The Quest system of Civilization: Beyond Earth is intended to both enrich and inform the player. The player receives quests from a variety of sources, and completes them for rewards.
Quest Purposes[ | ]
Quests serve several important functions:
- Teach the player how to play the game; the tutorial takes the form of an
extended quest.
- Delivers a narrative.
Provide the player with interesting things to do, and rewards you when you have.
- Define a clear path to victory.
- All victory types other than Domination take the
form of quests.
- Provide interesting ways to experience game systems you might not
otherwise, such as exploring the map and interacting with Stations.
Quest Narrative[ | ]
Quests are completed by reaching one or more objectives, and may entail one or more choices. Each quest has its own unique narrative. There are many quests in Beyond Earth.
An example:
“THE CLOCKWORK WARRIOR”: “A survey team has uncovered what appears to be a giant robotic creature half buried in a nearby complex of alien ruins. Excavation is now under way. If a suitable power source can be found, perhaps the creature can be reactivated.”
You must find the Robot power source in another ruin.
Then you must choose:
“Reactivate robot. Reward: Unique Robot Unit”
You receive the following text: “The final power cell was inserted and the creature shuddered. Ancient gears engaged with such violent protest that I feared the massive internal machinery we’d spent so many months reconstructing would tear itself apart. Transfixed, I watched as the giant slowly righted itself. Several of my colleagues ran in fear. All I could do was stand there and Wonder if we had made a terrible mistake.”
or
“Disassemble robot and study it. Reward: 200 science”
You receive the following text message: “The power source was the key to the puzzle. It’s unfortunate that in order to fully understand how it worked, we had to destroy it. My disappointment is tempered by this terrible machine’s manifest purpose. I hope we have found the only one.”
Quest Choices[ | ]
As in the above example, quests may involve the player making a choice. Choices can branch the quest narrative or provide alternate rewards. When a player is presented with a choice, it must be resolved before the turn is complete.
In the case of a multiplayer game where the player fails to make the choice before the turn timer expires, the player is presented with the choice on the next turn.
Quest Categories[ | ]
Quests are broken down into several general categories. When a new quest is presented to the player, its category is illustrated with an icon to help the player prioritize which quests they want to do first based on the elements of the game they are interested in.
The categories are:
- GROWTH: Growth quests encourage the player to grow their colony, and serve as longer-term goals for the early and middle game.
- TRADE: Trade quests center on interactions with the trade system as it applies to both stations and to other colonies.
- DIPLOMACY: Diplomacy quests all have the player interacting with other colonies in some manner.
- MILITARY: Fighting ... obviously.
- COVERT OPERATIONS: Covert Ops quests entail undertaking some nefarious activity in a city in another colony.
- EXPLORATION: Exploration quests involve expanding your visibility, exploring ruins, and probing unknown features of the map.
- VICTORY: Several quests involve some aspect of Victory, usually thematically linked
to one of the Affinity victory condition.
- CUSTOM: Custom quests are designed to provide players with narrative flavor for their domestic activities: territory expansion, city growth, Buildings, Wonders, and improvements.
Each is intended to be fairly straightforward with one or two choices that allow the player to express a preference or a perspective on their recent activities and guide the development of their homeland in thematic and substantive ways, typically along Affinity lines.
- AFFINITY: Affinity quests are multi-stage, complex quests entailing multiple choices. Upon completion, the quests will award points in an Affinity ... which is
determined by the choices you make.
- AFFINITY INVESTMENT: Affinity Investment quests are each keyed to a specific Affinity, offering benefits to the player if they have taken up that Affinity