Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

We just had a preview of faction leaders with different civilization bonuses and maluses, so probably. You've got your corporate guy, your diplomacy girl, etc.

True, but the Civ IV leaders each had bonuses too, without any real personality.

I think they've said that they want to amp up the leader personality from Civ 5 into something a bit more well-rounded. Haven't played SMAC, does that sound about right?

The personalities of the leaders in Civ V are more like subtle AI traits, they aren't really people in any developed sense. On the other hand, the faction leaders of SMAC were unique and (at least somewhat) developed characters with distinct personalities and motivations.

Supremacy! Resistance is futile.

I'm interested in seeing what the Harmony units (probably my favorite idea of the three) will look like. I'm going to guess that they'll take off their helmets at some point (maybe around tier 3?) and genetically engineer themselves into ethereal-looking Navi people by the end of the game.

I wonder if they'll somehow modify their vehicles into Tyranid/Yuuzhan Vong-esque biomachines, or if they'll just ditch transport altogether and ride around on the giant worms and such?

Suddenly I just want to play some Sid Meiers Colonization.

I kind of like those, but I'm hoping we'll have more color options in the main game. The grey and yellow isn't working for me.

Also hoping that, in addition to the Affinity differences, there's also (slightly) different looks for each culture.

edited 24th May '14 4:00:34 PM by kingtiger522

Civilization: Attack of the Hippies!

Aka Harmony Dev Blog

edited 30th May '14 12:41:19 PM by lrrose

Yeah, I'm definitely going Harmony for my first playthrough.

My only (minor) gripe with the units so far is that there should be another transitional form between the second and third units for each civilization. As is it is so far, it seems like too big a jump to go from that blocky white aesthetic to cyborgs/biotech/space marine units.

I'm kind of disappointed they didn't go grosser, more biomechanical.

I'm very disappointed that they didn't go full Organic Technology. Apparently affinity only affects people's aesthetics.

Well, I suppose the harmony ideology is all about working with the planet; they might be built out of environmentally friendly materials or "grown" out of organic matter, or something similar. They do look more organic when contrasted against the other two, for what that's worth.

Yeah, but still. You can find designs that look like that today; organic contours do not organic technology make. I was hoping for either extensive bio engineering or biomechanical designs. As it is, the different faction units are looking too similar to each other.

On a similar note, I'm not sure the Supremacy units look mechanical enough either. I understand that it's hard to show the difference between a guy in a tank and a guy who is a tank, but I think they could have given the infantry units some kind of inhuman proportions to emphasize that it's more integrated than a guy in a suit.

edited 31st May '14 3:41:20 PM by Clarste

Predictable but good:

Yeah, this. The proportions are all too similar; there's really no sense of the (supposedly) trans or in human aspects.

It doesn't seem like that big a deal for me. I mean, in Civ V all the units (except for the one or two uniques) were identical except for color schemes, even when you'd expect them to have different skin colours, clothes, etc.

I wouldn't have minded if they hadn't made a big deal of it. They told us they would be making affinities look different, and even went out of their way to have these previews of the differences, but the result is underwhelming.

Well, we finally got some in-game footage:

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/3tedfv/sid-meier-s-civilization--beyond-earth-first-look-gameplay-interview

Looks good.

Also, the fact that we might get the opportunity to domesticate/ride the aliens later on suggests that the unit previews weren't a really good representation of things, so that's nice.

Loving that preview.

Anyone else picking up a Spore-style vibe from the planet's surface and its alien inhabitants?

I like that Harmony will let you ride the aliens and stuff.

Those two didn't look too happy to be interviewed, but the game looks interesting.