Civilization: Beyond Earth (was: New Firaxis game being announced tomorrow)

[lozina]

Here's how I feel

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

 

[QuantumPion]

Nah, playing the other Civ games doesn't mean you'd automatically hate Civ V.

I started with Civ 3 which quite a few Civ 2 fans hated to the bitter end. Then Civ IV came out and suddenly Civ 3 was the best Civ ever and Civ IV broke everything that made Civ great. After a couple expansions there were still stalwarts against it but most agreed the expansions made it a better game. Then Civ V came out and you could basically repeat the Civ IV story again.

This isn't true at all. When Civ4 first came out it had bugs and the AI wasn't perfect. Many people complained about crashes and glitches that prevented them from playing the game at all. But I can't recall anyone anywhere saying the core gameplay mechanics of 4 were in any way inferior to 3. Once the bugs were patched Civ4 vanilla was very good overall. What made Civ4 really awesome was the AI improvements in BTS, more so any of the added gameplay mechanics or new content.

There are some things Civ V does better than IV and some that are reverse but at this point it is just down to opinion on the various mechanics involved and claiming one is objectively better is a fool's game.

Honestly I can't think of a single thing that CivV does straight up better. Some people might prefer the simplified gameplay mechanics and 1upt, but there is not a single aspect of the game I can think of that is in any way objectively superior. Graphics, performance, AI, diplomacy, core mechanics, multiplayer, mods, all worse IMO.

 

[darkewaffle]

My friends and I loved Civ V, tons of time put into multiplayer. I'm interested to see how this game pans out, the one thing I hope that doesn't get really buggered is the pace. Part of the charm imo of Civ is the early era progression. I like the premise overall I just feel like the look and feel of "starter units with laser pistols" or whatever might not have the same effect as spears and bows.

 

[CountZero]

Honestly I can't think of a single thing that CivV does straight up better. Some people might prefer the simplified gameplay mechanics and 1upt, but there is not a single aspect of the game I can think of that is in any way objectively superior. Graphics, performance, AI, diplomacy, core mechanics, multiplayer, mods, all worse IMO.

You forgot to add "IMO" to your statement.

IMO the religion implementation in V is vastly superior in every way to IV. Religion in IV was a diplomacy sledge hammer that so over shadowed every other aspect of diplomacy as to make the rest of it essentially pointless.

It isn't the only thing V does better but it is an example.

 

[Revolution 11]

Still rocking Civ 2 here. Best WWII scenario ever.

 

[norseamd]

Still rocking Civ 2 here. Best WWII scenario ever.

downloaded freeciv last night

 

[GoodRevrnd]

I think a big part of recapturing SMAC's greatness will be having an equally great and intricate tech tree (which I don't see happening given how flat Civ V's was) and expanding upon SMAC's unit customization options in a more meaningful way. We'll see.

 

[Cozarkian]

Excellent, this is step one to my master plan. Next up, Civ: Infinite.

You play an Earth-based civ game with space race only conditions. All civilizations have until the first space ship lands to launch their own ship. When your space ship lands, a Beyond the Earth map is generated. However, there is a twist, each civilization that successfully launched a spaceship will arrive on the new planet, based on the turn their spaceship arrives, giving an advantage to the first civilization to reach. You then play a full game with all victory conditions except space race enabled.

If you win the Beyond the Earth game, you will be asked if you want to keep playing. If you say yes, a natural disaster will occur that forces you to abandon the planet with a small colony ship. You will arrive on another planet, having lost all of your technology. The new planet will be populated with other primitive cultures. Thus, you will play another Earth-style civ game. The trick here is that the primitive cultures on the new planet will be slightly more advanced (the game increases the difficulty by one level). Again, this is a space-race only condition.

Rinse and repeat until you have successfully taken a civilization from Settler-difficulty level on Earth through Deity-difficulty on Beyond Earth.

 

[Bateluer]

The DLC really fixed Civ 5. I got it for a song on Steam and have put 150+ hours into it. Great game

I picked up G&K on an Amazon sale for ~7 dollars. All the original flaws, problems, balance, and pacing issue were still present. BNW is still usually 30 dollars, perhaps I'll try it out in a month when it gets into the sub-10 dollar price range.

I started with Civ 3 which quite a few Civ 2 fans hated to the bitter end. Then Civ IV came out and suddenly Civ 3 was the best Civ ever and Civ IV broke everything that made Civ great. After a couple expansions there were still stalwarts against it but most agreed the expansions made it a better game. Then Civ V came out and you could basically repeat the Civ IV story again.

This is revisionist history at its finest. Many Civ fans hated 3 because it wasn't a good game. Civ4 was a good game, even at launch. I bought it at launch, then repurchased it again on Steam some time later. 4 fixed everything that 3 had broken while recapturing the feel of 2 while improving every aspect. Civ5 launched primarily as 1) a tool to sell shoddy DLC, and 2) a 'streamlined' experience to bring in new players.

I've logged around 700 hours in the Steam version of Civ4, and I've no way to track the 2 years I owned the retail disks outside of Steam. Civ5, about 70 hours, which resolved in multiple wins against higher level AI that was utterly brain dead. At launch, it was especially frustrating that larger maps were entirely unplayable because of a game crashing bug when the player acquired more than 20 or so cities. Which forced me to playing on smaller maps, which compressed everything into much quicker time frames. And they still fubared that.

I've seen no indication that Civ5 is salvageable, hence my concerns for Beyond Earth. If they model this game off Civ5, it'll be dead at launch for me.

 

[QuantumPion]

Heh I remember the last game of Civ5 I played, I was bordered by Napoleon and Ramses. I got Ramses to attack Napoleon while I built up a big force to take him down. He managed to defeat Napoleon's 2 cities (this was in 1900 or so, most of the map was still empty). I went in to attack and took back the French cities. I decided to give Paris back to Napoleon to revive him back into the game for the heck of it. What did Napoleon do? Immediately declared war on me. With one city. Surrounded by tanks on every hex. GG.

 

[JTsyo]

I enjoyed Alpha Centauri and Civ 5, so this is looking good to me.

 

[el-Capitan]

For all that have been holding off :

Can be pre-ordered at Amazon for $49.99 + $5 voucher on next order
or on GMG for $49.99 + $10 voucher on next order

 

[BlueWeasel]

Any reviews out yet?

[Edit] Nevermind...there are several out already.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Reviews are reasonably good. I'm confused though, am I supposed to use the Mantle option when playing?

 

[paperfist]

For all that have been holding off :

Can be pre-ordered at Amazon for $49.99 + $5 voucher on next order
or on GMG for $49.99 + $10 voucher on next order

Damn I pre-loaded it from Steam last night Oh well I'd probably forget I had a voucher anyway.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Addictive game but damn those aliens are brutal. Expansion is difficult (as it should be in an alien world I suppose)

 

[dighn]

when does the game unlock? i really want to play this!

 

[dighn]

ugh the aliens sucks. leave them alone and they randomly attack your shit, attack them and they swarm you. they are everywhere.

 

[norseamd]

Reviews are mixed as far as the soul of the game. A game that is playable and good compared to cheaply made games but one that is basically a renamed Civ 5 and something that is nowhere near what Firaxis is capable of producing. Just like Civ 5 and the newer Total War games the overall game is not that good even if some of the new ideas and mechanics have some promise. I knew right away to stay away from this game by their marketing. I could tell Sid Meier hired some professional psychologists and marketers.

 

[Sulaco]

I'm curious to hear how the AI for this game is.

The AI out of the box for Civ V vanilla was simply atrocious. God. F'ing. Awful. And yet it got glowing reviews everywhere from the tool "journalists", who seemed to be more concerned with graphics and benchmarking in a Civilization game than actual strategy.

I'm worried about seeing another watered down experience here, with patchwork DLC and "expansions" down the road to add in content and features that should have been there from the start.

 

[lozina]

Well you can forget about combat victory unless there are some advanced techs in late game. Capturing AI capitals is pretty much impossible because they severely scaled down how much damage units do vs. cities while severely scaling up how much damage cities do to units.

I tried to capture an AI capital who had no units, surrounded the city with about 14 units and in Civ 5 it would be good night capital but in this game I would barely scratch the city (only attacking with my range units, melee is just pure suicide apparently) while their city easily knocks off 100% units each turn one by one. By next turn most of the damage done to city is healed. Completely futile.

 

[norseamd]

ugh the aliens sucks. leave them alone and they randomly attack your shit, attack them and they swarm you. they are everywhere.

Read up about asymmetric warfare and guerilla warfare. Think about winning the war instead of the battles. Since there are probably many aliens concentration of force is probably going to be a very pyrrhic victory and just weaken your overall defenses just to deal with one small unit. You probably want to focus on keeping your stuff alive first while increasing your defensive units and border patrols to overall keep your stuff around and fight the intruders. Do not go on the offensive until you are fortified and powerful enough to deal with whatever they can throw at you. Also I would produce another force for any offensives while keeping your full defensive force protecting your territory. Also think about keeping your overall settlements and territory alive instead of just wasting your resources keeping one small settlement from falling to alien enemies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconventional_warfare

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_warfare

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petty_warfare

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_war

 

[norseamd]

Well you can forget about combat victory unless there are some advanced techs in late game. Capturing AI capitals is pretty much impossible because they severely scaled down how much damage units do vs. cities while severely scaling up how much damage cities do to units.

I tried to capture an AI capital who had no units, surrounded the city with about 14 units and in Civ 5 it would be good night capital but in this game I would barely scratch the city (only attacking with my range units, melee is just pure suicide apparently) while their city easily knocks off 100% units each turn one by one. By next turn most of the damage done to city is healed. Completely futile.

Yep. I was going to say to that other guy that I bet the game is at most apatheticly balanced but I decided to hold my tongue more because my guess is Firaxis did some QA testing for the game going by what you might think the productions values were.

 

[RaulF]

Reviews are reasonably good. I'm confused though, am I supposed to use the Mantle option when playing?

A review i read mentioned a 14.9.2 beta to enable mantle, not sure if is readily available.

Might be a release coming soon, look in guru3d they post beta drivers all the time.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Well you can forget about combat victory unless there are some advanced techs in late game. Capturing AI capitals is pretty much impossible because they severely scaled down how much damage units do vs. cities while severely scaling up how much damage cities do to units.

I tried to capture an AI capital who had no units, surrounded the city with about 14 units and in Civ 5 it would be good night capital but in this game I would barely scratch the city (only attacking with my range units, melee is just pure suicide apparently) while their city easily knocks off 100% units each turn one by one. By next turn most of the damage done to city is healed. Completely futile.

I couldn't even get units to their city. Every time i got within range the city would one-shot kill the unit, and that includes the siege units. I agree it seems totally pointless to have a large army since cities just dominate.