A good game that does not use its potential by far!

My first subjective impression: Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth has the potential to be a great game, but until then it will probably still one or two extensions. The setting is right, graphics and design is chic and the developers have made some effort with the background of the political groups. The UI is capable, but has weaknesses in some elementary game mechanics, such as the allocation of trade routes from a certain number of cities. Personally, I liked a couple of new features that distinguishes it from the previous civilization titles: For example, quests that are linked to built buildings and the new research tree, which allows more freedom than the linear design of its predecessor. Class thing! One of the changes that a lot has to potential with future patches, you will find at the beginning of the game. It no longer selects only one "Maximo Leader" from, but rather step by step builds his desire faction together and then sends it toward the newly discovered planet. To summarize my overall impression: Beyond Earth makes things right and some wrong. Unfortunately, a few wrong choices are more severe in terms of game design, as it can imagine the first 100 laps of the game ....

For the first few laps in the game really fun: After the spaceship has landed, it will dig into the wilderness to artifacts and crashed satellites, to loot container resources and the aliens to go out of the way. There are also fast the first decisions on the direction in which the colony should develop: Harmony, Supremacy or Purity. These three affinities reflect roughly the alignment again, on the way in which bypasses the new colony with the planet and the aliens. The election takes a few consequences, such as victory conditions or appearance and the bonuses of the special forces, which are gradually unlocked with the increase of affinity levels. Of course, it also has an impact on diplomacy, because the followers of the purity of the human race on the planet are not as excited when the man missed a genetic redesign with alien DNA.

And so we come to one of the points that have particularly disappointed me personally. The diplomacy has been - taken from Civilisation V, in this indeed was not particularly sophisticated, but had a right to exist - except for very small changes in detail. In Beyond Earth, the reason for being absent, and diplomacy has so little influence that one can ignore this completely. Cute Fluff, but meaningless and that's not enough for a game that looks as a secret place of Alpha Centauri. Especially the leaders of factions lacking "personality" and its own character. There are pretty animations with a few statistics in the background and are not compared to a Montezuma in civilization or Sister M. Godwinson in Alpha Centauri, which could be as direct neighbors a nuisance. Well, if the weapons then should speak but that's nothing that would fear a human player. It was a bit feeble KI taken from Civ5 with which many game mechanics has its difficulties. The AI ​​can not yet deal with "1 unit per box," or use for example the bonuses of units right always. Since diplomacy and struggle are not unimportant in such strategy games, that's just plain annoying.

Longtime veterans of civilization series, I recommend at least on the first extension to wait for many will be a disappointment at the difficulty. Even at the highest difficulty level, the AI ​​is not a challenge and diplomacy is unfortunate bad. Although the background of the political groups are well worked out, the game can not really tell an exciting story of the colonization of an alien planet. Even if you subtract the romantic notions that associate themselves with the memories of Alpha Centauri, Beyond Earth simply lacks the charm of its predecessor.

But well done are the opportunities for expanding a colony. For each type of tile, there are improvements that can be unlocked through various researches, and make it possible to form the colony on his own terms. The interplay between terrain, Social Policies (ahem: Vitues), the trade routes, the research and the quest system is well done and allows a lot of different strategies. Those who like to move and construction crews working on the optimization of research, industry and urban growth or making the first steps in a turn-based strategy game that may well risk buying. In addition, the rumor going around that the manufacturer is working on the first patch to fix some problems and bugs - so there is hope!