2K Announces Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth – Rising Tide Expansion Pack

2K and Firaxis Games announced Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth – Rising Tide, the expansion pack for 2014’s turn-based strategy title, Civilization: Beyond Earth, is currently in development for Windows-based PC. Created by Firaxis Games, Rising Tide will enhance the Beyond Earth experience by adding a variety of new gameplay capabilities and providing near limitless ways for players to create a new future for humanity on an alien planet. The expansion pack is currently scheduled for release in fall 2015.

Rising Tide will expand Beyond Earth to new frontiers on the planet’s surface and across its seas, adding more choices and diplomatic options as players build “one more turn” toward a new vision for humanity’s future. Newaquatic gameplay will explore the oceans for colonization by dramatically extending the play space, while an overhauled diplomacy system will provide players with additional layers of dynamic choices and options to shape the diplomatic landscape while engaging with the AI and one another.

“Firaxis Games has an impressive track record of delivering robust and innovative expansions that radically change player experience while adding extensive replay value,” said Sarah Anderson, SVP of Marketing at 2K. “Rising Tide is no exception, offering new features and overhauled gameplay systems that will challenge players embarking on a quest for planetary domination.”

“Rising Tide builds upon the lore of Beyond Earth, breaking away the historical boundaries of the original franchise and furthering mankind’s search for a new home in outer space,” said Sid Meier, director of creative development at Firaxis Games. “Whether colonizing the planet’s oceans, acquiring new Affinities or meeting exotic new leaders, aliens and units for the first time, Rising Tide offers more ways for players to write their own stories on a new world.”

Key features of Rising Tide include:

• Building floating settlements and accessing natural resources hidden beneath the seas of the alien planet, while alien beasts with unique abilities inhabit the water and challenge players in distinctive ways;
• Shaping the diplomatic landscape by upgrading traits, changing diplomatic relationships, and leveraging the benefits of your allies, all with political capital;
• Unlocking a dynamic set of Diplomatic Traits while activating different combinations in response to the changing world;
• Playing as one of four new factions, including the Al Falah, a group of nomad explorers descended from wealthy and resilient Middle Eastern states;
• Investing in multiple Affinities to unlock hybrid Affinity units and upgrades for the first time;
• Collecting and combining alien relics via a new Artifact System that unlocks powerful benefits;
• Exploring one of two new biomes, Primordial world, an untamed biome rife with volcanic activity and indicative of a chaotic landscape still forming in the new world.