Civilization: Beyond Earth

degrassinoel

I felt as though it was missing something, probably just cynical me being cynical but I'd recommend you wait for the price to drop before buying

Kunkka

I've enjoyed it but it could be a lot better in my opinion. I find myself getting bored and there isn't much action.

nesf

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Does it feel like it was rushed out?

It feels like a vanilla Civ game. Missing a few expansions. :P

Dave_The_Sheep

I find the diplomacy a bit limited. Haven't really seen a use for Favours. Anyone got a handle on these yet?

degrassinoel

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

I find the diplomacy a bit limited. Haven't really seen a use for Favours. Anyone got a handle on these yet?

No i did a load of favours for others and anytime i tried to form a cooperation or get a resource with any of them they declined outright. I'll just do myself a favour next time and not do any favours

Dave_The_Sheep

That's what I'm finding too. Useless against human players too, we'll just lie - "Here's this monopoly money for all your petroleum, promise I'll pay you back".

Zulu

All I got for favors was 100 energy. ...so WAR!

Generic Dreadhead

Play a bit last night only played 120 turns an will probably start a fresh game, was just tipping the toe in the water.
Feedback:
No clear instruction on what a "resource" is, what building/improvement I need to get it and what technology I need for that improvement.
Everything is like a line drawing wire frame, buildings, techs, prod queues, could barely tell what I was doing.... Granted you know what a Barracks looks like in Civ 5 and it's drawn and coloured accordingly.
Is there a production queue?
No decent tutorial IMHO, tried "new to Beyond Earth"
Diplomacy, no idea what I was doing, refused everything
Soooooo many Aliens.
Quests can go **** themselves, every ****ing thing was a quest
The Culture tress seem very tame and safe 0.25% this, +15xp that, free worker..... nothing really struck me as being compatible with my play style.

Will probably still reserve judgement till I have maybe 5 games under the belt, but for €30 it's not bad, but it's not the 2nd coming either

Gbear

If you don't mind disabling acheivements you can get this mod to make the tech web a bit clearer.

They'll almost certainly patch it over the next couple of months but in the mean time it makes research a lot more manageable.

Kunkka

Won my first game on Mercury difficulty by going for a win via Harmony, the late game units when you go that route are pretty cool.

Kiith

I dunno why, but it just doesn't seem to hold me like Civ 5. I think i just prefer the historical setting, which is odd as i love sci-fi. Maybe it's that the factions don't really have any personality? I mean bar a perk, is there any difference between them?

Gbear

Anyone using Mantle notice any difference?

Installed the latest Catalyst driver yesterday to see if it did anything. Can't say I've noticed much improvement (although I'm only early on in that game - it might make a difference later on).

Wossack

not picked it up yet, and tbh Im not rushing to either from the pretty lukewarm feelings in this thread - hopefully a few patches will polish it up? happy to see theres some mods out already for it however

Kunkka

Kiith wrote: »

I dunno why, but it just doesn't seem to hold me like Civ 5. I think i just prefer the historical setting, which is odd as i love sci-fi. Maybe it's that the factions don't really have any personality? I mean bar a perk, is there any difference between them?

I'm of the same opinion. I enjoyed it but no where near Civi 5. Still loads of time for it to improve though. I just find it a bit boring. A lot of it is down to not knowing how good an upgrade/technology is because it's fictional I guess. Now that I know a few from my first game I can see me looking forward to getting them this time round. The ultimate Hydra harmony unit is ****ing sick, 90+ str

Zulu

Kunkka wrote: »

I'm of the same opinion. I enjoyed it but no where near Civi 5. Still loads of time for it to improve though. I just find it a bit boring. A lot of it is down to not knowing how good an upgrade/technology is because it's fictional I guess. Now that I know a few from my first game I can see me looking forward to getting them this time round. The ultimate Hydra harmony unit is ****ing sick, 90+ str

Me too. I'm sticking with it, but I also bought BNW for Civ5 and it's starting to tempt me more and more.

nesf

Kiith wrote: »

I dunno why, but it just doesn't seem to hold me like Civ 5. I think i just prefer the historical setting, which is odd as i love sci-fi. Maybe it's that the factions don't really have any personality? I mean bar a perk, is there any difference between them?

One of the Youtubers I watch (I think it was quill18) summed it up as: "ok, the ARC landed beside me. Um. I've no idea how they're going to behave."

The AIs feel quite random. They're not but often you need to give players little helpers like "X is expansionistic" to help them feel more immersed rather than "random Civ X has built another city."


That and I really miss the really strong personalities from Alpha Centauri! :P

Kunkka

The Brazilians are mad bastards anyway from what I found. Friendly for most of the game and then boom, little did they know I had really strong upgraded units and I obliterated them.

Lone Stone

so far ive completed the emaciation and first contact victory, with the corp that starts with + trade routes, it makes the game way to easy i found. Get citys up and running really fast with those extra trade routes. I found the whole spying and intrigue system to be insanely slow and can never even get up to a level 4 intrigue mission

Branoic

The AI seems really passive for the most part. Turn 300 and I've never been at war and as best I can tell no one else has either. I'm not the strongest nation either so even the bigger boys haven't appeared to be inclined to attack me. Then I ally with someone and a few turns later he decides to declare war on someone else and I just get a notification that now I'm at war too. Thanks a lot buddy! It would have been nice to be given an option to decline to enter the war, which will break your alliance and p1ss off your former ally, but no, I was automatically committed to the war.

MOH

Branoic wrote: »

The AI seems really passive for the most part. Turn 300 and I've never been at war and as best I can tell no one else has either. I'm not the strongest nation either so even the bigger boys haven't appeared to be inclined to attack me. Then I ally with someone and a few turns later he decides to declare war on someone else and I just get a notification that now I'm at war too. Thanks a lot buddy! It would have been nice to be given an option to decline to enter the war, which will break your alliance and p1ss off your former ally, but no, I was automatically committed to the war.

I had the opposite. Built an outpost a bit too near ARC and they complained, I agreed not to do it again and kept my promise. Then discovered later they'd built 3 cities right on my border, complained and got laughed at. A few turns later they invaded me, nearly wiped me out, I built up my army, fought back and destroyed them.

Then everyone else decided I was a warmonger and started declaring war on me.


One thing that's really bugging me: it's not very clear when other civs are getting close to a victory (though I discovered in my last game the second tab in the quests screen shows it, but in a very confusing way).

Twice now I've been happily researching and building stuff, or fighting a war, and then poof - game over screen and that's it. Worst of all, there's no option to keep playing after. If I could play around with the end game a bit more might help get get a handle on things for my next game.

Still, it's growing on me a bit. After all, my first ever game of Civ I didn't know Railroad was the key to everything, took a few games to learn the tech tree. And I think the web is more geared toward looking at your surroundings, and researching based on making the most of the resources available, rather than sticking with the same plan every game. Think it needs a slightly different way of thinking, and a few games of experimenting to get the hang of.

Generic Dreadhead

MOH wrote: »

After all, my first ever game of Civ I didn't know Railroad was the key to everything

Cause it's not, IMHO it depends on what victory you're going for, I find gunpowder, aesthetics etc to be far more valuable as they are more early game

Dave_The_Sheep

MOH wrote: »

I had the opposite. Built an outpost a bit too near ARC and they complained, I agreed not to do it again and kept my promise. Then discovered later they'd built 3 cities right on my border, complained and got laughed at. A few turns later they invaded me, nearly wiped me out, I built up my army, fought back and destroyed them.

Then everyone else decided I was a warmonger and started declaring war on me.

That's always annoyed me about Civ. I don't start a war, but I damn well finish it. But I'm the warmonger? This is one area they really should smarten up about.

Branoic

The war I inadvertently got dragged into ended up being hilarious. The "enemy" was on the other side of the planet so I didn't bother with them. 5 turns later they contacted me and asked me to make peace, offering me one of their 3 total cities. Bargain! They continued to be at war with my ally.

10 turns later my alliance expired. I decided to renew it, forgetting about the whole "war" thing, and bang, I was back at war again. This time, the city he'd given me previously was now obviously within reach of his units, but I had puppetted it and I had no supporting units nearby so it was on its own. He marched a couple of units up to it, and I bombarded them like twice from the city defences, and the next turn he begs for peace again and offers me the second of his 3 cities!

Hmm.

I seem to recall when Civ 5 launched the AI was similarly far too eager to give up cities for no reason. That was patched, so I'm surprised to see it back in this code.

ZeitgeistGlee

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

That's always annoyed me about Civ. I don't start a war, but I damn well finish it. But I'm the warmonger? This is one area they really should smarten up about.

A thousand times this.

Why in the name of God would I allow someone who is repeatedly militarily antagonistic towards me remain at my borders? If I completely crush someone who declares war on me because "lol ur weak 'n I want ur stuff" (Shaka, Genghis, Gandhi :pac: and Napoleon being the worst offenders) and then keep my army within my own borders for the rest of the game (300+ turns on) then being regarded as a warmonger is just ridiculous.

In BE specifically, I find being taunted by full Harmony Elodie that I have cast away my humanity by going full Supremacy hilarious. I then purged the xeno-tainted heretic for the glory of the Omnissiah and the Imperium.

Kunkka

ZeitgeistGlee wrote: »

In BE specifically, I find being taunted by full Harmony Elodie that I have cast away my humanity by going full Supremacy hilarious. I then purged the xeno-tainted heretic for the glory of the Omnissiah and the Imperium.

Poetry

Kirby

To be fair, Supremacy ends up more robot than man. The only true "human" tree is purity. The steam achievement for maxing the trees really gives you an idea of what they end up as.

For Purity its called "So say we all" from BSG.
For Supremacy it's "The Sound Of Inevitability" which is clearly a matrix reference.

How could the elodie not rage against the machine?

Lone Stone

took over some civ's capital with a coup de ta woo la la, that was a rather rewarding experience.

bleg

I've played through this a few more times now and while I enjoy it, I have come to the following conclusion. This is a very very very lazy game with a few alterations. Basic things such as diplomacy not fixed, minor changes to the tech tree, 8 "civilizations" barely distinguishable from each other, minor alterations to the tech tree or "web."

It pales in complete insignificance to Alpha Centauri, a game that pisses all over it in its depth and character. Remember the planetary council? Raising and lowering the sea levels? Planet busters? The crazy factions: University, Hive, Crazy Christians, Children, Morgan Industries and the Spartans?

If they were looking for the spiritual successor to that game they have failed.

ZeitgeistGlee

Kunkka wrote: »

Poetry

Now if only the ANGEL was a walker styled after an Imperator Titan.

Kirby wrote: »

To be fair, Supremacy ends up more robot than man. The only true "human" tree is purity.

True, weirdly though I got the same taunt from Supremacy Kavitha while playing Purity Hutama. Guess that's what happens when you trust your transhuman ascension to Microsoft.

Kirby wrote: »

How could Elodie not rage against the machine?

Her rage, much like her resistance was futile.

Generic Dreadhead

Played my 2nd game last night. Won it on (2nd lowest difficulty, was still learning my way) 310 turns with Transcendence was about lvl 17 Harmony playing as Kavitha.

WTF are Favours and how do i call one in?
The ending was S***, it was literraly a text box, then the same text box with a picture saying the same text
Why are there no post game stats or showing map coverage as the game went one.
It just went, "you won" now back to the main menu
Found staying healthy with even 3 cities to be extremely difficult.
My units were supremely over powered by about turn 180. Attack 48 vs Attack 12 etc.
Ended up with 3 of the Harmony Mega Units, 2 yokes the sixes of cities and a big floating Rock-Lobster
The in city menu (particularly the citizen management and production queue) seems broken.
I kind of miss the ole Great People of Civ, surprised they are omitted here.
Also why no decent cut scenes etc? The 1st one is great, after that it seems like bad concept art.
Technology web thing is crap, can't make head nor tail of what i'm looking for
Civilopedia is crap too, too me ages to find how to get Firaxite and Floatstore connected

I might just try another 2 games (Purity and Supremacy) and maybe go for different victory types and see what I think.... Seems like it really needs a 2.0 patch IMHO.... and an expansion pack.

Dave_The_Sheep

Cormac... wrote: »

Found staying healthy with even 3 cities to be extremely difficult.

Prosperity tree helps that massively later on. Had a civ of about 15 cities, and was in +48 health toward the end.

ZeitgeistGlee

Just did the Purity victory and never doing that again, seems like Contact/Domination are probably the easiest two and Harmony's the easiest of the 3 ideologies.

Cormac... wrote: »

Found staying healthy with even 3 cities to be extremely difficult.

I find it really weird BE punishes you for playing Tall over Wide, logically it makes far more sense for our early extraterrestrial colonies to be fewer in number but of moderate size with growing populations rather than a large number of small ones.

Gbear

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

Prosperity tree helps that massively later on. Had a civ of about 15 cities, and was in +48 health toward the end.

It's a consistent fault with the happiness/health system.

Later on health is almost worthless.

You at least get a little bonus in BE at 20 health and obviously happiness generated golden ages in Civ 5 but largely it becomes an irrelevance.

Usually you have the game "won" a 100 turns before the end. With nothing left to manage as your health/happiness, gold/energy are rendered irrelevant so all you have left to do, unless you're going for conquest, is occasionally pick a different tech, virtue or useless structure.

Kirby

Harmony is definitely the easiest of the three options regarding victory conditions. The AI knows it too. The AI that goes Harmony invariably wins if you stay out of it. Mind flowers for all!

nesf

ZeitgeistGlee wrote: »

I find it really weird BE punishes you for playing Tall over Wide, logically it makes far more sense for our early extraterrestrial colonies to be fewer in number but of moderate size with growing populations rather than a large number of small ones.

*Patiently waits for the balance patches.*

Generic Dreadhead

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

Prosperity tree helps that massively later on. Had a civ of about 15 cities, and was in +48 health toward the end.

That just sounds broken to me, that would NEVER have happened in Civ. It's a joke. And needs rebalancing

ZeitgeistGlee wrote: »

I find it really weird BE punishes you for playing Tall over Wide, logically it makes far more sense for our early extraterrestrial colonies to be fewer in number but of moderate size with growing populations rather than a large number of small ones.

Started a new game last night. Got to 3 cities around the 160 turn mark and was once again at about -2 to -4 health with no light at the end of the tunnel.

Also there was a crazy amount of Alien nests and Siege worms. I was pretty much holed up in my corner of the map playing defensive, which I don't mind, but christ, there was like 12 aliens around my bases.

Anyone else finding the satellites part to just be a little "meh"

I'm trying to like this game but it's really unbalanced.

nesf

Cormac... wrote: »

I'm trying to like this game but it's really unbalanced.

Civ games are long term purchases. The community normally breaks the game fairly soon after launch and Firaxis have to spend time tinkering and fixing. It's quite difficult for them to do this pre launch because it's such a sandbox game, the health mechanic could be coming from an idea that people wanted to go wide in this kind of game only to find that players still want to go tall and they need to come back to it. The satellites aren't game changing but they feel reasonable, I think it's better to be somewhat meh than somewhat overpowered with a new mechanic in a game. It's hard for them to balance these kinds of games because it's extremely difficult for the devs to figure out how players will play them, you see similar issues with the Paradox games at launch.

Give it time. Same as Civ V this might be one to put aside for a few months after launch to allow them time to patch up.

Gbear

Cormac... wrote: »

That just sounds broken to me, that would NEVER have happened in Civ. It's a joke. And needs rebalancing

That happened to me literally every game in Civ 5.

Routinely my happiness would be well over 50.

MOH

Cormac... wrote: »

Anyone else finding the satellites part to just be a little "meh"

For wars, Tachub is handy. And the two attack ones (orbital laser and planet killer).
Oh and the phasal transporter, once you work out that you can only drop units on the sea if they can hover. Since all my units could embark, I assumed I could drop them all off the enemy coast, but you can't.

But they're only helpful if you're either playing a small map or can expand your orbital coverage far enough, or have already captured an enemy city and the sky around it isn't filled with enemy sats.

The miasma one is useless. Every time I've launched it it's deorbited before it did much.

Gbear

MOH wrote: »

For wars, Tachub is handy. And the two attack ones (orbital laser and planet killer).
Oh and the phasal transporter, once you work out that you can only drop units on the sea if they can hover. Since all my units could embark, I assumed I could drop them all off the enemy coast, but you can't.

But they're only helpful if you're either playing a small map or can expand your orbital coverage far enough, or have already captured an enemy city and the sky around it isn't filled with enemy sats.

The miasma one is useless. Every time I've launched it it's deorbited before it did much.

It seems to remove all the miasma.

It's handy later on for new cities on the frontier.

MOH

Gbear wrote: »

It seems to remove all the miasma.

It's handy later on for new cities on the frontier.

That's what I thought it was supposed to do
Maybe I just hadn't put it where I thought I had

ZeitgeistGlee

nesf wrote: »

*Patiently waits for the balance patches.*

Pretty much. For all its early niggles I have to say I'm starting to quite like BE. It's reawoken that "one more turn" spark I'd lost with CiV. Hopefully it gets the attention it deserves to grow.

Cormac... wrote: »

That just sounds broken to me, that would NEVER have happened in Civ. It's a joke. And needs rebalancing

It routinely does, even in BNW. I'd consider it an odd if I didn't have at least 40-50 happiness towards the end of my games (I generally go culture/science wins) with only 6-7 cities.

BE definitely needs to rework Health though, you have to go Prosperity at the start in order to just get off the ground but once you've researched most of the tech tree, built most of the health buildings and taken most of the health virtues/improvements from quests you'll hit stupidly high numbers. I reached 340ish (not a typo :pac:) health a few nights ago while I was trying to get the Purity victory with Hutuma.

Cormac... wrote: »

Started a new game last night. Got to 3 cities around the 160 turn mark and was once again at about -2 to -4 health with no light at the end of the tunnel.

Also there was a crazy amount of Alien nests and Siege worms. I was pretty much holed up in my corner of the map playing defensive, which I don't mind, but christ, there was like 12 aliens around my bases.

Anyone else finding the satellites part to just be a little "meh"

I'm trying to like this game but it's really unbalanced.

I've found with aliens you have to start clearing the nests early or else you'll just end up swamped at later points. Four marine squads can pretty much clear a continent if you're careful with them and keep them next to one another but the main thing is to bring the xenomass pools into your territory otherwise nests will just keep spawning on top of them.

As I said, you have to play Wide (lots of low-med cities) over Tall (a few high pop cities) early in BE or the health will just continue to dog you. Unlike Happiness in CiV where you could farm happiness through luxuries at an empire level, Health improvements are rooted in individual cities. You should also be using/abusing your trade routes for internal growth over external trade, the energy/science trade-off isn't even worth considering.

Satellites are kind of weird for me, they certainly have their uses like clearing miasma or energy boosting but don't feel as key to the game as they were hinted to be, especially with range units being able to target them.

MOH wrote: »

That's what I thought it was supposed to do
Maybe I just hadn't put it where I thought I had

IIRC it starts in the centre and works its way out. They do work, it just takes a while. I've dropped 4 simultaneously over a large area to make way for a few cheeky settlements in decent terrain.

Generic Dreadhead

ZeitgeistGlee wrote: »

As I said, you have to play Wide (lots of low-med cities) over Tall (a few high pop cities) early in BE or the health will just continue to dog you. Unlike Happiness in CiV where you could farm happiness through luxuries at an empire level, Health improvements are rooted in individual cities. You should also be using/abusing your trade routes for internal growth over external trade, the energy/science trade-off isn't even worth considering

I can't believe as en experiences Civ player I'm even asking this.... but how do I play wide without having too much population. Do you just prioritise production, science in cities? Avoid growth buildings, avoid growth virtues?

Gbear

Cormac... wrote: »

I can't believe as en experiences Civ player I'm even asking this.... but how do I play wide without having too much population. Do you just prioritise production, science in cities? Avoid growth buildings, avoid growth virtues?

It's annoying that there's no "Avoid Growth" button.

ZeitgeistGlee

Cormac... wrote: »

I can't believe as en experiences Civ player I'm even asking this.... but how do I play wide without having too much population. Do you just prioritise production, science in cities? Avoid growth buildings, avoid growth virtues?

I haven't played on the harder difficulties yet (stuck to Mercury and Soyez while I'm learning the game's quirks) but I never specifically avoided growth in my early games and once I had a decent bit of health (10ish) actively started to grow my multitude of smaller cities with internal trade routes.

Because Firaxis got rid of luxuries, there are a lot more health producing building so you counter any potential drop in health by a huge margin as your cities start to grow and your science/culture ramps ups along with them allowing you to get Health techs and virtues that much faster.

Also as the AI is so passive in BE and you're focusing exclusively on internal trade routes there's absolutely no downside to other factions not liking you. It's not like BNW where a coalition could slowly but surely strangle off your happiness/growth with repeated motions before the UN. Generally speaking you'll be so far ahead tech-wise and production capability-wise of the AI that even if he does attack you you'll repulse him after only a few turns.

Kunkka

Tried the route of kill all the aliens. Those worms hurt! :eek:

Kirby

There is too much emphasis on Affinity levelling in this. It's not really balanced.

For example a faction who has researched a lot of unit and weapons on the tech tree and has 5 affinity.............. will get crushed by a faction who has researched only infrastructure but they have 8 affinity. Their units are simply much better because of the affinity upgrade.

Units becoming better being based purely on your affinity level is bloody frustrating. You are better off just spamming the easy to get affinity points on the tech web early and crushing your opponents. Spoils is a little.

nesf

Kirby wrote: »

There is too much emphasis on Affinity levelling in this. It's not really balanced.

For example a faction who has researched a lot of unit and weapons on the tech tree and has 5 affinity.............. will get crushed by a faction who has researched only infrastructure but they have 8 affinity. Their units are simply much better because of the affinity upgrade.

Units becoming better being based purely on your affinity level is bloody frustrating. You are better off just spamming the easy to get affinity points on the tech web early and crushing your opponents. Spoils is a little.

Is there really much of a difference between researching a tech to improve rocket launchers and researching a tech that boosts your affinity that gives you improved launchers?

Kirby

Yes. There is. Strategy games work off a system of choices and the repercussions of them. Go for early military? You will be safe but will suffer economically later. Go for early Economy? You will be rich but be vulnerable to early attacks. Go for researching high tech stuff? It will pay off later but you might not live that long. And so on. Even games with no combat or fighting work off this sort of mechanic.

You can research Ethics and Social Design and have a better army than somebody who has researched robotics and mechatronics. It makes zero sense.

If you want a badass army, you should be forced to sacrifice something else. And you aren't. You don't have to forgo production research and buildings in order to get there. It just.....happens. Its kind of derpy.

Gbear

Kirby wrote: »

Yes. There is. Strategy games work off a system of choices and the repercussions of them. Go for early military? You will be safe but will suffer economically later. Go for early Economy? You will be rich but be vulnerable to early attacks. Go for researching high tech stuff? It will pay off later but you might not live that long. And so on. Even games with no combat or fighting work off this sort of mechanic.

You can research Ethics and Social Design and have a better army than somebody who has researched robotics and mechatronics. It makes zero sense.

If you want a badass army, you should be forced to sacrifice something else. And you aren't. You don't have to forgo production research and buildings in order to get there. It just.....happens. Its kind of derpy.

The problem is there's so few units but roughly the same spread in strength from Civ 5.

So units go roughly from 5-100.
But they're jumping by 25%-50% in Civ 5 but more like 50%-100% in BE.

But in Civ 5 not only are there the same units as BE (infantry, siege, ranged, cavalry, air), there's also hard counter units that help bridge the gap - Lancers are between Knights and Cavalry in strength but hard counter other cavalry and are on a different branch of the tech tree.

Also, the Unique Units help as well - many of them aren't just a variation but play completely differently - cavalry archers replacing knights, battering rams replacing catapults and so on.