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Civilization: Beyond Earth update prepares for Starships' arrival

The latest update for Civilization: Beyond Earth is addressing several aspects of the Firaxis strategy game, including trading routes and Wonder effects. However, it will also prepare for the incoming arrival of Sid Meier's Starships by adding in a connectivity feature.

Ozzie Mejia

February 20, 2015 11:45 AM

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With Sid Meier's Starships set to launch very soon, that leaves the question of what happens to Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth. 2K and Firaxis have somewhat answered this by issuing the game's Winter 2015 update, which will prepare for future integration between the two standalone games.

"Both the Starships and Beyond Earth teams have been interested in the idea of having two separate games able to pass information between them, and what that might mean for players," Firaxis community manager Dave Hinkle said on the Civilization website. "This is our first experiment with this cross-game connectivity. We're handling this through my2K. If you log into your my2K account within Starships or Beyond Earth, then we will be able to establish a connection between the two games. If you don't already have a my2K account, you'll need to create one. For now, this system works for Beyond Earth and Starships, but may extend to future titles as well. The first time you log into your my2K account from Beyond Earth, you will get an exclusive map: the Glacier planet."

Other changes include some major revisions to the game's Wonders, with several of them having their costs and effects adjusted. Meanwhile, trade routes will now be unlocked through city population, while an "auto-renew route" option is being added to help make management a bit easier.

The full update notes, as taken from the aforementioned Civilization website, are as follows:

LOCALIZATION

• Added support for Simplified Chinese

WONDERS

• General cost pass on all Wonders
• Xenodrome - Provides a small positive influence to alien opinion each turn, and negative alien opinion recovers twice as quickly
• Panopticon - Gives +1 unit sight and +5 anti-orbital strike range on city
• Mass Driver - Gives +1 city strike range and +25% city strike damage
• Gene Vault - Gives free worker to new cities
• Ectogenesis Pod - Gives 1 Food per 4 pop in its city
• Quantum Computer - Gives free orbital unit maintenance and +50% orbital unit duration
• Drone Sphere - Gives +50% speed to worker builds and explorer expeditions
• Cynosure - Gain +1 Science for every 3 population in its city
• Ansible - Affinity XP is gained 25% faster
• Stellar Codex - +8 Orbital Coverage range
• Master Control - Free Maintenance and +1 Movement for Workers
• Precog Project - Military Units can achieve two additional levels of Veterancy
• Human Hive - City immune to Covert Operations
• Holon Chamber - Gain Science equivalent to 10% of global Energy income each turn
• Archimedes Lever - Any hostile unit within 2 tiles of the city suffers 10 attrition damage per turn
• Memetwork - All Affinity Level requirements for buildings, units, and wonders reduced by 1
• New Terran Myth - +2 Culture from Trade Routes
• Markov Eclipse - Military Units attack at full strength even when damaged
• Promethean - City no longer produces Unhealth
• Nanothermite - All air, ranged, and city bombard attacks 25% stronger
• Xenomalleum - +5 Titanium, Petroleum, and Geothermal resource
• Xenonova - Penalties due to Unhealth reduced by 50%
• Bytegeist - All Virtue Tier synergy bonuses require one less point to complete
• Armasail - City suffers 50% less damage from ranged attacks
• Deep Memory - +1 Culture for every 3 Population in every City
• Tectonic Anvil - +5 Production from Canyons
• Crawler - +25% Production for buildings and wonders
• Daedelus Ladder - All City Yields +10%
• Resurrection Device - Benefits from positive Health effects increased by 50%

GENERAL BALANCE

• Domination victory is now won by controlling all original player capitals including your own.
• Veterancy Promotions: All combat boost promotions add +10% strength
• Veterancy Promotions: All unit heal promotions starting at level 4 heal 75 hp
• Veterancy Promotions: Adding level 5 and 6 unit veterancy promotions to work with Precog Project
• Virtues: Replaced Applied Aesthetics virtue with Applied Metasociology virtue - City Intrigue decreases faster when an Agent is present
• Virtues: Settler Clans virtue now gives +1 population in new cities
• Trade Routes: Trade route slots now primarily unlocked based on city population. Trade Depot allows building trade routes and gives 1 slot, all others unlock at population thresholds
• Trade Routes: Added option to auto-renew Trade Routes
• Covert Ops: Lowered intrigue level required for affinity covert ops
• Friendly aliens no longer prevent city citizens from working plots

UI

• Added tech filters for Units and Orbital categories
• Victory progress tooltips show explicit status of quest objectives
• Re-enabling yield for canyon plots (2 production, not improvable)
• Added "Incoming Transmission" on main menu for in-game messaging

AI

• Fixed an issue where Victory Wonders could be built by AI in captured territory, and not be able to be interacted with
• Fixed an issue that could cause the AI to not aggressively target rival planetary Wonders
• Fixed an issue where non-Harmony AI players were not clearing Miasma properly
• AI is now more selective about desiring alliances
• AI will now form alliances to counter a strong shared neighbor.

OTHER

• Added my2K functionality to title, allowing cross-game connectivity and unlocks with other Firaxis titles (starting with Sid Meier's Starships), along with other future perks
• Added Glacier map that unlocks when signing in to my2K for the first time

BUGS

• Fixed an issue where Covert Ops panel could go blank in the middle of a game, or after a coup
• Fixed an issue where AI aircraft city UI was displaying in Fog of War
• Fixed an issue where resource pods and relics where not placing properly on the Taigon map type
• Fixed an issue with the Growth Potential quest failing when the AI would destroy a target station
• Fixed an issue where an AI leader would sometimes propose an offer that they would not accept when you agreed
• Fixed an issue where a player might not be able to restart a Victory wonder (like the Beacon) if a Victory wonder was attacked after the countdown had started
• Fixed an issue that was causing the skeleton to not drop when a Worm was killed (still only a chance, but now works properly
• Fixed an issue that was causing Xenomass under an existing alien nest to not be counted when the nest turned friendly
• Fixed misc crashes as reported by Steam error reporting
• Additional misc bug fixes

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?