The Civilization: Beyond Earth fall update is now live, addressing various technical problems including the infamous "144hz monitor issue"—the bizarre inability to run the game at resolutions greater than 1280x720 on monitors running at 144hz refresh rates—and making changes to units, the tech web, quest rewards, AI, UI, and more.

To be honest, there's nothing in the patch notes that really leaps out at me in a, "Oh, thanks goodness they fixed that" kind of way. "Revised trade route formula for city-to-city trade, with reduced yields," is one change, selected at random; "Miasmic Repulsor now unlocks on Alien Biology (was Ecology)" is another. The combat strength of Explorers has doubled, from 3 to 6, and the AI will now only pursue Domination once the game has gone into extended mode. Individually, none of this sounds all that important, but collectively it adds up to a pretty major overhaul.

"In addition to fixing these and other issues, Firaxis has also addressed a number of gameplay balance requests from the community—like optimizing trade route yields and doing away with one particular Covert Ops exploit," Community Manager David Hinkle wrote. "This is a substantial update, so please take a few moments to pore over the full patch notes below before you jump back into Beyond Earth."

The Civilization: Beyond Earth update should download and install automatically. If it doesn't, Hinkle suggested restarting Steam.

We like cheap PC components and accessories. But you know what we like even more? Expensive PC components and accessories that are on sale. We ve partnered with the bargainmeisters at TechBargains to bring you a weekly list of the best component, accessory, and software sales for PC gamers.

Some highlights this week: Both Dragon Age: Inquisition and Far Cry 4 are 25% off with the code found below. The classic Jet Set Radio is only $1.24 in today's deal on GreenManGaming.com. The EVGA GeForce GTX 780Ti is over $300 off and comes with your choice of Assassin's Creed Unity, Far Cry 4, or The Crew. The MSI Radeon R9 290X sheds $100 off its usual price and comes with four free games: Civilization: Beyond Earth plus your choice of three more from a list that includes Alien: Isolation, Star Citizen, Sniper Elite 3, Thief, Tomb Raider, and many more.

Games:

— Dragon Age: Inquisition is $45 on GreenManGaming with the code 1MZ9FW-H92JSD-2CT74F

— Far Cry 4 is $45 on GreenManGaming with the code 1MZ9FW-H92JSD-2CT74F

— Today only, Wing Commander Saga (8 games in a bundle) is only $9.52 on GOG.com.

— Gamersgate is having a pre-Thanksgiving sale, featuring Borderlands titles for 75% off , GTA titles for 80% off and more.

— Today only, Jet Set Radio is a mere $1.24 on GreenManGaming, along with a bunch of other cheap games.

Hardware:

— The Lenovo Z40 14in Gaming Laptop is $619 on Lenovo s site with the code D2BZ40

— The Seagate Expansion 2TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive is $79.99 on Newegg.

— The PNY Optima SSD7SC240GOPT-RB 240GB 2.5" InternalSATA III SSD is only $69.99 on Newegg after a $20 rebate.

— The Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 ATX Cube Case is $99.99 on Newegg with the code EMCWWHF72 (expires 11/26) and after a $10 rebate.

— The D-Link DAP-1650 Wireless AC1200 Dual Band Gigabit Range Extender is $79.99 on Newegg after a $10 rebate.

— The TP-Link TL-WDR3600 Dual Band Gigabit Router is all the way down to $39.99 on Newegg with the code EMCWWHF49. (expires 11/26)

— The TP-Link TL-WR841ND Wireless N Router is only $14.99 on Newegg with the code EMCWWHF76 (expires 11/26) and after a $5 rebate.

— The EVGA SuperNOVA 850W ATX12V 80PLUS BRONZE Modular Power Supply is $69.99 On Newegg after a $20 rebate.

— The Raidmax RX-635AP 635W ATX12V 80PLUS BRONZE Modular Power Supply is $29.99 on Newegg after a $20 rebate.

— Get four 4GB G.Skill Ripjaws 4 series DDR4 RAM (16GB total) for $229.99 on Newegg.

— Get two 4GB Team Vulcan DDR3 RAM (8GB total) for $56.99 on Newegg.

— The MSI Gaming N760 GeForce GTX 760 video card is $179.99 on Newegg after a $20 rebate.

— The MSI Radeon R9 290X Gaming video card is $299.99 on Newegg after a $30 rebate, but is also packed full of free games. It comes with a free copy of Civilization: Beyond Earth, plus your choice of three more games from a list that includes Alien: Isolation, Star Citizen, Sniper Elite 3, Thief, Tomb Raider, and many more.

— The Sapphire Dual-X 100373-2L Radeon R9 280 video card is $169.99 on Newegg after a $15 rebate, and also comes with your choice of three games from a list that includes Alien: Isolation, Star Citizen, Sniper Elite 3, Thief, Tomb Raider, and many more, just like above.

— The EVGA GeForce GTX 780Ti video card is $489.99 on Newegg after a $30 rebate, and comes with your choice of one of the following three games: Assassin s Creed Unity, Far Cry 4, The Crew.

For more tech deals, visit techbargains.com.

A note on affiliates: some of our stories, like this one, include affiliate links to online stores. These online stores share a small amount of revenue with us if you buy something through one of these links, which help support our work evaluating components and games.

I never thought I'd miss Sister Miriam, but it only took until my second rival made planetfall in Beyond Earth to start remembering her fondly. If you never played Alpha Centauri... well, firstly, please rectify this situation at once... she's the faction leader everyone loved to hate, without the inherent awkwardness of classic Civilisation jokes about Gandhi getting the Bomb and so on. She heads up the religious faction in the game, the Believers, though that's honestly not why she's hated. It's that she's very strong in the early game, that her faction tends to be aggressive and problematic, that the only reason she'll ever have your back is to stab it, and last but not least, because she has a really punchable face. Her scowl says it all; eyes narrow, contemptuous, looking you in the eye only because she wants you to know the extent of her scorn.

How I wish Beyond Earth had half the personality of that one simple bitmap.

In a way, I feel bad about making the comparison, because Beyond Earth's team has always been clear that they were making Civ In Space rather than Alpha Centauri 2. It was also going to be nigh-impossible to recapture that lightning in a bottle without simply rehashing what came before. As is often the case, a modern game picking up where an older one left off doesn't simply have to compete with the original, but potentially decades of carefully pruned and polished memories. In Alpha Centauri's case for instance, it's easy to forget that the dialogue was largely done in Mad Lib style - endless conversations along the lines of "Greetings from the [WHO HECK US], honored [PERSON], I hope you are [APPROPRIATE THING TO SAY]!" Any memories of real diplomatic cut-and-thrust are entirely invented or very rose-tinted.

But damn, if it didn't do a great job at creating the illusion.

Alpha Centauri is hands down my favourite 4X game of all time, and it's almost entirely down to its characters and story. The idea to split humanity on ideological rather than national boundaries was a great one, but it's what happened next that marks AC's true genius - the human faces put onto them to make them more than simply a philosophy, mixed with a game that made you feel you were seeing the expression of it. Regardless of the numbers and what specific tactics the AI was using, fighting the Hive felt different to fighting the Gaians; the accumulated weight of the Morganite philosophies and their financial empire making allying with them a very different matter to, say, Chairman Yang, who would turtle up in his bases. It was a personal experience, helped by a thousand tiny little touches like the insults the faction leaders would sling at each other ("Lady Deidre dancing naked through the trees" and so on) that made it feel like they were engaged in the struggle instead of simply controlling their part, and the beautifully written slivers of philosophy that sat effortlessly next to words taken from some of the greatest minds in history.

Beyond Earth, its defenders say, goes to similar lengths. If you look in the Civpedia, you can find reams of background information on the difference between Franco-Iberia and Brazilia, information on the techs and wonders, where CEO Suzanne Fielding went to school, all of that. And that's true, in much the same way that the plans for the bypass due to knock down Arthur Dent's house were technically on display for him to see. The difference is that these never really feel part of the game. Even after several games, I don't feel any innate sense of how the Slavic Federation rolls vs. the Pan-Asian Co-operative or whatever, nor that the developers even care that much beyond what was needed for balancing. By that, I'm not calling laziness, but rather pointing to the fact that the sweep of the game is about everyone losing interest in all that stuff anyway in favour of the Harmony, Purity and Supremacy affinities that they all inevitably end up subscribing to.

A simpler way to put it is that Alpha Centauri has story, Beyond Earth has lore. The two are often confused, but serve very different purposes. Lore is background. Lore is additional information. All too often, lore is an excuse, seen in many a bullshit argument like "But elves are nymphomaniac nudists in the lore!" Story is a core part of the experience, and in Alpha Centauri more than any other 4X game ever made. There's the obvious stuff with the faction leaders and big text infodumps at regular intervals, but there's also a lot of other important stuff going on that's less front-of-house - not least the constant reinforcement of just how awful everything on the planet actually is. What starts as a mission of hope breaks up before it's even really begun, and it's not long after that that you're nerve-stapling citizens and fighting wars where the losing immortal is thrown screaming into a pain booth. Alpha Centauri's Planet is a terrible, terrible place where the best of intentions go to die.

But here's the thing. It's your terrible, terrible place. Chances are that at least initially you'll take a faction that you feel comfortable with, that chimes at least somewhat with your moral compass or beliefs and set out to make Planet a better place (This is admittedly much less the case in the gimmicker add-on Alien Crossfire). By the time you realise just how bad things really are, it's too late. Dipping into the lore, it's even worse than it may seem - at one point Lady Deidre of the Gaians manages to impress another faction by greeting them without her protective mask on, the mindworms cripple their victims with fear and give them one of the most horrible deaths this side of the Sarlaac pit, and the entire plot is rooted in extinction. But all of that is just trimming on a game that sells the effect with just what we see and what's implied.

The core difference between the two games though is that Beyond Earth is a game about humanity settling a new world, while Alpha Centauri was about humans doing so. That's a bigger difference than it might initially seem, though one that shows itself again and again in execution details - in quests that honestly believe that a boost to production is the most important part of your choice, or in your first glimpse of your rival factions coming in the form of stock dialogue that sounds like it was written by a robot. "I'm sorry, but we haven't known one another for long enough for me to feel comfortable doing so. Perhaps we can revisit this subject in the future." Sigh. Boring!

This is all very Civilisation in style, of course. But in Civilisation, you don't go in cold. There are expectations of the characters and nations, fair or otherwise, there's... well... there's history. In Beyond Earth, the artifice is gone. These people are simply statistics with a face, every stone left unturned to make them more. It comes from a design school that has stripped away personality with pretty much every sequel, from the first Civilisation where you got to see your cities and build a throne room, to the current one which is far more concerned with warfare and the numbers of production. Alpha Centauri meanwhile picked up where its creator Brian Reynolds left off with Colonisation, where the King was an active player and your direct relationship with home was a fundamental part of the experience - from initial settlement to finally declaring independence and having to hold the land that you'd taken.

For me though, the wider scope doesn't lead to a more interesting or even more freeform game. Technically, sure, you can argue it does. The Harmony/Supremacy/Purity split is a decent attempt at covering both philosophy and strategic considerations, and for the game, it makes sense. Clarity is important. On a narrative level though, I can never fight the feeling that I'm less forging a path for my society as quietly signing it up to a space-cult. If your vision of the future doesn't conform to one of them, complete with what goes with it, you're left picking on either purely pragmatic reasons, killing the philosophy, or forced into the least personally objectionable. Alpha Centauri meanwhile only provided one real path (multiple victories, yes, but that's not the same thing), but a better illusion. It's like dealing with a magician holding a pack of cards. You're always going to get the Ace of Spades, or close enough. What matters is that you think you chose it.

I'm certainly not saying Beyond Earth is a bad game here, just not what I was hoping for. It's a solid strategy game about conquering a new world. It's just not the story of the next big jump for humanity, not really, and while most of the other bits that people don't like at the moment can be bulked up or patched with expansions it seems unlikely that any money or attention will go on that side of things, or into future revisions of the concept. It's not that only Brian Reynolds could create something like Alpha Centauri, but that he increasingly feels like the only person who's been high up on the Civ chain of command who appreciates what stepping away from the numbers can do - AC being less a designer's new take on Civilisation as a Civilisation designer exploring philosophy through its lens. Next time, it would be good to see the skill and processing that goes into the mechanical side take a few cues from that, and show us just how much more a world can be than the sum of its strategies.

Civilization: Beyond Earth has only been out for a week, but there are already some amazing mods on the game s Steam Workshop page. As of writing this, there are about 100 mods to choose from, some of which only make small changes and some that aim to do a whole lot more. We went through all the mods currently available and sorted out which ones are already impressive and which ones have the potential to be truly great as they are developed further. 

From a simple recoloring to a complete rebalancing, here is our list of the best Civilization: Beyond Earth mods broken down into two categories: mods to get right now and mods to keep your eye on for later. We'll update this list in the future.

Mods to get right now

Colorful Tech Web

By Glidergun | Steam Workshop page

Everyone who's played Beyond Earth knows that overwhelming feeling the first time you open the tech web and see its branching paths loom over you. Glidergun s Colorful Tech Web mod looks to ease that pain in the simplest way possible. The mod assigns a different color to each kind of symbol in the tech web, letting you see at a glance if a tech will unlock new units, buildings, wonders, satellites, or what have you. It also adds an icon to units and buildings that will still be locked behind a minimum affinity level after being researched. There are a few other mods that try to organize the tech web, but their color coding systems are overly complex and cause as much confusion as they alleviate.

EnhancedLoadout

By Kleinzach |  Steam Workshop page

A few sponsor mods have added custom colonist, cargo, and spaceship choices, but no other mod adds so many options at once. EnhancedLoadout nearly doubles your options at the start of a game. It currently has few balance issues here and there, like an immediate free affinity level, but creator Kleinzach has been patching and updating it regularly. This is a great mod to install and forget about, adding variety to the start of every new game without imposing itself any further.

Empowered Wonders

By 3ntf4k3d |  Steam Workshop page

One thing you might notice is that wonders, being easier to pick and choose between, don t have the oomph they used to. The Empowered Wonders mod aims to change that, giving every wonder a significant boost in power. Now those planet exclusive buildings are strong enough that choosing which ones to pursue can be an influential part of your strategy. This mod might not be for everybody, but it is a well executed response to a common criticism of Beyond Earth without feeling heavy handed.

Tiny tweaks: Simple Clock and Previous Route In Red

By salec and Guildencrantz&Rosenstern, respectively |  Simple Clock | Previous Route in Red

These two mods are incredibly small but currently have no compatibility issues with other mods, so there is absolutely no reason to leave them out of your game if you like them. Simple Clock just adds the real world time to the center of the top UI bar. If you are like me and suffer from one more turn syndrome, then it can be a much needed reminder that reality isn t slowing down. Previous Route in Red highlights the Previous Route text when a trade route completes, maybe not a change needed for some people but one that is unobtrusive and helps speed up your play if you don't plan on switching trade routes often.

Info Addict

Original by robk, updated for Beyond Earth by Unknownone |  Steam Workshop page

A classic mod for Civilization V updated for the newest game in the series. Info Addict adds a bunch of time-based infographics showing Civ details like score, military power, energy, affinity level, and much more. A utility tool, Info Addict is more for people curious about the behind-the-scenes of their civ game than those looking to make gameplay changes.

Mods to keep your eye on

Player Colour For Units

By SaintDaveUK |  Steam Workshop page

All units in Beyond Earth have the same model and textures regardless of your sponsor, meaning a large amount of the base units have red stripes even if your civ isn't red. Modder SaintDaveUK has set out to correct that, dynamically recoloring the red spots to match the primary color of the sponsor you ve chosen. The mod already works well, but unfortunately only changes four units right now. This will be a great graphics mod when it reaches completion, but currently doesn t feature enough to make it a must have.

BeBa - Beyond Balance

By Albie_123 and the Civilization Fanatics community | Steam Workshop page

Beyond Balance is a monumental, community-driven undertaking that aims to rework the balance of the entire game and make sure no single strategy is dominant over the rest. What seems like an almost insurmountable task is already well under way, as BeBa has taken on explorer weakness, trade routes being overpowered, slow affinity leveling, and many other commonly raised concerns with the base game. Unfortunately, BeBa still has a long way to go and might be erratic until more unified and agreed upon balance decisions are established. It may one day turn into an essential mod for the Beyond Earth experience, but currently comes with a few issues of its own.

Sponsor Mods

Pictured sponsor is The Holy See by JFD

Finally, an honorable mention to all the new sponsor mods, which you can check out here. These are great for adding flavor, but now that choosing a specific sponsor means so much less than choosing a Civ in Civilization V—specifically the lack of unique units and buildings—most of these mods are light on content or change. A lot of them are still very cool and work well, with some modders even going as far as to add a colonist, cargo, and spaceship option themed with their added sponsor. However, until I see a breakout, large scale change-making sponsor mod, what might be considered the best new sponsor is up to personal preference.

If you're tempted by Civilization: Beyond Earth, but not enough to stump up the wonga without knowing if and how well it will run on your PC, I have some good news: demos are a thing. Admittedly, not a thing that exists much anymore, but Firaxis have always been very good at offering up a generous amount of their games for no money. Beyond Earth is no exception, and if you navigate your way to the game's Steam page you'll find that there's now a big 'Download Demo' box on the right.

It's 5GB in size, and Reddit users are stating that it gives you 100 turns to play around with, as per usual for Firaxis' Civ demos. That's a good amount of time to get a feel for the game—although for a fuller overview and appraisal of Beyond Earth, you could always check out our review.

Beyond Earth begins with the very sci-fi premise of What if? What if you took Civilization, the classic turn-based grand strategy game, and made one of its signature endings the beginning of a whole new game?

In Civilization, you can win the game by building a spaceship to launch your civilization into space, in search of a new world. Beyond Earth takes that ending and makes it a beginning. You are now on that new world: Go.

The result is a game that succeeds in almost exactly the same way as it fails; a major case of cognitive dissonance. Beyond Earth, while bearing many attributes of a brand new game, is based in Civilization 5 s engine and mechanics. It is in many ways exactly the same game as Civ 5, just spacier.

Is that a problem? That depends on how much you like Civ 5, and how willing you are to take the ride and give Beyond Earth s new space look a shot.

For me it was a problem all through my first game. I played as the Brazilian civ, with its bonus to melee combat. Being a Civ veteran, I, without even realizing it, ported over my go-to Civ strategy of focusing on strength in the early age to build the foundation of a strong late-game civilization. And then, turn-by-turn, I played the game almost on auto-pilot.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn t enjoy the experience. And it took me losing that game and having to step away and reassess how I was approaching it in order to learn how to love it.

New world

Beyond Earth has a lot of new looks: new units, new victories, a completely new tech tree (actually, it s a web), new leaders, new civilizations and a handful of things under the hood that are also completely new. But the experience of cracking it open, watching my colony ship settle onto a completely dark map and then setting foot onto this alien world felt just like playing Civ 5—at first.

On the one hand, there are many worse 4X strategy games to emulate than Civ 5, and as that game s expansions have proved, while it redesigned much of the original Civ formula, it left a lot of room on the table for reinventing itself. Beyond Earth brings some of the better reinventions along with it. Trade routes feature prominently in Beyond Earth, for one thing, as does a new strategic component much like Gods & Kings s religions, called Affinities.

Affinities allow you to evolve your Beyond Earth civ beyond its human origins, focusing research on technologies that will play to how you want to interface with your new world and its inhabitants.

The Harmony affinity is what it sounds like, allowing you to meld with the new planet s lifeforms and create new alien units. Purity focuses on genetic manipulation of the human genome to build better versions of your civ. Finally, Supremacy lets you make your civ s humans into cyborgs with giant robot friends.

Each affinity allows for slightly different victories and affinity-only units, and can have a dramatic effect on your overall game. Specializing in Supremacy will unlock robot soldiers, for example. Whereas the Harmony affinity will grant you access to alien-based units and the ability to tolerate the new world s harsh alien environment. Other civs will respond to you (or not) based on your affinity, and actions you take in the world can impact your affinity score.

This is most noticeable when dealing with the planet s indigenous creatures. Instead of Civilization s barbarians, Beyond Earth has a variety of alien lifeforms, some more aggressive than others. On the surface, these seem to be more bug-like versions of the barbarians, but they play and react quite differently from their hairier, Earth-bound cousins. Whereas barbarians will more or less attack whatever is in range at random, the aliens will frequently not attack unless provoked. I was able to send Explorer units carefully into heavily alien-infested territories without earning so much as a scratch. Still, other times, aliens would attack me at random, either provoked by the presence of one of my military units or by the aggressive actions of my civ neighbors. Over-aggressively terraform your new world and your Harmony attributes will be for naught, as aggro aliens force you into conflict. Whereas attempting to clear out the new world s alien lifeforms (instead of attempting to harmonize with them), can lead to them becoming even more aggressive, eventually luring more powerful aliens toward your cities.

The other big newness is the orbital layer. You can build and launch satellites in Beyond Earth, and these will impart benefits to specific tiles. Some are quest- and victory-based, and others are magnificent weapons. The Planet Carver, for example, shoots a massive beam of weaponized energy from space and it is glorious. You can toggle between the planetary and orbital layer with a button, and you can knock enemy satellites out of orbit with certain ranged units.

The Orbital Layer adds a fun, new twist and an engaging tactical element to Civ 5 s already finely tuned tactical game. I found myself chuckling at the misfortune of civs that crossed my path when I had Planet Carvers at my disposal. And deploying Solar Collectors and Miasma Repulsers (to clear away the alien planet s harmful, natural vapors) made me feel like I now had a new, more direct tool for improving my cities.

Besides, who doesn t like launching stuff into space?

Old struggles

Now for the bad news: It s easy to feel like Beyond Earth is just an expansion to Civ 5, albeit spacier than those that came before. For Civ 5 fans like myself, this is a loaded proposition.

If you like Civ 5, then more Civ 5 equals more Civ 5, which is great! But there s no denying that even as much as I love Civ 5 (and I do love it, quite a lot), I was expecting something more from Beyond Earth than Civ 5 with a sci-fi skin. And in spite of the dramatic opening cinematic, the rocketing descent of my landing craft and the stirring opening text about how my civilization had traveled the stars to start anew and blah, blah… as soon as that first turn started and my explorer unit stared across the landscape dotted with hex grids and covered with the fog of war, I felt a rush of disappointment.

My newly founded city needed to produce things, and although those things bore new names, they seemed to me the same, old buildings in all but name alone. And although the alien landscape was littered with seemingly-unusual resources, the deadly miasma and resource pods containing goodies for home, all that, too, felt same old, at first blush.

So I set about methodically slogging through the familiar in search of the new, and without my even realizing it, I found it.

Starting over

Beyond Earth s many similarities to Civ 5 mask, to its detriment, a game that is remarkably new and different, and once I was able to see past those similarities, the newness and wonder of playing in a future Civ sandbox washed over me like a slow boiling pot of water. I was engrossed before I realized it.

As the Brazilians, I was aiming for a Purity affinity, but fumbled my way through the research web willy-nilly and eventually lost the game without ever realizing one of my enemies had been close to victory. Not great, but that s when it finally dawned on me that Beyond Earth, in spite of its heavy foundation in Civ 5 s mechanics and rules, is actually a completely different game.

So I started again, this time as the Slavic Federation. I would specialize in Supremacy and after a bit of research on what the new victories actually were (pro tip: read the f-ing manual), I decided to shoot for the Contact victory, but build a strong enough civ that, should all else fail, I could at least take over the world.

Beyond Earth offers five victory conditions, although two are similar, differing only in which affinity will unlock it.

Contact involves discovering an alien signal and unlocking the secret of your new planet s Progenitor species, an ancient alien race that left mysterious ruins behind. It is by far the most narrative of the victories, although its attempts at narrative don t always mesh well with Civ s UI.

One specific portion of the road to the Contact victory, for example, called for sending a military unit to a recently discovered alien ruin. I located the ruin and dispatched a rover… and waited. And waited. And waited. The instruction dialogue said the ruin itself had summoned a civilian from one of my cities, then asked me to send a military unit, presumably to escort that civilian. Which I had done, but I wasn t sure if I had skipped a step. After several turns I finally noticed a new button had appeared in the rover s action panel. I pressed the button and the quest concluded anti-climactically, with a text box and a ding. Wheres Firaxis s other sci-fi game, XCOM, uses cinematics to impart such momentous advancements, the Beyond Earth solution felt more than a little hollow and frustrating.

Domination is what it sounds like, giving you the win if you capture all of the opposing civ s capitals. This is the most Civ-like of the victories, although it does require some mastery of Beyond Earth s new technologies and units.

Emancipation and Promised Land are two sides of the same coin. You must research the technology to eventually open either an Emancipation or Exodus gate back to Earth, bringing those left behind either salvation or dominance. If you are Purity or Supremacy, this is your Affinity-scientific end game.

Transcendence is the Harmony victory. It involves researching alien technologies to create a mind flower that will unite your consciousness with that of the alien planet. City buildings can aid in this victory, shortening the amount of time it takes for the mind flower to bloom.

In addition to the end game victory, Beyond Earth also brings along smaller quests. Occasionally new technologies or improvements will offer a choice for how they are used, adding additional money or food, for example, or presenting a moral or philosophical choice. Eradicate aliens or domesticate them, for example. It s a nice new twist and they gave me a stronger connection to the decisions I was making, and gave an aspect of the game that has typically been ho-hum, more drama.

Quests will occasionally also be simply fun things to experience. There is a massive 'siege worm' in Beyond Earth, for example. A late-game Harmony technology will eventually allow you to control these worms, like Paul Atreides in Dune, but an early-game quest with no affinity restriction tasks you with killing one. If you can pull it off, it s a hoot.

Playing as the Purity Brazilians, I eventually corralled a siege worm and with the help of one air unit, three ranged units, a melee soldier and a satellite buff, I took it. It had already destroyed two settlers, half a dozen military units, countless trade convoys and an entire outpost. The quest reward didn t nearly repay what I had lost, but it was a glorious struggle.

Ascension

As the Supremacy Slavs, I slaughtered alien lifeforms with abandon, reaping monetary and technological rewards and tried to focus my research on Supremacy techs to grow my military force. When the ARC civilization landed on a plain I had planned to colonize myself, I decided to go full tactical and take them out.

What followed was an, at times, tedious, but overall successful campaign to take over the ARC land and, in the process, clear an alien infestation from a mountainous jungle that would eventually form the production center of my empire. Using Brawlers, Rovers, and Gunners, I first attacked ARC s capitol and was repulsed, and then withdrew into the jungle to wage war on the aliens while earning upgrades and improving my equipment with scientific research. Dozens of turns later, I emerged from the jungle with a seasoned army and conquered the ARC one city at a time. They were but the first.

As my neighbors inched toward various victories, I invaded their lands to secure my dominance, building a robot empire on the bones of their fallen civilizations.

For my third playthrough, I wanted to win without firing shot. I almost succeeded.

I picked the Franco-Iberian civ and focused on the Harmony affinity. Instead of clearing the alien miasma, I left it alone and eventually developed immunity to its effects through technology.

Focusing on trade and science, I built a civ on an archipelago-like planet that spanned two large islands. I traded with every other civ, giving both them and me a boost to income and science. I made deals for resources I had in abundance. I made friends. Meanwhile I used my trade vessels to boost my own productivity and growth, and built city and tile improvements that gave me a scientific edge.

When war broke out between the Polystralians and the PAC, I took no sides. When the Brazilians edged closer to their own Transcendence victory, I made trade routes to beef up my science output and closed the gap.

Above: Gameplay footage we captured from an earlier preview build.

When I pulled ahead, and Brasilia began massing troops near my border, I formed alliances elsewhere and quietly poured money at my military and defenses.

Ultimately, war never came. Although I was forced to kill a handful of arbitrarily aggressive aliens, I dominated my fellow civs with science and trade, with my guns silent. And when my mind flower bloomed, I felt like I finally understood everything Beyond Earth had to offer. And, just like for my Harmony civ, with understanding came a deep appreciation for my new world/game s many complexities.

This is how Beyond Earth succeeds in spite of its similarities to Civ 5. It offers a game steeped in the traditions and mechanics of Civilization, that s nevertheless surprising and new in often unexpected ways. I ve conquered countless civilizations on the planet Earths of each various Civilization game, and each time it s felt like reinventing a fantasy version of the past. In Beyond Earth, victory feels like living in—and forging—humanity s future, and I can honestly say I ve never had more fun building a civ to stand the test of time.

Science has a lot of running to do to catch up with the aspirational extremes of science fiction, but many of the concepts and technologies that you use to mould your futuristic society in Civilization: Beyond Earth are based on real world ideas and technology. Beyond Earth's sprawling technology web encompasses futuristic interpretations of biology, bionics and military science, so let's take a look at some of the real science behind those spectacular inventions.

Space lasers

Orbital units in Civilization: Beyond Earth have many uses, both helpful and destructive. By positioning a satellite in the orbital view you can buff cities and tiles positioned beneath it, or use an orbital weapon to devastate an enemy. The orbital weapons platform has long had a place in science fiction, whether you're reading Akira or watching James Bond try to shut down the Goldeneye platform. The reality of weaponised orbital units thankfully doesn't reflect the fiction.

This is thanks in part to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which forbade nations from sending nuclear warheads into space. The treaty was necessary at the height of the Cold War, when the militarisation of space began in earnest. The secret Soviet space station, Almaz 2, was equipped with a gun on-board to fend off potential boarding actions from US forces, though the whole space station would have to be rotated to aim the weapon, and there were fears that the kinetic force of firing the gun could destabilise the station's orbit.

But what about space-to-Earth orbital attack craft? These largely exist in theoretical forms. The Nazi regime designed heliobeam—a huge space mirror that would concentrate sunlight on a point on Earth's surface. The Soviet Fractional Orbit Bombardment system orbited Earth for 15 years during the Cold War, and was capable of guiding nuclear missiles in low orbit. That was decommissioned in the early '80s in accordance with space demilitarisation agreements.

Space-capable nations have been launching classified missions for decades, so it's impossible to say for sure that more elaborate space weapons aren't orbiting right now. On a new planet with no international treaties, like the ones envisioned by Civilization: Beyond Earth, there's every chance humanity could develop very effective orbital weapons platforms.

Bionic augmentation

In Civilization: Beyond Earth, you can choose to align your civ with one of three affinities. Each reflects a different philosophical approach to humanity's future. The technology of each faction is hugely important to their identity. The Supremacy affinity, for example, is all about using technology to help humanity advance its current form. They want to improve our human characteristics through advanced computing and superior bionic components.

Most of these ideas are far from feasible, but we've been augmenting the human form for a long time, as anyone wearing glasses or contact lenses will have experience of first-hand. Hugely successful Cochlear implants improve hearing in profoundly deaf people. Artificial hearts are frequently used as a bridge organ during heart transplants, and have sustained patients for years in lieu of a working organ.

Dramatic strides have also been made in limb-replacement technology for amputee patients. New limbs model the complex actions of a limb, of course, but the discipline also incorporates the development of machine-brain interfaces to allow the amputee to control their new limb with thought. This currently means painstakingly wiring nerves to the replacement limb—a difficult and expensive process for now.

Existing technologies are basic compared to the metal soldiers of Civilization: Beyond Earth, but it's a burgeoning area of science. It seems inevitable that we'll reach the dilemma faced by Beyond Earth's factions: when augmentations are better than our existing bodies, will we embrace machines completely like the Supremacy player, or hold onto our fleshy human forms like the Purity player?

Terraforming

The Purity affinity is dedicated to preserving humanity in its current state. They view the new planet they've settled on as a new paradise, a second Earth which can offer the species a second chance.

That means changes need to be made to the new world. While the planet is habitable, it isn't hospitable. Clouds of deadly miasma blanket the terrain and indigenous creatures patrol their territory. The Harmony player will seek to preserve the natural order of the planet, but others would rather change it to be more Earth-like.

That process is known as terraforming. It's largely a theoretical concept at the moment, but serious scientific thought has been given to the idea of reshaping worlds within our solar system to make them habitable.

Mars is a particularly interesting candidate, as it once held surface water. Its lack of magnetic atmosphere means it's currently too exposed to solar winds to settle on, but the introduction of huge amounts of greenhouse gases could theoretically create an atmosphere that could trap heat. The addition of water and earthen microbiology could then create an environment that would support plantlife. The oxygen output would eventually render the atmosphere breathable.

Another popular terraforming technique involves the construction of vast domes, which operate as miniature, man-made atmospheres and contain within them the gases and temperature conditions needed to support life. One of these actually exists on Earth. The Biosphere 2 is a huge biome in Oracle, Arizona that, for a time, enclosed a sealed artificial atmosphere and ecosystem. Scientists lived inside these systems for years, studying precise changes in the chemical makeup of the air and resident plantlife. Those experiments were shut down after the isolated scientists involved fell out and split into factions.

Luckily, the planets you settle on in Civilization: Beyond Earth already have an atmosphere, but it's sensible to build a small army of worker drones to build farms and scientific facilities near your cities. Satellites are also a useful terraforming tool, and can be used to burn away that inconvenient miasma.

Habitable planets and extraterrestrial life

Alien life is everywhere in Civilization: Beyond Earth. Every city starts out as a fragile outpost that must survive in a climate full of roaming siege worms, and other local critters. The Contact victory condition invites you to make contact with a technologically advanced alien race. How close are we to meeting an alien species?

Let's start small. Scientists have long suspected that Mars may hold the fossilised remains of bacteria, which could have thrived on Martian water. The findings so far have been inconclusive, but that hasn't stopped scientists from looking further afield. One hypothesis suggests that the chemical components of DNA and RNA—the building blocks of life—could form in outer space and travel on asteroids, giving impacted planets a better chance of generating life. Earlier this year NASA also revealed a database for tracking polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the universe, which some theories suggest played a significant role in the origin of life on Earth.

But what about the search for sentient beings? Obviously, they haven't been discovered yet, but the SETI project is devoted to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. They monitor electromagnetic radiation for signs of alien transmissions and radio telescopes scour the cosmos for any sign of intelligent signals. In Civilization: Beyond Earth you have to decipher the Progenitor code to make contact with the alien race, which might seem convenient, but we've been attaching cryptic guides to our cosmic location to our spacecraft for decades just in case they fall into the hands of a alien race beyond the edges of the solar system.

Astronomers, meanwhile, are busy searching for terrestrial planets similar to our own elsewhere in the galaxy. It's thought that the nearest star to ours, Alpha Centauri, could support planets capable of sustaining life, but the most recently discovered and potentially habitable planet is Kepler-186f, orbiting the red dwarf, Kepler-186, a mere 500 light years away.

That's just a small taste of the scientific basis for Civilization: Beyond Earth's most exciting technologies. Which piece of Beyond Earth tech would you most like to see developed in the real world?

Here's the opening cinematic to the future-set 4X strategy Civilization: Beyond Earth. You may as well watch it now, because, in game, you'll only see it for the few seconds it takes to hit Escape and get to the menu. While Civ's historical intros were geared towards the grandiose—of the permanence of legacy and the weight of rule—this sci-fi cinematic is more about the hope of a better tomorrow.

Of course, that tomorrow could potentially be about an augmented machine-man race that goes back to invade Earth. But don't let that detract from the poignancy of the video.

Civilization: Beyond Earth is out next week, on 24 October. For more, check out our hands-on impressions, either in video or written word format.

Developers interviewing developers? This will not stand*! Actually this chat between Sid Meier and XCOM: Enemy Unknown designer Jake Solomon is funny and interesting, and a rare chance to see Sid Meier in the wild.

Solomon initially tries to establish whether or not Meier is a Canadian spy, and moves on to quiz the Yoda of strategy design on his origins and inspirations. It's particularly charming to hear about the humble origins of Microprose. This anecdote reveals how much the games industry has exploded since the early days of the medium, though tools like Game Maker and Unity have kept this spirit alive.

"When people ask me 'how do you become a game designer?' well you just sit down and type a game into your computer and you're a game designer. That's really the way it was back then. I did all the art, the sound, the programming, printed the manuals on my printer and put them in a baggy, and sent Bill off to sell them... we did games in about two months back in those days, maybe three if it's, like, in depth."

The video was recorded at Firaxicon, a convention for fans of Firaxis' long line of strategy games.

*When devs interview devs the results are often interesting. Check out the Tone Control podcast for more of that sort of thing.