Civilization: Beyond Earth Codex Mod Review

A lot of people had problems with the base game, but I always sorta liked it. The original developers set out but failed to streamline everything, because by the mid-late game everything could certainly become a lot less fun. You were no longer finding artifacts (if you bothered) because you had all the bonuses and if you build more than four or five cities it all becomes a spammy chore. The game encouraged having a small empire, so I always did and went with it and that way could have fun, myself. But lots of cities is always a pain in the ass and lots of AI units moving around between turns is pure hell. So this mod here fixes all that, in fact it changes everything in the game but diplomacy as far as I can tell. I tried starting a vanilla game to compare how it used to be, though, and even early game is better. I realized I could never play this game again without this mod, and went back to my now main Codex (V.7) game.

You know the original developers would be horrified with these modders taking all the menu options they tried hiding away, putting them in a big box in the upper left there, where you can easily read and click whenever. The horror the pure joy! Here’s the fucking menus already, you know I don’t use this box often but I’m glad it’s there and never notice it when I don’t need it. Now artifacts have new effects that can stack, so you continue to find them throughout the game. Affinities now function like a religion, with populations following one of the three, and you no longer gain affinity through techs but a counter. But quest building types and some techs, other bonuses can also add to the counter. The mod adds government and economic types, and also a Commonwealth that gives out quests like vaccinations, warehouses, etc., these act like mini-wonders. They’ve reworked how you build buildings overall, so later cities aren’t having to build a million things every few turns, that horseshit gets eliminated, most buildings get upgraded as empire wonders in your main cities. It stops all the spam, but there’s still always lots of choices, works well. They’ve changed one of the endgame victories with the moonbase. You research that and have two new resources you need to collect by building mines/wonders, then you complete your kickass moonbase, and win I guess. Espionage has more tiers, like steal tech II, and it’s harder to level up your spies. Golden ages have been changed, so as the spy-lady Leader, my golden age has a bunch of turns where my spies can’t fail or be killed. You can also activate your golden age whenever you want, so that was a lot of fun recently when I made the Indian lady leader pay for her constant shit. The mod is pretty self-explanatory as you play it, so no pdfs to read.





That’s what I’m talking about. Menus, baby.



O shit yes O yeah O shit yes.



See this here was almost confusing. I had to take some Industry to have enough to get Tier II Combat. So all this is different and expanded.



This Commonwealth doesn’t just have those Quests I was talking about, I can buy and sell resources here with cash. Tanks need two Titanium now, and you use more shit so this is nice. Once in a while the Commonwealth sees which Leader is losing and gifts them shit.



Here’s a normal city. Notice how I can pick which Infrastructure it can have: Industry, Power Grid, or Metropolis. I’m making it Industry, which opens up other buildings that require that infrastructure, specializing all your cities.



Here’s my Capitol. I built a Wonder that gave me a bonus Metropolis infrastructure after I already picked Power Grid, so here I get to have both!



Here’s the reworked tech tree, made less asinine and all over the place. Holy shit. I can find shit now!

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Roop Dirump