Nostalgia got me to throw a little round of Civ Beyond Earth. I honestly did have some rose tinted glasses about the game, combat feels much worse than Civ 6, but the tech tree is VASTLY superior to the linear version. The affinity system leaves a little to be desired, especially since it kinda forces you to engage with the tech tree in a linear way, you more or less have to go for the nodes that give the affinity you're going for, even if their unlocks are irrelevant. Also, the enemy AI is a little dodgy, they never back down from war even after you capture several of their cities, which is frustrating because I had to spend a really long time doing one of the affinity quests since one of the enemy civs kept killing my units as I sent them to the objective.