14 DAY TRIAL // Civilization: Beyond Earth wants to be the spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri that gamers never got and it's almost painful to hear the developers at Firaxis talk about the title without being able to use the name, which has a disputed ownership at the moment.
The E3 2014 demo captures some core elements of the coming title, starting with the unique nature of the world that's being created by the studio.
The alien flora and fauna will be very important in the early game and players will have to carefully choose how they create their first cities and where they direct their exploration and their initial development.
Firaxis is also giving fans a quick look at the way the new Affinity system works and how it will be used to change the game experience for the player and open up new options for him, both when it comes to the future of his faction and to the day to day operation of his units.
Gamers will be able to move closer to their chosen future by using the new tech web, which has a system of core discoveries that all players need to get through and smaller subsets that offer advantages depending on the choices that the player has made about the future.
Diplomacy will also be affected by Affinity choice and the leaders of the factions themselves seem to have more personality than they ever did in classic Civilization.
The espionage system was also demonstrated and unfortunately, it seems that Probe Teams have been dropped and replaced with a much simpler system based on agents that can be sent to enemy cities in order to perform certain operations.
The final section of the DE3 2014 demo for Civilization: Beyond Earth focused on the way combat was improved via the addition of new layers of choices, including satellites that could give troops bonuses as long as they stayed in range.
In terms of graphics, the title does not seem to be a huge improvement over the already aging Civilization V, but the team seems to have done some work on the interface and on the extra layers that will open up new strategic options to gamers.
The various Affinities that the gamer can work with also significantly change the visual style of the experience in some interesting ways.
Civilization: Beyond Earth will be launched during the third quarter of this year and the title will only be offered on the PC, with versions for Mac and Linux operating systems.