Sid Meier's Civilization®: Beyond Earth™

I don't know what the Valve is doing, but this game constantly crashing the last months and it's impossible to play.

I'm just tired on take two shenanigans.

All take two games are getting negative reviews until T2 stop attempts to undermine player control over their games and information.

Different in some aspects from the rest of the series, but still a fun game. This was my first Civ game and I really enjoy playing it.

Very fun game. Wish the developer expanded more on the space theme. The system implemented in Beyond Earth is simple yet so much fun.

I think this is probably the most underrated Civ game out there. Love the feel, gameplay, and art design. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but I think if you like Civ games you'll have no problem enjoying this one.

Imagine your favorite soda—the full sugar version specifically. Tastes great? Of course it does!

But have you ever seen one of those images showing you just how much sugar is actually in that stuff?
It's nauseating, to put it lightly. The drink hasn't changed at all, but now it's less appetizing because you see it for what it is. Yeah, everyone and their mom knew all along that Mug Root Beer was slowly killing you, but that harsh reality was dwarfed by the immediate "hit" of the taste and marketing of the drink. The imagery of shoveling 50 grams of high fructose corn syrup, a glass of water, and "caramel color" (whatever that is) is too visceral to cope with, so we choose to ignore it. Have I ever told you I'm fun at parties?

Civilization V's references to real history merely serve to hide that it's a machine designed in a lab to make the grains of sand fall through the hourglass of your life at record pace. The humor one finds in the leaders, wonders, combat, etc. are all predicated on the fact that they're all grounded in the common vernacular of pop history (a cartoon-ified version, sure). Like, REALLY fun

Beyond Earth eschews that charm because it has no history to build off of. BE is a far-future game, so those historical references that carried Civ V can't be made here. The game feels foreign, not in the good kind of foreign in that you're stepping into a rich, yet-to-be-explored fictional realm full of wonder (see LotR, ASoIaF, Blade Runner) but the bad kind of foreign in that it's like a LLM's outline for a fictional future. Bland, uninspired, and lacking any cultural touchstones to use as a contextual foundation to relate to and build upon.

The problem with BE is that it's similar to Civ V, but you're forced to see the reality of what you've been shoveling in your mouth the whole time you were playing Civ V. I used to grind out achievements in V as a pastime and now I can't play any 4X games because the thought of burning free time on 'em makes me queasy.

I contemplated giving BE a sincere thumbs up because it was one of many games that helped me realize I've been wasting my life consuming slop. I'm now much more grateful for the games that are worth it.

yay

yay

Great game.
Nice break from a regular Civ game.

this is now my favourite civ game to play. If you love civ and sifi you will enjoy this.

Civilization: Beyond Earth – A Misunderstood Gem That Deserves a Second Chance

Overview:
Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth has long been regarded as the black sheep of the Civilization series. Upon its release in 2014, it received mixed reviews from both critics and fans. Many viewed it as a spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri, but it struggled to meet those high expectations. While it lacked the polish and immediate charm of other entries in the franchise, it remains a game with substantial potential—especially after a few essential updates and some thoughtful modding.

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Interface and Visuals: Functional, Not Flashy

One of the most common criticisms of Beyond Earth concerns its user interface. Admittedly, the HUD is less streamlined and intuitive than what we see in Civ VI. Certain mechanics are buried deeper in menus, and newcomers may find it somewhat overwhelming. However, once you grow accustomed to it, the interface is more than serviceable. It conveys the necessary information and supports the game’s layered mechanics reasonably well.

As for the visual style, it often divides players. The color palette is certainly different—alien, even unsettling to some—but this is, in my opinion, a strength rather than a flaw. Beyond Earth isn’t trying to be a traditional Civ game. It’s set on an alien planet, and the visual design reflects this beautifully. The terrain, buildings, and units have an otherworldly quality that enhances immersion and supports the game’s sci-fi themes.

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Gameplay and Mechanics: Rough Start, but Playable Today

It’s no secret that Beyond Earth launched with several balancing issues and underwhelming mechanics. A famous example is the early-game trade system, where internal trade routes could generate 20–30 energy and production per turn—a clear sign of unbalanced design.

However, much of this has been corrected. The base game received two patches, and the Rising Tide expansion came with two additional updates. While not an extensive post-launch support history, these were significant enough to fix many of the early frustrations. The diplomacy system in Rising Tide added more depth, and aquatic cities introduced new strategic dimensions. The Affinity system—though initially confusing—has become more coherent with some experience and community guidance.

Additionally, a handful of still-functioning mods help polish rough edges even further. While the modding scene is not as vibrant as in other Civ titles, there are enough quality-of-life mods and balance tweaks to elevate the game into a satisfying experience.

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Pricing and Accessibility

Beyond Earth still carries a surprisingly high price tag for a game over a decade old. Fortunately, it goes on sale several times a year. I personally picked it up for about $10 recently, which felt like excellent value for the depth it offers.

If Firaxis or 2K were to consider a revitalization, I would urge them to:
• Release one more DLC or expansion to round out the game systems.
• Push out a couple of final quality-of-life updates.
• Perhaps even open up the game further to mod support.

Such steps could breathe new life into a title that deserves more recognition than it has received.

While Civilization: Beyond Earth may never reach the iconic status of its siblings, it stands as a fascinating and enjoyable strategy game in its own right—especially after patches and mods. It dared to do something different and paid the price for its ambition, but that very ambition makes it worth revisiting.

It may not be the best Civ game ever made, but it’s far from the worst. It’s playable, it’s immersive, and with a bit more attention from its developers, it could become the sci-fi strategy game it always aspired to be.

Different

Simple and fun. No fluff/bloat.

Love this game, whole reason why i played Civilization

I've never understood most of the hate this game has gotten. As an adaptation of Civ5, it's fantastic. One of my biggest qualms with Civ5 was how by the end of the game half of the map was still empty. I started on Civ3 and still believe that is actually the best entry in the series, so it never made sense to me and I always found it immersion-breaking. With BE, it actually makes sense because you aren't part of standard human history. You're playing a theoretical future on an alien planet, so this quirk introduced in Civ5 is a lot easier to swallow. Health, while being similar to happiness, is a superior mechanic to happiness.

People complaining about the tech web somehow being un-intuitive are smooth brained and can't read tool tips I guess. I mean, I understand that by this point in the series they had been conditioned to follow a strictly formulated path as the only viable option to win Civ5 on the highest difficulties, but the whole point of the web was to break away from that. With the special strategic resources introduced in this game it actually makes more sense anyway. I'll never understand the people who complain about variety and choice. It's not like certain paths are unbalanced either. It's remarkably balanced actually, and very easy to tailor to whatever your starting situation is and easy to adapt as your situation changes throughout the game.

I appreciate the level of customization we have with the virtues. It is genuinely one of the best and most flexible systems in the entire franchise, and affinities add a lot of flavor especially with Rising Tide. My only complaint about this game is the lack of/unbalanced choices for the bonuses you can pick from to start with, which was initially flexed as a big feature when this game was being developed. It was disappointed that they weren't added to with the expansion, but water cities are pretty cool!

As I said before, Civ3 was my favorite. Civ5 is probably second, but BE is a very, very close third. Really, they occupy the same spot in my mind, it just depends on if I'm feeling like playing historical or sci-fi as a genre.

Great game, Amazing game. There's just one small issue, this game runs on 32-bit and Steam stopped supporting 32-bit games back in February of 2024...which means that this game will crash for no reason whatsoever out of nowhere whenever it feels like it. I hope someone can potentially find a means to jury rig the game to run better but until then I suppose i'm SOL

Its good.

Update: recommending now
I am not experiencing crashes anymore since reading these tips:
https://github.com/bmaupin/civ-be-linux-fixes

I love CIV games and I love this game.
But, I cannot recommend it because it is buggy. The game crashes too often, with reasons then locked to the saved game moment; ie restarting the saved game after crash repeatedly results in the same crash. Basically preventing further gameplay with that savegame.
I do enjoy starting new games with a new world and exploring it, but have never been able to finish it.

Needed for context: I only play on linux, on different devices. At the moment of this review, I was using Proton-9.0,4 and Steam Linux Runtime 1.0.
In case you were wondering; yes, other games run fine, I only experience crashes with this game.
And yes, I shall keep trying to play this game once a year perhaps, to see whether new Wine /Proton updates were able to help solve the cause for the crash. Because the game itself is great! I love the visuals, the quirky aliens, odd resources and especially the storytelling aspects added to decisions to make with the quests.

Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth brings the classic 4X formula into a sci-fi setting with affinities, orbital units, and a nonlinear tech web. The setting is intriguing and full of potential, but the atmosphere can feel cold and oppressive. While the core gameplay remains solid, some systems feel less refined compared to mainline Civilization entries.

Uninteresting at best. All the (arbitrary) quest perks seem cool at first coming from Civ until you realize it just doesn't matter. Tech tree is not linear and it's all made up concepts so it really isn't particularly intuitive how to progress and science has an air of grind to it. The concept is not really fun enough to make me want to learn how to get better at the game or progress to higher difficulties. Just feels like another long-winded time waster from Sid Meier.

always fun to play a cid civ game.

good game

It would be nice to have a manual for this one as well because you encounter things in the game that you are at a standstill as to what to do. It's based on being on another planet, and not on earth, and you have differently named units. It would be nice to know what each does so it would reduce the level of confusion.

I thought it was good until 10 minutes into the game I realized how there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do! Growth and progression is all linear. You either do what the game wants you to do or you don't get to grow.

1. Settle a city in an Alien world.
2. Explore the Alien World.
3. Repeat.

Awesome game one of my favourites!

It's flawed and quite un-finished.

Not worth full price

This is a updated, re-imagined release of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri but using the Civilization 5 game design style. If you loved the original you will enjoy Civilization Beyond Earth.

fun and easy once you get the hang of it

Still like this game, especially with the Rising Tide expansion. It's a shame it didn't do well enough to warrant a second expansion.

This is a great game!
If you want to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of conquering an alien planet, then this is definitely for you!
I especially liked that the technology tree is not linear, but circular: you can research technologies in any direction you like (unlike Civilization's tech tree).

This game gets alot of harsh criticism for not being a good successor to alpha centauri, and also not a true successor to Civ5. I dont think this is entirely fair, because Beyond earth on it own really is not bad at all. I myself have not played alpha centauri, but i am a big civ5 fan. As a result i still had a good time with civ BE. Its not groundbreaking, but its all around solid and plays well. I see it as a civ5 spinoff that stands quite well on its own legs.

The rising tide DLC makes a big difference and is essential to make the experience different enough from civ5. Some of the core criticisms still are valid though : the game lacks identity and the leaders are not interesting at all. Story wise you have to search through flavour text and wiki to find anything interesting, you can ignore it entirely with no impact on gameplay. Firaxis did not take the sci fi sitting nearly far enough, which is a real shame.

Onto the good parts of the game, which i think are are often overlooked. The affinity system is interesting and pretty fun to play around with. It also leads to good unit variety. Orbital units are a great idea, and especially useful if you like min-maxing. I really liked the aliens acting as barbarians, in comparison to civ5 barbarians you can interact with them way more. My favourite part form Civ BE is the artifact system. Hunting for artifacts to get the exact combo you need is very satisfying. The new diplomacy is bit weird an unintuitive, but still fun to play around with. Lastly the floating cities are also a nice touch. As a result Civ BE incentivizes you to play very wide, which is a nice changeup from civ5.

To conclude Civ Beyond earth is a bad Alpha Centauri successor, but nonetheless as good 4X game. 7.5/10

Great Game

I really try to like this game but how can you like such a grindy game that in its smallest and easiest version takes like 500 turns to finish ?

To my thinking (and I have played Sid Meier's Civ since version 2.0) this, with the Rising Tide expansion is the best yet; it's better playing on a grand scale strategy than Civ V ad Civ VI. It worked very well with some mods on Win10. As I am now on Linux Mint, I found that Aspyr's version (rework?) tends to ignore at least some mods, and it tends to crash to desktop after a while. I have nearly 1000 hours in this Beyond Earth alone. I was nowhere near as enthusiastic about the mere base game, but the expansion really brought the game to life for me.

Ima be real. Some of the hate is deserved, but it's a solid game.

Personally, I love having an alternative to traditional civ without super modding and BE comes in clutch.

More customization options than classic Civ V, spy missions like Civ VI, adorable alien friends

Somehow, still better than Civ 7.

Would recommend trying if you liked Civ 5, but keep in mind it's an alien world you're on and everything about the game is new and alien too. Be prepared to relearn, decipher and use the civilopedia and search bars a lot, this is a complex game. Other than that a great new take to the series and very fun to get into. Visually vibrant

515 turns into an Epic game, i lose a very healthy super rich town to a coup somehow. There is no cheat codes to correct the games stupid broken mechanics. Buy this game if you want to invest a bunch of time to get screwed for reasons that make no sense.

Also its pretty much just a total rebranding of Civ5

Similar enough to the earlier versions that it's easy enough to play, but has added changes that make it interesting and challenging.

This game is amazing. Unfortunately, the UI for newer, high definition systems is so small, it's pretty much unplayable now.

I held off on buying this when I saw the reviews saying the game wouldn't launch. It works fine for me. I am running windows on an MSI laptop and there are absolutely no problems launching the game for me at all. I guess they fixed.

One of the most underrated games ever

Best game in the franchise!

Awesome game

Playing with just the vanilla civ experience (no mods), I can't keep to keep the game running more than a few hours. It just keeps crashing. This isn't acceptable. Happened on Windows and Linux.

Be prepared to lose time and yourself.

Can get it

pretty fun, much like civ... wish there was more