whole point of it. World would be Eru's plaything where nothing that displeases him can happen.
I love Beyond Earth. Absolutely love it. Still play it a lot, and I'm really glad to see someone else playing it too. The biggest problem, I think, is that so much of the lore is hidden away in the Civilopedia, so to get the depth of it, you have to read rather than really see it in-game, which does rob it of character.
Beyond Earth is fantastic! The terrain mod is a must
Do you remember the name of the terrain mod?
This game is fantastic! . . . so long as you change things.
loved it back in its day for a while. it did some interesting mechanics that civ 6 could have adopted for building up trade routes and city states. I really liked the tech tree
My college gave us a week grace period after finals week for students to move out. Me and my friends spent that entire week playing Beyond Earth. Such fond memories.
Picking a Weapon Arsenal with an aquatic start does allow you to start with a boat.
"Beyond Earth isn't bad? "
"Never was."
Yes it was
@@RobertLey60 How so?
isn't great either, which is no something you expect after Civ5
@Alvaro89Rus I loved the fact aerial Units came early and you can Settle off the Coast. Made it real consistent to have 3 Cities around the Capital that were evenly spaced from each other. All in all, the game was about as good as Civ5, but with a different enough flavor to justify being it's own game. I don't play as much, though, because I've got a strategy perfected on there. Civ5 and Civ6 I'm more harassed by enemies. In BE, the fence that repels aliens deals with BE's version of Barbarians, and the other Civs aren't bad until I start up the signal beacon for the BE equivalent of a Science win (I prefer to turtle up and focus on a passive victory, fighting over Cities, Culture, City-States, or Religion seems to much effort to bother, but I liked CivRev for the Gold Victory).
@@jeremybrummel3254 Well I actually remember how first couple games it felt really great, but then it worn off really fast. It didn't have much replaybility which is one good for 4x game.
I say Age of Wonders Planetfall latter became Beyond Earth 2.0., as if latter was demo for former.))
Oh my God I never even knew you could replenish your explorers exploration modules. I would always just send them off into the wilderness to get eaten by aliens when they ran out
The PAC is absolutely nuts in being able to 1 turn any wonder
turn 20 uncontestable markov eclipse goes brrrr
The research tree makes so much more sense than the linear system in civ.
Like, every civilization would concentrate their efforts on a specific branch and become very distinct from one another.
It was so motivating to either min max or just enjoy it for rp reasons.
So much potential. Imagine it had been implemented into the main game.
The tragedy of Beyond Earth is that media is too scared to deviate from the norm.
This game had so much promise.
"I've always been a 'let's get along kinda guy"
Literally last video series he's dominating the world out of spite (the Canadians didn't laugh at his joke)
The Music from the base game and rising tide is amazing. Great listen on its own. Games solid and some mods that make it more fleshed out or alpha centauri like are great too.
If there's one thing this game had over Civ V in spades for me, it was the soundtrack. While the main menu themes and civ specific themes of Civ V were awesome, the music I'd spend most of my in-game time listening to was the bland and forgettable ambient tracks.
BE's soundtrack being consistently better overall, and actually being able to hear the best of it frequently, did wonders to take the edge off the game's weaker elements. "The Future of Mankind" in particular is simply musical overkill and I'd have it no other way.
I still have the soundtracks for the base game and expansion downloaded on my phone and play it on a regular rotation in my car.
As a starting choice tectonic scanner can be very overpowered due to titanium. The resource itself isn't that important, but it is upgraded with a mine that you can build immediately, and the mine gives 5 production. +5 production in your capital the moment you get a worker is insanely strong and sets you up so well. Sadly you aren't guaranteed titanium in your capital, but it still lets you build your second city in a great location and get it going super fast.
Also, if you are playing a water start civ, the free soldier gives a patrol boat. It moves a gazillion tiles per turn and has a high vision range, allowing you to scour the entire ocean for resource pods before the other civs even make planetfall. You can get an early worker though virtues anyway.
The problem i had was that the flavor was presented the exact same as it is in a normal civ game, but a normal civ game has the richness of all of human history to draw upon, and Beyond Earth has a few blurbs here and there with maybe a few write ups hidden in a compendium somewhere nearly inaccessible. Therefore Civ 5 flavor winds up being a gateway into a deep ocean of lore and knowledge and civ beyond earth winds up being a gateway into a puddle.
This was a interesting blast from the past, I’d hope to see you continue this game as I’ve become instantly invested in it.
Keep it coming. Have a lots hours in Beyond Earth and always loved the design and futuristic vibe!
No waaay!! i asked for so many episodes and it happened!!!!!!
Just picked up the DLC for $8 as part of of the autumn sale. Thanks for sharing how much fun Beyond Earth can be. I bought the base game at launch for full price and probably only played 2 play throughs.
Potato, thank you. I’ve been requesting this every time you open the community feed for suggestions. Thank you.
Omg yes! I confess I didn't really enjoy Beyond Earth on release - but the first DLC fixed most of my issues with it, but I could never convince any of my friends to try again.
It's fun to think about how this is basically the next chapter in a scientific victory. Every time I do a science game it makes me want to play Beyond Earth again.
A remastered SMAC with improved AI and nerfed Usurpers would be so sick...
My favorite part of Beyond Earth is all of the cool sci fi fiction written in into the Civilopedia. Makes it much more immersive when you can learn the practical purposes of an alien bugfarm or a sympathetic brain wave transmitter or whatever
I genuinely forgot about this game, and I love that you started playing this again. I plan on watching every single one of these including any other one you play! beyond earth was such a cool concept, I just think that it was half-baked in some case, but that's just me
Also I forgot how much this game must have influenced Triumph when they made Age of Wonders: Planetfall. Those starting perks looking awfully familiar. :>
Beyond Earth has an immense SOUL with all this quotes and stuff, there were a nice small community with memes and awesome fanfiction...
Thank you! I always got the impression I was the only person who liked Beyond Earth.
If you're keen on Beyond Earth vibes in a more recent game, check out ZEPHON. It's a post-apocalyptic 4X with three affinities (which you can mix, albeit with added costs): Human (conventional miltech hoo rah), Cyber (shiny high tech robots and maybe also crimes against the fabric of reality) and Voice (psychic meat cultists that build everything from the flesh of their faithful).
Some have called the game 'Civilization if it was about Skynet vs Cthulhu'. :P
It was my first civ game.. really enjoy going back to it every so often for a game
Always loved Beyond Earth! I just got back into Stellaris (love your play throughs btw) and seeing this game again makes me want to play it again lol
I once played a game of civ 5 space victory, then played a game of beyond earth and then started a stellaris game. Ah back when I had so much damn time
Thanks for reminding me of this classic, one of my Old Faves - just in time to have something different to play while waiting for Civ VII. Re-installing C:BE as I write.
I always liked the core systems of BE, especially once they added mechanics like moving floating cities. The biggest piece in need of improvement, imo, was the specific position of things in the tech web. Those could have used more playtesting and iteration, as they felt a bit rushed and undercooked. The web-like tech design was interesting, much harder to balance properly, but not unsalvageable.
The thing I don't like with BE is that most victories are "build wonder and defend it".
FINALLY someone else enjoying this game. Been playing it for years. Seems like no one else is playing it anymore
I really enjoyed it. The fact you could truly play the same civ and make different choices and actually feel completely different depending on what was available felt great.
I loved the Yellow and Green techs and units more than the purple. But I always seemed to get luckier with those resources.
I would love another game in this style especially if you could do more with space and maybe multiple planets.
I am very glad to see some people looking back fondly on Civ BE, as I do. It had huge shoes to fill and did the best it could ‐ while still ending up a good, solid game.
IVE BEEN WAITING FOR A BEYOND EARTH VIDEO FROM YOU FOR SO LONG!!!
I really loved playing this game, it was way more chill than the others. it's a bit more casual, especially when you don't play it often
Dude thanks for this video. Civ: BE is my second favorite Civ game after Civ5. It's awesome to see it get a little love. Neat to see how Civ7 is copying the tech tree approach a little, with the main techs and supplemental techs.
The Tech Web (rather than a Tree) is SO much more satisfying as a means of making your choices significant.
Canyon production wonder is underrated.
I was so hiiiigh when I saw the trailer. And the thing with weed is it numbs the emotions, but I shed a tear. It was beautiful, dramatic, hopeful, and sad all the same time
I always felt lile that Beyond Earth needed one proper expansion to be really good. As it is a lot feels half baked.
Yeah the little upgrades to the buildings was my favorite part of Beyond Earth. Added so much customization and flavor to your playthroughs.
All the best couch civ memories are from this one actually. Robots vs aliens vs space marines, who can forget
This game was sooo much fun growing up! I played like over 3k hours of Civ5 and this game hit a sci-fi worldbuilding itch that I just loved.
I loved how each of the Affinities played differently and required different resources for their buildings, like going with Purity you would need Floatstone versus going Harmony you need Biomass or whichever one its called
I was in two years of volunteer work when this game was slated to come out. So all i remember is the crazy reveal trailer.
It’s fascinating seeing a deep look into this game
I tried BE after years of civ 6 and couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. Maybe just me but it felt like there was a WAY higher barrier to entry. Need to go back and give it another shot.
I actually loved this still love it today
Still play it
Kinda feels insanely fast though
The pacing is my favourite thing about it. Can finish a game in one session on fastest speed something I wish was true of more 4x games
"I'm just a let's get along kind of guy." - Guy who invaded and Nuked Canada in the last series.
It's in my opinion a perfectly competent sci-fi Civ. However, it went against the legend of Alpha Centauri. And that game was all that BE is and had a completely enthralling character and spirit, whereas BE felt kind of generic. BE feels really good to play, but only mid at best to *get into*.
The new ZEPHON strategy (from the devs of Gladius) is actually a spiritual sequel to Beyond Earth, lifting whole gameplay aspects out of it.
1:28 so that is a mix between standard civ.. well, civ's and stellaris race creation setup
I loved this game, I’m so glad you’re playing it!
I actually played BE before V, so it has a special place in my heart.
It needed some touching up to smooth out some issues and I hate that we didn't get a second DLC, but I still come back to it periodically.
Really looking forward to more videos on this from you. It's a shame the game was abandoned so early on, it could have been so much more.
That being said.. I'd love to see you play Alpha Centauri on the channel! It's such a unique and wonderful thing.
My favorite feature was that a floating city can be moved, so you can paint a continent's entire coastline
If you like beyond earth you have to play the inspiration Alpha Centauri. It has a story line and is much more hardcore sci-fi. Plus all the different leaders are fully voiced.
You have to know going in that the UI would now be considered terrible though. It was an amazing game, but the lack of 20 years of QOL improvements makes it a hard play now for me
@@iambicpentakill971 With Thinker and PRACX mods a lot of the annoying things from the UI are fixed. The UI feels aged but it is by no means bad and the game remains the best Civ game to this day, IMO.
@@iambicpentakill971 mods bro. It’s got mods. That’s how I run it. Mods change the game.
This game was fun as hell and felt like so much potential sat behind it. Just wish it had got a bit more attention before and after release
Damn I didn't expect a video on that game, happy to see it !
Edit : could you add the mod list on the video description ?
I didn't even know this existed; I'm definitely going to check it out!
A mod I really like is Affinities as Yields.
What it does is instead of getting Affinities just from researching tech and events, sometimes locking affinity techs behind other affinity techs, instead affinity is generated by buildings and resources on map.
So instead of researching something and getting +50 Supremacy, you build a Colonial Power Grid and now all your generators generate +1 Affinity per turn.
Potato - "I wanna sit down and make my own mods " "I wish They built a sequel with Civ7 Bones"
the soundtrack was godly as in any civ game but here it was really unique
it was always good. i loved the quests, and the choices that would let you go down different tech and culture paths.
my stepdad loves it, but cant ever get it to work on steam, can you enlighten us as to how to get it up and running?
idk I just ran it and it worked
9/10 its a direct x issue or an steam verify integrity issue. Even after a new install the files need to be verified.
when I played rising tide, I did not know that bringing the explorers back would restore their modules... .
BE was my most hyped for game in 2014. I was 17 and addicted to my new smartphone and by extension, the variety of games I could experience through Lets Plays. A major one was Civilization 5. I followed Pete Murray for all the news and was more disappointed than anyone when all the Civ lets players did two games and went back to 5.
As for the game, I have two major complaints. No strategic view, and no high colour contrast. The first is because my PC couldn't run 5 outside of strategic mode. The second is because I'm colourblind. I wouldn't mind 2 if there was strategic mode.
I really hope they try and overhaul BE with Civ 6 mechanics one day. It would work so much better, I think.
interger is my fav faction because of how insane their diplomatic capital discounts can get. if you accept every deal the AI throws at you you'll have a high enough income that you can settle and heavily develop a city with just a few turns of stockpiling
I had "the laws of nature are weaker than strength, resolve, purpose, and will" from this game as my desktop background for years
It's not Alpha Centauri II - which is what we really want, but it can see Alpha Centauri in the distance.
What I always like is the dual trade routes. The RPS style Tech net, the underlying specialization of "policy cards" with points. The Auto harvest for districts, the hydro districts, and the ability to move cities was great. I Always wanted these to be late game techs in OG CIV.
For an oft forgotten spin-off, Beyond Earth's design has had a surprising amount of influence on mainline Civ.
From little details like streamlining land and naval civilian units into embarkable land units, certain music tracks becoming more grandiose as the game goes on, barbarian interactions other than total extermination, and certain tile-based wonders as a precursor to the district mechanic...
To major systems like leader agendas and diplomatic currency, major mechanics of Civ VI and VII, debuted and fleshed out in Beyond Earth.
I remember this being sold as the spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri, I didn't really see it myself. Still enjoyed it mind you.
I always liked playing domination only games, covering whole continents in terrascapes, and fighting large scifi-wars. Basically playing as Gladius before that one came out.
Oh my god THANK you, I try to boot this game up about once per year but it hasn't actually successfully launched in a long while. People call the leaders boring relating them to Alpha Centauri but like... yes. They are fairly blank slates that, over the course of the game, develop their policies and preferences. You can prefer AC's leaders pretty reasonably but to completely discredit this game is a bit much. And if you're the type of person who thinks games of Civ start to feel a bit samey this game is great with its quest system slowly shaping what your buildings can do. Definitely not a perfect game but a hell of a lot of fun
Plus "...For a price" is just too good of a meme
It's usually a direct x issue and on steam the integrity constantly breaks. There's options on steam to restore it. Even after a fresh install it'll often be wrong
@@inditsnotdenon922 Appreciate your input and I've returned with both good news and bad news in one: cannot recreate bug. Game is working and it's good to be back. May the potato bless you as he has blessed my computer
I like this game's ideas despite some flaws. I particularly love the satellite feature and I hope it will one day make an appearance in Civ
I would love it if Potato made a comprehensive early/mid/late game guide series for Beyond Earth.
Oh, I loved it. Almost immediate access to air defense, and most of all, being able to settle in water. I like to have satellite Cities evenly spaced out around my Capital.
Beyond Earth was really fun. It always seemed like a lot of the hate for it was just because it wasn't Alpha Centauri 2 and a lot of people never really gave it a look as its own thing.
Great start setup, subpar start and priorities.
Costal scanner is a must for those early game goodies.
Then pushing navy for even more goodies.
Heavy-handed nostalgia hit, mourning the loss of the unreleased potential possible.
I like civ games but it always gets more and more tedious as you progress. Moving a lot of military units is also annoying. How do you deal with the late game?
Playing Al Falah for the meme build of an Aquatic city with a Benthic Augur is fun. But I honestly enjoy Civ 6's districts and Wonders that take up whole hexes so much I can't go back.
SMAC on the other hand, that's just art.
Beyond Earth is kind of like sequel to a missing sequel between itself and Alpha Centauri coming out at a Civilization 5.5 generation tech level
Damn I know what im playing this weekend
HOLY SHIT I WAS LOOKING FOR A PLAYTHROUGH OF YOU PLAYING BEYOND EARTH. ITS MY FAV CIV GAME. If you decide to do another playthrough of this game, use the codex mod. it’s such a fire way to play the game.
I loved Beyond Earth. And played a lot of Alpha Centauri as a kid. I had actually kind of hoped that they would do a Beyond Earth 2 before Civ 7
PCW>: "In order to restore these expedition modules, you have to bring these guys home..."
Me>: "you can do..what?!"
To this day I hope for a sequel to correct some things! The idea about is incredible
Do an alpha Centauri playthrough I need the nostalgia!
In a lot of ways Beyond Earth is my favorite Civ game. I definitely wouldn't say it's the best one, but at the same time, there just isn't any other game like it so the things that make it great just don't have any competition.