Support NeoGAF

[Fragamemnon]

What are the chances that they might tweak or improve the AI with patches though?

Most Civ 5 patches had AI fixes and improvements, some of them pretty substantial. So I expect some changes. Honestly what really needs to happen is a "YOU ASKED FOR IT" masochistic AI setting like Deity was in Civ4/5. Due to the nature of the mechanics in BE the AI should be a hell of a lot scarier with the appropriate bonuses than it ever was in Civ 5.

 

[CoconutTank]

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.

Interesting... on Mercury, or whichever is the standard difficulty, I've had pretty consistent success at going to war with other civs.

In my current game, I'm playing Brasilia/Artists/Coast Scanner/Soldier and attempting to see if going deep into Might will ever work, so I've ended up hunting aliens quite a bit with Scavenging to boost my science. The other civs told me to stop but I continued anyway.

Also I have about 50ish Floatstone and went for Purity, while the other civs on my continent picked conflicting affinities.

Also I didn't send any trade routes to them and refused to hand over any of my resources.

Also I kept doing expeditions near their borders and let them know that the expeditions would continue regardless of their complaints.

Also... initially, my army was a paltry 4 Gunners when the PAC and the PAU DoW me Might virtues did squat for city growth so it was taking so long for everything to be built. Luckily I was close to researching LEV Tanks and have fielded about 9 of them along with a bunch of Dragoons. I found it depressing that, despite getting Adaptive Sciences and Martial Meditations, I was still behind on the military tech curve compared to PAC for awhile and had to rely on sitting behind a river to get potshots. Also due to investing really heavily into an army, my unit maintenance costs started getting out of control, despite having built mostly generators over farms for most of the game.

I picked about 5 Might virtues before I went off into Industry for awhile to get energy bonuses, but next time I think I should try Might + Propserity.

 

[MonorailCat]

What are the chances that they might weak or improve the AI with patches though?

Actually improving the AI? close to zero.
But I at least hope there will be one or two additional difficulty options in which the AI is more aggressive.

Won my second game on Apollo with Promised Land victory. AI just watched me settling my human settlers right next to their borders and on different continents basically undefended (my continent was full). No war declaration all game. Just researched all the Purity techs more or less randomly.

Yeah, I had a good starting position. But come on, thats the hardest difficulty. I shouldn't be able to win that in my second game.

Edit: and by god, pls nerf traderoutes. The amount of traderoutes you can have mid-to-late game is just insane. It's unbalanced AND an UI Nightmare. I had 20+ traderoutes. So more or less every single turn I had to renew something. In the end I just randomly chose something from the list. (and again: on the HARDEST difficulty. no micromanagement needed)

 

[Bregor]

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).

Let's be fair, most people aren't Civ 5 veterans. Only 14% of the people on Steam have the achievement for beating it on Prince difficulty, and only 1.4% have the achievement for Deity. So for probably 90% at least of the people who play the game, it provides enough challenge. It's the people like you or me who can see the balance flaws and how easily you can beat it if you know how.

I'm not excusing it, just saying that a lot of audience will be satisfied as far as difficulty goes.

 

[Maledict]

The problem with the AI was introduced in Brave New World in Civ5 and hasn't been fixed in that so I'm not too optimistic about it being addressed here.

The basic problem is that the AI overvalues trade routes. When it calculates whether it should go to war, it takes into account the fact that doing do would lose it 30 gold a turn, 30 science etc. Unfortunately that short term calculation means it very often choses to avoid war even if it's really pissed at you.

 

[MonorailCat]

The problem with the AI was introduced in Brave New World in Civ5 and hasn't been fixed in that so I'm not too optimistic about it being addressed here.

Yup, in G&K I actually feared the early game AI and settled far away from them.
Now I just settle next to them to cut them off, tell them to shut up and continue winning by not building any military till Turn 100+.

 

[Fragamemnon]

The basic problem is that the AI overvalues trade routes. When it calculates whether it should go to war, it takes into account the fact that doing do would lose it 30 gold a turn, 30 science etc. Unfortunately that short term calculation means it very often choses to avoid war even if it's really pissed at you.

They really only value it when they are actively sending caravans/cargo ships to you. The AI will declare on you if the trade is unidirectional coming from you to it.

Not that it really mattered much,given that the Civ 5 AI's military threat to the player peaks with muskets/xbows and drops off dramatically afterwards, and it's usually not a good idea to send out trade routes at that point given how much more beneficial internal routes are in Civ 5 at that stage of the game.

Let's be fair, most people aren't Civ 5 veterans. Only 14% of the people on Steam have the achievement for beating it on Prince difficulty, and only 1.4% have the achievement for Deity. So for probably 90% at least of the people who play the game, it provides enough challenge. It's the people like you or me who can see the balance flaws and how easily you can beat it if you know how.

I agree with this, but the passivity and lack of interaction is part of the difficulty problem, and those things make the game less interesting at all difficulty levels.

Now I just settle next to them to cut them off, tell them to shut up and continue winning by not building any military till Turn 100+.

This works vs. some AIs but ARC, Brazil, and the Slavs can punish you hardcore for this behavior. The spam they can perform in the first 100 turns is actually very impressive.

 

[Technosteve]

Played more of this game, then played some SMAC right after. God BE is so vanilla and AI so uninteresting, what's the point of favor points when they never repay it!

 

[MonorailCat]

This works vs. some AIs but ARC, Brazil, and the Slavs can punish you hardcore for this behavior. The spam they can perform in the first 100 turns is actually very impressive.

Yeah, ARC attacked me in one game on Turn 110 or something like that with 12+ Units.
But they ruined the surprise by shuffling around my border for over 10 Turns. Giving me enough time to research Rocket Batteries for my cities and building Units.

They would have easily killed me if they attacked right away instead of shuffling around. But that is a problem that was never fixed in BNW so it won't be fixed in this game either.

 

[Noaloha]

At this point, I think I'm content saying that I enjoyed my opening week with Warlock 2 more than I did with this. It's just not finished. Firaxis's (or 2K's?) idea of 'shippable' is dismaying. It's just kinda unfinished-feeling. Straight up broken in places. And, unlike Warlock 2, it's not broken in a fun, laugh-at-the-craziness way.

My 4X games of 2014 list as of now:

Age Of Wonders 3
Eternal Legend
Warlock 2
SMC: Beyond Earth

And, honestly, I still had fun with BE, sort of. Unsure how, or if, that fun will carry forward short of a drastic balance patch. Been a fun year for 4Xs.

 

[Fragamemnon]

Played more of this game, then played some SMAC right after. God BE is so vanilla and AI so uninteresting, what's the point of favor points when they never repay it!

Building up favor points with early strategic resources so that you can get a burst of petroleum later on to do mass satellites is actually pretty useful. Certainly beats paying out the nose for resources.

I disagree about SMAC in terms of flavor beyond the thematic elements of the game and its presentation. In terms of decisions made by the AI controlled leaders, they didn't exactly ooze with flavor. Civ 4/5 are still at the peak of the series for giving leaders personalities in their gameplay-Isabella in Civ4 (crazy religious lady) and Dido in Civ5 (reliable backstabber) in particular stand out to me in ways that Chairman Yang and Provost Zhakarov do not.

 

[KingSnake]

Ok, after playing quite a lot in the past days I decided to abandon this for now. It's utterly boring. I'm in a war for 50 turns already and practically nothing happens, as neither of us has the necessary strength to make a decisive attack on the cities of the others with all the jets, rocket modules and city rockets. The AI declared war on me and now it sits on its ass and do nothing and besides that running turn after turn doing mostly the same thing (like exploring for the same 3 things over and over again) and the lack of diversity in the landscape and species made me regret buying this. I like the science tree and the idea of it, but it doesn't compensate for the rest.

I will leave it aside for now, maybe some future expansion or patch (although they can't patch up the lack of diversity) will bring me back on board.

 

[Alchemy]

I seriously have no idea how to play this game. Civ 5 made sense, but I feel directionless in this game. Just a lot of meandering through the tech tree to get a Transcendence victory, and it leaves me crazy vulnerable to aggressive AI opponents.

 

[Unison]

Wow, I just finished my first game of this and cannot believe there are no post game stats to look at. Just a splash screen and a dump to the main menu!

I know that this game is an expansion or two behind Civ 5, but for this to be missing so many features is terrible.

I imagine if it gets some expansions it will be good, but it DEFINITELY needs more varied win conditions, more differentiated races, a system like religion, and some endgame stats.

Anyone would be a fool to play this over Civ5 + Expansions! This is admittedly still fun, because the basic formula is so strong, but it honestly feels like half of a product.

 

[oipic]

Wow, I just finished my first game of this and cannot believe there are no post game stats to look at. Just a splash screen and a dump to the main menu!

I'm yet to finish my first game, so I can't vouch for this personally, but this Reddit post indicates that post-game stats are still available via the main menu (although still relatively limited in comparison to Civ5 - no replay feature, for example).

 

[Kevyt]

How are you guys liking the Web-designed technology structure? To be honest for me it looks a bit messy. Depending on the type of victory that you want to accomplish, some technologies will not be of much use. I kind of liked the forced linear progression in Civilization V. But I'm not sure, maybe I just need to try it out.

 

[Special C]

How do I select my tacjets? This game's UI is a mess.

 

[Unison]

I'm yet to finish my first game, so I can't vouch for this personally, but this Reddit post indicates that post-game stats are still available via the main menu (although still relatively limited in comparison to Civ5 - no replay feature, for example).

Ahhh, good to know... they could stand to be fleshed out, but yeah... at least it's there in some form.

For the record!:

 

[Pooya]

re-installed Civ5 to refresh my memory.

- UI waaay better. Why change what wasn't broken?!!! some odd placements in new UI.
- Performance? Waaay better on my Surface.

This game is very much a reskin (I don't have any problem with that, I love this 'skin', more even) but still they managed to ruin it, baffling.

 

[TimeKillr]

I was wondering something...

Whenever there's an enemy near one of my cities, I *absolutely* cannot end my turn without bombarding them. This is true for worms, also, so like if there's a worm super early near one of my cities I am forced to attack it, then it destroys all my workers..

Is this normal?

 

[Fragamemnon]

How do I select my tacjets? This game's UI is a mess.

Click on the number above the city name, chose your tacjets. Don't worry, you're not missing out on much they don't do any damage. :/

How are you guys liking the Web-designed technology structure?

I love it, but it is very skill testing and I can see how it might induce people into paralysis on what tech to move to next. Civ 5's tree had only a handful important decisions, which were more or less the same each game.

- Machinery vs. Education first.
- Construction vs. Philosophy
- Artillery vs. Plastics

BE puts you to the test much more frequently. The game really asks for a lot of the player if you are playing 'optimally', the issue here is that you don't need to play optimally really to win at the highest AI level and multiplayer is a hot mess.

 

[Technosteve]

Click on the number above the city name, chose your tacjets. Don't worry, you're not missing out on much they don't do any damage. :/



I love it, but it is very skill testing and I can see how it might induce people into paralysis on what tech to move to next. Civ 5's tree had only a handful important decisions, which were more or less the same each game.

- Machinery vs. Education first.
- Construction vs. Philosophy
- Artillery vs. Plastics

BE puts you to the test much more frequently. The game really asks for a lot of the player if you are playing 'optimally', the issue here is that you don't need to play optimally really to win at the highest AI level and multiplayer is a hot mess.

Why can land units attack air units? this game confuses me.

 

[archnemesis]

Why can land units attack air units? this game confuses me.

They use rifles or cannons. Both can fire into the air.

 

[KingSnake]

They use rifles or cannons. Both can fire into the air.

The rockets make sense, but for rifles and cannons not really. This is not WWII, there are planes that can fly and attack from way above the range of riffles and cannons.

 

[Wenger'sBakedBaguettes]

Most Civ 5 patches had AI fixes and improvements, some of them pretty substantial. So I expect some changes. Honestly what really needs to happen is a "YOU ASKED FOR IT" masochistic AI setting like Deity was in Civ4/5. Due to the nature of the mechanics in BE the AI should be a hell of a lot scarier with the appropriate bonuses than it ever was in Civ 5.

Actually improving the AI? close to zero.
But I at least hope there will be one or two additional difficulty options in which the AI is more aggressive.

Won my second game on Apollo with Promised Land victory. AI just watched me settling my human settlers right next to their borders and on different continents basically undefended (my continent was full). No war declaration all game. Just researched all the Purity techs more or less randomly.

Yeah, I had a good starting position. But come on, thats the hardest difficulty. I shouldn't be able to win that in my second game.

Edit: and by god, pls nerf traderoutes. The amount of traderoutes you can have mid-to-late game is just insane. It's unbalanced AND an UI Nightmare. I had 20+ traderoutes. So more or less every single turn I had to renew something. In the end I just randomly chose something from the list. (and again: on the HARDEST difficulty. no micromanagement needed)

I guess they will at least fix some of the AI problems. Improvements might be too much to ask for (unless it's improvements that doesn't affect the general AI in any significant way) but fixes and additional difficulties should not be impossible.

 

[Chaos17]

I seriously have no idea how to play this game. Civ 5 made sense, but I feel directionless in this game. Just a lot of meandering through the tech tree to get a Transcendence victory, and it leaves me crazy vulnerable to aggressive AI opponents.

I though, I would never said that but I miss the basics advisors of Civ5.
Simple and tell what was important for novices.

 

[todahawk]

Played more of this game, then played some SMAC right after. God BE is so vanilla and AI so uninteresting, what's the point of favor points when they never repay it!

I did the same thing and C:BE comes across as pretty dull in comparison. The factions have so much more personality in AC. Started a new campaign and first faction I bump into was Miriam and I began instantly plotting to destroy her after her rants.

 

[Finalow]

any tips for online matches? The best affinities/virtues? Should I also rush some specific tech?

I'm not planning on jumping into it yet, just asking for builds or whatever. I'm assuming you should expand very fast? Of course you have to manage healt for that. If I don't go for the green virtue path which gives +7 health and more bonuses I'm usually in negative.
however I'm reading that some people are not caring about healt at all since you have the same penalties from -20 to -100 or whatever the cap is.

besides, I haven't tried to max out all the affinities yet but Harmory seems the best early-game since you can use the miasma to even heal your units.

 

[el87]

Looks like Firaxis is listening to at least some of our feedback

Here is a list of technical issues we are looking to address (please know this list is not all inclusive and we will continue to track and research issues that are reported).
[ENGINE]
- Correcting screen resolution problems, particularly related to the 144hz refresh rate full-screen (or lack of full-screen) issue.
- Investigating a start-up problem where the game shuts down with an error immediately following the opening movie.
- Investigating crash issues submitted by users, and through Steam crash reporting.
- Adding an in-game option to disable depth of field effect for players that prefer the game without this.
[UI]
- Ongoing updates to in-game text, tool-tips, etc.
- Correcting an issue where actions could be missing from embarked workers (like repairing a pillaged water improvement)
- Adding "Completed" section to city production menu so players know what they just finished.
- Adding advanced touch controls, gesture support, pen support.
[ACHIEVEMENTS]
- Achievements not firing if Max Turns was set in previous games. Also investigating some other possible causes.
[MODDING]
- Fixing 2D leader fall-back image support for all graphics quality settings
[MULTIPLAYER]
- Investigating reports of potential multiplayer stability issues

Source: http://www.civilization.com/en/news/2014-10-firaxis-games-update-on-beyond-earth-feedback/

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

How do I enable people actually talking to me?

It seems like the game defaulted to silent AI?

This is giving me the shits, along with the goddamn resolution bug. When the fuck are they going to fix that

 

[neoanarch]

Without luxury trading the AI has very little reason to ever talk to you it seems. Besides that the only reason I ever spoke to the Ai in V was war. Either to declare, negotiate peace or bribing them to weaken a rival. So now I mostly ignore them in BE. You are bound to go so wide that you don't need to barter for resources either.




I'm gonna try small maps and see if that is better. Less resources, less space and maybe leads to more war and more Ai interaction.

 

[jwhit28]

Without luxury trading the AI has very little reason to ever talk to you it seems. Besides that the only reason I ever spoke to the Ai in V was war. Either to declare, negotiate peace or bribing them to weaken a rival. So now I mostly ignore them in BE. You are bound to go so wide that you don't need to barter for resources either.




I'm gonna try small maps and see if that is better. Less resources, less space and maybe leads to more war and more Ai interaction.

As I got deeper into my affinity they seemed to express that they were with me or against me a lot. Then they declared war to try and stop my Contact victory. They like to complain when you hunt aliens too. I didn't need to trade much though and I still haven't tried the favor system.

 

[Falk]

http://steamcommunity.com/id/baldfalk/stats/appid/65980/achievements

Someone please send help

 

[Poodlestrike]

http://steamcommunity.com/id/baldfalk/stats/appid/65980/achievements

Someone please send help

You're beyond saving.

 

[Falk]

Can I at least get the last cheevo before I pass away then?

 

[Rentahamster]

Do the mods that change the UI. also disable achievements? I want to use the color coded tech web UI since the default one sucks ass (seriously how did that pass muster with QA?) but don't want it to disable my achievements.

 

[marvelharvey]

Do the mods that change the UI. also disable achievements?

Sadly yes. Even using an overlay-clock will disable achievements.

 

[Meteorain]

Emancipation victory is the longest shit in the world.

1 unit per turn? Are you kidding me?!!

 

[Aiustis]

I just started playing. This is the first Civ game I've seriously planned to play in years. I don't remember a thing.

 

[Rentahamster]

I just started playing. This is the first Civ game I've seriously planned to play in years. I don't remember a thing.

How long is "years"? Did you play 5 or any of its expansions? I haven't gotten a lot of playtime in with BE yet, but I can't help but think that the awesomeness of Civ5:BNW (the second expansion) is making BE look underwhelming by comparison.

 

[Guesong]

So is Contact Victory bugged?

Cause it skipped me through the "Build Deep Space Telescope" phase of it. >_> Won like 50 turns earlier than I should have because of that because I was nowhere close that tech web.

 

[FinalHeaven]

I've never played a single civ game, though I own V.

I'm enjoying this from what I've played so for but the AI does seem kind of bland.

 

[Aiustis]

How long is "years"? Did you play 5 or any of its expansions? I haven't gotten a lot of playtime in with BE yet, but I can't help but think that the awesomeness of Civ5:BNW (the second expansion) is making BE look underwhelming by comparison.

I didn't play 5. I tried it once on my sister's computer when I visited her for a weekend, but there were other things to do so I wouldn't count an hour as really playing it. Outside of that 4 with no expansions was my last game; so it's almost been 10 years as that was high school.

 

[UnluckyKate]

Rocktopus wins best unit in the game. Simply can't beat a giant orbital squid delivering strikes from space

 

[FormallyFamicom]

So is Contact Victory bugged?

Cause it skipped me through the "Build Deep Space Telescope" phase of it. >_> Won like 50 turns earlier than I should have because of that because I was nowhere close that tech web.

You only have to do two of the three things they ask in the first phase.

 

[lukeskymac]

So is Contact Victory bugged?

Cause it skipped me through the "Build Deep Space Telescope" phase of it. >_> Won like 50 turns earlier than I should have because of that because I was nowhere close that tech web.

You don't need to if you luck out and find the other half of The Signal exploring ruins.

Yes, this happened to me too and completely breaks the game. I don't know whose bright idea it was, but until they change it I'm turning Contact off =/

Such a shame - it's otherwise my favorite victory type. The others require taking your affinity to extreme levels.

 

[Pooya]

touch support? yay.

 

[Falk]

Emancipation victory is the longest shit in the world.

1 unit per turn? Are you kidding me?!!

No longer than Promised Land or Contact tbqh.

 

[Guesong]

You don't need to if you luck out and find the other half of The Signal exploring ruins.

Yes, this happened to me too and completely breaks the game. I don't know whose bright idea it was, but until they change it I'm turning Contact off =/

Such a shame - it's otherwise my favorite victory type. The others require taking your affinity to extreme levels.

Well, to be fair (or not), I was building The Beacon at the same time I was building an Emancipation Gate. So the "timing" for these victories were quite close. If I had went for Deep Space Telescope first without finding the Signal, I probably would have won at around the same time.

However it did allow me to branch out massively instead of putting Tech Points into that. Hmm.

So all victory conditions have a two out of three conditions? Considering you can never see beyond the step you are presently in (or can you?), that's...weird. They should make it explicit so you can plan around instead.

 

[Finalow]

any tips for online matches? The best affinities/virtues? Should I also rush some specific tech?

I'm not planning on jumping into it yet, just asking for builds or whatever. I'm assuming you should expand very fast? Of course you have to manage healt for that. If I don't go for the green virtue path which gives +7 health and more bonuses I'm usually in negative.
however I'm reading that some people are not caring about healt at all since you have the same penalties from -20 to -100 or whatever the cap is.

besides, I haven't tried to max out all the affinities yet but Harmory seems the best early-game since you can use the miasma to even heal your units.

*? :_(