Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

What we got coming Thursday:

https://www.facebook.com/civ/photos/a.349831890358.197044.117631940358/10152706766170359/?type=1&relevant_count=1

New gameplay trailer:

"The future... is but one more turn away."

Cheesy, but I like it.

I wonder how different the modding structure will be in this, or if it will be nearly the same given the obvious changes.

Or if it would be difficult to import Civ 5 models into Civ BE and effectively mod BE to include all the eras from Ancient forward :P

Maddjinn's doing Let's Plays on the Pre-Release Build:

Gamasutra article on coding.

Beyond Earth Intro Cinematic:

Gah, the girl's lack of expression is really disconcerting.

Beyond Earth takes place after the invasion in X Com: Enemy Unknown, which is why Earth is wrecked and leaving was necessary.

Four reviews of Beyond Earth:

• http://www.gamecrate.com/review-civilization-beyond-earth/
• http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/24808/article/review-civilization-beyond-earth/
• http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/23/civilization-beyond-earth-review
• http://www.pcgamer.com/civilization-beyond-earth-review/

edited 23rd Oct '14 5:14:41 AM by ManchuCandidate

Hmm, PC Gamer liked it, once their reviewer got over the idea that it is just a Civ V reskin. I want to get the game but I think my computer may finally have reached the point where it can't run it without an upgrade.

The Cynical Brit made his own video about it.

A fairly positive review. Amusingly, it made me more curious curious to play Alpha Centaury than Beyond Earth.

He ain't the only one.

Well, I spent a good chunk of the day playing BE today. All in all, it's a pretty solid installment in the series; Franco-Iberia is far and away my favorite civ thus far, with Pacific Commonwealth in a close second.

My only two complaints are that stations tend to appear in really inopportune locations; I've had several of them spawn adjacent to major Floatstone/Firaxite resources that I wanted to settle, so I had to waste time waiting for them to die before I could move in. That, and the fact that having infinite high-yield trade routes is ludicrously overpowered- every civ can now be Venice on steroids.

edited 24th Oct '14 7:02:07 PM by Locoman

I've found my spawns always seem to be miles away from the affinity resource I'm planning on going for.

I don't think you can really go into a game with a "planned" affinity; I've found there's a lot of adaptation you have to do based on your surroundings, neighboring civs, amount of aliens...

I mean, you could decide to play Purity beforehand, for example, but you'd have to restart a couple of times to make sure you spawn next to a lot of floatstone.

People are saying that trade routes are overpowered, internal ones not the stations, and unhealthy has too little drawback

The problem with the internal trade routes is probably more that they're way too easy to set up: You're only limited by two per city (although there are caps to increase the limit). So you can set up as many as your sanity allows.

Started one game as franco-iberia, noticed that I was outdoing all the AI's to the point where it was silly, and restarted on highest difficulty.

Notes: Internal trade routes are far and away the best way to get food. And production. Errh. Those are the cornerstones of everything, so basically I just never have any other kind of trade route. - I mean, I use the cultural stations to boost borders on new cities, but other than that, no. This also results in really silly city growth rates. Keeping healthy is difficult, but possible.. and it doesn't even matter much if you let it slide.

I am having fun so far ;)

So I've just won the game twice...

And thus far, according to steam, I've spent 35 hours playing o_o...

Mother of God, now I remember why I try to avoid buying 4x games during the school year...

edited 26th Oct '14 8:14:07 PM by Archereon

So, thoughts thus far:

Virtues. Fantastic little improvement on the Policies system. Much more organic, and I like the synergy bonuses. Somewhat poorly balanced atm.

Affinities. Just, really great stuff. I'd like it if the visual progress had more steps involved, and if it caused a more pronounced effect on AI relations, but honestly it's just a load of fun. I especially like how it requires that you adapt to your changing circumstances. For instances, resource placement and alien aggressiveness can (and will) necessitate altering your pre-game plans.

Victories. Some of them are much, much cooler than others. Domination is still fun, as are the Purity and Supremacy victories, but holy crap the Contact and Harmony victories are incredibly boring. Also, the lack of a post-game victory cutscene and stat screen is awful.

Trade is hilariously OP, but that's easily fixed (already a fan-made balance patch )

Aliens are a huge, huge step up from Barbarians. They're smarter, more coordinated, and the way they can go through aggressiveness states is a huge plus.

All told, good game, but definitely one in need of some Firaxis-style expansions to polish out the rough bits and add some depth.

Trade being ridiculously powerful is somewhat reminiscent of supply crawlers being ridiculously powerful in SMAC.

Speaking of which, the "crawler" wonder is definitely a homage to that fact?

I think that's intentional. They land in places that would make for good cities, based on the game's internal rubric. This is meant to encourage you to kill them sometimes, because otherwise there would be no point in that mechanic even existing. They also spawn next to your own cities, at about the same distance I would normally space them out. Basically they exist entirely to land on the spots you were eyeballing for expansion.

Luckily they don't actually shoot back, so you can kill them with a level 1 Ranger and an Explorer, if you need to.

I actually expect that to change. It seems like until really late in development Stations didnt prevent cities from being created near them, for some reason they decided just before release to change that. There are still a lot of problems with stations that I think are left over from when they worked differently. Right now there's not much decision to be made: stations should be killed. Not only do they take up really sweet city spots, but they also give expedition sites when killed! Not much reason not to keep them around until you're ready to expand and then kill them right now. Making them spawn in less attractive places should give them a fighting chance. Also give them a ranged attack or something, they're just sad right now.

I think they should also make "stop attacking city states" as a diplomatic option. I understand that they wanted to introduce a sort of "cold war" front where you can take out city states to cut off trade partners for your enemies, but with how city states work now there's no way to protect them short of the very stupid "human shield" approach.

Basically there's a lot of inconsistencies in how stations work that they need to all bring into line with how they function now.

edited 27th Oct '14 11:34:00 AM by mrshine

A level 3 production-only station will give 7 units to whatever city trades with it. That's worth it, IMO.