You canвЂ™t even escort a colony expansion until you research Gunboats in such a scenario, and one Gunboat can eat about two hits from the standard sea alien. Remember when I told you that high-level aliens are everywhere right from the start? That also includes the seas.

Which could be interestingвЂ¦ except, whoops, you need to spend ~17 turns researching the ability to Embark your land units. My second game was on a bigger map that ended up being an Archipelago-ish area. I get that this would probably be completely compelling in a multiplayer match or something, but Jesus. Then I needed toвЂ¦ send 1,000 Attack worth of units through the gate. After grinding up Supremacy to the prerequisite level, I had to spend 30 turns building an Emancipation gate. I have completed one game thus far, where I decided to go for the Supremacy victory instead of вЂњjust roll over the insane enemy CivsвЂќ victory. Speaking of forever, my Civ 5 experience in pressing End Turn about a thousand times before anything of consequence occurs has carried over into Beyond Earth. and you could be frustratingly locked into a different Affinity or just use standard units forever. Combine that with Civ 5вЂ™s вЂњwe still donвЂ™t like you building citiesвЂќ M.O. I know Civ 5 had something similar, but itвЂ™s extra important in Beyond Earth because your Affinity special units вЂњreserveвЂќ a certain amount of said resource, and you never really know how much youвЂ™ll have until unlock the ability to see it. Still, there is a lot of convoluted nonsense in there with some techs granting bonuses to buildings on the other side of the tree and the rather unfortunate necessity to research certain techs to вЂњunlockвЂќ strategic resources. Each tech вЂњbranchвЂќ has tech вЂњleaves,вЂќ which I thought was a pretty clever way to keep the web itself relatively clean. The basic gist is that instead of needing to research lame things like Pottery and Horseback Riding on your road to thermonuclear weapons, you can make a beeline to wherever you want. Such as A) run screaming, B) decide you didnвЂ™t want to build a city over there anyway, and/or C) New Random World.ДЄnother thing I like вЂ“ thus far вЂ“ is the tech web: While it feels a bit unfair to stumble across a Siege Worm with an Explorer on Turn 3, I enjoy that extra level of randomness insofar as it gives you some interesting decisions.

There are multiple kinds roaming about, including ranged and flying units, and even some вЂњendgameвЂќ aliens right from the start. What I already like about the game are the barbarians aliens. By contrast, I have 16 hours in Beyond Earth as of this morning. I have a total of 24 hours /played in Civ 5 actually. You know, itвЂ™s actually extra unfair that I keep belaboring this Civ 5 point because I didnвЂ™t start playing Civ 5 until about two months ago. And donвЂ™t even get me started on those real-world quotations used when researching new tech вЂ“ I walked into my college courses years later with the equivalent of AP credit from being inspired by Plato and Aristotle half a dozen years before they were required reading. That will need to be nerve stapled to be removed. Alpha Centauri consumed a solid chunk of my adolescent mindspace, where it resides to this day. I knew this wasnвЂ™t going to be Alpha Centauri. That is not an entirely fair comparison, of course.

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