Sid Meier's Civilization®: Beyond Earth™

If you don't treat this as Alpha Centauri successor, this game is actually very good.

Lore and writing are subpar, but the visuals and gameplay are great and immersive. AI can feel surprisingly competent at times due to prevalence of air units and all cities having very low hp.

This civ doesn't have a lot of mods, but there are some good overhauls which also improve AI

Overall, it's good if you don't have high expectations about it.

Basically sci-fi Civ 5, but worse. While the game still has Civ in its core, its features seem undercooked. 7/10

Don't listen to the naysayers : if you're a fan of the franchise, have been longing for another Alpha Centauri and some innovative gameplay, buy it. My only complaint is the complacency of the other factions on more peaceful levels of difficulty even up to Gemini, when only the Slavs got expansive. I do hope that the franchise continues to develop the civs into space :D

It needs mods, but when it does, it is absolutely exceptional and I really hope they remake this game

The story is probably the main highlight as well as the victory story lines

This is easily my favourite CIV game out of all of them

It's a shame the developers have been failing at understanding what makes CIV great lately

Civilization: Beyond Earth – A Deep Dive into Humanity's Future (with Rising Tide Expansion)

Civilization: Beyond Earth (Civ BE) is a masterclass in strategic depth and world-building, taking players on an ambitious journey beyond our planet's borders. Built on the beloved Civilization framework, this installment catapults players into an uncharted alien world where every choice shapes the fate of humanity. With the Rising Tide expansion, the game becomes an even more immersive and complex masterpiece, making it an absolute must for any strategy aficionado.

A Brave New World – Unmatched Depth and Complexity
Civ BE is not just another installment in the Civilization franchise; it's a bold reimagining of what the future holds for humanity. The game’s depth is staggering, offering a complex web of strategic choices that go beyond mere city-building and resource management. Every decision, from your chosen sponsor to the affinities you pursue (Harmony, Supremacy, or Purity), fundamentally alters your path, making each playthrough a unique narrative.

Rising Tide – Breathing Life into the Abyss
The Rising Tide expansion is where Civ BE truly shines. It introduces aquatic cities, new biomes, and enhanced diplomacy, fundamentally changing the way players interact with the world and each other. The ability to build floating cities is not just visually stunning; it adds a layer of strategic depth, forcing players to rethink territory control and resource gathering.

Diplomacy has been completely overhauled with a dynamic system that reacts to your actions, not just your words. This creates a more fluid and realistic political landscape, where alliances and rivalries are born organically, driven by your decisions and ideologies.

Endless Possibilities – Replayability Galore
One of the standout features of Civ BE is the sheer variety of options available. With numerous factions, technologies, and affinity paths, no two games feel the same. The addition of hybrid affinities in Rising Tide expands this diversity even further, allowing for creative and adaptive playstyles that keep the gameplay fresh and challenging.

Alien World – Beautiful and Dangerous
The alien planet in Civ BE is as beautiful as it is hostile. The vibrant, otherworldly landscapes are teeming with mysterious flora and fauna that can be both friend and foe. Navigating this alien ecosystem requires strategic foresight, as the environment can significantly impact your expansion and military strategy.

Final Verdict – A Must-Have for Strategy Fans
Civilization: Beyond Earth, combined with the Rising Tide expansion, delivers a deeply engaging and thought-provoking strategy experience. Its complex mechanics, stunning world-building, and unparalleled replayability make it a standout title in the Civilization series. If you're a fan of 4X strategy games and are fascinated by the possibilities of humanity's future, Civ BE with Rising Tide is an absolute must-play.

Rating: 9/10 – A Stellar Journey Beyond the Stars

Pretty complicated game even for Civ vets, but still good in that, one more turn, kind of way. Hell of a time sink, so unless you have a lot of time, I'd stay away. Got time to kill, this game will definately do it

I passed this up when it came out but I wish I hadn't. Kind of feels like Starship Troopers and civ 5 mechanics combined. I would check this out on sale if you love the series.

I'm writing this review retroactively, so I can't speak to the launcher issues a lot of folks have been complaining about recently.

I thought it was good, as long as you take it for what it is: a small and straightforward expansion meant to extend game play past the scientific victory in Civ 5. You start after touching down on a new world. Don't expect something on the scale of an entire new civilization game or any of the new features from Civ 6.

They mixed things up for us a fair amount. New units and unit evolutions, different biomes to adapt to, replaced city-states with alien life forms (or I guess we would be the aliens), and a new tech tree. There is also some new lore that is probably the biggest strength.

It is in all respects a simple and small scale adjunct to one victory condition of Civ 5. As long as you keep your expectations in check, I think they did a good job with this and that it didn't deserve a lot of the hate it got.

Early game can be a little slow, but the mid to late game is paced really well.

The game overall is lighter on systems than a normal Civ game, but I personally appreciate that. Newer Civ games become very micromanage-y and tedious, especially in the late game. This hits a nice balance.

I played 510 hours of this game and thought I'd finally give it a review. So here we go:

Personally I think Civ:BE got a bad rep. It's really a fun game, and has some really good things to it. But yes, if you try to look at it with 'rose colored goggles' for the old 'Alpha Centauri', you may not like it. So you really have to take it for what it is.

The Good

- The unit evolutions. Personally my favorite part of this game.
- The lore.
- The different map biomes.

The Mixed

- The difficulty. When you start, you feel powerless, as it should be. But after you get a few units to evolve, the 'power creep' becomes a 'run away freight train'. So it starts very difficult, and by the end it's far too easy.

The Bad

- The randomness of starts. If you get a bad start location, you might as well just restart the game and try again. Because a bad start location, is not salvageable no matter what.

- The jumbled tech-web. There's no definitive path. You end up with all 3 paths (Supremacy, Purity, and Harmony), and all 3 maxed out no matter what you do.

But all in all, it's still a fun game. And yes, it still runs fine.

I guess I'm a minority here, but I like this game. I didn't like the other Civ games very much. I played 5 for a while, hated 6, but loved Beyond Earth. I don't have any problem launching the game.

Summary: I am fond of this game. It is closer to Civ 5 than Civ 6 or Alpha Centauri, but has enough unique systems to stand on it's own. The Sci-Fi atmosphere is executed well and the options for combat and growth become thick by mid-game, making combat more interesting than other Civ entries. Be sure to buy it with the Rising Tide expansion, this changes the game a great deal. The game is often on sale.

Positives:
Technology Advancement: The tech tree is made a circular web of interacting technologies, each with branches of deeper concept research. The techs themselves are largely interesting and gaining research by trade, infrastructure, and quests feels theme appropriate, The research is deeply rooted in the concept of Ideological Affinity which is a new Civ concept that lends to making oft overlooked tech choices interesting. There is a lot of replay-ability here.
Diplomacy: Rising Tide opens up a Diplomacy system that measures respect/fear and offers the investment of political capital into Meaningful trade agreements and/or the advancement of your Leader's unique power and investment in 3 more society powers that represent your chosen style of Statecraft. As a result, starting character powers aren't as important as the other choices you make along the way; almost like choosing Era cultures in Humankind or Civ 7.
Aliens: The Dev choice to incorporate Sid Meyer's original idea of a self-aware planet that can be subjugated or assimilated is a welcome homage to the great game Alpha Centauri.
Combat: Combat starts out simple and indistinguishable from Civ 5, but as Technologies are unlocked, unit interaction and customization optimization opens up a fun and highly customized mid-game slug fest experience.

Negatives:
AI: The NPCs run on a slightly modified Civ 5 AI, from what I can tell. They aren't great at Naval warfare, fail to capitalize on airpower, ignore combat applications of satellites, and have no understanding of the Affinity and Technology advantages. Endgame against the AI just isn't challenging and not many people play the vanilla game, so PvP options are limited. You will have more fun roleplaying and outbuilding the AI than in a real head-to-head experience.
Terrain Colors: The art choice in colors makes terrain types very hard to tell with the naked eye. The rest of the artwork is great! Why the bland color scheme for biomes?
Endgame: The victory conditions sound EPIC, but are SLOGS in practice. By the time you have the Tech to make a victory run, you've almost always dominated the planet. Making this worse, some of the Victory Conditions take 20-40 turns or even longer! Combined with an AI that just doesn't understand how to use a laundry list of tech, culture, and affinity upgrades in late game, we end up with an endgame I have rarely indulged in.

Rate: 7 of 10 Well worth it on sale, if you are a Sci-Fi buff! The game is genuinely fun.

It's not *bad* per se, but it's not good either. There's a lot of stuff here that's just an objective step backward from Civ 5, even very simple UI stuff. Take for example the small bar that runs along the top of your screen in Civ games. This is used to display basic information, like what resources you have, what your general happiness level is, how many trade routes you have available and how many are active, etc.

For some reason, in Beyond Earth they chose to REMOVE the trade routes from this bar. Now if you want to see how many trade routes you have and which are active, you have to click on "additional information" and then select the trade route overview. The "additional information" button is also on the bottom right now, along with spy overview and a bunch of other things. It's completely flipped from Civ 5 (and Civ 6), so it constantly throws your brain for a loop because you're not used to going to the bottom right corner for information.

Diplomacy is also kind of a mess. From what I've been able to tell so far, there isn't actually a way to trade for resources. Your "trade" agreements with other civs are more like small-scale research agreements, and what you can barter for is dependent on the civ's personality. For example, Al Falah seems to be focused on production because their agreements give you stuff like an increase in energy yield for your capital, letting you build worker units for free, etc. It's not bad, you can get some useful stuff, it's just odd that you're not trading for actual resources. I don't have any Firaxite, but the American Reclamation Corporation does. Why can't I just ask to trade for it? But what can be much worse is your actual relationship with other civs. If you are "cooperating" with another civ (this game's equivalent of being friendly), you may be tempted to form an alliance with them. For the love of god, DO NOT do this. I made the mistake of proposing an alliance with Al Falah and was IMMEDIATELY thrust into a war with every single civ they were at war with (half the civs on the map).

Then there are other mechanics that are just half-baked. The xeno wildlife is this game's version of barbarians, and the *idea* behind them is cool. Most of them aren't outright hostile and they'll leave you alone as long as you don't get too close. You can destroy their nests to keep them from spawning if they're in the way, but that can be risky early on. They're all connected by a hive-mind so it'll make the rest of them REALLY mad at you. Conversely, you can research an ability that lets your explorers "leash" xeno units and make them your own (there's also research that let you produce your own xeno units). The problem is, leashing wild xenos is mostly pointless. They're quickly outpaced by normal military units, and you can't upgrade them. For example, the xeno cavalry unit is just humans riding on raptor bugs. If you leash a few wild raptor bugs, you *should* be able to upgrade them to cavalry units once you've researched alien domestication. But you can't. Why? I dunno.

Most of the game is like this. There's a lot of neat ideas here, but none of them were ever fleshed out. Firaxis only released one small expansion for this game and a map pack, then promptly abandoned it.

Actually a lot of fun and way fewer bugs than CIV VII

Bought this game long ago, just reinstalled it, it runs on steam. i had no issue but i have FUN

poorly designed game with bad tech progression and game flow. I play on normal difficulty, and besides the 4 military unit I build at the beginning of the game to deal with some aliens, up until I build the gate for emancipation victory, there was no point in building more units or research them. I build the ultimate unit in the game and it moves so slowly that by the time it got there, my rangers, (like archers in civ 6) already killed the enemy city.... and it was just a lot of waiting at the end game - about 20 turns to build the gate for emancipation gate, and it takes at least 20 more turns of sacrificing units to it to finish...

the map and minimap is really dark, so the theme and art are both unappealing. not a very good civ game.

love the concept, game play, and familiarity/structure with Civilization turn-based games. As is always the challenge the CPU/AI are not competitive.

I really, really was hoping for a continuation of Civ 5 on other planets with alien or human leaders. What we got was a clunky mess that is just not fun and it's a lot more complicated than it needs to be and now doesn't even work on Steam. Don't waste your money, this one's yet another miss after Civ 5 and I quit and uninstalled it after only 14 hours total.

I like how it feels like a choose your own adventure story.

I want to like this game but it crashes literally all the time. It is super unstable and currently unplayable for a huge number of people. I keep trying to play it, and it crashes every time I load a world.

Took me years to finally get this after seeing how Meh it is. Still Meh but overall decent. The map colors are bizarre and not user friendly. Sorry Sid you should have used more Alpha Centauri Colors. Speaking of Alpha Centauri it beats this game in every way, but its soo old and the graphics are outdated.

Shallow. Unengaging. Comparing it to Alpha Centauri and this game feels like 20% of that. Waste of time.

Awful game. Completely inferior to the classic late-90s game Alpha Centauri. Boring, generic gameplay. Basically a copy/paste space version of Civilization 5 but with a lot of the best features stripped out. I stopped buying Firaxis games after this one as it was clear they were going to the slop-style development model of high prices and low creativity.

Me: Can we have Alpha Centauri?
Mom: We already have Alpha Centauri at home
The Alpha Centauri at home:

Writing a review for Beyond Earth in January of 2025 was not on my "Things to do" list... but here we are

Beyond Earth is just a different approach to the classic Civilization formula. At times it felt like each member of the creative team was given a bottle of Robitussin to chug before work.

The game runs fine, the game is fun, the xenos are squishy. 8/10, will exterminate again.

Greatest entry in the Civ line since Alpha Centauri.

I think the biggest problem that people had with this game is that they wanted this to be Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri 2, but it wasn't. It is at best a spiritual sequel to the classic that is SMAC, but by no means a bad game. Unit design is straight-forward and uncomplicated, tech web is great, the weird terrain and aliens are cool and fun to deal with, there's still tons of replayability here. If you're going to get this though, you'll need to get Rising Tide as it does fix a lot of the problems that the base game had.

First impression I thought it was cool. Then quickly got tired, especially of the aesthetic, but I must admit, I didn't know the mechanics. Got into it more cos it still felt like classic Civ.
Potato McWhiskey posted a video about BE recently and went over the basics with such enthusiasm that it made me revisit the game. With online guides taking me step by step, not only was my next playthrough much more efficient, it was certainly more enjoyable.
I see the extra fun behind it. Given the intro movie, I now see it as what happens after you claim a science victory in Civ 6: Gathering Storm's Apocalypse Mode lol.

Holy crap.
I played it for half an hour but that was enough.
This is not even close to civilization 5 or 6. This is garbage.

The UI is a degrade and looks really lazy done. A black box with silver border
and a small shitty text on it. The terrain textures are really low (and I have everything on max in the settings).

And by the way, I had to fix the game by uninstalling and deleting all the stuff manually and then
reinstall. Else you will stuck with access violation exception.

I had some doubts about that game but wow ... this is really not that good.
I remember civilization games to be way better. But maybe I just cannot connect
to the sci fi settings in here.

I will install civilization 6 again and play that instead.

An under rated entry in the Civilization series that unfortunately didn't get the support it needed from the developers. The idea of a desperate mission to another planet to colonize it and save the species is a hell of a starter. Choosing what to bring to ensure your success was something that needed to be expanded on but wasn't at launch. Another problem was too many people made parallels to Alpha Centauri thinking it was a reboot of sorts and the devs didn't do enough to dissuade people from that idea.

It hasn't aged well, but I still think it's in my top 10.

It's not a classic Civ game and the tech tree is a bit more confusing at first, but overall it's very much worth a play.

Had to disable Steam overlay to get it to launch, but once I did that, it's a fun take on the old Civ game model. New content, familiar gameplay.

Gets way too much undeserved hate. Its a great game where they tried out a lot of new mechanics. Not for everyone but I really like it

When this first came out, i struggled to enjoy it, a few years ago i tried again and felt the same, I have since bought the dcl and honestly i have been having a lot of fun with it, i would recommend revisiting for anyone who who tried it before without the dlc to try it with the dlc. :)

1. pretty much abandoned by player and modder community
2. harder AI doesn't mean it smarter, it just get loads of bonus and going to gang on you with no reason
3. every leader are ugly

The basic game itself isn't very good but add some mods that the fans made and it becomes pretty enjoyable. I'ts a shame everyone gave up on it so soon.

Waiting for Civilization VII. I am about Civ VI'd out. This is similar to other Civ products. Plays a little, ok, a lot slow. I am over a hundred hours in, having fun, but wondering who will win.
Solid bang for the buck.

This game is a scam now. I bought it a few days ago and it doesn't start at all. Since I have playtime from a free weekend several years ago, Steam won't approve a refund request. Absolute garbage that shouldn't be sold.

A lot of cool new ideas about the future of mankind. It's pretty cool what you can come up with.

Do not buy, it will just not open and say "Updating executable". The game maker will not fix, same for all Civ games, I will not be buying Civ 7 and recommend anyone reading not to do so either.

I have been a fan of this franchise since the start, I remember playing the very first title on a super old system that had Windows XP and I have grown to love the franchise especially the 5th & 6th instalment.

Beyond Earth is a whole different take on the franchise, imagine colonizing other random planets and having to deal with the concept of creating a civilized empire among alien life forms. It’s an interesting and refreshingly different take but my lord is it a hard game to master.

You don’t have famous historical names to reference, having to remember the names of different colonies and its leaders can be tough. Having to navigate the overall complex skill/science tree is hectic and trying to understand what new mechanical systems there are to create and produce can be a struggle to.

It all feels so, ALIEN, indeed. As for the technical issues, I did have some issue running my game but as of this review on this date my game runs perfectly fine on my up-to-date Windows 10 platform. Initially I found that launching was failing but once I verified the integrity of the game files through STEAM, it was found to have been missing 1 crucial file, not sure what it was, but STEAM automatically downloaded the file that was missing and I was able to run my game just fine.

Overall, I recommend this game as a very different change of pace but with that said, the previous title still remains my favourite in the franchise thus far.

Recommended 7/10

Can't tell ya what the "Mixed" review status is all about other than the fact that 2K launcher removal borked launch of the game for a few days. That was no issue for me, and now I'm playing what might be the best entry in the Civ series.

Cartoonish caricatures of worn-out historical figures? Nope. We got all new characters, realistically modeled. Doesn't matter that they don't have VAs. In fact, I think I like a silent world leader. Too many of them like to hear themselves talk, y'know? Anyway.

That, and the dynamic quests, make for your own storyline. Sucks that there's no custom leader creator, but at least I'm not playing as the same tired characters. It doesn't matter if Elizabeth I, Victoria and Eleanor were all different figures with wildly different personalities if there's no depth to the storytelling. That depth is here. I care about my colonists finding these weird aliens. I get to choose what path my civ takes, and that choice matters. Do I bait the little bastards to study them? Do I repel them with a sonic fence? What's gonna happen in either case? IDK yet! And I love it! :D

I normally recommend Civ's 2K-published offerings at 90% off only, because the pricing scheme for Civ VI sucks every kind of ball imaginable, but this? Get it at half off or better. It's that good. (Rising Tide is a must-have with this, so only consider getting BE if you can bundle it.)

Desperately needs a remaster., no longer runs on modern Windows

Game no longer launches after a recent update. Again. If I could ask for a refund, I would, because this is just silly.

I enjoyed the game very much, though I recently noticed that the game won't boot.

After some tinkering, I've found a reliable solution:

1. Install the game.
2. Right click on the game in the Steam Library and select Manage -> Browse Local Files.
3. Once the File Explorer opens, go one step up, so you can see the main game folder. Should be in "***\Steam\steamapps\common\".
4. Right click the "Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth" folder and select Properties.
5. Untick Read-Only (apply it to subfolders and subfiles as well).
6. Once done - boot the game.

It is possible the game STILL won't run, but that's okay because:

7. Repeat step 4-6. In the install folder, right under the CivilizationBE_DX11.exe file, Steam may create a file with a weird name (civilizationbe_dx11.exe.4328.STEAMSTART). Delete that file and boot the game again. This time, Steam should properly be able to update the game files and the game should boot normally.

Once it boots up once, these steps should no longer be necessary.

This solution worked on a couple of different machines/setups so far, so I'm positive it should work for you as well!

Time to go Beyond Earth!

Dont buy this game since it doesnt work. Nothing you do will get it to work either forget about it.

I had some fun with this game and would have recommended it if bought on sale, but now I'd highly recommend everyone stay away from it and 2K games in general. 2K pushed an update a bit ago (as of 12/28/24) that broke a lot of old games when they removed the launcher. Some people haven't had issues, but a bunch of my older games, including this one, now fail to launch without extensive troubleshooting. This publisher is trash and you should 100% be wary of buying anything from them in the future.

Great Game, If you love Civ but need a break pick this up as another option. Could have used another DLC.

A good game, I tried the Windows version on Proton but it failed to run (just like some people reported running the Windows version on Windows). But the Linux version ran just fine.

Good game!

The game play is "clunky " (for lack of a better term). 4/10 would recommend. After removing the 2K launch in late November, it is now unplayable even though I paid for the game. The "helps" are of absolutely zero use. Even after closely following the instructions, uninstalling and reinstalling the game, it is unplayable. Good luck in trying to get technical support. "May the odds forever be in your favor."