

Several new units of the game can only be built if the player has points from multiple affinities. In Rising Tide, players are now also rewarded for leveling up multiple affinities at the same time. The game favored choosing one affinity to level up while ignoring the other two. In the original game, players are encouraged to earn points toward one of the affinities: Supremacy, Harmony, or Purity. Hybrid affinities add another twist to the Beyond Earth experience.


This graphical enhancement allows for players to see resources under the ocean. When viewing at ocean tiles, water is transparent rather than blue allowing players to see the ocean floor. Workers in RT can build farms on aquatic tiles, and they have an expanded number of aquatic tile types they can improve. On top of these differences several wonders and buildings are exclusive to either land or aquatic cities. However, they are much harder to defend, and are less efficient at producing land and air units as land based cities would.
