Firaxis is making tweaks to the core engine

Nov 27, 2014 22:27 GMT  ·  By

Video game developer Firaxis and publisher 2K Games are announcing that they have all but finished development for the first full patch for their recently launched Civilization: Beyond Earth and that they are preparing to launch it via Steam as soon as possible.

In the meantime, gamers can take a look at the official change list and talk about the way the game is tweaked.

The official announcement states, "We’d like to thank all our fans for the feedback and reports they have been posting and sending in. The team has been working hard on bug fixing and balancing, and as you’ll see in the change list below, we’re close to locking down this patch. We’ll share more specifics for the gameplay changes shortly while the build is making its way through the approval process."

When it comes to the gameplay of Civilization: Beyond Earth, Firaxis aims to better balance the health system, get rid of some bugs for the quests that gamers can tackle, and eliminate some of the exploits that the fan community has been reporting since launch.

The core engine is also worked on to eliminate a memory leak and to make sure that all crashes are solved.

Finally, Firaxis is also making sure that the user interface, which is especially important to turn-based strategy titles, gets some necessary modifications.

Civilization: Beyond Earth fans can take a look at all the revealed changes introduced in the first patch at the bottom of this article.

More than simply Civ in space

When the Civilization: Beyond Earth project was first announced, some gamers were afraid that the experience would simply transplant the core mechanics of the series to a new world.

Firaxis instead sought to keep some of the main features, including the one military unit per hex rule and the variety of choices offered to the player, while significantly changing others.

A new tech web shows how the future would treat research in a more open-ended way, and there's an orbital layer which allows gamers to influence their cities and to support their troops in interesting ways.

Fans have generally received Beyond Earth well, but many are complaining that the game is a bit shallow and does not manage to offer an experience that can rival that introduced by the older Firaxis project Alpha Centauri.

The game will probably get at least one major expansion, and given the studio's history, an official announcement might be made in 2015.

Civilization Beyond Earth

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