Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

That looks great, and makes Brazil a very interesting choice of civ (for some reason every time I roll a random civ it wants me to be Brazil). Wars for fun and profit!

Were they playing on the patch in the firaxis stream today, then?

edited 29th Oct '15 12:05:57 PM by MrShine

Hmm, I'll have to read that when I get the chance. War Score seems to have been somewhat haphazardly implemented, and figuring out what will make the AI like or dislike you feels very random.

War Score was pretty badly implemented, yeah (the major flaw was that cities as the only unit of exchange is not nearly granular enough). But the respect/fear mechanic seems fine. In addition to all the normal things people will like or dislike you for doing, looking up each leader in the diplomacy menu will tell you which actions they like, based on the traits they've chosen.

Indeed, but I miss the handy tooltip: "X likes you Y much for doing Z." Digging around in those traits takes way too much effort for what I view as virtually zero payoff, because if you have a big army, a good economy, lots of science, good orbital coverage, etc., most leaders will give you respect without any particular effort on your part.

edited 29th Oct '15 12:38:37 PM by Fighteer

Okay yes that looks a lot better than the currently-broken mechanic. I'm still hoping that they will also fix the trade options and the half-baked implementation of hybrid affinities.

Well, well. Apparently, releasing the patch "soon" meant, "later today." Patch notes. Highlights include:

• Artifact wonders have been nerfed in cost and, in the worst cases, effect.
• Smart Grid caps at 100 EPT.
• The Black Market covert op lets you buy strategic resources for DC.
• The Lush Marvel now requires 5 biopsies instead of 3.

edited 29th Oct '15 4:51:18 PM by ABNDT

Hi. I've started playing this game a couple of days ago. Looks cool.

One thing that's been bugging me, however: I just noticed that the opening cinematic I've seen is something new, and the vanilla game had a different one. Why the change, and what is the new scene supposed to be about? What are is that mysterious human-built ship?

I believe the new opening cinematic is supposed to reflect the journey of Al Falah, which left later and in a different type of ship (generational vs sleepship) than the other factions.

If I recall: The 3 new sponsors left Earth long after the vanilla sponsors did. So, what the video represents is the vanilla sponsors being surprised at the arrival of the 3 new sponsors.

New patch. The AI will now drastically ramp up aggression in response to victory wonders, you can sell strategic resources through the Black Market in addition to buying them, warmongers no longer need to spare the enemy's final city in order to claim spoils of war, and Chungsu's colors are no longer indistinguishable from Brasilia's.

Is anyone else still playing this? I've been loving the new patch and all the options it brings to come up with your own "broken stuff" to do that this is the one time I haven't seen a civ game with a One Right Way to Win. I've been getting some pretty fast victories even without trying to win as fast as possible so I finally feel like I'm getting the hang of the game.

I started a new game this weekend as Elodie; I'm working on achievement completionism, meaning that I need to win with each leader and each map type. I'll leave the super-high difficulties for later.

Each patch improves the quality of the AI interactions, although it's still pretty easy to get and stay ahead of them. The new War Score tribute system is really nice, and it encourages complete victories rather than leaving defeated opponents with a station so you can milk them for more later. In fact, since there seems to be no diplomatic penalty for warmongering, there's never a reason to quit a winning war unless your society's health would be jeopardized.

The game is in a good spot, now, but it's still something that I turn on as a default, when I've run out of other interesting things to do.

Steam Winter Sales has everything for $34.99. Will be picking it up. :p

Given the new patch note about how the AI will gang up on a player who is about to complete a winning project, I wasn't sure what form that would take. Well, it takes the form of having war instantly declared by all other sponsors as soon as you start the final Wonder building. That would be pretty inconvenient if I weren't already far enough ahead that their attacks were pathetic. How are you supposed to win a close game under those circumstances?

edited 24th Dec '15 6:25:33 PM by Fighteer

For land warfare in this game there's a huge advantage for the defender. Strategize properly and it shouldn't be too hard.

To be fair, you usually, supposedly only build winning wonder after you got like, 2000000 reserves energies and like, 5000 energies/ turn, with all your fav tech hit the roof and every city has respectable defense, including full squadron of fighters. But then again, that's me.

Heh, there is that. Air power is supreme in this game. But tech levels are critical to winning wars: trying to fight Tier III units with Tier II units is a recipe for horrible death. Fortunately, by the time you tech up enough to reach endgame, you axiomatically have enough Affinity levels to be at Tier III, with the possible exception of the Contact victory.

edited 25th Dec '15 4:13:19 AM by Fighteer

As for AI ganging up on me, I had a situation yesterday: two AIs got mad at me for building the Emancipation Gate, two other AIs got mad at me for building the World Flower, and the two angry at the Flower rushed me, only to be beat back by everything I could muster, including three Orbital Lasers, including one pounding away at one of their cities. A war started, I racked up enough War Points to get massive reparations in the form of Energy, and then both factions realized that after trashing my Flower they really should have had left me alone.

So with the Emancipation Gate I went. I spent the reparations, and Diplomatic Capital, on rushing all sorts of big nasty military hardware, then threw it through the gate. Why do I have the feeling that the endgame speech was a huge load of hypocritical propaganda? That's a very Republican meaning of the word "Liberation"...

edited 25th Dec '15 7:21:30 AM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

Oh, Emancipation is a very nasty victory. It's Might Makes Right taken to the ultimate extreme.

How do you get Orbital Lasers to strike effectively against cities? Can't they shoot them down faster than you can build them?

edited 25th Dec '15 7:53:57 AM by Fighteer

The AI was daft as fuck, allowed me to bombard her city for five turns or thereabouts before doing something to it. But then, I operated at the maximum range of the laser (4 hexes?).

Also, Civ V is still strong with this one - a successful conquest of a city still requires just a couple of artillery pieces and something to breach the gates. And the fact that you can't stack your troops makes the job even easier. Oh, and simplifying the submarine mechanics? It so happens I wanted a stealth navy artillery unit on an Atlantean map for Christmas! Now I can shell enemy cities from the water before inventing hovertanks!

Yeah cities are extremely weak in this game and sea cities even weaker. Makes the defensive buildings actually worth building, and almost mandatory for sea cities. You can make cities into impregnable fortresses but they require more tech/hammers than is usually worth it. I'm not hundred percent sure but I think that an orbital laser out-ranges a baseline city without a rocket battery, but a rocket battery makes a city laser-immune.

I can get cities up to 150 defense or so with all the buildings. It makes them tough to crack but you still need units or you'll lose by attrition against a sufficiently determined attacker.

Yeah. Also, AI often forgets to stock up on the city defense and can't even defend its cities, while I often put artillery to defend mine (or swarm battleships and a helpful sub or two in case of the floating ones).

Tier III artillery are the best garrison units because of their insane range. Add 3 aircraft and you've got a ridiculous amount of defensive firepower without any field units whatsoever.

Nah, there's that one A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. unit that outranges the ordinary artillery by a hex. It can chuck a round four hexes away, but it's slow as hell.