Civilization: Beyond Earth expands with a Rising Tide

Civilization: Beyond Earth – Rising Tide has been announced, promising aquatic gameplay, rejigged diplomacy, hybrid Affinities, and more.

As the name implies, Rising Tide is largely focused around the water. Players will be able to expand their civilizations to alien seas, with floating settlements, underwater resources, and aquatic alien life all there for building, exploiting, and challenging. While that’s the main thing, though, that’s not the only thing. You’ll be able to unlock Diplomatic Traits, change your relationships, and get your allies to do things by spending political capital, and you’ll be able to invest in multiple Affinities to get yourself some hybrid Affinity units. There’s even an Artifact system that lets you uncover and combine alien relics to get yourself some unique benefits.

Aside from the larger gameplay additions, there’s also new shiny stuff. A pair of new biomes are promised, with one being the volcanic Primordial World, and there’ll be four new factions to mess around with. The one revealed so far is Al Falah, a bunch of nomads formed from wealthy Middle Eastern states.

My favourite thing about this, of course, is that Beyond Earth: Rising Tide acronates to BERT. Civilization: BERT. I like it.

Civilization: Beyond Earth – Rising Tide is due out this autumn, and will cost $29.99.