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[hemtae]

Finished a game with the supremacy ending. SMAC is still king and I'm slightly disappointed in it but it is definitely better than Civilization 5 was at the beginning. I don't know if it'll ever surpass SMAC but I have hope that after a few patches and an expansion or two that it'll turn out really good.

 

[Ont]

I think I just had the best end game experience I have had in Civilization, Total War, and other similar games.

I was playing as ARC with most of my affinity points in supremecy. After succesfully wiping African Union off the map, I ended up in a bitter conflict with Slavic Federation (harmony). Just when I had finally managed get my offensive going deeper into Slavic terrority, Franco-Iberia (harmony) declares a war and steamrolls into my second largest city at the opposite side of my territory. They manage to destroy my city by choosing to burn it before I had time to recapture it.

I quickly made a peace with the Slavic Federation and then fight another bitter war with Franco-Iberia during which I started building my emancipation gate. When I was finally pushing into Franco-Iberian territory with help of my massive mech units I realised that Kavithan Protectorate (supremacy) - who were hiding behind Franco-Iberian terroritory - had already finished their own emancipation gate before me and were already sending units to the Earth. I again made a peace with now much smaller Franco-Iberia and declared war against Kavithan Protectorate.

With all my land and sea units committed on one side of the map, I was able to take over the Kavithan city that had the emancipation gate. Thinking that I had just won the game, I realised to my horror that Polystralia (purity) was only 10 earth settlers short from winning the game with a promised land victory. I had no units anywhere near Polystralia, so made desperate dash accross the sea with my battleships and one carrier to Polystralian side of the map as an attempt to take out the gate that was bringing in settlers from the Earth. My whole navy and orbital lasers were completely destroyed by Polystralia so I decided to teleport all my remaining land based units back to my base so that I could slowly send them through the emancipation gate. This got to the point where Polystralia had 19 out of 20 settlers settled and I was still at least few units away from winning the game. Luckily, just when Polystralia was about to win the game, I realised that I could pillage any outposts created by the Polystralian settlers which were easy to attack with my fast moving scout hovercraft, also somehow their settlers died in the process. By doing that I was able to push the settler count down to 14.

In the end I won the game, but those last 80+ turns were constant crisis management. Now maybe this can be avoided by monitoring the victory condition panel more closely than I did, but that was the first time when an ending of a game like this was not an anti-climax for me.

 

[Uthred]

I'm surprised the press haven't been calling out the game much at all. I can see a lot of people being dissapointed with this and yet everyone has been giving it pretty good scores.

Maybe they arent "calling it out" because they enjoyed it? There are a few less than glowing reviews floating around

Except that except for maybe virtues all those systems have massive issues on top of all the massive issues civ 5 already had. 1upt just doesn't work and it is building a house on a broken foundation.

This presumes of course that Civ 5's "massive issues" are some kind of objective fact and not the subjective preference they clearly are

 

[LurkerPrime]

Except that except for maybe virtues all those systems have massive issues on top of all the massive issues civ 5 already had. 1upt just doesn't work and it is building a house on a broken foundation.

This sort of petty hate for changes Civ5 made needs to end. 1UPT is an immense improvement over doomstacks, and it is only a matter of time until the AI can wield it as effectively as human players. There is no reality where removing it would be anything other than a step back.

No matter what issues Civ5, CivBE, or whatever have, don't mix your personal agenda with genuine problems in the game. Such vapid critques will never sway anyone, nor will it do anything to validate your opinion. It's time to let it go.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Except that except for maybe virtues all those systems have massive issues on top of all the massive issues civ 5 already had. 1upt just doesn't work and it is building a house on a broken foundation.

1upt is so, so much better than the roving doomstacks it's not even funny. Yeah, the AI has trouble, but it's still a lot more fun. Yeah, BE inherited some of Civ V's problems, but I'm just not seeing how it's filled with "massive issues."

 

[injurai]

This sort of petty hate for changes Civ5 made needs to end. 1UPT is an immense improvement over doomstacks, and it is only a matter of time until the AI can wield it as effectively as human players. There is no reality where removing it would be anything other than a step back.

No matter what issues Civ5, CivBE, or whatever have, don't mix your personal agenda with genuine problems in the game. Such vapid critques will never sway anyone, nor will it do anything to validate your opinion. It's time to let it go.

Very well said. I sort of want a re-scaling of the tiles though so cities take up 7 hexagon spread.

It's rather annoying to approach them by land.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Very well said. I sort of want a re-scaling of the tiles though so cities take up 7 hexagon spread.

It's rather annoying to approach them by land.

Endless Legend takes an interesting approach to city-building. Regions separate the land and only allow a single city. Cities, in turn, can be expanded by a special construction projects that lets them sprawl across the region, accessing an ever-increasing amount of hexes. It's a very unique and cool take on culture, city-building, and land control - one that allows for truly sprawling megacities. Hopefully Firaxis is taking note of what EL's ideas, because they are really cool.

Of course, Civ has hex improvements, workers, and culture boundaries, all of which EL lacks... so each series manages to implement city growth in their own way.


This reminds me, do aliens pillage civilized hexes like barbarians would?
(I'm still waiting on my copy.. Q.Q)

 

[sueil]

1uPT is a bad system that Firaxis themselves admitted doesn't work. The AI cannot use it at all, and it is not any fun for human players either. It was an overreaction to the problem. Using a method of limiting how big a stack could be would have been a much more sane and better idea. When I was playing BE I could dump out dozens of units per turn and go to war with every faction at the same time and win easily but it was the most miserable experience imaginable because of how much you had to micromanage the units for no real gain. The units do not have unique enough abilities for real tactical combat and ultimately is just driving bigger numbers into smaller. It is a game of economics and numbers the same as it ever was but with much more tedium involved on the players part and total incompetence to use the system on the AI's part.

Civ and the entire 4x genre is a game of large scale and broad strategies. It is poorly suited to simulating the finer details of battle and attempting to turn it into some kind of tactical war game doesn't work. There is very little difference between all the units in Civ 5 other than raw strength and that is the most important factor. When you out tech your opponent and can build a much bigger economy is where you win. Beyond Earth is even more dire in this regard due to the low unit variety and the massive jumps in power from higher tech levels that comes in leaps and bounds rather than gradual.

 

[Poodlestrike]

1uPT is a bad system that Firaxis themselves admitted doesn't work. The AI cannot use it at all, and it is not any fun for human players either. It was an overreaction to the problem. Using a method of limiting how big a stack could be would have been a much more sane and better idea. When I was playing BE I could dump out dozens of units per turn and go to war with every faction at the same time and win easily but it was the most miserable experience imaginable because of how much you had to micromanage the units for no real gain. The units do not have unique enough abilities for real tactical combat and ultimately is just driving bigger numbers into smaller. It is a game of economics and numbers the same as it ever was but with much more tedium involved on the players part and total incompetence to use the system on the AI's part.

Civ and the entire 4x genre is a game of large scale and broad strategies. It is poorly suited to simulating the finer details of battle and attempting to turn it into some kind of tactical war game doesn't work. There is very little difference between all the units in Civ 5 other than raw strength and that is the most important factor. When you out tech your opponent and can build a much bigger economy is where you win. Beyond Earth is even more dire in this regard due to the low unit variety and the massive jumps in power from higher tech levels that comes in leaps and bounds rather than gradual.

There's a lot wrong here. I enjoy combat a lot more with 1upt as opposed to unlimited stacking, as do many others, so saying that it's no fun for human players is just nonsense. Having a limited number of units allowed on the same tile introduces the same "problems" that having only 1 does, it just reduces it by a factor of however many units you allow to stack. The AI can, and will at some point, be able to handle it properly; it's ultimately a question of power, which is a question of time. Economics is how countries always win wars, both in real life and in 4X. The question in a game is how interesting can you make it, and I say that 1upt> deathstacks any day.

The one thing you got right was saying that units should have more variety than they do now, but seriously, that's an expansion away from being fixed.

 

[Uthred]

1uPT is a bad system that Firaxis themselves admitted doesn't work. The AI cannot use it at all, and it is not any fun for human players either. It was an overreaction to the problem. Using a method of limiting how big a stack could be would have been a much more sane and better idea. When I was playing BE I could dump out dozens of units per turn and go to war with every faction at the same time and win easily but it was the most miserable experience imaginable because of how much you had to micromanage the units for no real gain. The units do not have unique enough abilities for real tactical combat and ultimately is just driving bigger numbers into smaller. It is a game of economics and numbers the same as it ever was but with much more tedium involved on the players part and total incompetence to use the system on the AI's part.

Civ and the entire 4x genre is a game of large scale and broad strategies. It is poorly suited to simulating the finer details of battle and attempting to turn it into some kind of tactical war game doesn't work. There is very little difference between all the units in Civ 5 other than raw strength and that is the most important factor. When you out tech your opponent and can build a much bigger economy is where you win. Beyond Earth is even more dire in this regard due to the low unit variety and the massive jumps in power from higher tech levels that comes in leaps and bounds rather than gradual.

Seems like an odd thing for Firaxis as a company to make a statement about, where did they do so? And having less units with increased significance is a move towards "large scale and broad startegies", suggesting that the system in Civ 5 is even an attempt to simulate the "finer details of battle" or become a tactical wargame feels a little laughable. It would be more palatable if people simply admitted that it wasnt to their preference as opposed to trying to dress it up with an overly self-conscious sounding objective facade.

 

[sueil]

The AI being able to handle the 1UPT system has nothing to do with power. There is plenty of computing power to handle calculations like that. The problem is the programming for it is no where near the levels it needs to be for it to work. AI is still very basic in video games and I do not see that changing anytime soon no how much cores or clock speed you throw at the problem. Civ is a complex game with a lot of variables and not a lot of hard and fast rules. It is the same reason why you can program a computer to play chess at a high level of competency high enough to be a challenge to world class players. Chess is a well ordered game with not a lot of possible moves so it is easy to reduce it to a small amount of optimal moves. There is lots of pattern. Strategy video games are more like Go which computers have never been able to be good at because of how many possible combinations there is and how variable the moves can be. Go AI are laughable compared chess AI because of how much less pattern there is to the players moves. Civilization is the same way.

1UPT I don't find interesting at all because it is still a game of economics and not tactics. It is the completely wrong genre to simulate it. Doomstacks didn't offer huge amount of tactics either but were at least easy to use and weren't a hassle.


"Seems like an odd thing for Firaxis as a company to make a statement about, where did they do so"

The Lead designer for Vanilla civ 5 said so I don't have a link sorry.

It really has nothing to do with preference and what makes for a better game. Civ 5 is a game with many flaws.

 

[Maledict]

The lead designer for civ 5, after he left the company and was shilling his own game said that 1 upt was a mistake. No ulterior motive there at all!

I love 1upt, and as someone who has religiously played each civ since the original think 5 is the best of all now. I also am constantly amused by the insane amount of selective memory that goes on when discussing previous versions of civ - it's as if it wasn't possible to completely and utterly break the military AI in civ 4 by leaving cities undefended and then redefending them turn after turn so their giant stack just bounced pointlessly between two spots. Or how every strategy at higher levels involved chain whipping (which the AI wasn't Brit enough to do). Or the way human players could utterly break the diplomatic AI through abusing religion and the silly diplo modifiers...

I guess my point is every version of civ has flaws in the AI you can abuse, and have too at the highest levels of play to win.

 

[LurkerPrime]

1uPT is a bad system that Firaxis themselves admitted doesn't work. The AI cannot use it at all, and it is not any fun for human players either. It was an overreaction to the problem. Using a method of limiting how big a stack could be would have been a much more sane and better idea. When I was playing BE I could dump out dozens of units per turn and go to war with every faction at the same time and win easily but it was the most miserable experience imaginable because of how much you had to micromanage the units for no real gain. The units do not have unique enough abilities for real tactical combat and ultimately is just driving bigger numbers into smaller. It is a game of economics and numbers the same as it ever was but with much more tedium involved on the players part and total incompetence to use the system on the AI's part.

Civ and the entire 4x genre is a game of large scale and broad strategies. It is poorly suited to simulating the finer details of battle and attempting to turn it into some kind of tactical war game doesn't work. There is very little difference between all the units in Civ 5 other than raw strength and that is the most important factor. When you out tech your opponent and can build a much bigger economy is where you win. Beyond Earth is even more dire in this regard due to the low unit variety and the massive jumps in power from higher tech levels that comes in leaps and bounds rather than gradual.

Ok, now apply your criticisms of the 1UPT system to the previous system of doomstacks, or a limited unit per tile system, and see how much of it would still stick.

The fact of the matter is that, ultimately, 1UPT is the simplest way to implement a deep yet elegant combat system. It allows for high-tech units to dominate less advance units - as they should; it allows for superior tactical positioning to give an advantage in combat - as it should; it adds additional strategic and tactical considations to combat (for things like logistics and supply chains) - as it should; and best of all it does this without a thousand little sub-systems/mechanics to weigh the whole thing down, keeping everything quick to comprehend and easy to understand - as it should.

Unless there is a drastic overhaul of some fundamental Civilization design principles 1UPT is here to stay.


Now, if you don't like the extra strategy involved in managing these armies, perhaps you simply don't like Civilization.... or, at least, the future of Civ. Fortunately for you, the older Civilization games still exist, and you're free to play those.

So, once again I will ask that you please let it go. It's an utterly hopeless opinion that only leads to vapid, off-hand remarks littering the Civilization threads, annoying almost everyone there. These comments are akin to kicking the hornet's nest, because I can't let you spread blatant lies as much as you can't let it go.

 

[Orgun]

Got Civ BE tonight, ill just giive it a quick go - 210 turns later...

 

[Bregor]

1UPT is a system I like, and based upon the success of Civ 5 and it's copying by competitors I would suspect that it's here to stay.

But sometimes I with someone would produce a competitor to Sid Meier's Civilization series. Something closer to what Civ 4 was like, but modernized. Not for myself (I like Civ 5), but for the fans of Civ 4 who don't like where the series has gone. Surely with the advent of digital distribution there is now room in the market for both game types to coexist.

 

[jblank83]

1UPT is a total PITA late game.

 

[samn]

This sort of petty hate for changes Civ5 made needs to end. 1UPT is an immense improvement over doomstacks, and it is only a matter of time until the AI can wield it as effectively as human players. [/URL]

Well we've had 2 expansions and a spinoff game since the mechanic was introduced and the AI still hasn't caught up to it.

I much prefer 1upt because it makes managing an army much more transparent, but they need to make it cohesive with other aspects of the game.

 

[Delta Assault]

This game could use a lot of helpful tips. Like... after building a Trade Depot, I kept looking around for how I could place it on one of my tiles. Took me bout 10 minutes to figure out that the Trade Depot is automatically just... in the city and you don't need to place it on a tile. How was I supposed to know that?

And when you tell a unit to fortify, there's no symbol over the unit telling me that it's gained a defense bonus. This is simple UI stuff.

 

[HGStormy]

How easy would it be for me to jump into Civ:BE if I have never played a Civ game before?

 

[Chaos17]

Well we've had 2 expansions and a spinoff game since the mechanic was introduced and the AI still hasn't caught up to it.

Yup the AI is still bad.

 

[Poodlestrike]

How easy would it be for me to jump into Civ:BE if I have never played a Civ game before?

Eh. Turn the tooltips/assistance up to max, you should be fine.

 

[Serandur]

Just passed the 300 turn point in my first playthrough; so far so good. I am having a few glitches/bugs that have caused me to quit and reload such as being unable to end a turn and leader dialogue not initiating and I still miss more detailed demographics but the game's pretty fun. Wonders kind of suck and I ended up going the harmony route, but the soundtrack is pretty great, if a bit limited. I noticed my cities have started to incorporate some gray, alien-like buildings; not sure if that's because of time, technology, or harmony.

On the tech side of things, I need to get a second SSD to put the game on because load times and I would upgrade my CPU for turn processing alone if there were anything actually faster than my 3770K for the task.

 

[jaundicejuice]

I've played a number of games over the weekend, won through all of the Affinities as well as Contact. I've played on a few different map types and sizes with four different factions, all with different starting bonuses. There are things I really like about Beyond Earth, there are things I dislike, there are things that puzzle me about the game but the single biggest what-the-fuck is there's no post-game recap. No stats, no graphs, no hex map replay of the 500 turns you just played. WHY.

 

[Strider]

I'm probably late on this but I just found something that's incredibly useful for me since I'm not memorizing the tech web very well...

Clicking the + icon next to the orbital view, then tech web, then using the filter function is so incredibly useful. Wish I had noticed that sooner.

 

[Huevos de Oro]

I'm at around turn 200 in my first playthrough. I'm not what you'd call a Civ experienced player, so I don't really have much background to compare things to. I am liking most of the things I've found. Unfortunately I believe I am making the wrong decisions at every turn, and it's probably stuff unrelated to BE and more related to Civ games as a whole, in which historically I have never been proficient or even adequate. At one point in time I had like 20+ workers doing auto stuff, and my overall health has been in the -20s for a long-ass time now. AI cities grow and prosper and my first city got stuck at Lv 8-9 for god knows how long and got even surpassed by younger settlements within my borders.

I need to look for some strategy or something.

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

If we're setting aside the aliens, the tech web, the unit upgrading system, and the Virtues, then yeah. Nothing's changed. Totally worthy of a thorough lashing.

<.<

Aliens feel like glorified barbarians. Alien nests are barbarian camps. You could achieve the same feeling of the dangerous unknown by playing with "raging barbarians" on. Sure they can be passive most of the time if you leave well enough alone. But a harmless colonist or explorer happens upon one? Gone for no reason. The waterborne aliens are also just assholes with no behavior pattern other than "kill anything in my sight." Aliens don't feel like indigenous life. They'd be more engaging if it was like, certain aliens grazed on fungus, but I need to build a plantation on that fungus for my city. Or if there was some immediate benefit to letting them live other than not pissing off AI that like aliens. The alien variety is also incredibly lacking. You have siege worm, sea dragon and kraken, wolf beetle and raptor bug, manticore and other ranged thing, and then the drone. That's about it.

Virtues are consolidated social policies and the tech web, while allowing for more freedom of choice, feels like a step down from Civ V's tech tree in just how confusing and unintuitive it is. Trying to figure out what you already researched is a minor chore compounded by the fact that I have to do that every time I choose what to research. Wonders are indistinguishable from regular buildings other than the build cost. Very few of the wonders have anything worth pursuing either. Also no world wonders.

City states have been replaced with one tile stations that offer no resources and the trade benefits are minimal in later game, even at tier 3. You're better off trading internally for the mondo production boosts.

Orbital layer and affinities are about the only substantially new things I can point out. Even the orbital layer I've rarely had to use other than eradicating miasma and the occasional solar collector I get from expeditions.

I think my biggest issue with the game is that it feels like the devs were really scared of any one thing being too overpowered, so instead they made everything bland. It's been balanced to the point where nothing is special. None of the civs feel unique, which is quite an accomplishment considering there's only 8 of them. Not even the affinites feel like they make my civ particularly different.

It's been said, but the game lacks personality. Civ V feels like it was designed with a passion and reverence for history. It has an ornate, art deco UI that is still easy to read and understand. Civ BE should feel like it was designed with a reverence for space, science, and discovery. But instead it feels bland and soulless, opting for for a minimal looking UI that doesn't look inspired by anything. I like minimal, but this feels phoned in and ugly to boot. Teal, pink, blue, purple all combined with black seems to be this game's main color scheme. I don't think it works and it doesn't evoke sci-fi. What about white? Beyond Earth's box art with the astronaut in front of the window. It would have been better if they went for a look that was more in line with that image.

I was never looking for Beyond Earth to be a wildly different game from even vanilla Civ V. I was ready for "Fallout 3 to New Vegas" levels of change. I wasn't, however, prepared for how much is absent in Beyond Earth that makes Civ V such a better experience.

For new Civ players, unless you reeeaaaally won't play a Civ game unless there's a thin sci-fi veneer over it, I'd reccomend getting Civ V with the expansions over Beyond Earth. BE won't escape the identity of "reskinned Civ V" until the BE expansions come out.

I didn't mean to rant, but damn, between XCOM, Civ V, and their respective expansions, Firaxis was on a roll. So that just makes Beyond Earth more disappointing to me.

 

[Starviper]

Hoping the AI gets a good patching. Had a really stupid event where I performed a Coup on a city of theirs and captured it. All I got from the AI was "Hey, get your spies out of my cities" and left it at that, continued trading with me and everything.

Also, the complaint about the AI not handling air units is totally true. Another AI kept throwing air units at my intercepts turn after turn, I just kept taking them down and eventually got the city for peace.

I like the themes and the gameplay.. But fuck. The AI is so broke it hurts.

I found the orbital layer to be pretty handy, there are some interesting tactical satellites that can be launched. Also, I prefer how city states are handled -- I got some quest perks that made trading with them very beneficial, and they don't take up space.

Also noticed in the games i've played the AI's tend to go Supremacy.

 

[Mattenth]

I'm about 5 full rounds in and trying to win on the hardest difficulty. My biggest complaint about the game is that it doesn't seem to have really increased the "fun" in turn-to-turn choices, and instead just exacerbated the sheer number of wrong choices.

Take the tech web, for example. About 2-3 tech into the game, you now get to decide between ~15 tech choices. About 10 of those would be simply wrong choices for a wide variety of reasons, while choosing between the remaining 5 is fun and interesting. But figuring out and comparing those 5 is simply cumbersome. There's no way to quickly evaluate that decision, and it's very costly to choose the wrong one.

If you're a new player and want to take 50 turns getting "Computing" because that sounds cool instead of Pioneering (only correct choice), well, you're fucked. On a slightly harder difficulty, or playing with friends, you just lost the game on one of the earliest choices you could make. Honestly, the game should prevent you from making those choices that are that incorrect. Why are you ever presented with the option of Pioneering vs Computing? Civ 5 at least prevents you from making dumb choices by reasonably limiting them.

Another example: your military. If you're playing against any AI, there seems to only be two good opportunities for starting a military: 1) When the AI gets it, or 2) When you want to conquer someone. If you get a military before the AI, you've just wasted turns that could be multiplying in other categories. If you get it after, you risk losing and being conquered. At least in Civ 5 you could tech up and crush them with superior tech. Or you could rush early and upgrade later.

With the military being so bland, it makes the game feel very 1-dimensional. If you try to break out of that mold, you're falling behind (though most of the mid-tier difficulties don't punish you for it).

Final example: number of cities and health. With no luxury resources, you basically don't get any choices as to the size of your empire. If you want to grow, you've got to go get the health-building technologies, then build the health buildings in your cities, and then expand. All that's fine, but what it effectively means is that there is only ONE way to grow your empire. Civ 5 wasn't great here, either, but at least the luxury resource system introduced new ways to figure out how to grow (and maintain) your empire, especially in the mid game. But in Beyond Earth, your health basically dictates your empire size, and you have extremely little control over it. Any deviation puts a costly 10% tick (or more) on whatever you're doing.

In the end, Beyond Earth just makes it really easy to make really bad choices, but it doesn't make it "fun" to make the "correct" choices, either.

There are a lot of earflicks too, many of which I'm sure they'll fix. I can't run the game in 1080p yet, let alone 1440. Trade is vital and yet so fucking annoying to micro manage. The AI is still terrible and frequently buggy ("quit attacking my outpost" when I'm no where near an outpost). You lack a lot of diplomacy that are important ("Hey AI, quit attacking that outpost. They're my trade friend." - I literally surrounded an outpost with 12 marines at one point to stop an AI from hitting it). I'm hopeful that many of these will get patched.

 

[Qvoth]

you guys should really check out endless legend

 

[marvelharvey]

I've purchased around a dozen titles this year, all of which have been underwhelming and disappointing. All this time I was thinking "Well at least CiV:BE will be good". That's what makes the failure of CiV:BE hurt so much, it was my last hope of a great game in 2014.

 

[Delta Assault]

I still haven't figured how to access my Affinities. I went and opened up the Virtues tree menu and thought that was the Affinities menu for a while. Until I looked and saw there were actually four colored trees in there...

Basically, I'm trying to say BE's tutorial kinda sucks.

 

[Nephrahim]

I'm about 5 full rounds in and trying to win on the hardest difficulty. My biggest complaint about the game is that it doesn't seem to have really increased the "fun" in turn-to-turn choices, and instead just exacerbated the sheer number of wrong choices.

Take the tech web, for example. About 2-3 tech into the game, you now get to decide between ~15 tech choices. About 10 of those would be simply wrong choices for a wide variety of reasons, while choosing between the remaining 5 is fun and interesting. But figuring out and comparing those 5 is simply cumbersome. There's no way to quickly evaluate that decision, and it's very costly to choose the wrong one.

If you're a new player and want to take 50 turns getting "Computing" because that sounds cool instead of Pioneering (only correct choice), well, you're fucked. On a slightly harder difficulty, or playing with friends, you just lost the game on one of the earliest choices you could make. Honestly, the game should prevent you from making those choices that are that incorrect. Why are you ever presented with the option of Pioneering vs Computing? Civ 5 at least prevents you from making dumb choices by reasonably limiting them.

Another example: your military. If you're playing against any AI, there seems to only be two good opportunities for starting a military: 1) When the AI gets it, or 2) When you want to conquer someone. If you get a military before the AI, you've just wasted turns that could be multiplying in other categories. If you get it after, you risk losing and being conquered. At least in Civ 5 you could tech up and crush them with superior tech. Or you could rush early and upgrade later.

With the military being so bland, it makes the game feel very 1-dimensional. If you try to break out of that mold, you're falling behind (though most of the mid-tier difficulties don't punish you for it).

Final example: number of cities and health. With no luxury resources, you basically don't get any choices as to the size of your empire. If you want to grow, you've got to go get the health-building technologies, then build the health buildings in your cities, and then expand. All that's fine, but what it effectively means is that there is only ONE way to grow your empire. Civ 5 wasn't great here, either, but at least the luxury resource system introduced new ways to figure out how to grow (and maintain) your empire, especially in the mid game. But in Beyond Earth, your health basically dictates your empire size, and you have extremely little control over it. Any deviation puts a costly 10% tick (or more) on whatever you're doing.

In the end, Beyond Earth just makes it really easy to make really bad choices, but it doesn't make it "fun" to make the "correct" choices, either.

There are a lot of earflicks too, many of which I'm sure they'll fix. I can't run the game in 1080p yet, let alone 1440. Trade is vital and yet so fucking annoying to micro manage. The AI is still terrible and frequently buggy ("quit attacking my outpost" when I'm no where near an outpost). You lack a lot of diplomacy that are important ("Hey AI, quit attacking that outpost. They're my trade friend." - I literally surrounded an outpost with 12 marines at one point to stop an AI from hitting it). I'm hopeful that many of these will get patched.

Virtues can also increase your health, and luxury resource system in Civ 5 was kind of broken (Since you would end up just trading for all of them and have huge happiness.)

Other then that, I feel like a lot of these complaints are also ones at least I have had in the CIV games as well. Techs in particular, can be fucked up just as easily in a civ game. I really love the open ended nature of the tech web, letting you prioritize whatever you want.

 

[Macattk15]

you guys should really check out endless legend

Game has worse AI than Civ games ...

 

[neoanarch]

The tech tree in V felt really limited in the ways you could advance past emperor difficulty. I mean shoot for the national college in philosophy. Then to education and either scientist bulb to a science win or musician spam for cultural win. The web is a solid improvement over that.

 

[Anjelus_]

It's been said, but the game lacks personality. Civ V feels like it was designed with a passion and reverence for history. It has an ornate, art deco UI that is still easy to read and understand. Civ BE should feel like it was designed with a reverence for space, science, and discovery. But instead it feels bland and soulless, opting for for a minimal looking UI that doesn't look inspired by anything. I like minimal, but this feels phoned in and ugly to boot. Teal, pink, blue, purple all combined with black seems to be this game's main color scheme. I don't think it works and it doesn't evoke sci-fi. What about white? Beyond Earth's box art with the astronaut in front of the window. It would have been better if they went for a look that was more in line with that image.

Totally agree. This right here is what made SMAC so wonderful. I remember when Dan Carlin referenced how some Civ games postulate on intricate future systems of government we haven't even discovered yet, and I immediately thought of SMAC. It's just such a great damn vision of the future.

 

[jman2050]

1UPT vs doomstacks in a Civ game is trading one poison for another. Except one of those poisons isn't a tedious pain in the neck to logistically manage

Unfortunately it's clear that Firaxis hates stacking and 1UPT is more palatable to untrained players so it's here to stay so I guess all I can say is deal with it.

 

[mrpookles]

I think I just had the best end game experience I have had in Civilization, Total War, and other similar games.

I was playing as ARC with most of my affinity points in supremecy. After succesfully wiping African Union off the map, I ended up in a bitter conflict with Slavic Federation (harmony). Just when I had finally managed get my offensive going deeper into Slavic terrority, Franco-Iberia (harmony) declares a war and steamrolls into my second largest city at the opposite side of my territory. They manage to destroy my city by choosing to burn it before I had time to recapture it.

I quickly made a peace with the Slavic Federation and then fight another bitter war with Franco-Iberia during which I started building my emancipation gate. When I was finally pushing into Franco-Iberian territory with help of my massive mech units I realised that Kavithan Protectorate (supremacy) - who were hiding behind Franco-Iberian terroritory - had already finished their own emancipation gate before me and were already sending units to the Earth. I again made a peace with now much smaller Franco-Iberia and declared war against Kavithan Protectorate.

With all my land and sea units committed on one side of the map, I was able to take over the Kavithan city that had the emancipation gate. Thinking that I had just won the game, I realised to my horror that Polystralia (purity) was only 10 earth settlers short from winning the game with a promised land victory. I had no units anywhere near Polystralia, so made desperate dash accross the sea with my battleships and one carrier to Polystralian side of the map as an attempt to take out the gate that was bringing in settlers from the Earth. My whole navy and orbital lasers were completely destroyed by Polystralia so I decided to teleport all my remaining land based units back to my base so that I could slowly send them through the emancipation gate. This got to the point where Polystralia had 19 out of 20 settlers settled and I was still at least few units away from winning the game. Luckily, just when Polystralia was about to win the game, I realised that I could pillage any outposts created by the Polystralian settlers which were easy to attack with my fast moving scout hovercraft, also somehow their settlers died in the process. By doing that I was able to push the settler count down to 14.

In the end I won the game, but those last 80+ turns were constant crisis management. Now maybe this can be avoided by monitoring the victory condition panel more closely than I did, but that was the first time when an ending of a game like this was not an anti-climax for me.

Great read. Making me want to get back in and play some more.

 

[jaundicejuice]

My first late-game crisis management match was in the second largest map type, it had me sailing an army across an ocean to stop one A.I. from winning a Purity victory because I spent most of the game ignoring the victory tab in the quest log. The gate was already built, the refugees from old Earth were pouring through and being settled when I swooped in with an army of human/alien hybrids and smashed it all. Sank my economy and my empire's health, but I was able to save off two attempts at a Purity victory (almost had to smash a third gate) and one Supremacy victory.

That said I haven't really had to worry about my own gateways, mind flower or contact tower. I tend to build them in easily protectable areas, surrounded by lots of military units but in my contact victory I had a hostile neighbour with a wicked huge fleet do nothing about my lightly guarded and easily accessible victory wonder. Most of my army was away smashing other factions victory wonders. The best the A.I has done is slip a unit, an explorer I think, through my army (it moved three units through to do it) into my Emancipation Gateway and put it to sleep. I just went to war, killed the unit and won. I haven't played on the higher difficulties yet so I'm sure that will change. I hope it does, at least more than the stupid advantages the Civ V A.I. gets in Emperor on up but I'm not holding much hope for that.

Currently playing as the PAC on the largest map type possible, will definitely be paying more attention to the victory tab of the quest log and try using spies to find out which city needs to be attacked.

 

[EricTheCleric]

How easy would it be for me to jump into Civ:BE if I have never played a Civ game before?

I would recommend you buyr Civ V: GOTY instead. It is a better game and you get more for your money.

 

[neoanarch]

I would recommend you buyr Civ V: GOTY instead. It is a better game and you get more for your money.

Complete Edition is the latest "has everything" release.


I can't wait till for expansions. I don't think new sponsors will add much to the game so I wonder what they'll do.

 

[spiritfox]

I would like to see them add unique units/buildings. At least that'll create more variety and flesh the sponsors out more. Also, make stations actually useful instead of being easily ignored and taking up the spot where you want your next city.

And balance changes of course.

 

[Chariot]

We also need more victory conditions or something that makes late game more fun. Supremancy is the only thing that seems particularly fun, well domination. But the others are boring and in the case of Purity very tedious. Make contact longer, let actual higher civilized aliens land somewhere. Endgame feels very underwhelming.

 

[Chaos17]

If we're setting aside the aliens, the tech web, the unit upgrading system, and the Virtues, then yeah. Nothing's changed. Totally worthy of a thorough lashing.

<.<

The tech web is reskin of the classic tree skill which I miss.
The virtue are the same we had also a tree skill for that back in Civ5.
The unit upgrade is kinda new but not really since you could alredy updrade you units back then too. They just putted into an updrade tree.

So yeah, most of the things you listed are just some reskin with no real improvements.
The only thing that I'm happy at the moment is the workers, they're less dumb than before.

 

[Garrus Vakarian]

For all the InfoAddict fans out there from Civ 5 you can find the BE version here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=332239071&searchtext=infoaddict

 

[Serandur]

For all the InfoAddict fans out there from Civ 5 you can find the BE version here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=332239071&searchtext=infoaddict

Fantastic! One of my problems with the game are gone now.

 

[RVinP]

Game just isn't as fun without the 'real' historical stuff I find. Obviously some people prefer the sci fi stuff but playing this made realize the history aspect is one of the major reasons why I love the series.

History or interesting lore, the game needs a catchy idea to keep reminding the player that they are part of something..a connection.

 

[Niahak]

I had a pretty rough last game.

Brasilia and Polystralia were doing the Civ 5 standard "pretend to be friends with you, then declare war" stuff. Fine, whatever. I've dealt with that before.

They wouldn't let me offer terms for 200 turns. Even after I took Brasilia's second city and one of their outposts, they kept harassing me with one sturdy faction unit after another, refusing to make peace at all (not even getting to the "offer terms" page). Sure, I was a jerk to Brasilia exploring their ruins, but does that really require a 200 turn war?

Finally, about 20 turns after Brasilia denounces Polystralia, they both offer me a white peace.

I'm not going to pretend that's why I lost that game (I had too difficult a time deciding between Contact and Harmony), but man was it frustrating.

It's also annoying to get quests that I can't possibly complete (e.g. Build a Petrochemical building in a city with no Petroleum resource). It's hypothetically possible with the strat-resource satellite...

That said, I like the tech web, the customization stuff, and the quest system by and large. I do wish I could fully automate trade units ("keep doing what you're doing").

I'll be looking forward to a balance patch, but I still like it better than Civ V so far. Much nicer variety of strategy from what I've played.

 

[Lé Blade Runner]

I can't stop playing it. I know it's got some issues, but I just find it super engrossing.

Same here. And this is all that matters in the end. Might help that I didn't get burned out on Civ V, either.

 

[neoanarch]

Something people really seem to miss about diplomacy. If two factions dow you they take into account their combined military strength against you in their calculations. If those two civs are only at war with you they are less likely to negotiate. You either have to wipe one of them out. Or have a third faction dow them. AI's are much more likely to negotiate if they are fighting a two front war.


I find that most of the time people that complain about diplomacy are the ones that tend to ignore it completely. It's not perfect but if you pay attention to it a bit its perfectly manageable.

 

[Drinkel]

Man these outposts sure have a habit of popping up as soon as I have a colonist ready. On top of every good collection of resources, which they don't even use.