Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

They said they're putting resources and stuff into the trade system. You don't need diplomacy to trade Titanium, you need trade routes. I don't think we've seen the details of how this works though, unless it been in one of those long streams I didn't watch.

Yeah, but that sucks. You don't get to negotiate trade routes, you only get a yes/no choice. And that would also relegate city exchange to just peace treaties or something.

Been playing this again lately. I like how I shoot the alien wildlife, then one of the other factions contacts me and is all "hey man, not cool, stop killing the wildlife!" And then I go "nah" and go back to firing my orbital lasers at the wildlife.

We haven't seen the new trade route interface (as far I know), so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

I am rather interested in the war score mechanic (looks like somebody at Firaxis likes Europa Univeraslis and Crusader Kings).

Anyway, the developers said that they are going to let the demands the player and the computer can make when suing for peace dependent on how the war score between the two factions is balanced.

The trade route screen has shown up in a few of the preview videos and L Ps, and it looks the same, except with the ability to gain strategic resources from trade routes.

Viewing more of quill18's play really bears out one of the developer comments, that sea gameplay will be much faster-paced and be easier to claim and lose territory. Your naval units start with 3 or 4 movement and only get faster as you upgrade. All terrain costs 1 move and you don't have obstacles like mountains or canyons, so it is much easier to penetrate enemy territory and surround cities.

edited 28th Jul '15 8:38:48 PM by Moopsball

Today's livestream showed off some new art for quests and exploration. Also, becoming Cooperative or Allied now costs diplomatic capital (what would the unit name for that be? Globes?).

Edit: Let's try putting the right link in there.

edited 30th Jul '15 11:03:24 PM by ABNDT

The War Score and diplomatic capital systems make me hope that Rising Tide will bring back the ability to make other nations into your vassals like you could in Alpha Centauri and the early civ games. If you were beating someone badly enough, they would offer to give you all of their tech and gold and swear alliance for the rest of the game.

In Rising Tide it would be neat if one of the concessions you could get from peace is a long-term boost to your fear/respect value with the enemy and a discount to the political capital costs of signing agreements or improving relationships. In effect it would let you force a beaten enemy into alliance.

Woohoo! Just got every achievement! There Is No Try was quite a pain.

The third expansion faction has been revealed, INTEGR lead by Lena Ebner. Since Franco-Iberia includes France, Spain, Mediterranean North Africa and southern Europe, and NSA includes the British Isles, Scandanavia, Danemark and the Netherlands, INTEGR is probably left with Germany, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia, and maybe Romania. Their factional trait reduces the diplomatic capital cost of agreements and making purchases.

Also, another new preview video here. No real new information, though.

edited 13th Aug '15 12:55:48 PM by Moopsball

Huh. Had they previously mentioned the ability to purchase units and buildings with Diplomatic Capital? Must have missed it.

But can they into space?

It's kind of been in the background of some of the stream and LP footage, there's an option to purchase with energy or diplomatic capital. No real announcement, as such.

Well, you know, the Polish sent a rocket to the sun once, at night.

Almost forgot the other significant news. Rising Tide is up for pre-order, projected release date of October 9.

New gameplay video. The voiceover is in German, so I don't have a clue what they're saying, but we finally get a look at Brasilia's and the PAU's new faction traits. Brasilia now gets a 30% boost to war score, as well as 1 diplomatic capital for every unit killed in combat. Africa lost their free Old Earth Relics and got +1 to specialist yields.

The question remains: will specialists ever be worth anything? Because in Vanilla they're mostly worthless.

Well, you can make a trade deal with a Progressive civ to make your specialists not cost food.

Considering how ridiculous tile improvements tend to get, that still might not be worth it.

Not necessarily. The Student Aid diplomatic agreement means specialists don't consume food at neutral status. If improved diplomatic relations increase specialist yield, it could definitely make them worth it. You can also pick up the Hands Never Idle virtue in Prosperity. A grower specialist would have an effective yield of 4 food and 2 energy, equivalent to a farm on floodplain.

An unupgraded farm. Farms get ridiculous deeper in the tech tree.

And it's not like you can even have specialist without researching the specialist buildings.

edited 25th Aug '15 8:09:37 AM by Clarste

Mm. Not sure I like the idea of warscore in a Civ game, but I'd have to wait for the implementation. Civ isn't EU - the assumption after a war is not that you occupy the whole country and then take a couple of cities, the assumption is that once you take a city, it's your property now - you know, straight up 4X as opposed to "Grand Strategy."

edited 25th Aug '15 8:24:20 AM by Ramidel

I played this during the last free weekend, and I really liked it. Besides the UI, the only problem I had was that even taking into account the fact that I prefer long games, there was a lot of time spend doing nothing but slowly and comfortably gaining power. There's stints like that even in harder games of regular Civilization, but in this game it feels like the majority of my time is spent that way.

I think the issue there is that there are so few races in the game - since they're liable to be far apart there's no reason to interact with and directly compete with each other until you're ready unless you're playing a small map, plus the use of Civ V's diplomacy system, which never was great with the whole interaction bit. Once you get powerful/harmonic enough to deal with the aliens without issue, you only really need to look outside your own domain when its time to fight over something.

Imo, the series has needed something to keep every single war from being for the utter annihilation of the races involved for a while. There are a few things they added in V to reduce that, but it's still a noticeable thing.

The series has already had a basic "warscore" mechanic for a long time now, in that the AI tracks how bad they're losing or winning and uses it to decide whether they want to surrender (and what they're willing to part with). So imo they should be advertising wars with specific purposes instead.

edited 25th Aug '15 10:46:48 AM by KnownUnknown

I actually think Civ's needed some way to reduce the tendency for wars started over minor grievances (eg. contested borders or need for certain resources) to quickly turn into wars of total conquest.

To be fair, in Real Life, war of conquest using inconsequential Pretext for War has been a very long theme. It become less useful with the rise of Information Age, since your subject can makes you suffer if he doesnn't agree with you morally (by not choosing you in election). Civ's based on Real Life, so there's that.

EDIT: Wait, so basically, with the Rising Tide, I can no longer ask for resource borrowing continuation by asking cities?

....

Oh well.

edited 31st Aug '15 5:32:08 PM by RBomber

Yes, but Balmung was saying that it would be nice if there was a way to keep trivial wars from escalating.

Certainly, trivial wars go crazy sometimes (WWI for instance basically was really a minor internal concern for Austro-Hungary which spiralled waaaaay out of control), but I find that in Civ, almost every war can turn into a war of conquest if I don't deliberately hold back to avoid a reputation hit. And sometimes even then, they refuse to settle unless I white peace or destroy them entirely.

Meanwhile, games like Europa Universalis have a lot of wars fought for petty things which usually are settled on a small scale; if I'm pissed off about a small colony, or blockade, I can fight a quick war ending and settle it rather than dragging all of my resources into a total war which ends in the annihilation of one side for the sake of a minor annoyance.

edited 31st Aug '15 7:29:38 PM by Fauxlosophe

Some interesting material here. Mostly old news and the footage is from the last featurette they released, but a few new things.

• There will be a covert op to obtain diplomatic capital, similar to the ops for energy and science.
• Fear and respect system is still a thing. Different civs have different thresholds for changing relationships (someone might be friendly and have a low required respect score to improve a relationship, but also are difficult to cow and need to fear you a lot for that same change).
• Relying too much on fear can backfire. Other civs may take note of your strong-arm diplomacy and lose respect (may be based on a hidden loyalty value, mentions that someone like Fielding won't care what you do to everyone else). Someone pressed to max fear can lash out.
• A.I.s will buy traits based on their current needs to shore up their weaknesses.