Game News Civilization: Beyond Earth to be released October 24th

[Zed]

Tags: 2K; Civilization: Beyond Earth; Firaxis

Firaxis' Civilization: Beyond Earth's product page has been updated with a release date: October 24th.

In case you've forgot what it's all about, Beyond Earth will be a standalone Civilization game set in space. Kind of like Alpha Centauri, I assume and hope.

Sid Meier's Civilization®: Beyond Earth™ is a new science-fiction-themed entry into the award-winning Civilization series. Set in the future, global events have destabilized the world leading to a collapse of modern society, a new world order and an uncertain future for humanity. As the human race struggles to recover, the re-developed nations focus their resources on deep space travel to chart a new beginning for mankind.

As part of an expedition sent to find a home beyond Earth, you will write the next chapter for humanity as you lead your people into a new frontier and create a new civilization in space. Explore and colonize an alien planet, research new technologies, amass mighty armies, build incredible Wonders and shape the face of your new world. As you embark on your journey you must make critical decisions. From your choice of sponsor and the make-up of your colony, to the ultimate path you choose for your civilization, every decision opens up new possibilities.​

 

[Whisky]

Thanks for posting this, I appreciate it.

 

[General Maxson]

I don't have much hope for this, but we'll see. I hope someone here reviews it.

 

[Zeriel]

I don't have much hope for this, but we'll see. I hope someone here torrents it and then takes a big dump on the forums on it.

Oh, don't you worry. We will.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I hope this turns out good but i doubt theres any talent left, at Firaxis, to squeeze a proper alpha centauri sequel of.

 

[Hellraiser]

This is going to be an even bigger turd than nu-XCOM

 

[Monocause]

For now, Kyrub's patch has given new life to SMAC. I see no reason to even touch BE so far.

Also, am I the only one who has a great antipathy for 3D 4X since Civilization 4? Slow, bulky, heavy use of CPU resources, looks like crap, etc. Meanwhile SMAC is as fast as your right hand is at pressing "next turn" and still seems beautiful to me, even today. Interface is also very good, even for 2010's standards.

I really can't understand that attitude. So Endless Space is discussed and some posters say 'u wot yeh go play moo2'. The new Civ game is discussed and 'well yeh safe but why stop jamming smac'. Usually accompanied with 'yeh the only gud thing bout this piece of shit is uninstall.exe jk'

Maybe a good reason to play new stuff is because these games are pretty fucking old and stale and everyone played them to death and back? Or because they're aging rapidly? Also, as much as, say, Endless Space is inferior to MoO2 it's still different enough to offer some novelty and still is decent entertainment.

That thinking's just rubbish. I keep imagining a dude who flat-out refuses to listen to modern music, claiming there's no reason to stop listening to Bach's concertos cause he's done it all before and he's done it better. Or just these sad, sad people who frequent video game boards but who actually hate video games except for the precious few titles that they've been obsessively replaying every fortnight for the last 15 years.

It's fine if you dismiss most new titles and keep replaying old ones instead but do admit that it's a quirk.

EDIT: (not really aiming this at you in particular bro, you just triggered a general rant)

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I really can't understand that attitude. So Endless Space is discussed and some posters say 'u wot yeh go play moo2'. The new Civ game is discussed and 'well yeh safe but why stop jamming smac'. Usually accompanied with 'yeh the only gud thing bout this piece of shit is uninstall.exe jk'

Maybe a good reason to play new stuff is because these games are pretty fucking old and stale and everyone played them to death and back? Or because they're aging rapidly? Also, as much as, say, Endless Space is inferior to MoO2 it's still different enough to offer some novelty and still is decent entertainment.

That thinking's just rubbish. I keep imagining a dude who flat-out refuses to listen to modern music, claiming there's no reason to stop listening to Bach's concertos cause he's done it all before and he's done it better. Or just these sad, sad people who frequent video game boards but who actually hate video games except for the precious few titles that they've been obsessively replaying every fortnight for the last 15 years.

It's fine if you dismiss most new titles and keep replaying old ones instead but do admit that it's a quirk.

EDIT: (not really aiming this at you in particular bro, you just triggered a general rant)

I think its because for some people, these games feel like a lame version of the old experience, like seeing some pop rocker do a horrible gay remix of a Black Sabbath song and then failing, horribly.

For example, I played MoO2 but I also played Space Empires IV and both are different enough experiences to play both. I do think that MoO2 is way less bland, even if some mechanics are quite primitive to me and the game is easy. SEIV also has too much micro sometimes.
On the other hand, there's no reason to play Europa Universalis II if you have III or IV, except nostalgia or crappy computer, maybe AGCEEP. On the other hand, EUIII and EUIV are different enough to make playing both a good idea.

I like SMAC but sometimes I play Conflict on Chiron because I like to have more than seven factions. On the other hand, Civ4 has aged badly on modern computers and turns get hella slow as the game goes on. All SMAC needs is two patches and it plays as well in a modern system as it did in 1999, then put in Kyrub's and you get a good challenge if you play on Transcend.

So far Civ: BE is a lot like nuXCOM - A new spin on a old classic, but it feels mostly bland, lacking old features, gamey at times and missing the entire point.

The original X-COM's entire point is fighting a sinister alien invasion with a outgunned organization whose main resource is plentiful of explosives and cannonfodder. The point of X-COM is pitting humanity's best soldiers against a onslaught of genetically-engineered, cybernetically-enhanced monsters that know all there is about you and outgun you in every way, resulting in a game of terror turn-based tactics as the unknown enemy raises the bar of combat all the time - Plasma weapons, psionics, independent flight, perfect night-sight, destructive war machines, ridiculous firepower, super-soldiers, quickly-spreading zombie horde of doom, etc - leading to all sorts of unconventional, emergent and often-insane tactics as you try to catch up and save the world.

nuXCOM failed on many accounts.

 

[Minttunator]

Or just these sad, sad people who frequent video game boards but who actually hate video games except for the precious few titles that they've been obsessively replaying every fortnight for the last 15 years.

I think you just insulted most of the users on this website.

Good rant, though, and I agree for the most part. It's just disappointing when, as technology advances, we hope for more interesting, more complex games (not just shinier graphics) - and instead we get simplified, consolized, barebones versions of the games we've played to death.

I mean, it's just sad when the highest praise one can give a New Game is "oh, it's almost as good as the Old Game" when the Old Game was released 20 years ago.

 

[tuluse]

Civ4 has aged badly on modern computers and turns get hella slow as the game goes on. All SMAC needs is two patches and it plays as well in a modern system as it did in 1999

How is that worse than when it came out? It always ran slow as molasses in late game.

 

[commie]

Rage against the dying of the light

Monocause....moar like Menopause judging by this rant.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

How is that worse than when it came out? It always ran slow as molasses in late game.

Its even worse because it doesn't use all your computer's power. If you have a multicore you're fucked. Hell, I got myself a old 3.0 GHZ right now and it runs as bad as my old i5.

Fucking amateur programing.

 

[Zeriel]

I think you just insulted most of the users on this website.

Good rant, though, and I agree for the most part. It's just disappointing when, as technology advances, we hope for more interesting, more complex games (not just shinier graphics) - and instead we get simplified, consolized, barebones versions of the games we've played to death.

I mean, it's just sad when the highest praise one can give a New Game is "oh, it's almost as good as the Old Game" when the Old Game was released 20 years ago.

This is the real reason sites like the Codex exist. It's not about nostalgia and revisionism, it's about the utter despair and hopelessness that modern gaming engenders in people. We don't want to be playing Alpha Centaur in 2020, we just sort of suspect we're going to be forced to by lack of anything comparable, let alone better. There are certain idiosyncratic differences between games that will always be there, so there will never be another Alpha Centauri in the same sense there will never be another Godfather. Unfortunately, artistic merits aside (like SMAC's very characteristic use of alt-history and futurism, and dystopian themes) there doesn't appear to be any chance that a game will even try to match SMAC in mechanics and gameplay. Film critics don't despair that there will never be another Godfather, and watch it all day, but that's because the industry is still producing newer stuff like The Departed. If the best crime movie in the past three decades was Snatch, film would be a lot more like gaming.

 

[Scowlie]

There are certain idiosyncratic differences between games that will always be there, so there will never be another Alpha Centauri in the same sense there will never be another Godfather. Unfortunately, artistic merits aside (like SMAC's very characteristic use of alt-history and futurism, and dystopian themes) there doesn't appear to be any chance that a game will even try to match SMAC in mechanics and gameplay. Film critics don't despair that there will never be another Godfather, and watch it all day, but that's because the industry is still producing newer stuff like The Departed. If the best crime movie in the past three decades was Snatch, film would be a lot more like gaming.

The comparison to cinema isn't off the mark, but I'm going to go ahead and proclaim (utterly sans research) that there is at the very least one cinephile site analogous to the Codex. And that site is surely chock full of angry cunts who'd scuff at your example of The Departed the same way many here scoff at the new X-COM. Guaranteed 100% true without even a simple google search and we all know it. Because you're right, idiosyncratic differences between games or movies will always be there, but the line between which facets form idiosyncratic character and which facets contribute to "the whole point of the game" just isn't real. What makes a game or a movie or a piece of art great is subjective. And most so with games due to their interactivity, which for long-ass games like those we cherish promotes personal investment as well.

But I'd say you've got the outlook for movies and games reversed. Let's say that both mediums are rushing ever faster towards an infinite ocean of shit. With games, we've at least got Kickstarter. God knows that has its own set of problems, but at least niche game makers have a very real and substantial source of funding to bypass crap-factory publishers. What do cinephiles have to look forward to? More Adam Sandler, more Scary Movie, more slasher reboots, and of course more every-single-fucking-comic-book-character-ever sequels.

At this moment in gaming, there's no harm in being cautiously optimistic.

 

[tuluse]

The comparison to cinema isn't off the mark, but I'm going to go ahead and proclaim (utterly sans research) that there is at the very least one cinephile site analogous to the Codex. And that site is surely chock full of angry cunts who'd scuff at your example of The Departed the same way many here scoff at the new X-COM. Guaranteed 100% true without even a simple google search and we all know it. Because you're right, idiosyncratic differences between games or movies will always be there, but the line between which facets form idiosyncratic character and which facets contribute to "the whole point of the game" just isn't real. What makes a game or a movie or a piece of art great is subjective. And most so with games due to their interactivity, which for long-ass games like those we cherish promotes personal investment as well.

While this is true, if you brought some Coen Brothers's movies, or Old Boy, they'd probably accept those movies are about as good as crime movies have ever been, and as complex.

Not even average gamers say modern RPGs are as complex as older ones, they are just glad the complexity is gone.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization:_Beyond_Earth

In designing the tech web, the Beyond Earth team began by going to the Wikipedia article on Alpha Centauri

began by going to the Wikipedia article on Alpha Centauri

 

[Zeriel]

I think it's funny they think mentioning that would give them street cred, when what it really does is make them sound like clueless losers.

 

[Zeriel]

There are certain idiosyncratic differences between games that will always be there, so there will never be another Alpha Centauri in the same sense there will never be another Godfather. Unfortunately, artistic merits aside (like SMAC's very characteristic use of alt-history and futurism, and dystopian themes) there doesn't appear to be any chance that a game will even try to match SMAC in mechanics and gameplay. Film critics don't despair that there will never be another Godfather, and watch it all day, but that's because the industry is still producing newer stuff like The Departed. If the best crime movie in the past three decades was Snatch, film would be a lot more like gaming.

The comparison to cinema isn't off the mark, but I'm going to go ahead and proclaim (utterly sans research) that there is at the very least one cinephile site analogous to the Codex. And that site is surely chock full of angry cunts who'd scuff at your example of The Departed the same way many here scoff at the new X-COM. Guaranteed 100% true without even a simple google search and we all know it. Because you're right, idiosyncratic differences between games or movies will always be there, but the line between which facets form idiosyncratic character and which facets contribute to "the whole point of the game" just isn't real. What makes a game or a movie or a piece of art great is subjective. And most so with games due to their interactivity, which for long-ass games like those we cherish promotes personal investment as well.

But I'd say you've got the outlook for movies and games reversed. Let's say that both mediums are rushing ever faster towards an infinite ocean of shit. With games, we've at least got Kickstarter. God knows that has its own set of problems, but at least niche game makers have a very real and substantial source of funding to bypass crap-factory publishers. What do cinephiles have to look forward to? More Adam Sandler, more Scary Movie, more slasher reboots, and of course more every-single-fucking-comic-book-character-ever sequels.

At this moment in gaming, there's no harm in being cautiously optimistic.

Yeah, I was a little hesitant to make the comparison. I wasn't sure it really held true. I watch a lot of film (actually, more than I play games, these days), but I can't say I'm a student of it. I find analogies useful to shake up people's thinking about games, though. And I do feel there is a structural difference between the industries. Say what you will, but some of the biggest film companies recognize the importance of diversifying their investments. Sure, they pile billions into titles like Transformers, but they also spin-off small divisions of the studio to fund small, arthouse productions.

The gaming industry is still stuck in the mindset of "the bigger the better, the smaller the worse". As a result, they leave a lot of money on the table, and plenty of quality titles that could have been made simply aren't given a chance. When a billion-dollar investment succeeds, film studios make a small profit. When a ten million film goes gangbusters and makes five times that, they look like fucking geniuses to their MBA buddies. Meanwhile in the gaming industry, the same thing does happen on occasion: look at Minecraft. But instead of learning something from this, the big publishers simply want to buy out such IPs after they hit it big rather than trying to invest in lots of small ideas of their own.

By the way, nice first post. Welcome to the Codex and all that faggotry.

 

[Scowlie]

While this is true, if you brought some Coen Brothers's movies, or Old Boy, they'd probably accept those movies are about as good as crime movies have ever been, and as complex.

Not even average gamers say modern RPGs are as complex as older ones, they are just glad the complexity is gone.

Well we're pretty deep into the realm of speculation, but you can imagine there probably are movie super-purists (Codex analogues) who can disparage anything by holding it to the standards of Godard or Bergman or Wells, picking whichever classic contains elements found in the newer film. As non-film-extremist-cunts, it's easy for us to say there are at least a few movies coming out now that are as good as ever. But wouldn't many or most gaming sites (including many that cater to the strategy niche), enthusiastically hold up the new X-COM as proof that we've got strategy games as good as ever?

When you talk about complexity, it's still a question of mainstream versus niche. The games we like are the arthouse films, but this analogy has broken down so fuck that. Yes, the mainstream game publishers are certainly moving away from complexity, same as mainstream publishers of everything else, is but we've still got Paradox and whomever makes all those games Matrix sells and we really do have Kickstarter to fund indie devs.

Was there really anything as complex as HOI3 a decade ago? Just like movies, the old franchises (how old is Civ now?) probably aren't where the good stuff's going to happen. But you never know.

Yeah, I was a little hesitant to make the comparison. I wasn't sure it really held true. I watch a lot of film (actually, more than I play games, these days), but I can't say I'm a student of it. I find analogies useful to shake up people's thinking about games, though. And I do feel there is a structural difference between the industries. Say what you will, but some of the biggest film companies recognize the importance of diversifying their investments. Sure, they pile billions into titles like Transformers, but they also spin-off small divisions of the studio to fund small, arthouse productions.

The gaming industry is still stuck in the mindset of "the bigger the better, the smaller the worse". As a result, they leave a lot of money on the table, and plenty of quality titles that could have been made simply aren't given a chance. When a billion-dollar investment succeeds, film studios make a small profit. When a ten million film goes gangbusters and makes five times that, they look like fucking geniuses to their MBA buddies. Meanwhile in the gaming industry, the same thing does happen on occasion: look at Minecraft. But instead of learning something from this, the big publishers simply want to buy out such IPs after they hit it big rather than trying to invest in lots of small ideas of their own.

By the way, nice first post. Welcome to the Codex and all that faggotry.

Thanks! I have to disagree with you somewhat, not necessarily in anything you've just written but with What it all means, man. I agree about the industries. Though we can't take the comparison too far because big film publishers will buy indie movies in a completed state based on screenings at film festivals, however another difference is that in film there's really no good way to bypass the publishers. A game dev with a finished (or lately, unfinished) project can just put up a website and/or go to Steam and other services. Contrast that to the movie world, where James Rolfe (with a complete film but no big name film publisher) seemingly has to make a separate deal with every individual cinema to get them to show his AVGN movie. Poor lucky bastard.

I totally agree about the game publishing industry, and according to reports like this Jimquisition shit's even worse than we think. Alas large video game publishers suck in every way and still make money. BUT unlike the film industry, game devs have alternatives for getting their games out. And that is why I can be more optimistic than I was 5 years ago, despite the fact that the mainstream game publishers have spent those 5 years declining as hard as they could.

 

[tuluse]

Scowlie there's a reason I specified RPGs and not all video games.

 

[Scowlie]

Scowlie there's a reason I specified RPGs and not all video games.

Oh! Well I'm 102 years old and this is a Civ:BE thread so I'll cut me some slack, jack.

BUT I'll concede because I really haven't been paying enough attention to RPGs (which I'm here to slowly rectify). Still, isn't the point I made re: Civ games at least somewhat applicable to RPGs too? Mainstream franchise decline to hell, but a suddenly very viable indie funding and distribution model? Those few hardcore RPG projects we've watched being developed for so, so long are/will surely being joined by at least some similar efforts now that the road to funding and distribution is much more well-paved? Right? Maybe? At least one?

OK, I'm not holding my breath either.

 

[Abelian]

In b4 MoO4

 

[Redlands]

SMAC has Rochosity (Flat/Rolling/Rocky) and Rainyness (Arid/Plain/Rainy). All of these are independent of land height, which can be anywhere from nearby sea-level to great mountains.

Not sure why you're claiming this as a good thing, at least for rainyness. Unless you're saying something you didn't mean to say by poor word choice or something.

How "rainy" an area is depends on a bunch of factors, one of the key ones (precipitation) being affected by altitude via changes in pressure.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Indie developers are clueless fuckers.

Petroglyph: "Wait, you guys don't want a tank mmo thingy? You want a RTS in the vein of C&C? Fuck, why didn't you tell us!" And they go ahead and start work on Grey Goo.

I'm waiting for a developer with a little talent to wake up and realise that we a CIV/SMAC type game.

 

[Kazuki]

Hopefully, there will be no delay until the release.

I'm curious, is there any information regarding day one DLC ?