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Civilization: Beyond Earth |OT| - The Future of Mankind
- Thread starter Fragamemnon
- Start date
You can win without fighting with affinity victories.
Two of them
(Emancipation Gate & Contact (kind of))
is build a gate and bring things through it (Exodus Gate)
build something and defend it for a while
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Isn't affinity mostly the same as science though? Since you have to tech up to earn affinity points.
ashecitism
Member
Yes, and that is disappointing. I hope that if there are ever expansions they will give more varied ways to gain significant amounts of affinity.
However it still makes a difference - just teching to a military unit is not sufficient in and of itself to give you superior quality units. Another civ that focused on their affinity techs instead may beat you with an 'inferior' unit that has better upgrades.
It is, at least, a step in the correct direction. It's worth noting however that it's unlikely that such a system would work in the mainline Civ series - people just have an ingrained expectation that better tech equals better military, and that's one of the reasons why science has always been the most important thing for any empire.
GungHo
Single-handedly caused Exxon-Mobil to sue FOX, start World War 3
I like Endless Space. It has a very David Lynch's Dune presentation for the planetary view, along with a Empire faction that captures look of the Imperium of Man while having the declining flavor of the Foundation. The conceit of the Endless universe of games is similar to that of Warhammer... the factions you face in Endless Legend go on to be the factions of Endless Space.
So just played a decent amount of the game, around turn 280 and.. I'm not finding it very interesting at all.
-Tech web is just confusing to follow.
- Production seems really bad, where's all of the buildings that increase production by 10% etc instead of a measly +1. My capital has a poxy 25 production where a capital in Civ V would be nearing 100 at this stage.
-Where's all of the provide 15Exp etc for new military unit, buildings?
- Why do I have to upgrade a unit? Had the Xeno Swarm unit and because I stole some tech from another Civ that provided 2 purity levels, I then had to upgrade my Swarm unit the purity path however, I wanted to wait before I could upgrade the harmony path, but I couldn't end my turn until I upgraded.
-Is there nothing I can do with the forests? Does the future not need wood chopping down?
-Already been mentioned but trade routes are just annoying to have to keep setting their route every 10 turns ish
-How do you declare war against an outpost, I wanted to attack one from sea but it wouldn't let me.
There's more frustrations but yeah, it's just not very fun to play.
-Tech web is just confusing to follow.
- Production seems really bad, where's all of the buildings that increase production by 10% etc instead of a measly +1. My capital has a poxy 25 production where a capital in Civ V would be nearing 100 at this stage.
-Where's all of the provide 15Exp etc for new military unit, buildings?
- Why do I have to upgrade a unit? Had the Xeno Swarm unit and because I stole some tech from another Civ that provided 2 purity levels, I then had to upgrade my Swarm unit the purity path however, I wanted to wait before I could upgrade the harmony path, but I couldn't end my turn until I upgraded.
-Is there nothing I can do with the forests? Does the future not need wood chopping down?
-Already been mentioned but trade routes are just annoying to have to keep setting their route every 10 turns ish
-How do you declare war against an outpost, I wanted to attack one from sea but it wouldn't let me.
There's more frustrations but yeah, it's just not very fun to play.
CoconutTank
Member
I dunno if this is a relatable sentiment, but I'm kind of okay with wonders not being super good this time around compared to Civ 5. The bonuses they give are still somewhat big, but at least they don't feel mandatory.
In BE, Panopticon and Master Control are the only wonders that I want to go for and feel like restarting the game if another civ gets it before I do. I can usually persevere and continue playing without those though.
Civ 5? If I settle a city into a desert and don't get Petra, then I've basically wasted a lot of effort and resources to plop down a dead city. If I don't get the Great Library, National College starts to look really far away. Failing to get Notre Dame isn't completely life or death, but lacking the 10 happiness buffer will make war mongering worse for awhile before I take it back.
In BE, Panopticon and Master Control are the only wonders that I want to go for and feel like restarting the game if another civ gets it before I do. I can usually persevere and continue playing without those though.
Civ 5? If I settle a city into a desert and don't get Petra, then I've basically wasted a lot of effort and resources to plop down a dead city. If I don't get the Great Library, National College starts to look really far away. Failing to get Notre Dame isn't completely life or death, but lacking the 10 happiness buffer will make war mongering worse for awhile before I take it back.
Thug Waffle
Member
Endless Space is cool except for the really fucked up AI fleet production.
CoconutTank
Member
1. I think they could color code the symbols to make them more clear what you gain from each tech. I didn't know that wonders had a rounded border instead of a partial octagon border until I read up more online, but it can still be hard to differentiate immediately.
2. You should set up internal trade routes to increase the amount of nuts you get. There are also quests that come up from time to time that make certain buildings produce more nuts.
3. This is basically replaced by the affinity system. Affinities more or less are military tech branches, but they also open up win conditions. When you go far enough into an affinity, your units will automatically upgrade and gain new abilities/become stronger. I'm kind of happy that I don't have to spend a bunch of turns moving my units back into my territory and spending a bunch of gold to bring them up to spec. I wish the units would be differentiated more than by just the choice I make for each tier though.
4. I think there's an ignore option when you are prompted to upgrade a unit, but I haven't tried that yet. I'm hoping it allows you to save an upgrade point until you want to spend it on another affinity model, but if not, then yeah I think that needs to be fixed.
5. Yeah apparently forests are only good for being chopped down for nuts =[
6. I am really hoping they add some persistence or automation to trade routes in the future. In Civ 5 it was okay if you weren't Venice because you had at best what 8 trade routes to manage over the course of the game? In BE, the number of trade routes you can get scales with the number of cities, so that just gets crazy really fast.
7. I don't think using the bombard command works, but I think you can still right click to attack. When I right clicked a station to attack it with a Marine, my Rangers could bombard it after that.
Yeah I did that, but it still wasn't anything meaningful
Yeah it's nice that I don't have to manually upgrade each unit but I was thinking more along the lines of upgrades like: increase attach range by 1 tile, increase attack on rough terrain etc. I know you get 1 upgrade with the affinity system but it still isn't very interesting
Yeah it works first if I enter in a land unit, but I didn't have one nearby and just wanted to bombard from sea but it wouldn't let me
Cities in this game are not structured the same, all the buildings are flat bonuses. IMO this was purposely done to encourage wide play (lots of smaller cities), whereas Civ V encouraged tall play (a few big cities). Don't try and play it like you would Civ V - in this game your capital is just another city for the most part. It won't end up being a massive industrial / scientific / cultural giant.
CoconutTank
Member
1. Really? Hmm, I don't think I ever felt like I had much production issues in my games, I haven't even built a Manufactory yet. And trade routes tend to give about +7 to +10 nuts or so, multiply that by about 5 or 6 cities (yes it is okay to expand a lot) should be a lot of production.Yeah I did that, but it still wasn't anything meaningful
Yeah it's nice that I don't have to manually upgrade each unit but I was thinking more along the lines of upgrades like: increase attach range by 1 tile, increase attack on rough terrain etc. I know you get 1 upgrade with the affinity system but it still isn't very interesting
Yeah it works first if I enter in a land unit, but I didn't have one nearby and just wanted to bombard from sea but it wouldn't let me
2. There are upgrades for +1 range and for buffing attack and defense while in miasma and whatnot. However I wish how the affinity system would work would be the following:
a) The upgraded units would be differentiated immediately. Right now the only difference between the units are the one choice you make on their ability, the stat increases are all the same between the same tier of units.
b) Make it so that the choices you would normally make in the affinity upgrade UI be promotions you could choose for a unit the moment it is deployed.
I don't know how others feel about this, but I never got tired with selecting promotions for my units in Civ 5 (in fact the choices mattered a lot and depended on the unit's surroundings) and it's designed to happen less over time anyway since leveling up requires more XP per level. In Civ BE, being able to move after attacking versus having to spend only 1 movement over any terrain makes a difference, and potentially I would like to field units with either ability for different purposes.
3. Did you try right clicking? I think for some reason using hotkey attacks don't work, but right clicking should. It's sort of odd. I've only attacked a station once so far though, will let you know if this action is consistent.
GungHo
Single-handedly caused Exxon-Mobil to sue FOX, start World War 3
Yeah, that was a big miss. To bring the point back home, it was like when you left Chairman Yang alone on a continent until the end of the game and then found out he'd covered every possible inch of his domain with cities and roads, like he had had achived the singularity and the machines took over.
jaundicejuice
Member
Beyond Earth, as it is, has no legs. I binged Beyond Earth over the weekend and have played some games on and off during the week nights. I've dumped 40 hours into the game and already have 70% of the achievements. I think with any other series a statement like that would be preposterous but this is Civilization we're talking about. I've beaten the game with 6 different factions, achieved all of the victory types, played all of the map sizes and a fair share of the map types. Once I beat the game with the two remaining factions and maybe try the higher difficulties I'm pretty much done with Beyond Earth until there is some substantive patching and probably a major expansion pack. I've dumped 1500 hours into Civ V, Gods & Kings and Brave New World but I probably won't hit 100 with Beyond Earth.
There are a lot of interesting ideas that are poorly executed, there are questionable omissions (no post-game recap, wtf) and even more questionable things from Civ V vanilla were included into this game.
You can make an awful lot of choices in Beyond Earth but most don't really matter. If at all. The quests and building quests sort of become white noise after a while but the bigger offender are the trade routes. That is the most tedious but powerful thing you will be doing all game with the clunkiest UI.
Beyond Earth is too much like Civ V vanilla in all of the worst ways and it's a huge step back from Brave New World. The A.I. is the same horrendous and limited thing we're been subjected to since Civ V vanilla. The A.I. still has more ways of interacting with the player than the player has interacting with it. Two major expansions and a brand new game and we've still got the same A.I. And the terrain in BE with all of its canyons and craters seems to make the A.I.'s already questionable use of 1UPT from Civ V even worse.
Why doesn't Beyond Earth start off with something like the world council from BNW. This is supposed to be a fresh start for humanity, it would provide an added layer of diplomacy the game badly needs and maybe favours would actually mean something. This new world council could even fracture and split into faction specific councils once the affinities start to dominate the "diplomatic" interactions in BE.
Health is a worse constraint than Happiness because there is no equivalent of luxury resources, there are few unique wonders that address Health (buried deep in the tech web) and no national wonders unless you count the pitiful 2% bump your spymaster can grant via Propaganda. Health constrains and limits how you start every single game of Beyond Earth. Unless you're happy rolling with penalties that can stifle your growth, production, economic and scientific output you're going to be stuck with just two to three cities for a good chunk of a game.
The Tech Web is an interesting idea but, like the whole UI, it's a hot mess in Beyond Earth. It's too easy to make mistakes that are costly and prohibitively expensive to research. This is a huge step back from Civ V's tech tree.
Wonders are anemic and hard to find on the tech web. There's nothing that denotes them as being special compared to an average building or tile upgrade at a cursory glance. I've played seven full games and still don't know where some of them are. The blue print images and in-game representations are kind of steps back from Civ V as well. They also take a huge back seat to researching affinity bonuses and the tech path to your affinities victory wonder. There's not enough reason to burn research and production on many wonders in this game.
The Affinities aren't different enough and it takes too long for what differences there are to appear in a given game. This is a general complaint you could apply to the game as a whole. The unit changes should occur in the first tier of upgrades, not the second tier, it takes too long for the factions to start looking like their faction. There should be more unique units per faction that aren't reliant on potentially limited resources. It would be nice if your choice of faction affected how the common tiles looked, a Harmony farm should look different compared to a Purity and Supremacy farm. Why am I building a Terrascape as Harmony or Supremacy when neither faction cares about clinging to the old ways or standard definition of humanity? Purity players empires should look more earth-like, Supremacy players empires should look more Borg-like. The final tier of Harmony players should have tile improvements that just generate miasma. The faction choices should be reflected in the tile improvements. Why am I still being attacked by xenos as Harmony or Supremacy player when both have quests to domesticate them? Why the xenos becom passive to Harmony players and the nests be something I could choose to destroy for biomass or have them be a resource I create a pen around and that's how you get Xeno Calvary. Supremacy players could build production pens around nests. I'm just rattling off random ideas at this point. The affinities are too similar from production tiles to the same basic military units.
The Affinity victory types are too similar as well, they're all basically boring Civ V science victories that make you wait an additional 30 turns. I'd say Harmony's is the easiest because you just build a wonder and guard it. You can construct buildings, before you finish the wonder, that speed up the victory process once the wonder is constructed. Supremacy requires you to have an army to guard the wonder while you feed units through the gate, while Purity requires you have an army to guard the wonder, place to put refugee settlements and then not have those settlements somewhere where it's easy to attack the three you have to build. Contact is probably almost as easy as Harmony but it requires an economic investment per turn.
There are too few factions in this game and, worse, they have too few flavour dialogues. "No village was ever ruined by trade" "What's mine is yours...for a price" Douchebag smile. Playing large games is boring because you're always going to be facing the same Civs. There's little surprise or variation with who you'll be playing against in a given match and that's one of the biggest killers for me with Beyond Earth. The same rogues gallery every game, the early game choices and affinities don't really make up for the lack of factions in this game versus Civ V vanilla.
Beyond Earth really feels like a content light expansion to Civ V. Maybe an expansion pack will change my tune sometime down the road but right now I'm starting to eye Endless Legend, haven't played that since it left Early Access.
There are a lot of interesting ideas that are poorly executed, there are questionable omissions (no post-game recap, wtf) and even more questionable things from Civ V vanilla were included into this game.
You can make an awful lot of choices in Beyond Earth but most don't really matter. If at all. The quests and building quests sort of become white noise after a while but the bigger offender are the trade routes. That is the most tedious but powerful thing you will be doing all game with the clunkiest UI.
Beyond Earth is too much like Civ V vanilla in all of the worst ways and it's a huge step back from Brave New World. The A.I. is the same horrendous and limited thing we're been subjected to since Civ V vanilla. The A.I. still has more ways of interacting with the player than the player has interacting with it. Two major expansions and a brand new game and we've still got the same A.I. And the terrain in BE with all of its canyons and craters seems to make the A.I.'s already questionable use of 1UPT from Civ V even worse.
Why doesn't Beyond Earth start off with something like the world council from BNW. This is supposed to be a fresh start for humanity, it would provide an added layer of diplomacy the game badly needs and maybe favours would actually mean something. This new world council could even fracture and split into faction specific councils once the affinities start to dominate the "diplomatic" interactions in BE.
Health is a worse constraint than Happiness because there is no equivalent of luxury resources, there are few unique wonders that address Health (buried deep in the tech web) and no national wonders unless you count the pitiful 2% bump your spymaster can grant via Propaganda. Health constrains and limits how you start every single game of Beyond Earth. Unless you're happy rolling with penalties that can stifle your growth, production, economic and scientific output you're going to be stuck with just two to three cities for a good chunk of a game.
The Tech Web is an interesting idea but, like the whole UI, it's a hot mess in Beyond Earth. It's too easy to make mistakes that are costly and prohibitively expensive to research. This is a huge step back from Civ V's tech tree.
Wonders are anemic and hard to find on the tech web. There's nothing that denotes them as being special compared to an average building or tile upgrade at a cursory glance. I've played seven full games and still don't know where some of them are. The blue print images and in-game representations are kind of steps back from Civ V as well. They also take a huge back seat to researching affinity bonuses and the tech path to your affinities victory wonder. There's not enough reason to burn research and production on many wonders in this game.
The Affinities aren't different enough and it takes too long for what differences there are to appear in a given game. This is a general complaint you could apply to the game as a whole. The unit changes should occur in the first tier of upgrades, not the second tier, it takes too long for the factions to start looking like their faction. There should be more unique units per faction that aren't reliant on potentially limited resources. It would be nice if your choice of faction affected how the common tiles looked, a Harmony farm should look different compared to a Purity and Supremacy farm. Why am I building a Terrascape as Harmony or Supremacy when neither faction cares about clinging to the old ways or standard definition of humanity? Purity players empires should look more earth-like, Supremacy players empires should look more Borg-like. The final tier of Harmony players should have tile improvements that just generate miasma. The faction choices should be reflected in the tile improvements. Why am I still being attacked by xenos as Harmony or Supremacy player when both have quests to domesticate them? Why the xenos becom passive to Harmony players and the nests be something I could choose to destroy for biomass or have them be a resource I create a pen around and that's how you get Xeno Calvary. Supremacy players could build production pens around nests. I'm just rattling off random ideas at this point. The affinities are too similar from production tiles to the same basic military units.
The Affinity victory types are too similar as well, they're all basically boring Civ V science victories that make you wait an additional 30 turns. I'd say Harmony's is the easiest because you just build a wonder and guard it. You can construct buildings, before you finish the wonder, that speed up the victory process once the wonder is constructed. Supremacy requires you to have an army to guard the wonder while you feed units through the gate, while Purity requires you have an army to guard the wonder, place to put refugee settlements and then not have those settlements somewhere where it's easy to attack the three you have to build. Contact is probably almost as easy as Harmony but it requires an economic investment per turn.
There are too few factions in this game and, worse, they have too few flavour dialogues. "No village was ever ruined by trade" "What's mine is yours...for a price" Douchebag smile. Playing large games is boring because you're always going to be facing the same Civs. There's little surprise or variation with who you'll be playing against in a given match and that's one of the biggest killers for me with Beyond Earth. The same rogues gallery every game, the early game choices and affinities don't really make up for the lack of factions in this game versus Civ V vanilla.
Beyond Earth really feels like a content light expansion to Civ V. Maybe an expansion pack will change my tune sometime down the road but right now I'm starting to eye Endless Legend, haven't played that since it left Early Access.
marvelharvey
Member
Good post.
As you say, when the humans arrive on the planet there really should be some sort of 'everyone is friends' UN that slowly degrades into petty arguments and then war.
I recall Sid Meier stating "All civs should feel over powered" when talking about the Civilization series. BE doesn't follow his philosophy and instead we have a bland "+1 this and +10% that". This leads to almost no differing play styles between factions, they're all pretty much the same. Something along the lines of the ideas below would certainly make each game feel varied. They're all overpowered.
Faction A:
-can build no military units
-has unique unit 'alien wrangler', who can capture nests and have the aliens fight for them
-can build alien nests to harass other factions
Faction B:
-can harvest miasma for health. One harvest give +10 health on the next turn, then +9, +8 and so on.
-for each miasma harvest, there's a 25% chance a worm will spawn
-half price orbitals, stay in orbit for double the length of time
Faction C
-tiles adjacent to chasms have +1 nut +1 energy
-can build bridges over chasms
-can dig out and extend chasms with worker (takes a considerable amount of time though)
Faction D
-receive receive +1 science when a new city is connected to the capital, +2 for the next and +3 for the 3rd and so on (10 cities would give +45)
-no science penalty for expansion
exmachina64
Banned
I hadn't thought about it this way. Missing a wonder hasn't "ruined" a campaign for me yet and that's a nice feeling/realization.
I also like that there aren't really any dead cities since the Vivarium makes deserts livable and whatever technology makes tundra livable.
Edit:
Colorful Tech Web mod.
EricTheCleric
Member
Get Civ 5 with expansions instead, it is a much better game
Very good post, jaundicejuice.
I didn't spend as much time with BE as you, but after playing a few games, I already went back to Civ5.
Why release a game that's fundamentally very similar to your last one, but remove a ton of the mechanics without adding enough new ones to compensate?
Small technical issues make this even less enjoyable. I straight-up don't have a minimap, and get weird texture/color glitches throughout a game.
Very frustrating release that's most likely going to get fixed with upcoming expansions. Which is exactly the problem. I'm super disappointed in Firaxis.
I didn't spend as much time with BE as you, but after playing a few games, I already went back to Civ5.
Why release a game that's fundamentally very similar to your last one, but remove a ton of the mechanics without adding enough new ones to compensate?
Small technical issues make this even less enjoyable. I straight-up don't have a minimap, and get weird texture/color glitches throughout a game.
Very frustrating release that's most likely going to get fixed with upcoming expansions. Which is exactly the problem. I'm super disappointed in Firaxis.
What jaundicejuice said
huge disappointment from this game
hope they address at least some of that in future patches
huge disappointment from this game
hope they address at least some of that in future patches
Okay I got a couple of hours into the game. It's so okay that it's just mediocre. Nothing stands out and I might as well have played CIV V with all the expansions in place. Won't preorder a B-Team game from Firaxis again, heck CIV V at launch was more fun to me than BE.
Regarding the affinities, does anyone think that it is actually quite boring how all the factions basically only have 3 personalities at the end? I kinda wished to see different variations of the affinities. IMO removing ideologies really took away a lot from the atmosphere of the game (and because the leaders are as interesting as watching somebody poop).
Regarding the affinities, does anyone think that it is actually quite boring how all the factions basically only have 3 personalities at the end? I kinda wished to see different variations of the affinities. IMO removing ideologies really took away a lot from the atmosphere of the game (and because the leaders are as interesting as watching somebody poop).
Wow, you couldn't be more wrong here. Build your health buildings and dive into the Prosperity tree and you'll have all the health you need. In my Apollo level difficulty win I had 88 surplus health with 8 cities at the end of the game. My health never went lower than -4.
Also having a small negative health is not really an issue here. The game seems balanced, at the start, with a health between 0 and -10. There's a reason you get a bonus as soon as your health is positive, and why the penalty for having a small negative health is so small.
Completely contrary to civ 5 where any negative happiness would instantly slow your population grown down massively, in BE it only has a very minor effect and doesn't impact on your growth at all.
Completely contrary to civ 5 where any negative happiness would instantly slow your population grown down massively, in BE it only has a very minor effect and doesn't impact on your growth at all.
Freeman
Banned
I didn't like this game so much, it feels like it's going to take a while and maybe a couple of expansions for it to get to the right place.
Some of the victory conditions are absolutely frustrating and the game does a very poor job at explaining them. The technology tree is more interesting than Civs but there is something off putting about it (the lack of icons I think). I already reverted back to Civ 5.
Some of the victory conditions are absolutely frustrating and the game does a very poor job at explaining them. The technology tree is more interesting than Civs but there is something off putting about it (the lack of icons I think). I already reverted back to Civ 5.
Fragamemnon
Member
My biggest complaint about the game currently is how passive the AI is. Two of the AIs act on the highest difficultly like AIs are supposed to (ARC, Brazil), the others are just too passive. I feel that AI aggression needs to be increased across the board, and on top of that the aliens need to be made much more dangerous, increase the way they aggro units from two tiles away to three and make them attack unprotected civilian units even in borders. Shitcan the ultrasonic fence trade route upgrade.
Also, give the AI an extra colonist on Apollo, for goodness sake.
edit: I think this game just needs UI tweaks and non-content patches to be great (not excellent, but great). There's certainly a burden going forward to expand some of the game's systems out more, but that will (hopefully) be the point where the game goes from great to excellent, which is what GNK and BNW did for Civ V.
edit2: Let me recommend the Beyond Balance mod on the workshop if you are playing this game and are a Civ 5 veteran. It really does help with some of the game's rough edges (and outright brokenness with the trade routes).
Also, give the AI an extra colonist on Apollo, for goodness sake.
edit: I think this game just needs UI tweaks and non-content patches to be great (not excellent, but great). There's certainly a burden going forward to expand some of the game's systems out more, but that will (hopefully) be the point where the game goes from great to excellent, which is what GNK and BNW did for Civ V.
edit2: Let me recommend the Beyond Balance mod on the workshop if you are playing this game and are a Civ 5 veteran. It really does help with some of the game's rough edges (and outright brokenness with the trade routes).
I was playing a pretty long game and was about to win then the game suddenly ended. There was a popup window that said some stuff, but it wasn't clear at all what the fuck happened. I couldn't even play any more turns afterwards, the thing just forced me to go back to the main menu. That was pretty annoying and added to the tons of other annoying issues I have with the game so I ended up going back to Civ V. Maybe after a bunch of patches and expansions, BE can be a good game somewhere down the line.
Gets even worse in multi, seems that because they never call you [
] there will be fewer diplomatic hits. Played nearly a full game the other night...morning... and me and the other guy were pretty much just doing our thing, the AI might as well not have been there at all. Had to find an excuse to declare war on the Slavic man to try out my orbital (airquotes) "laser".Fragamemnon
Member
Gets even worse in multi, seems that because they never call you [
Multiplayer w/ cutthroat players is just crazy broken. The list of issues is huge.
Wenger'sBakedBaguettes
Member
Is this game really that "similar" to the previous games? I'm seeing so many mixed opinions about this game....still think I will go for it.
It's different at some points, but most of the time to the worse and the actual good changes don't crawl much over "nice idea". It could be a very different and fun game, but the execution is just poor. Although there are already some mods that clean up a bit.
It's different enough to me to be worth a purchase, but if I had to choose one it would be Civ V complete edition. Beyond Earth just does not have the replayability to match Civ V yet.
Wenger'sBakedBaguettes
Member
Thanks. I think I'll still give it a try just to see what new stuff is about, but it looks like Civ 5 is the preferred one.
This reminds me a bit when AoE 3 came out.
This reminds me a bit when AoE 3 came out.
I think my biggest problem with affinities right now is how linked your military progression is to them. In order to get anywhere with a domination victory, you need to upgrade your military units fast, which means accumulating affinity levels quickly. And if you level up your affinity fast enough, then in many cases you may as well just shift to an affinity victory instead.
Fragamemnon
Member
Civ:BE sits in an uncanny valley of sorts with Civ 5-close enough to it that people immediately notice the similarities, but different enough from it that people find it uncomfortable compared to the Civ 5 they have acclimated on for years now.
I find the differences in the way to play Civ 5 and Civ:BE to be quite substantial. The problem is that because of the feeble AI it is hard to have those differences be substantial and skill testing-I am at this point playing the game in a sort of "time attack" mode to see how optimally I can reach a given victory condition.
Poodlestrike
Banned
I'm trying out the "aggressive AI" mod. It's a little bit better now. Part of the problem is that there's a lot more ways to win without interacting with other countries now compared to Civ V + BNW, so they need a bit more prompting to get involved.
Fragamemnon
Member
I think this got rolled into Beyond Balance in the newer version, which I haven't played yet since I catassed XCOM Long War for five hours last night. I'll check it out. I can't imagine not playing the game modded at this point.
Wenger'sBakedBaguettes
Member
What are the chances that they might weak or improve the AI with patches though?