Surviving the watery dangers of Civilization: Beyond Earth — Rising Tide (hands-on)

The first time I sent out a gunboat to explore the waters of my world in Rising Tide, a giant squid lashed its tentacles onto it and destroyed the vessel.

That’s just one of the dangers from the deep that players face in this expansion for Civilization: Beyond Earth, which debuts on Windows PCs this fall for $30. Published by Take-Two Interactive’s 2K Games label and developed by Firaxis Games, Rising Tide focuses on civilizations with floating cities on watery worlds. The expansion is the first major expansion pack for Beyond Earth, the latest version of Civilization set in a future when humanity colonizes the stars. Rising Tide is an important downloadable content (DLC) addition that is aimed at keeping gamers loyal to Civilization: Beyond Earth well after its initial 2014 launch.

I played the first 150 turns of the latest preview build at the 2K office in Novato, California. Besides the Waterworld-like landscape with floating cities, this expansion offers a new diplomacy system, four additional factions, a new artifact system, two new biomes, and the capability to mix affinities from two different civilizations. All of these changes mean that die-hard Civ fans should have plenty of reasons to pick up this DLC. But I don’t think any of these features will convince new players to pick up the game.

Oceans away

One of the first things you’ll notice upon touching down on a new planet for colonization is the new graphics. It has plenty of water, and now it is transparent, with shallow parts near shore and deeper parts further out. Resources are visible beneath the surface, as are a variety of sea creatures.

The familiar grid of hexagons still covers the entire map, and you can still build on land and send satellites into the orbital layer above the planet. But now the oceans come into play with creatures such as huge Kraken and sentient and monstrous coral reefs.

“Graphically, we created new shaders, textures and other tech for the water. It’s now transparent and has visual clarity for depth,” said lead game producer Andrew Frederiksen in an interview with GamesBeat. “Some resources appear on different types of water. The tiles have different layers. You have to research technology to go into the deeper ocean. It’s been a lot of work. We wanted to push the envelope more and take these civilizations into new places.”

You still build cities in the traditional way: picking a good site, putting a colonist on the location, and then developing the tiles around it to enable it to gather resources from farms, mines, and solar collectors. Now you can create floating structures to collect the resources on the water around your cities. You can also physically move your floating cities to new locations, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEGnSTFwGQY

How it plays

That becomes important as you deal with alien threats such as the giant coral, which can rope off your city and prevent all movement coming in or out of it. I created a couple of cities on two different maps. Fortunately, the coral didn’t gang up on me even after I started blasting back at my alien attackers.

Besides new sea creatures, this expansion also has new sea vessels. You can build Explorers that go on land or water as well as patrol boats, gun boats, trade ships, and submarines. As you progress and research new technologies, you can build more sophisticated seagoing craft. The submarines have an advantage of being invisible to an enemy’s surface units.

One of the things you have to learn through trial-and-error is just how tough your gunboats and submarines are against the sea creatures. Initial hostilities began and I chose to eradicate alien life on the planet.

In the early parts of my game, I had to make sure that my colony grew and the aliens didn’t eradicate me. Meanwhile, I had to explore the surrounding area and keep enough of a military presence to ward off attacks from the aliens in the water. I set up a floating city, and I kept my gunboats close so that I could bombard alien attackers with my Home City artillery, before committing naval ships to the attack.

I learned that the hardware. I sent some gunboats out into the ocean to survey the area. One of them was attacked by a Kraken and sunk within a couple of rounds of combat. By ganging up on a Kraken, my fleet was able to do enough damage to bring down the giant sea monster.

New faces, new foes?

You also have to deal with four new factions. A previously announced faction includes Al Falah, from the Middle East. Another being announced today is Duncan Hughes, a late arrival from Earth. He’s a leader of the North Sea Alliance, a collection of Northern European countries. A Scottish sailor, he comes from roots in organized labor. His faction controls the seas. Their cities can move faster and they have a higher defense.

“When they are in the water, they are a force to be reckoned with,” said Frederiksen.

Frederiksen said the new diplomacy system expands your choices dramatically beyond declaring war, making peace, or trading goods.

Now you’ll see what the leaders fear, and the things that cause them to be afraid of your faction, or the things they like. If the other leader cares a lot about a strong economy, you will please that leader if you do things that strengthen your own economy or both economies, such as establishing trade routes. The hope is that the diplomacy of the artificial intelligence leaders will be as interesting as playing against another human.

“The diplomacy changes are big,” Frederiksen said. “You have a wider variety of choices. But you also have transparency into other leaders on fear and respect. That affects the options you have and who you can be friends with. You can try to guide the diplomatic landscape.”

Now you’ll have a better idea of where things stand with an ally and where they are heading. You still won’t know if a faction will attack you in three turns. But you’ll be able

You can also develop hybrid affinities. In the prior game, you could choose an affinity, such as Supremacy, focused on robots; Purity, focused on human development; and Harmony, focused on embracing alien life. You can now mix those affinities as needed and still stay on a particular path toward victory.

“You get some new gameplay out of those hybrid affinities,” Frederiksen said.