Civilization: Beyond Earth (review) is a lot like if you ordered a pizza without mushrooms, and they brought it out with mushrooms. So they bring it back out with an expansion of extra cheese and better crust and throw in some bacon bits, but those mushrooms are still on there. Make no mistake: Rising Tide enhances a lot of things, like diplomacy, exploration, and affinity choice, leaving Beyond Earth a better game than it’s ever been. It just does very little to resolve the limited replayability that is the central cause of this being a relatively weak Civilization game.
Improvements are notable. The overhauled diplomacy system, for starters, is the best it’s ever been in a Civ game of any stripe, and makes the largest positive impact of any new feature. Each leader now has a Respect and Fear value associated with every other leader, which serves as an excellent, two-axis barometer for how they are likely to treat you and their rival AIs. This is augmented by selectable personality traits like Imperial, Industrialist, and Cultured, which provide bonuses to your whole civ, can be swapped or leveled up at an expenditure of the new Diplomatic Capital resource, and will influence how you are seen by other leaders based on how your traits align or clash with the traits they chose.
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Improvements are notable. The overhauled diplomacy system, for starters, is the best it’s ever been in a Civ game of any stripe, and makes the largest positive impact of any new feature. Each leader now has a Respect and Fear value associated with every other leader, which serves as an excellent, two-axis barometer for how they are likely to treat you and their rival AIs. This is augmented by selectable personality traits like Imperial, Industrialist, and Cultured, which provide bonuses to your whole civ, can be swapped or leveled up at an expenditure of the new Diplomatic Capital resource, and will influence how you are seen by other leaders based on how your traits align or clash with the traits they chose.
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