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[jph139]

I was hoping they'd skip out on BE expansions and move on to Civ VI, but from the wording of that press release ("first expansion"), it looks to me like we're in this for the long haul...

Hopefully updates and expansions can salvage this wreck but honestly, at this point, I doubt there'll ever be a point where I'd choose BE over Civ.

 

[jaundicejuice]

What's there to improve upon in Civ after Brave New World? Beyond just stating "better A.I." or make the game run/load faster, what gameplay systems would you improve upon in Civ VI after Brave New World?

I like that they're going to put out an expansion or two for Beyond Earth because they can at least explore some fun uncharted territory without being loosely constrained to history or the present day.

Some time needs to be put between Civ V and Civ VI's release.

 

[Rentahamster]

What's there to improve upon in Civ after Brave New World? Beyond just stating "better A.I." or make the game run/load faster, what gameplay systems would you improve upon in Civ VI after Brave New World?

I would make the gameplay systems more balanced so that there are more viable paths to take, especially in the Social Policies area.

(Unless the recent Tradition nerf fixed that?)

 

[jph139]

Some time needs to be put between Civ V and Civ VI's release.

It seems really recent, but Civ V was released five years ago this September - that's the same amount of time between IV and V (2005 - 2010) and longer than III to IV (2001 - 2005). Even judging the distance by final expansion packs, ~2 years is about the norm, and it's been two years since Brave New World.

I wouldn't mind the wait if Beyond Earth was a worth successor, but it's not - even with hundreds more hours in Civ, I'll choose it first every time. I doubt that any expansions will change that.

 

[Poodlestrike]

It seems really recent, but Civ V was released five years ago this September - that's the same amount of time between IV and V (2005 - 2010) and longer than III to IV (2001 - 2005). Even judging the distance by final expansion packs, ~2 years is about the norm, and it's been two years since Brave New World.

I wouldn't mind the wait if Beyond Earth was a worth successor, but it's not - even with hundreds more hours in Civ, I'll choose it first every time. I doubt that any expansions will change that.

Not that I disagree with you, necessarily, but the same was said (repeatedly) about 5 in relation to 4.

 

[Maintenance]

This game was one of the biggest disappointments that I had with PC gaming in the recent years (I'm not talking about bugs or anything like that, but the game itself). Hopefully by the end of the next expansion (not the one announced) it will be worth the purchase.

 

[jaundicejuice]

Beyond Earth will have a similar arc as Civ V. People begrudgingly started coming around with Gods & Kings, and Brave New World won over most except the most devout haters of 1UPT. However I think the base game of Beyond Earth soured more people and the game will have a harder push uphill to win players back with expansions.

With my Apollo victory I pretty much only have the tile acquisition achievement left to play for. Probably going to dive into Endless Legend for a while now that its first expansion is out but I'll be back for Rising Tide. I think if you haven't played Beyond Earth since launch and have missed out on the 2015 winter update, it's worth giving it another shot. Automated trade routes alone make the game so much better.

 

[Fragamemnon]

Not that I disagree with you, necessarily, but the same was said (repeatedly) about 5 in relation to 4.

People hemmed and hawed about 4 over 3, if you can believe it.

I played a half game or so of BE tonight. Unmodded. It's not bad. It's a 7.5-8/10 game in a world where you can play nothing but 9/10s all the time and still not finish everything.

 

[Rentahamster]

It's not bad. It's a 7.5-8/10 game in a world where you can play nothing but 9/10s all the time and still not finish everything.

That's a very poignant observation. I've sometimes wondered if we were content so long ago mainly because we didn't yet know just how good games could potentially be. Not that I'm complaining or anything. I'll take as many good games as I can get.

 

[Poodlestrike]

People hemmed and hawed about 4 over 3, if you can believe it.

I played a half game or so of BE tonight. Unmodded. It's not bad. It's a 7.5-8/10 game in a world where you can play nothing but 9/10s all the time and still not finish everything.

That's a very poignant observation. I've sometimes wondered if we were content so long ago mainly because we didn't yet know just how good games could potentially be. Not that I'm complaining or anything. I'll take as many good games as I can get.

This is a pretty good way to look at it.

While I think it's fair to want to discard games that don't meet one's personal standards, I do think it's unfair to treat them as if they're genuinely awful in doing so. I'm always a little bemused when I see people bitching about how AAA review scores only really cover the 6-10 range; most people's mental scores can't even manage that It's either extraordinary or trash.

 

[Rentahamster]

This is a pretty good way to look at it.

While I think it's fair to want to discard games that don't meet one's personal standards, I do think it's unfair to treat them as if they're genuinely awful in doing so. I'm always a little bemused when I see people bitching about how AAA review scores only really cover the 6-10 range; most people's mental scores can't even manage that It's either extraordinary or trash.

What a time to be alive!



hehe

 

[jaundicejuice]

My first Contact victory without Progenitor ruins...

Not finding Progenitor ruins with a scout early drastically pushes the Contact victory into the late-game. I had to warmonger a Harmony Civ to prevent their Transcendence victory. My 3 city empire was pretty miserable most of the game but then I annxed Fanco-Iberia's capital city and everything became aces.

I hope they tweak the Transcendence victorty a bit in Rising Tide, it's too easy right now. You basically have to watch all high level Harmony Civs and be ready to take their capital city once they hit Affinity level 10 if your victory wonder progress is lagging behind.

 

[jaundicejuice]

Has anyone tried the Social Engineering mod that's up on the Steam workshop, it's pretty good.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=451875031

It heavily reworks the Virtue system and re-organises it into 4 basic Social Engineering categories--Politics, Economics, Values and Diplomacy--that are further broken up into sub-categories. You can only choose to develop one sub-category within each Social Engineering category, each comes with its own positives and negatives as well as shapes how other Colonies interact with you. For example if you choose a planned economy, you're not going to get along with Hutama/Space Australia and buying units is going to become more expensive the more you invest in a planned economy but then you get the amazing internal trade-route bonuses amoung other things. My first game with this mod was pretty interesting but I crashed half-way through (first time I think) and I have a bad habit of not saving. Definitely going to try a few more games with it, I'll just have to be conscientious about saving.

One thing of note, it might seriously make the A.I. a bit nutty. I had everyone denounce me at game start despite having no negative relationship modifiers and having some strong positive ones fairly early in the game. It was a chain reaction of every other Civ in the game as if I was a Civ V early game warmonger when I was Wonder turtling as the PAC. Then the demands for favours were pretty absurd. Open borders, energy per turn, strategic resources for 1 favour. It was non-stop and I had a pretty decent military so I wasn't certain what the root of the behaviour was.

 

[el87]

Just gonna quote myself, since it's been a few months

When is that 2.0 supposed to come?

 

[alstein]

Beyond Earth will have a similar arc as Civ V. People begrudgingly started coming around with Gods & Kings, and Brave New World won over most except the most devout haters of 1UPT. However I think the base game of Beyond Earth soured more people and the game will have a harder push uphill to win players back with expansions.

With my Apollo victory I pretty much only have the tile acquisition achievement left to play for. Probably going to dive into Endless Legend for a while now that its first expansion is out but I'll be back for Rising Tide. I think if you haven't played Beyond Earth since launch and have missed out on the 2015 winter update, it's worth giving it another shot. Automated trade routes alone make the game so much better.

I've seen a few people say this time that they think the problem isn't just a bad game, or something that's a one-off, they are starting to think Firaxis can't cut it anymore.

In some ways, Firaxis is in the same position Stardock was a few years ago after War of Magic. While Stardock's bomb was much, much worse, Firaxis's mediocrities have gone in a golden age for many of its competitors. Stuff like AOW3, GalCiv3, Sorcerer King, Endless Legend make not being great really stand out more.

Civ VI is going to have to hit it out of the park.

 

[xbhaskarx]

What are the expansion pack plans? I got bored with the main game after like a month...

 

[TeddyBoy]

Just gonna quote myself, since it's been a few months

It'll probably be with the expansion's release. It'll make sense since plenty of people will return to the game with it being put back into the news.

Here's the trailer for the new expansion since I don't think it was posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=376&v=OBjKGPKqiMM

 

[Fragamemnon]

In some ways, Firaxis is in the same position Stardock was a few years ago after War of Magic. While Stardock's bomb was much, much worse, Firaxis's mediocrities have gone in a golden age for many of its competitors. Stuff like AOW3, GalCiv3, Sorcerer King, Endless Legend make not being great really stand out more.

Civ VI is going to have to hit it out of the park.

This is way off the mark. BE was just middling. Elemental was a full on dumpster fire. XCOM was a game of the generation level game in terms of quality.

The biggest issue that BE actually has is how freaking huge and satisfying Civ 5: BNW turned out to be, between the content in that game and the huge mod community for it, it was hard for a new game without that huge amount of content to compete with that.

Civ 6 just needs to take XCOM 2's model, which it will-make it open, empower users, and make what worked in Civ 5 work better.

 

[Rentahamster]

I've seen a few people say this time that they think the problem isn't just a bad game, or something that's a one-off, they are starting to think Firaxis can't cut it anymore.

In some ways, Firaxis is in the same position Stardock was a few years ago after War of Magic. While Stardock's bomb was much, much worse, Firaxis's mediocrities have gone in a golden age for many of its competitors. Stuff like AOW3, GalCiv3, Sorcerer King, Endless Legend make not being great really stand out more.

Civ VI is going to have to hit it out of the park.

If they had screwed up XCOM, I might concede that Firaxis can't cut it anymore.

But XCOM was great. Based Solomon.

 

[alstein]

This is way off the mark. BE was just middling. Elemental was a full on dumpster fire. XCOM was a game of the generation level game in terms of quality.

The biggest issue that BE actually has is how freaking huge and satisfying Civ 5: BNW turned out to be, between the content in that game and the huge mod community for it, it was hard for a new game without that huge amount of content to compete with that.

Civ 6 just needs to take XCOM 2's model, which it will-make it open, empower users, and make what worked in Civ 5 work better.

Despite my pessimism on this, I do hope they do it. Firaxis has a long, great history- and I'd like to see them remain one of the leaders.

 

[jaundicejuice]

Civ V was a misstep, it still is in the eyes of people who dislike 1UPT, but most seemed to forget or forgive Civ V vanilla once Gods & Kings came out. Xcom and Enemy Within were pretty much well received by everyone and Brave New World elevated Civ V to being a classic.

Beyond Earth wasn't so hot when it released but it has been improved with patches. I would argue it is not the same game now as it was at launch. Firaxis stumbled a bit with two new designers making a new game.

 

[Fragamemnon]

Beyond Earth wasn't so hot when it released but it has been improved with patches. I would argue it is not the same game now as it was at launch. Firaxis stumbled a bit with two new designers making a new game.

BE's problem really came down to a lack of feedback on their systems from actual Civ players. They've talked about it a lot-if they had a chance, they would have a beta program to get feedback sooner in development so they could address some of the things that turned out to be pretty obvious problems right at release.

 

[jaundicejuice]

I kind of hope they do that with Rising Tide, pre-order the expansion and get access to a closed public beta with a chance to provide feedback for a few months before the official release.

 

[Maledict]

BE's problem really came down to a lack of feedback on their systems from actual Civ players. They've talked about it a lot-if they had a chance, they would have a beta program to get feedback sooner in development so they could address some of the things that turned out to be pretty obvious problems right at release.

I'm afraid I'm rather more critical.

BE was an amateur job done by a C team who didn't understand either what made Alpha Centauri great, or what was necessary to make Civ 5 great (I fall into the camp of Civ 5 is now the best version of Civ made). They didn't have any original ideas, but at the same time were afraid of copying what had gone before - the weird copying of Alpha Centauri's plotline being the case in point - they used the same story, but incredibly badly implemented and written.

I still think BE is fundamentally flawed, and unlike vanilla Civ 5 they show neither the inclination or understanding of what's needed to make it a good game. The expansion feels like a cheap cash in, and the fact they backed away from their initial plans of a sweeping 2.0 set of changes to fix the game doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

It's a shame because I've been one of Firaxis staunchest supporters - I loved vanilla Civ 5 even when it was getting torn apart from fans. But BE really was inexcusable - it's the laziest, most disappointing game I've played in years.

 

[Fragamemnon]

I'm afraid I'm rather more critical.

I don't think BE is ever going to escape one of its flaws (the tech web and how it disconnects players from a natural progression of a futuristic civilization), but that's really the only thing that seems beyond repair. The game's other big weak points-diplomacy, alien interaction, unit diversity, and iffy virtues system can all be fixed, either by Firaxis or modders.

I'd love for someone to tackle down the tech web and style it like the tiered tech tree of EL at some point. Almost all of the thematic issues the game has go back to the way the tech web flows. It's just a big giant mess.

 

[Rentahamster]

Almost all of the thematic issues the game has go back to the way the tech web flows. It's just a big giant mess.

Yep. Once you get familiar enough to know what general directions you want to go in, the tech web isn't so unwieldy, because at that point, you're only weighing a few familiar options in your head.

To those unfamiliar with the tech web, they're stuck with looking at a whole bunch of options to choose from, which is a lot to ask of players (especially new players) to keep in their head.

Most people quit the game before the tech web starts to click for them, and by then it's too late. Oh well.

 

[Funyarinpa]

Has anyone tried the Social Engineering mod that's up on the Steam workshop, it's pretty good.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=451875031



It heavily reworks the Virtue system and re-organises it into 4 basic Social Engineering categories--Politics, Economics, Values and Diplomacy--that are further broken up into sub-categories. You can only choose to develop one sub-category within each Social Engineering category, each comes with its own positives and negatives as well as shapes how other Colonies interact with you. For example if you choose a planned economy, you're not going to get along with Hutama/Space Australia and buying units is going to become more expensive the more you invest in a planned economy but then you get the amazing internal trade-route bonuses amoung other things.

Sounds a lot like how Alpha Centauri works.

 

[jaundicejuice]

Well, they're going to have to have another crack at the tech web with Rising Tide because they've got all of the aquatic settling, resource exploitation, and units to mix in as well as the hybrid affinities and their specialised units. At the bare minimum there will be a re-shuffle of the web, hopefully they'll think to include eras as well.

 

[Shepard]

Anyone tried playing this with Windows 10? Performance just took a huuuge dip on my end. I have a 980 with a 3570 and the game used to run perfectly for me under Windows 8. Just wanted to know if the problem is with the game or the messed up Nvidia drivers (they've been giving me headaches since I upgraded...)

Edit: Well, turns out vsync was the problem. Turning it off gave me constant 60 fps. For some reason it was giving me 20-30 before.

 

[jaundicejuice]

Here's a diplomacy overview video for Rising Tide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTIdqYSQQ7c

They do discuss Al Falah, the North Sea Alliance and water cities a fair bit as well as going into the new diplomacy system. It looks super promising so far.

 

[jaundicejuice]

Here's a video on Hybrid Affinities and Hybrid Affinity units...

http://www.twitch.tv/firaxisgames/v/14261403

The unique units for hybrid affinities look pretty fucking awesome.

 

[Rentahamster]

I want to believe that the hybrid affinities will make for good gameplay, but I have a feeling that it could introduce a lot of unnecessary complexity and the addition of unimportant choices. (at the cost of dev time of making all those new assets).

I guess we'll see how it plays when it comes out. Personally, I think they should have treated affinities more like Ideologies from Civ5, where you have to make a choice mid-game and stick with it.

 

[Shepard]

Rising Tide changes are really exciting. First they are giving more "personality" to the game (more artworks!) and leaders (new diplomacy system, traits). Also, being able to work on the sea tiles will be awesome too. Preordered through GMG, way cheaper there.
Also, I guess I'm one of the few that loved the base game, and this looks like a welcome improvement over it.

 

[jaundicejuice]

I want to believe that the hybrid affinities will make for good gameplay, but I have a feeling that it could introduce a lot of unnecessary complexity and the addition of unimportant choices. (at the cost of dev time of making all those new assets).

I guess we'll see how it plays when it comes out. Personally, I think they should have treated affinities more like Ideologies from Civ5, where you have to make a choice mid-game and stick with it.

On the higher difficulty levels you have to stick with one Affinity. If you're playing on Soyuz or Apollo you have to know by turn one which Affinity victory you're going to pursue. You cannot afford to waste research turns. On Soyuz you've got to have your Affinity victory ready by turn 300, on Apollo you have to have it ready by turn 200. You also need to keep up militarily with the A.I., even if it's brain dead, those Affinity tier upgrades are hugely powerful. Fall behind and the entire world will declare war on you.

Hybrid affinities don't open up new, alternate Affinity victory types, ultimately you still have to stick with a single Affinity for the victory type. Hybrid Affinities require 8 points in two Affinities. If you get screwed by resources or need some powerful mid-game warmongering capabilities, I can see the worth of Hybrid Affinities. Right now I love getting 3 levels of Supremacy if I'm going Harmony or Purity (especially Purity) and can afford to burn the research turns. Free road maintenance is huge. Same with Master Control, free maintenance for your workers. If you're not going Industry, those two things can be huge economic boosts.

While you can use 4 levels from a different Affinity to level up your main Affinity third and fourth upgrade tier in the base game, you don't really get any strong bonuses for doing so. Now you can. Not only can the base units get different bonuses, you can also go for some unique military units. The golem and flying carrier sound like they could be super useful in negating terrain advantages for some cities.

Rising Tide changes are really exciting. First they are giving more "personality" to the game (more artworks!) and leaders (new diplomacy system, traits). Also, being able to work on the sea tiles will be awesome too. Preordered through GMG, way cheaper there.
Also, I guess I'm one of the few that loved the base game, and this looks like a welcome improvement over it.

The Winter Update was my turning point. My playtime went from sub-fifty hours to my pre-Gods & Kings Civ V vanilla number of nearly 300 hours. I play BE more than Civ V now.

 

[jaundicejuice]

Firaxis Let's Play Rising Tide Hybrid Affinities at War:
https://youtu.be/mnE34qp6-gA

For the first time in a game I kept an alien nest in my territory. First simply because I couldn't afford to attack the aliens, there were too many and I couldn't afford to aggro them. Then I started to get the xenomass resource without improving the tile and an insane positive relationship modifier with all aliens. They were completely passive, they didn't siege tiles they occupied. It's more powerful than the Xenodrome and doesn't require hundreds of turns of research and then tens of turns of production.

In the video they've got leashed sea dragons and siege worms. That's so damned amazing. I can't wait to go Harmony and generate a xeno army with some scouts roaming the world or farming a xeno nest in my territory early to mid-game.

 

[Falk]

This is a really old and common opinion, but I think the biggest issue for me was the lack of characterization of... everything. Tech tree had little to distinguish what did what except reading all the tooltips one by one just so you knew what all the options were (incl. unlocks and future techs) before picking one. Different factions had really little to do with their origins, and more to do with all the other things you could pick upon starting the game making factions a lot more homogeneous. (debatably a good change)

I understand completely that this isn't supposed to be Civ-on-Earth anymore, but when you're trying to live up to the legacy of Alpha Centauri, and that game had far more memorable factions/leaders and (dare I say it) a more understandable tech tree for a game half as old as I am, something is very, very wrong.

I'm not sure anything shown for the expansion addresses that one big issue, but the new systems definitely look interesting. I just hope it's not still a case of simply wading blindly through dozens of tech for the first half dozen games or so before things start to make sense.

 

[jaundicejuice]

The traits, fear/respect, diplomatic currency/deal sysems as well as the blurbs Faction leaders give in combat when a unit is defeated look like they're going to really address the personality issue some people have while maintaining the customisability. The new faction bonuses in traits for existing factions have been touched on in passing but haven't been directly highlighted. It was mentioned in passing in that Hybrid War video that Doaming and the Pan-Asian Cooperative now can get a free (1 turn production) wonder in each city, once, with her production trait (the name I forget). That's nuts. That will make playing as or conquering the PAC so worthwhile. I can't wait to see how all of the existing factions have been changed. Specifically Franco-Iberia and Brasilia.

The tech web looks better at showing which affinities each branch and leaf lends itself to, but the Rising Tide tech web looks like it's largely the same as what was in BE vanilla, so it's probably kind of a mess still. You still sort of have to rely on tooltips, using the search parameters to narrow down tech that feeds into the broad categories (food, beakers, hammers, energy or affinity) and text search but spending a few dozen hours or so muddling through is still the "best" way to learn it. I've played for 300 hour snow and still have to muddle through and use the tool tips to find which leaf techs provide certain tile improvement bonuses. Endless Legend and Pandora: First Contact have decent solutions to this problem. Their tech web (EL) and tech tree (PFC) are divided up into eras. Affinity level tiers kind of are this but there's no big announcement like there is in Civ V when someone enters the equivalent of the industrial era. For all of its design problems or clunkiness, I've grown to really like the tech web. Once you know where things are in the web, you can evaluate your start better, and know where you're going to go with your research.

I kinda wish the Affinities were treated more like religion in Beyond Earth and that you could have units--a Harmony Hive Lord, a Supremacy Techpriest, or a Purity Inquisitor--convert citizens and cities to different affinities. That culture mattered in Beyond Earth, if yours was superior you could force other factions to convert. Techpriests could release nanite clouds that convert citizens and cities. Hive Lords could release a some airborne gene phage and Purity Inquisitors could cleanse the xenos filth with fire. Or also nanites. Probably fire tho.

 

[swoon]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10/08/beyond-earth-rising-tide-review/

the diplomacy changes sounds like a mess, i dunno who that's even for really.

 

[Rentahamster]

Wow this game is out tomorrow already. Hmmm....

 

[Bregor]

The diplomacy changes are actually what I am looking forward to, the system looks interesting.

 

[Maledict]

I generally trust RPs, and their preview sounds utterly dreadful. To me the biggest issue was the fact the aliens remain pointless - reskinned barbarians. BE really suffered from the fact the aliens were incredibly weak, and got weaker as the game progressed, and the expansion hasn't done anything to fix this.

Also the diplomacy system sounds attrocious. Why on earth have they removed player agency from these decisions, and why would they think that was an issue? People complained that the AI in the base game didnt make sense in its decision making, and they add in another system that doesn't make any sense?

First time ever I won't be day one buying something from Firaxis. There really doesn't seem to be enough meat on the bones to justify this, and given how bad the basic game was this doesn't seem to go near far enough to fix it.

 

[Falk]

Unfortunately I'm probably going to be in the same boat. Not to devalue the effort or anything, but it's more likely now I'll be waiting for a sale on this one.

 

[Rentahamster]

I generally trust RPs, and their preview sounds utterly dreadful.

Yeah. I know it's not fair to prejudge a game based on my own preconceived notions, but there were a lot of things that I imagined would have, in my opinion, made BE a better game, but none of those things were implemented.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

Can still get Rising Tide for $20.79 (33% off) at GMG (at least in the US) with the voucher code, which I'm seriously considering. Though Gal Civ III is also on sale for about the same price. Could pass on both for now though as well...

 

[RenegadeXV8]

Well not every review/preview has been negative, quite the opposite actually (currently sitting at a 82 on Metacritic) but the fact that some of them claim it doesn't fix all of BE's core problems is what makes me hesitant.

 

[Maledict]

Well not every review/preview has been negative, quite the opposite actually (currently sitting at a 82 on Metacritic) but the fact that some of them claim it doesn't fix all of BE's core problems is what makes me hesitant.

The original has an 81 metacritic score. Sorry but the majority of reviews of the launch game were dreadful, and clearly written by people who hardly played it at all. And I say that as someone who bought and enjoyed vanilla Civ 5 - BE was *that* flawed on release, the fact that it wasn't immediately called out for being a hack, rush job reflects very badly on the reviewers.

 

[jaundicejuice]

I don't get some of Alec Meer's comments about vanilla BE. This stood out in particular to me...

...but the president of the ARC is such a total unknown that it just feels unfair when they randomly declare war.

Now I get that for the first few games of Beyond Earth the Faction leaders are going to be ciphers--although you can infer a bit about their playstyles from their UA's--but it is never a mystery why a Faction declares war on you. In diplomatic dialogues you mouse over the name of the Faction leader in the dialogue window and see a list of positive and negative relationship modifiers. It's the exactly the same as Civ V.

You settled lands they believe are theirs.
You have a different approach to aliens and miasma (you have a different religion).
You have a different affinity (ideology).
They asked you to stop excavating near their land, you said no.
They caught you spying on them and asked you to stop, you said no.
You forgave them for spying.
You revived their civilization.
You freed some of their people.
You share a mutually beneficial trade route.
You have denounced the same leaders.
You have been to war against the same enemy.
You built wonders they coveted.
They believe you are a warmonger.

This list of relationship modifiers is found in the same spot in Beyond Earth that it is in for Civ V and the list is largely the same. plus there's always the good ol' they've simply got a larger army than you.

 

[Maledict]

My problem with them was that the irrational stuff that I expect from leaders in Civ just isn't there (as he says - Genghios attacking you. Ganghi with nukes, elizabeth being crazy etc), and that for some reason every game ended up in total war. Every single time. Never understood why.

 

[~Kinggi~]

Is there a review thread? I guess this got a 9 at gamespot according to gmg ad.

 

[jaundicejuice]

The thing with Civ there are a few leaders who players make an instantaneous connection with because of historical context, like Genghis Khan being a warmonger, but there are a quite few leaders whose personalities or quirks are internal to the series and have been built by playing the game for years. Rising Tide is supposed to take strides at addressing this, how well it does this remains to be seen.

The best one of these I've seen was Elodie taking a potshot at the leader of Integr when they first meet.

I'm not expecting Rising Tide to be perfect out of the gate, even if there weren't launch issues, I expected there being something like the Winter Update patch. Flawed as it is, BE is still my most played 4x game at the moment.

Edit: They've already pushed some of the changes to the base game. New tech web is in. The virtue screen has the new bg art. The new unit upgrade tree is in. The tech research progress and quests have the new art as well.