Civilization: Beyond Earth

Sephiroth_dude

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/civilization_beyond_earth/b/pc/archive/2014/10/23/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-siege-worm.aspx

degrassinoel

looks like the NDA ended, here's another from PCGamer & Polygon

http://www.pcgamer.com/civilization-beyond-earth-review/
http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/23/6880933/civilization-beyond-earth-review-pc
they both scored really high too

Lone Stone

Gonzovision wrote: »

I got my g2play key straight away.

I found it on the website, that was a bit weird with the email they sent me.
Phew was getting worried there.

ZeitgeistGlee

Found out today I have to work Saturday, seriously debating staying up the five hours before work... :pac:

Nody

TB has his review up including game play; limited number of units (but with upgrades) and with less depth then Civ5 with expansions (as to be expected).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IydX8R2xxe4

McSasquatch II

Just succumbed and pre-ordered the DL off Amazon, thanks to you lot...

Angry/happy.

Zulu

Just bought on g2play. Any idea what time it'll be released on steam tomorrow? I'll have the little one's in bed from 7pm and chomping at the bit

Gonzovision

Zulu wrote: »

Just bought on g2play. Any idea what time it'll be released on steam tomorrow? I'll have the little one's in bed from 7pm and chomping at the bit

Midnight tonight.

degrassinoel

Steam is being steam and not saying the time, only Oct.24th which is technically midnight this evening. As well as Firaxis stating the release dates and times as Midnight the 24th of Oct. So it Should be Midnight but knowing steam it'll be either that, 1am or 6pm tomorrow lol

Hoping it's midnight tonight, i bought civ supplies just in case too

Zulu

Well I'm only good to go after 7pm tomorrow, so, so long as it's released then I'll be happy.

TheChrisD

C'mon Amazon, what's the point in you not giving the code until midnight when Steam is the one managing the lock, and we could be pre-loading right now?

bleg

Soon...

Dave_The_Sheep

Longest 5 minutes this year, easily.

TheChrisD

Oh wait, it's not unlocked until 1am; because the unlock time is midnight UTC.

Fúck you Daylight Savings Time.

EDIT@ 00:20: nvm, unlocked now.

McSasquatch II

Bah, Steam won't even start for me.

degrassinoel

It's working for some and not for others - Firaxis have gotten onto steam about the issue apparently.

It's loaded for me just now

McSasquatch II

Got it working and is downloading now...

ShaneU

1080p Resolution option is missing. Tried Changing it to 1080p using GeForce experience and the game crashes at startup.

Dave_The_Sheep

These siege worms are tough buggers. One is completely stopping me from expanding into a peninsula, the bastard. Can't touch him.

TheChrisD

Threw a couple of hours into my first game (would've been more but was also recording it for my YouTube). Despite all the hours I've watched MadDjinn put into it either while missing his stream chat or watching the recent series, I still have this feeling of "what the bloody fúck am I supposed to do".

ShaneU wrote: »

1080p Resolution option is missing. Tried Changing it to 1080p using GeForce experience and the game crashes at startup.

Game booted up first time into 1080 for me?

Kirby

Space Worm wrecked me.

I'm all like "Oh my prosperous city is coming along quite nicely!" and then Jim comes along and destroys both my workers, my squad of marines and half my city before I can take it down.

Gbear

I played over 1300 hours of CiV. How on earth did I ever imagine I was going to hold off on buying this?

Lone Stone

finding the web tree a bit confusing, no idea which way to go with out feping it up, only complaint so far is the insane amount of aliens around my borders !! pesky divils so di be

Sephiroth_dude

So how are ye enjoying it?

Lone Stone

its good so far anyway, but i keep restarting 6th time now :P have to try out the spy system seems cool from what i saw earlier made me restart with the corp with the spying bonus. Far to many aliens around the place tho.

Kiith

Bought it this morning (god damn it) and will probably play it all weekend.

Lone Stone wrote: »

Far to many aliens around the place tho.

Harmony it is so.

Branoic

I think the game's focus on the aliens are throwing people a bit.

Eurogamer's review seemed to nail what the game's about for me - it's not just "Civ in space", no matter how familiar some elements and the interface are. It's not like a grand leisurely gentlman's game where the map is just the backdrop to your battles with enemy nations. If you play it with that mindset you'll probably run into problems. Its actually far less "civilised" - its a frontier game, a battle for survival, and the planet and the aliens are themselves meant to be primary threats. The aliens are definitely not just re-skinned barbarians. As the Eurogamer review points out, if anything it's the other corporate factions which are more of a background distraction - the main battle is with the planet.

I think its incredibly refreshing.

Kiith

Branoic wrote: »

the main battle is with the planet.

That makes it sound even better. I look forward to the mods that make the planet even more hostile and dangerous.

And the inevitable Dune mod with sandworms.

Taylor365

Battle with 'the planet' and aliens sounds exactly like Alpha Centurai.

Use a nuke and watch your base get overrun with the local planetary residence, sea levels rise, storms, etc.

bleg

Taylor365 wrote: »

Battle with 'the planet' and aliens sounds exactly like Alpha Centurai.

Use a nuke and watch your base get overrun with the local planetary residence, sea levels rise, storms, etc.

It's lacking the depth of AC. The different factions may as well not exist, choosing a different faction is about the perk and the perk alone...

ZeitgeistGlee

Bleh I see city spamming by the AI is still a thing, and here I was hoping Gunboat Diplomacy wouldn't be a staple of my strategy. *shakes fist*

Kiith

Is anyone playing it with Mantle? When i try to launch it, nothing happens. Works fine when i don't select mantle however.

Updated the driver and it launches, but crashes on launch.

I'm also stuck at low resolutions, unless i play in windowed mode. As soon as i check Fullscreen, 1080p disappears.

ZeitgeistGlee

I'm using it with no issues experienced so far.

Gbear

Playing at 1440p.

No problems. A lot smoother than CiV at launch. Loading screens do take quite a while though.

Haven't got to the late game yet though so I suppose that'll be the acid test.

Gonzovision

Just completed my first game there. Was completely annihilated after around 400 turns. Very enjoyable. Lots to learn. Have to say end game performance was very good, huge improvement over Civ 5 at launch in this aspect.

Kunkka

Well I gave in and bought this now. My food intake until payday is going to take a hit but **** it

MOH

Couple of things stumped me for a bit.

One quest description told me to organise an expedition to save xenomass. When I sent an explorer and tried to start an expedition, it told me that would fail the quest. Turned out I didn't need an expedition at all, I needed to send a worker to do it.
Another quest involved "sending a military unit into ancient ruins" - not being used to the UI, it's easy to miss that it adds an extra action on the right of the unit's icons when it's in the right place (as opposed to on top of them, which it seemed to do with the explorer).

And trade convoys are still confusing me. So you don't move them, you just set a destination. But I'm unclear on the rules - it looks like they only travel over land, and I though you had to have a unit with the city in sight before it showed up in the list. But now it looks like you just have to have uncovered an overland route to the destination?
(Didn't help that I spent ages trying to work out why I couldn't establish a trade route to a nearby station, and eventually decided to build a road to it, only to discover another civ had destroyed it, but I was still seing it because I had been past that way recently).
They've also a bizarre habit of avoiding roads - I set up one between two of my cities, and it moved off the road because of miasma. But continued to do so even after I cleared it.

Enjoying it though. The espionage is interesting, hadn't heard anything about that before hand. The tech web is going to take some getting used to. But my first playthrough is still costing me as much sleep as expected

Gbear

There's a few little UI problems.

There's no easy way to change production if you're building those production overflow projetcs (25% of production transformed into Energy, Culture, Science or Food).

I can't find any overall trade manager like in Civ.

In general, all the icons are difficult to tell apart.

It reminds me from Starcraft 2 - initally all abilities were the same colour and were largely indistinguishable. They looked an awful lot better when they coloured the buttons in to differentiate them.

I think they need to do that with the tech web, building icons, units and so forth.

Everything just looks kinda green or whiteish blue.

Gbear

On the things I really like,

Satellites - adds another small layer to the game that really should've been thought of before now.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOADDS of tile improvemnts. And workers can make Work Boats. There's far more flexibility in how you improve your cities.

All the units look really cool (albeit some more colouring wouldn't hurt). The Angel guy in the Supremacy tree reminds me of this guy from Crysis:


I also love the way upgrading works. Far more interesting than just spending money unit by unit.

A city-by-city cap on trade routes. It looks like it needs balancing but I like it much better than the global cap from Civ 5.

Synergies in the Culture tree - again, more flexibility.

nesf

Science win on Standard Gemini. Felt too easy, the AI attacks were poor.

Good fun though, different enough but no mistaking its genetics.

TheChrisD

MOH wrote: »

They've also a bizarre habit of avoiding roads - I set up one between two of my cities, and it moved off the road because of miasma. But continued to do so even after I cleared it.

It's by design. Trade routes (just like in 5) have a specific path set when the trade route is created, and they will stick with that route until the route is completed; then if it is re-created, it will take a better route with the miasma cleared.

MOH

TheChrisD wrote: »

It's by design. Trade routes (just like in 5) have a specific path set when the trade route is created, and they will stick with that route until the route is completed; then if it is re-created, it will take a better route with the miasma cleared.

Ah, wondered was that it. Thanks.

There's a few things starting to bug me mid-game. Mainly UI stuff, although I'm not really sure what I'm doing at this stage and I've reverted to basically playing an older version of Civ.
The tech web would be a lot easier to get used to if the techs you've already researched were distinguished a bit better. Plus possibly if it centered on the one you've just completed.
Same for production - if the production message included what it was the city had just finished producing.

It's possibly cos I'm tired, but I think the tutorial could have been a little better regarding some of the new stuff. OK, it explains what the orbital layer is, but I've found myself ignoring it since I don't really know what I can do with it. Maybe if satellites were in a separate section under production options.

It's all fairly superficial stuff, and I'm sure once I have a few games under my belt it won't bother me as much.

Kiith

I hate that the return to map button seems to be in a different place on every bloody screen.

Branoic

I enjoy the game, but there are some definite odd UI omissions. Also, the games missing a lot of flavour and description. Everything's all about stat bonuses with very little world- or fiction- building. Even on the faction selection screen, there's no information about the factions - you wouldn't even know what ARC stood for without the YouTube videos or digging into the civilopedia. Likewise, the tech web is just full of futuristic sounding names, with no description at all. City improvements are the same - just a name and a basic icon. I think this is partly what is meant when the game is criticised for lacking soul or personality.

Gbear

So apparently your Explorers replenish their Expedition modules when they return to one of your cities.

I'd be bee-lining towards techs and Virtues that increased the number of them.

Of course, it helps to have lots of modules because then, if you add the Purity trait, you can turn on auto-explore and leave them to their own devices.

Gbear

Another practical tip:

MOH

Gbear wrote: »

Another practical tip:

If you're trying to work out why there's so few techs available, you're possibly an idiot like me who's forgotten they have the filter turned on.

You can also use the search box on the tech tree to search for city improvements, it'll bring up the tech you need to build that improvement

Blowfish

It's not the best in the civ series, but decent. The usual civ release balance issues are there, trade routes trivialise everything when combined with city spam using the health benefits of the prosperity tree.

I agree with the lack of personality though, there is no difference in how any of the civs play, especially in comparison to the likes of Alpha Centauri.

Lone Stone

Enjoying it so far, havent beeen able to win a game yet tho. I went full harmony in one game thought i was doing really well but all the other civs around me were purity and just went to war with me and even tho they never even attacked for a good hundred turns and then anything they sent at me i destroyed they just refused to make peace.

But its a great change for a civ game really enjoying it, i agree with the lack of personality to it though i really miss the intro you had for your chosen civilization i dont see why they didnt do some thing similar for the corporations you chose from.

Sephiroth_dude

Does it feel like it was rushed out?