This is Will Miller of Firaxis Games, one of the co-Lead Designers on Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth.
Beyond Earth is a new science-fiction entry in the Civilization family of games.
You will lead a colony from Earth to settle an alien world and write the next chapter for humanity.
The version we're playing is an Alpha version of the game, so you may see some placeholder artwork or bugs. We're working to fix those by launch.
As you can see, we've settled on a lush, alien planet, with deep rift canyons full of magma, and miasma, which are environmental hazards, and an alien nest nearby.
There's a Manticore, which is an alien that can make ranged attacks. Now our Explorer isn't really intended to fight aliens, and by fighting the aliens we may make them more aggressive towards us. So instead we'll investigate this Resource Pod.
Resource Pods were sent ahead of our colonists by the people of Earth. By investigating these, we can get resources from them. Let's send our Explorer in to collect.
Now we're ready to see how our colony is faring. As we move across the world, you can see a number of features here.
This is Fort Miller, a military station. If we set up a trade route with them, we'll receive a powerful siege unit for our military.
And here we have a new alien life form, the Siege Worm. This can destroy tile improvements just by passing through them, and they're very hard to kill with just one military unit. We'll leave this guy alone for now.
There are also a number of alien artifacts on this world, like this huge Alien Skeleton. Let's send our Explorer in to take a closer look.
Once our Explorer finishes his work in a few turns, we'll gain a reward ranging from scientific research to resources, or even an alien unit that's under our control.
As we move towards our capital, you can see that our colony is thriving on this new world.
Around our city here we have plantations for Fruit and Tubers to feed our people, as well as a Node improvement, and even a wonder: The Gene Vault.
Now we have some quest decisions to make. Quests are a new feature for Beyond Earth, and are a way for players to create narrative within the game. In this case, we've just completed the quest "Gifts from Home."
In civilization games, the story is always created by the actions players take. These quests are there to provide some additional context, with meaningful choices. Each quest decision results in a gain of some kind for your faction.
Now we have another quest called "For Your Eyes Only." We've just built a spy agency within our capital, and we're ready to send our covert agent into the field in the American Reclamation Corporation city of Central.
Now our agent is on his way to Central, and once he arrives he'll begin to generate Intrigue in that city. As the intrigue level rises, we can move from simple covert ops, like monitoring and smuggling, to more complex ones, like planting attractors to bring Siege Worms towards the city.
Covert ops will play an important role in your interaction with the other factions on this world.
Now let's touch on Affinities, which are visions for how humanity's future might evolve, and how it changes the world throughout the game.
There are three types of affinities, Harmony, Purity, and Supremacy. Our Faction has adopted Supremacy, which is the belief that human beings need to be able to be independent of the worlds they settle. Through technology, augmentation, and cybernetics, Supremacy civs believe that human beings will be able to settle any world.
Our devotion to Supremacy is reflected in the style of architecture in our cities and the look of our military units. You gain devotion to an affinity through many means: objects in Resource Pods that earn affinity, through excavating ruins found on the planet, and even through the tech web, which is the main way you'll earn affinity.
Because we don't know how humanity's technology will evolve, we've created the tech web for Beyond Earth. You start in the middle, and then move out through the web for progressively more exotic technologies. There are branch techs and leaf techs, and you can see by the Affinity Icons next to them, which leaf techs will raise your devotion to that Affinity. Let's choose another Supremacy tech to research.
Now let's talk to some leaders who have made some different Affinity choices.
We see here that Fielding is wearing flowing garments with laurel wreath adornments that call back to Earth's classical past. She's adopted the Purity Affinity. Purity factions believe that this world needs to be transformed into a new Earth, for human beings as they are right now. Fielding is on a different part of the continent, so she's less of a concern to us than other leaders.
Samatar Jama Barre of the Peoples African Union has greenish clothing and those ports going to his head, which means his faction has adopted the Harmony Affinity. Harmony civs want to transform humanity into something like a native species on this new world, through genetic modification and gene splicing. As a Supremacy faction, we find tying yourself closely to one planet to be tragically short-sighted.
As it happens, Barre also has settled cities near a strategic resource that's critical to us: Firaxite. Firaxite is used by Supremacy factions to build powerful military units and buildings, and Barre has declined to trade for it. We need this for ourselves.
We've got a liberation force assembled here. You can see the visual style of our Affinity reflected in their design. But most importantly, they're reinforced by a tactical satellite.
This Tactical Satellite is from our new settlement and was launched to assist with the attack. As long as it's in orbit, it will assist our units with healing, as well as combat bonuses. If Barre is to survive, he should destroy this as soon as possible. As the game progresses, we can unlock many other types of satellites as well, not just military ones. There are others that can be used to clear Miasma, increase research, and so forth.
Let's begin our attack.
Now that we've liberated Barre's cities, the others will fall in due course, and we'll continue our march to victory. Thanks for watching this demo! Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth comes out this Fall.