What exactly is so bad about Beyond Earth?
- Thread starter Mister K
- Start date
I wouldn't say it's downright bad, but more underwhelming. The largest issue I had with it myself was the total lack of personality and atmosphere. Civilization V has the advantage of being based on actual history. We already know who the Romans, the Aztecs and the Mongols are, so we immediately grasp how they work and why they behave the way they do. Since BE is taking place in a fictional distant future, it doesn't have that luxury, and should put some effort into giving the factions, and their leaders, some kind of personality. But it never really does that. In that sense, all the factions are reduced to a set of stat bonuses with no real feel for what makes them distinct from one another. This fact is exacerbated by the unavoidable comparisons to Alpha Centauri, which handled this aspect masterfully.
There are also some gameplay problems. Trade routes are far too micromanage-y compared to Civ V. The research web is cool, but it's very hard to understand what the research actually does. The names of the wonders are completely nonsensical and explain nothing. The affinity system also falls flat on its face, since dipping into all of them is a viable strategy, but makes very little sense conceptually. And even when you do choose to follow a certain affinity, you just never really get a proper "feel" for how that affinity is supposed to be different, not only in terms of gameplay but ideology, compared to the others. It feels like I got most of my background on the ideologies from previews of the game, and not the game itself, which simply does a poor job of this.
EDIT: For a very in-depth look into the deficiencies of Beyond Earth, you might listen to the Three Moves Ahead podcast. These guys know their stuff, and I enjoy the podcast in general. As they emphasize, it's not a bad game, but just kind of disappointing. Of course, listening to an entire podcast might be a greater investment than you're ready for, but I'll link to it anyway: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/thr...ahead/e/episode-283-a-sterile-future-35914003
There are also some gameplay problems. Trade routes are far too micromanage-y compared to Civ V. The research web is cool, but it's very hard to understand what the research actually does. The names of the wonders are completely nonsensical and explain nothing. The affinity system also falls flat on its face, since dipping into all of them is a viable strategy, but makes very little sense conceptually. And even when you do choose to follow a certain affinity, you just never really get a proper "feel" for how that affinity is supposed to be different, not only in terms of gameplay but ideology, compared to the others. It feels like I got most of my background on the ideologies from previews of the game, and not the game itself, which simply does a poor job of this.
EDIT: For a very in-depth look into the deficiencies of Beyond Earth, you might listen to the Three Moves Ahead podcast. These guys know their stuff, and I enjoy the podcast in general. As they emphasize, it's not a bad game, but just kind of disappointing. Of course, listening to an entire podcast might be a greater investment than you're ready for, but I'll link to it anyway: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/thr...ahead/e/episode-283-a-sterile-future-35914003
Several reasons:
1. It compares poorly to Civ5. Granted, Civ5 wasn't all that feature rich at release, but that was one of the main criticisms leveled at it at the time. But in general, people were coming off Civ5 and into BE, and were simply expecting more, especially since the games are so much alike. Firaxis had the game engine and the groundwork laid out and had the feedback from the initial release, but decided to make the same mistake again.
2. It compares even worse to Alpha Centauri. The fairness of this comparison is besides the point, it was going to be made and Firaxis knew it. And BE pales in comparison to a 15 year old game by the same company. This is particularly evident in the setting and the lore, where BE provides bare minimum of context for what is going on, while AC built an entire believable Sci-fi future, grounded in existing scientific theories and providing a fairly serious exploration of possible paths mankind might take in its development. AC also did a vastly better job of making the planet and its indigenous life a real threat throughout the game, and involving it in the game's story. And then there's the laundry list of awesome features, like a robust terraforming model and unit customization. Basically, BE is AC's idiot cousin...
3. On its own, the game feels... flavorless. There's just not enough fluff in there, not enough explanation of what's going on, of what everything is. Games like this are at their core just number shuffling exercises, but the way those numbers are dressed up is what matters. And Firaxis just didn't do a good job there either. The whole thing feels like a framework for something that could be great, but there's just not enough meat on the bones.
The end result is a game that failed to live up to expectations and isn't particularly impressive even when taken on its own. It would be a good effort if it came from a smaller studio, but people expect more from Firaxis, and they simply didn't deliver...
1. It compares poorly to Civ5. Granted, Civ5 wasn't all that feature rich at release, but that was one of the main criticisms leveled at it at the time. But in general, people were coming off Civ5 and into BE, and were simply expecting more, especially since the games are so much alike. Firaxis had the game engine and the groundwork laid out and had the feedback from the initial release, but decided to make the same mistake again.
2. It compares even worse to Alpha Centauri. The fairness of this comparison is besides the point, it was going to be made and Firaxis knew it. And BE pales in comparison to a 15 year old game by the same company. This is particularly evident in the setting and the lore, where BE provides bare minimum of context for what is going on, while AC built an entire believable Sci-fi future, grounded in existing scientific theories and providing a fairly serious exploration of possible paths mankind might take in its development. AC also did a vastly better job of making the planet and its indigenous life a real threat throughout the game, and involving it in the game's story. And then there's the laundry list of awesome features, like a robust terraforming model and unit customization. Basically, BE is AC's idiot cousin...
3. On its own, the game feels... flavorless. There's just not enough fluff in there, not enough explanation of what's going on, of what everything is. Games like this are at their core just number shuffling exercises, but the way those numbers are dressed up is what matters. And Firaxis just didn't do a good job there either. The whole thing feels like a framework for something that could be great, but there's just not enough meat on the bones.
The end result is a game that failed to live up to expectations and isn't particularly impressive even when taken on its own. It would be a good effort if it came from a smaller studio, but people expect more from Firaxis, and they simply didn't deliver...
I had a suspicion that Civ BE would need time and expansions to be the best it could be so I was prepared for that, but my friend who I usually play coop Civ with got it on the first sale, so I jumped the gun and kind of regret it because on a technical level I would say its comparable to Civ V with expansions, but like many have said, It feels bland.
It's because we had to jump back from Civilization 5, with two good expansions full of religion, politics, decent diplomacy (not great), a shit ton of options, the three modern era philosophies, multiple routes to win, assets that have obvious advantages and every turn, you had to handle six or seven different aspects of your Civilization so even if you're playing a more defensive, peaceful game, you've got Missionaries and Inquisitors, you've got Great People being born, you're dealing with City States, you're trading resources, you're picking out Social Policies, you're deciding your science, you're buying land and building settlers, you're handling trade and using Workers to build farms or such, and so on and so forth.
Here is why Beyond Earth is (currenty bad):
Beyond Earth has a crap setting.
Despite the most amazing opening cinematic in a long time, I don't give a crap. Most of the backgrounds barely matter in the game (we could have a part when, if you picked Nobles, you have an advisor you have to deal with who is a Noble who would push for more Culture or Economy, or if you picked the People, they want more cities and more health, or if you picked soldiers, they'll argue for more war or a bigger army or to fight the alien, etc) so no matter what you pick, you'll end up picking the Worker every single time because it's the clear best choice, and you'll pick the Love the Alien route because they force it down your throat and all good technologies force you to have it, plus it's so utterly overpowered. I don't know or care who any of the others are, they have no personality, your choices don't change very much each game.
Like was said above, the normal Civ game has real history. I say I'm the Romans, you know exactly what that means. I build the Great Wall, you already have a mental image. I say we start worshipping Islam, you've got another idea. I start following Facism, you know what that is. History makes up the window dressing of the main Civ line. Beyond Earth just didn't. At least Alpha Centuri bothered to use real world politics, theories and plans when making it's factions so we could identify with the tree hugging Gaians, the capitalist Corporation, or the bloodthirsty Spartans. I remember them! Notice I can't name a single faction from Beyond Earth. There is the Asian one, and the American one, and the Indian one, and the African one (who is obsessed with villages and their being built on trade!)
They oversimplified Aliens.
For such a massive part of the game, the aliens start off annoying (which is good) and then a single upgrade later, they cease to be an issue for more or less the entire game. I've played several games and unless everyone is going alien kill crazy (and I promise you, 70% of them will not have), the aliens wil cease to matter past turn 40. I'd honestly suggest they remove the anti-alien field, and force you to have to deal with them constantly, but make the AI better so they also leave you alone if you leave them alone. They also treat ALL humans the same, basically, so it doesn't matter if you're hugging or blowing them up, they'll basically aggro everyone, making it a Prisoner's Dilemma where the best move is to not engage the aliens collectively, and thus removing the largest part of early game fun. In Alpha Centuri, we are constantly learning more and more of the aliens, they surprised us more and more and are part of this massive setting. In Beyond Earth, they're boring green bugs from Starship Troopers without even the interesting brain bugs.
They streamlined the game, and it's somehow even less balanced and more complicated than 5
It takes a special kind of genious to make something simpler and it's still more complicated than the previous system, but they have fucking done it. All that rich history and over a hundred units is simplified to about 6, which updated 3 or 4 times over the game into slightly different units. It sounds fine in theory, but it makes a such little difference as long as you're on the same tier as the others. They streamlined health, now it's even worse while it does nothing. They made the Social Policies more streamlined, by making it so two of the trees are amazing and the other two are complete shit, so at least you don't really have to choose. They streamlined the economy, by simply removing most of your buildings and forcing it more or less on just trade (which is overpowered and then some). They streamlined the combat, and now without that variety, it's just boring to watch and look at. They streamlined the user interface, it's now hideous and hard to navigate despite being simpler and having less to keep track of.
It must be said; they made spies better, but they're also stupid powerful.
It's a massive step back
Almost every single problem I have mentioned doesn't exist in Civ 5. Which means they made a great game, learned their lessons from making it, and then decided to ignore it when making Beyond Earth. Beyond Earth is literally nothing but a combat game. Every other win condition is fucking terrible, and forces the game into a race of "Who can build the Mindflower first?", possibly the most anti-climatic thing in the world. The World Wonders are boring and uninteresting. The Diplomacy system is so stripped back and broken it's pointless to use, and the faction system is so badly set-up there is no point bothering to try a peace run because 2/3 people will hate you regardless and unless you drive just down that one path (Harmony is the best, we all know it), you'll get fucked over by people who specailised. Your faction, despite having more choice at creation, means nothing. The religion system? Gone. The City State system? All character (and there wasn't much) is removed, meaning there is EVEN LESS to do. The science system? The web is a good idea but it's a fucking mess to navigate and there is such a thing as too much choice (as well as the affinity mostly coming from there means you'll be researching affinity, not technology, which is the wrong way around to do it!). Building something means nothing in this game. The barbarians may not be much, but they kept you busy in the early game until you were big enough for the other Civs to take over. In this game, it's just so boring and slow for anything to happen, and yet it's too short for a good paced long game. It'll be long and boring and then someone will build a building and you'll lose because reasons. The appearance of the game tries to be sci-fi and just looks cheap and tacky and painful to look at, factions are completely interchangeable, the setting is ashamed and hides away in Wiki pages, and it's so painfully slow between turns I hope you brought a book. (I'm talking Rome 2 levels of waiting).
But...
It'll be good. Once they released both expansion packs, to fix the beginning, the aliens, the religion or equivalent, a late game choice like the Liberty, etc, FIX THE DIPLOMACY OH MY GOD, make the U.I. better, add choice, add character, add settings, add more than the same 20 quests, and generally make the game fun and good.
All they should have done was re-released Civ 5 Brave New World with the new start done better, the quest logs and updated pictures. They completely missed the new Civ 5 market, and they utterly disappointed the old Alpha Centuri market.
Here is why Beyond Earth is (currenty bad):
Beyond Earth has a crap setting.
Despite the most amazing opening cinematic in a long time, I don't give a crap. Most of the backgrounds barely matter in the game (we could have a part when, if you picked Nobles, you have an advisor you have to deal with who is a Noble who would push for more Culture or Economy, or if you picked the People, they want more cities and more health, or if you picked soldiers, they'll argue for more war or a bigger army or to fight the alien, etc) so no matter what you pick, you'll end up picking the Worker every single time because it's the clear best choice, and you'll pick the Love the Alien route because they force it down your throat and all good technologies force you to have it, plus it's so utterly overpowered. I don't know or care who any of the others are, they have no personality, your choices don't change very much each game.
Like was said above, the normal Civ game has real history. I say I'm the Romans, you know exactly what that means. I build the Great Wall, you already have a mental image. I say we start worshipping Islam, you've got another idea. I start following Facism, you know what that is. History makes up the window dressing of the main Civ line. Beyond Earth just didn't. At least Alpha Centuri bothered to use real world politics, theories and plans when making it's factions so we could identify with the tree hugging Gaians, the capitalist Corporation, or the bloodthirsty Spartans. I remember them! Notice I can't name a single faction from Beyond Earth. There is the Asian one, and the American one, and the Indian one, and the African one (who is obsessed with villages and their being built on trade!)
They oversimplified Aliens.
For such a massive part of the game, the aliens start off annoying (which is good) and then a single upgrade later, they cease to be an issue for more or less the entire game. I've played several games and unless everyone is going alien kill crazy (and I promise you, 70% of them will not have), the aliens wil cease to matter past turn 40. I'd honestly suggest they remove the anti-alien field, and force you to have to deal with them constantly, but make the AI better so they also leave you alone if you leave them alone. They also treat ALL humans the same, basically, so it doesn't matter if you're hugging or blowing them up, they'll basically aggro everyone, making it a Prisoner's Dilemma where the best move is to not engage the aliens collectively, and thus removing the largest part of early game fun. In Alpha Centuri, we are constantly learning more and more of the aliens, they surprised us more and more and are part of this massive setting. In Beyond Earth, they're boring green bugs from Starship Troopers without even the interesting brain bugs.
They streamlined the game, and it's somehow even less balanced and more complicated than 5
It takes a special kind of genious to make something simpler and it's still more complicated than the previous system, but they have fucking done it. All that rich history and over a hundred units is simplified to about 6, which updated 3 or 4 times over the game into slightly different units. It sounds fine in theory, but it makes a such little difference as long as you're on the same tier as the others. They streamlined health, now it's even worse while it does nothing. They made the Social Policies more streamlined, by making it so two of the trees are amazing and the other two are complete shit, so at least you don't really have to choose. They streamlined the economy, by simply removing most of your buildings and forcing it more or less on just trade (which is overpowered and then some). They streamlined the combat, and now without that variety, it's just boring to watch and look at. They streamlined the user interface, it's now hideous and hard to navigate despite being simpler and having less to keep track of.
It must be said; they made spies better, but they're also stupid powerful.
It's a massive step back
Almost every single problem I have mentioned doesn't exist in Civ 5. Which means they made a great game, learned their lessons from making it, and then decided to ignore it when making Beyond Earth. Beyond Earth is literally nothing but a combat game. Every other win condition is fucking terrible, and forces the game into a race of "Who can build the Mindflower first?", possibly the most anti-climatic thing in the world. The World Wonders are boring and uninteresting. The Diplomacy system is so stripped back and broken it's pointless to use, and the faction system is so badly set-up there is no point bothering to try a peace run because 2/3 people will hate you regardless and unless you drive just down that one path (Harmony is the best, we all know it), you'll get fucked over by people who specailised. Your faction, despite having more choice at creation, means nothing. The religion system? Gone. The City State system? All character (and there wasn't much) is removed, meaning there is EVEN LESS to do. The science system? The web is a good idea but it's a fucking mess to navigate and there is such a thing as too much choice (as well as the affinity mostly coming from there means you'll be researching affinity, not technology, which is the wrong way around to do it!). Building something means nothing in this game. The barbarians may not be much, but they kept you busy in the early game until you were big enough for the other Civs to take over. In this game, it's just so boring and slow for anything to happen, and yet it's too short for a good paced long game. It'll be long and boring and then someone will build a building and you'll lose because reasons. The appearance of the game tries to be sci-fi and just looks cheap and tacky and painful to look at, factions are completely interchangeable, the setting is ashamed and hides away in Wiki pages, and it's so painfully slow between turns I hope you brought a book. (I'm talking Rome 2 levels of waiting).
But...
It'll be good. Once they released both expansion packs, to fix the beginning, the aliens, the religion or equivalent, a late game choice like the Liberty, etc, FIX THE DIPLOMACY OH MY GOD, make the U.I. better, add choice, add character, add settings, add more than the same 20 quests, and generally make the game fun and good.
All they should have done was re-released Civ 5 Brave New World with the new start done better, the quest logs and updated pictures. They completely missed the new Civ 5 market, and they utterly disappointed the old Alpha Centuri market.
If you're wondering, you can just go and buy Alpha Centauri on good old games. Thank god for GOG. I own it myself and I've never had any trouble with playing it, as per usual for GOG releases. Honestly, even if they do 'fix' Beyond Earth, I doubt I'll buy it. Why should I, when the competition( i.e. themselves fifteen years ago) was so much better.
From what I've been able to deduce:
Factions completely void of personality - Meanwhile, the Alpha Centauri factions were all VERY distinct from one another and the leaders were well developed characters.
For me personally, it doesn't seem to have as interesting a world either.
Factions completely void of personality - Meanwhile, the Alpha Centauri factions were all VERY distinct from one another and the leaders were well developed characters.
For me personally, it doesn't seem to have as interesting a world either.
Eh, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't different ENOUGH from Civ 5 to make me stick with it for any length of time.Mister K said:
Really its Civ 5 V 1.0 with a Space theme and some adjustments in how you get upgrades, thats really it. The mechanics are?odd. It really needs a lot of patches and maybe a free DLC with some major additions to get it close to on par.
its fun, its Civ?but its also annoying to play as well. The system in place involving going Affinities was actually annoying to me. I WANT to use this affinity, but nope, all my local resources are for another affinity, so I either have to do an Affinity I don't want, start over, and take my opponents land to grab the resources.
Then the end-game victory states are NOT balanced. One of the requires nearly no effort at all, reach this moment you win, gg. Another requires you port in like 20 guys and build settlements (at end game where no available land even exists) and warp in all these guys over this long period of time?HORRIBLE, I never wanted to play that Affinity again.
The horrible end-game states eventually made me stop playing, since I only ever felt like dealing with one type of victory condition.
As great as AC is in many ways, the interface is rather awful. It's probably the aspect that has aged the most poorly. The gameplay is also rather unintuitive compared to Civ V. Have you played any older Civ games? Because AC is probably closest to Civ 2 in the regard that it more or less demands a certain amount of sprawl, particularly in the early game land rush. A 3-city-strategy simply isn't viable. The AI is also quite unrelenting, prepare to get killed by frequent crusades from fundamentalist Christians. (damn you Miriam!)Mister K said:
Its greatest strength really is the worldbuilding and atmosphere. That's the main reason it's still so fondly remembered today
Underwhelming and let down would be better. The tech tree kinda sucked, unit variety was shit, and honestly it just felt like a quick cash-in. Factions are the same, with only three paths that actually change stuff. It just feels lazy. I still play Civ 5 over Beyond Earth any day.
I don't think Beyond Earth was particularly bad, I think it was just too much of a case of "same old stuff". I've played 3 campaigns (I will play more eventually - so many other games to play right now) and it just felt like more Civ 5. There was nothing in the gameplay mechanics that really made me feel like I was colonising an alien world.
I think instead of it being the same old Human factions, there should have been one or two alien factions to be controlled by either the AI or the player. The visual design of the units and the leaders in diplomacy would have been interesting. Those alien factions could have got some unique bonuses. Heck, you could even make it so you can't even do diplomacy with them until you research their language.
I think instead of it being the same old Human factions, there should have been one or two alien factions to be controlled by either the AI or the player. The visual design of the units and the leaders in diplomacy would have been interesting. Those alien factions could have got some unique bonuses. Heck, you could even make it so you can't even do diplomacy with them until you research their language.
The game is pathetically easy to break. Pick that expansionist virtue and enjoy your twenty cities with utopia level health(the mechanic that's supposed to limit expansionism!) then the A.I has no chance against your industry!
Every A.I is super peaceful so you can easily dominate as a warmonger too.
Every A.I is super peaceful so you can easily dominate as a warmonger too.
Looking at Beyond Earth, it almost seems like nobody play tested the game and the designers were just adding stuff and making up rules for them without any thought about how it would fit in with the rest the game.
What's worse is that the december patch made some imbalances worse, when you would think they would have had some useful feedback and experience by then.
BE is the first civilization game that has World Wonders that are not only not worth the investment, but you would also be better off scrapping, suppose you got one for free (because they take up strategic resources each turn, that would be much better spend elsewhere).
It's like the game designers had no fucking clue at all.
I don't mind the fluff, or the lack thereof and the presentation is adequate and the general ideas are alright too, but the values are all wrong.
The best thing I can say about BE is that I reckon the game could still be patched up to a good state, if they got together some veteran civ players to propose the changes and a coder to work on the scripts.
What's worse is that the december patch made some imbalances worse, when you would think they would have had some useful feedback and experience by then.
BE is the first civilization game that has World Wonders that are not only not worth the investment, but you would also be better off scrapping, suppose you got one for free (because they take up strategic resources each turn, that would be much better spend elsewhere).
It's like the game designers had no fucking clue at all.
I don't mind the fluff, or the lack thereof and the presentation is adequate and the general ideas are alright too, but the values are all wrong.
The best thing I can say about BE is that I reckon the game could still be patched up to a good state, if they got together some veteran civ players to propose the changes and a coder to work on the scripts.
As others have noted, the big problem is what it's being compared to. Fans have, for years, been clamoring for another game to fill Alpha Centauri's shoes, and although I don't recall ever seeing it stated directly (by Firaxis, that is) there was always the implication that this game would be to Civ 5 what AC was to Civ 2. To give you an idea of what that would mean, consider that the main appeal of Alpha Centauri was its atmosphere. That's why people were paying hundreds of dollars for copies of the expansion pack before GOG got to release it. That's why people still remember it- and still play it- all these years after it came out. "Okay," you think "that's not so unusual". But this was a game where you could launch a surprise attack on your enemy by blitzing his armies with quantum laser helicopters launched from submersible aircraft carriers while capturing his cities by airdropping in infantry from an orbital space elevator while your main force charged in over a land bridge you constructed. If he counterattacks, you can annihilate his offensive with a barrage of superweapons so powerful they literally destroy the land beneath a city, creating a new lake. Should that prove insufficient, you can ramp up your industrial production to the point that global warming causes planetwide flooding and his cities sink into the sea.
And what's most memorable is the writing.
But it's not just a comparison to its obvious older sibling that's problematic. Civilization 5 was a very divisive game. A large number of very fundamental changes were made to the game's very core; and, to be perfectly blunt, most of them didn't work. I don't mean I disagreed with them, I mean they flat-out didn't work: an AI that struggled with handling massive army stacks was utterly flummoxed at dealing with a widespread, single-unit per tile approach. Pathfinding meant that assembling an army and marching it into combat was a logistical nightmare. Adding commercial upkeep costs to roads made building the network that would've let you get around the previous problem impossible (fun fact: the reason given for adding costs to roads? The art department didn't like the way roads looked in previous games. Apparently fans of cutting off their heads to spite their faces, that group). The idea of making AI motivations secret and hidden meant that the AI played like a paranoid schizophrenic. Tying happiness to your entire empire rather than individual cities gave us a system that was so laughably easy to exploit that I, who had never so much as lasted 100 turns into a game on the highest difficulty setting, could blow through them with ease. Point being, even for a new release, it was unpolished.
Beyond Earth had the potential to unify a divided fanbase- a tall order indeed, given the series' age and complexity, but what we got didn't even try. Of the abovementioned problems, Beyond Earth fixed exactly none, as well as losing out on the advantages the Civ 5 expansions brought it. As a continuation of the Civilization series (or as a game in its own right), it's merely disappointing. As a spiritual sequel to Alpha Centauri, it's an abomination. That's where a great deal of the vitriol is coming from.
And what's most memorable is the writing.
But it's not just a comparison to its obvious older sibling that's problematic. Civilization 5 was a very divisive game. A large number of very fundamental changes were made to the game's very core; and, to be perfectly blunt, most of them didn't work. I don't mean I disagreed with them, I mean they flat-out didn't work: an AI that struggled with handling massive army stacks was utterly flummoxed at dealing with a widespread, single-unit per tile approach. Pathfinding meant that assembling an army and marching it into combat was a logistical nightmare. Adding commercial upkeep costs to roads made building the network that would've let you get around the previous problem impossible (fun fact: the reason given for adding costs to roads? The art department didn't like the way roads looked in previous games. Apparently fans of cutting off their heads to spite their faces, that group). The idea of making AI motivations secret and hidden meant that the AI played like a paranoid schizophrenic. Tying happiness to your entire empire rather than individual cities gave us a system that was so laughably easy to exploit that I, who had never so much as lasted 100 turns into a game on the highest difficulty setting, could blow through them with ease. Point being, even for a new release, it was unpolished.
Beyond Earth had the potential to unify a divided fanbase- a tall order indeed, given the series' age and complexity, but what we got didn't even try. Of the abovementioned problems, Beyond Earth fixed exactly none, as well as losing out on the advantages the Civ 5 expansions brought it. As a continuation of the Civilization series (or as a game in its own right), it's merely disappointing. As a spiritual sequel to Alpha Centauri, it's an abomination. That's where a great deal of the vitriol is coming from.
Beyond earth is not bad. Take all the critics that you heard about that game, look at the release critics of civ 5 and they will be the same. No civ game is good at release. Right now the game is ok. It have been patch twice with major changes. Trade routes are not a nightmare anymore, they change all the bonus, they change the tech web to be more clear, they have change the wonders, you can also send your data to,starship now, so it add a little something.
If you have the game but haven't played for a while, download the patches and try it again, it worth it in my opinion
If you have the game but haven't played for a while, download the patches and try it again, it worth it in my opinion