colinp

Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

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Simmons. Haven't read Card because I heard of that stuff in advance. Although from what I've heard of Card, I think Simmons is more obvious with it. Thing is, it wouldn't have bothered me nearly as much if he was clever about it, but instead of forming a coherent argument he just preaches.

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After some dithering last week I decided to get Endless Legend and wait for Beyond Earth to get some expansions. Nothing I have read, watched or heard since as convinced me I made the wrong choice unfortunately.

Anyone else holding out, you could do a lot worse that get Endless Legend instead.

 

You made the right choice....EndlessLegends>>CiV:BE

 

the fantasy elements get in the way of me truly getting sucked into the game...if I could blend BE and EL into a unholy union of 4x I would do it in a heart beat.....

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Yeah, for reasons Chris articulated on the most recent Idle Thumbs episode I will never get as excited about sci-fi and fantasy 4X games as I do with historically themed ones, but I do have to give credit to Amplitude to doing a much better job with at least making EL's world more interesting than the typical fantasy or sci-fi 4X (at a minimum, it's a huge improvement over Endless Space). 

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I have to disagree with this opinion regarding sci-fi vs historical for the reason that I find modern human scientific inquiry is just as interesting, if not more, as the historical record of human progress. Literary science fiction is able to bridge potential future discoveries with the modern context of our own civilization and human condition. (Literary historical fiction of course does the same with the historical record.) The reason I think people are dismissive of sci-fi and fantasy is because there is so much genre fiction that it drowns out most of the literary works, and even makes the best works difficult to appreciate due to the association.

 

Although I will say that I think Beyond Earth fails here not because it isn't trying but because of its poor execution. This is a cross post from the latest IT episode thread but basically I think a lot of the interesting fiction they've pieced together for Beyond Earth is buried in the Civilopedia, and what they do decide to surface in voice over and text you normally see during the game is so abstract that you can't even tell what it's supposed to be.

 

For example The Promethean, which just gives +4 Health and +2 Culture and a free Virtue, has art that just shows you some abstract squid chair looking thing (still disappointed Wonders are now just moving drawings and not full movies) as the visual for what it is. The quote that accompanies it is actually good but still doesn't explain what the thing is: "Anansi looked at the man's genome and said 'Messy! Messy! Who can live like this?' He took a broom and swept up the genome, and when the man woke up, he felt much better." - The Uncle Nevercloned Stories. Only by reading the Civilopedia entry do you understand that the Promethean is a new human genotype that has been genetically engineered to remove all genetic flaws and succeptability to diseases, a kind of perfect human. There's all sorts of long scientific jargon in the entry but the final sentence is particularly good and should've been surfaced better: "A Promethean moves with spare grace, sees the world in colors unknown to the old Homo sapiens, ages easily and slowly, retains her faculties through the lifespan, and, when the end comes, often has left behind a legacy that could not have been achieved by Old Man." It's not even clear the Wonder is actually supposed to be real living people until you read this. 

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Nice to find somebody else who shares my view: I like SciFi/Fantasy in theory, but most novels and films fall under daft escapism. 

 

The reason I think people are dismissive of sci-fi and fantasy is because there is so much genre fiction that it drowns out most of the literary works, and even makes the best works difficult to appreciate due to the association

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Latrine - to be fair when I was talking about science fiction, I was more thinking along the lines of space opera-y stuff, and not like hard sci-fi or anything like that. But I can't even think of any 4X game where that's a theme (Alpha Centauri probably comes closest, but it's still pretty out there in terms of within the realms of possibility stuff). And I was specifically talking about 4X games, and not like literature, movies, or even other genres of video games.

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Yeah I too waited a lot begin divided between Civ:BE and EL, but after reading some reviews and watch a couple of videos, I did choose EL and later tried the demo of BE.

 

I felt that at least the demo of Civ:BE is a very good game - I mean it does work well, but lack a more vibrant personality, which does mean it lack one: I too noticed the flavor in the text - but is almost like to grounded in a negative way - think of the concept of how factions rather that begin static they develop toward something, its amazing idea, and they could make it more vibrant somehow - from what I read and understand the text did chance to fit the affinity, but never goes much beyond that it don´t appear to fully explore how crazy things are getting (another strange thing, leaders do chance to reflect their affinity, but you can´t see how your own leader is looking like). Same is the aliens, they are ok, but I felt they could be bigger? sure the Siege Worm are huge, but they missed such chance to thrown in a really Kaiju or exotic style monsters. Even some giant robot do look timid.

On the other hand, Endless Legend is full of personality, might no be perfect but is amazing game.

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I also played the demo of Beyond Earth last night. It's clearly a good competent game but, the aliens aside, that opening just felt like Civ V reskinned a little too much. As for the aliens - they make things feel a little circumstantial. I got stuck on a ismuth of land cut off by a combination of miasma and siege worms. Attempts to build up my base meant rampaging siege worm food, and the miasma blocked any attempts at trading. Also, having to reset each trade after each run? Really?!?

The demo's not really enough to go on though. I'm happy to wait for some serious expansions, until then it's Endless Legend

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I actually find the theme of BE to be a great fit for the mechanics of Civilization. In fact, I'd argue it's the best mesh of theme and mechanics the series has ever seen.

First, Civ has *always* felt like you were exploring a new and unknown world, even when playing on "real Earth" maps. Resource locations are always random, barbarian/alien spawns are unpredictable, your starting area is not fixed, etc. Mechanically speaking there has always been an element of unpredictability and uncertainty in the Civ series, so meshing that feeling with the theme of literally exploring a new world works really well. It even allows a thematic reason for choosing your map. (Deciding on which "world" to settle). All this results is a close alignment between the mechanics and theme, especially early on, which is something I really love to see in games.


Second, and this is partially just personal preference, it allows the more complex mechanics to unfold earlier. Specifically I really enjoy having naval and air units be available and relevant far sooner. I've always been a fan of loading up carriers and protecting them with a few destroyers, then just devestating anything near a coastline with my armada. In previous Civ titles, this meant waiting until nearly the end of the game; only a fraction of each play-through lent itself to my favorite strategy. However, in BE you can employ these tactics much earlier because, thematically, it makes sense to have those options available early on. 

There are plenty of issues with BE, (balance and UI problems come to mind) but personally I really enjoy the futuristic theme.

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I played my first game at Vostok difficulty to an easy Transcendence victory with essentially no conflict at all. Can't really be happy with that.

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I played my first game at Vostok difficulty to an easy Transcendence victory with essentially no conflict at all. Can't really be happy with that.

I do agree with this. The AI, at least on the default difficulty and on Vostok, seems far too trusting and passive.

I play a very aggressive/militaristic style, and even after taking out several AI players I've never had the remaining AI declare war on me, or even be overtly aggressive at all really. They just patiently wait their turn until I invade them, without the others ever reacting to me being a huge warmonger.

To be fair, this is based off of only 3 games, but still... it is pretty joyless to play against such an exploitable AI. 

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In my second game I really felt like the game let me win. I had been falling behind in victory stuff, but it's like the AI didn't go for it when it was in reach. I had two states with at least as many cities declare war on me, but only launch wreak attacks and get their lone units chewed up by my boats mostly. I took three cities late game because I thought I must have lost. Razed them because cities seem to just slow you down and was surprised that I was able to reach the Emancipation victory. There's a very serious lack of tension in this game.

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I’ve now “finished” (read: played to the point where victory was inevitable) three full games, spanning a little under 1000 turns. Overall, I find the game underwhelming but still enjoyable.

Beyond Earth feels too much like its predecessor to warrant
a full price-tag. When you consider the improvements from Civ IV to Civ V, and then compare those to what’s changed with BE, it’s pretty disappointing. Civ V introduced hexes, ranged combat, one-unit-per-tile, and a beautiful graphical upgrade among many other features. BE has given us some interesting alien AI, (which are really just better barbarians) a non-linear tech tree, (which has a *wealth* of problems), a few minor new systems, (quests, expeditions, etc) and a fresh coat of paint on existing visuals and mechanics. (“Happiness” is now “health,” etc)

The tech web is a cool idea that I’m enjoying playing with, but the way it is presented leaves considerable room for improvement. Understanding what to research in order to support your chosen play style is much harder than it needs to be, as techs are not distinguished or categorized in any meaningful manner. For instance, yesterday I was trying to find a tech that would make my cities harder to attack, and I had to literally expand each tech and read what it unlocked one-by-one to understand which one I wanted.

My difficulty learning the tech web has been compounded by the fact that the technologies are now, (pardon the pun) completely alien to me. Techs are no longer grounded in real history, so I have trouble intuitively understanding what they do or where they might fit in. For instance, in Civ V, if I saw a tech called “flight” I had a pretty good idea of what it unlocked and when I should try and get it just based off of that one word description. (“OK, it probably gives me flying units and I probably don’t want to try and get it *before* I get gunpowder”) However, with a lack of linearity and tech names like “alien biology” I have *no* idea what that’s going to unlock, or when in my game it would make sense to get it.

The new theme of BE combined with the lack of guidance/linearity in the tech web means that the designers need to hold the players had a bit more than they actually have, and I think a few simple UI changes would really help to address this problem. For instance, color-coded techs based off of the bonuses they unlock would help players focus their research in a way that supports their playstyle. (In fact, there is already a mod out that does this) Also, simply showing the required affinity level without having to mouse over the unit/building would help players get a sense for when in their playthrough they should target certain techs. Right now, the only way to answer these questions is to re-read the tooltips for each tech until you (eventually) memorize the answers.

The alien faction is a fun addition, but not really that different from barbarians in previous games. The only real change is that there seem to be more spawned from a single camp – er, I mean nest - at any given time, and they now start as passive to you instead of hostile, with a random chance to “go rogue” and attack a nearby unit. The more aggressive you are towards them, the greater the chance that they will attack; not that huge of a change really, but an enjoyable one none the less.

Aside from that the game largely seems like more of a total conversion mod than a full-fledged iteration in the Civ series. There is no graphical upgrade to speak of, and the resources are simply re-skins of existing systems that have almost no difference when compared to previous games. The changes they’ve made are largely good ones, (with a few potential quality-of-life improvements sadly missing) but there is not nearly enough here to warrant a $60 price tag and a brand new Civilization title.

This would have made outstanding $30 DLC for Civ V, but as its own product it fails to sufficiently distinguish itself.

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Also, I agree with brkl; the AI seems to not even realize this is a competitive game. They are far too passive.


On my last game I chose the "fuck you" option in literally every single diplomatic interaction, and I still never had the AI declare war on me, or be overtly hostile in any way. (Though I did have one of the AI players flip one of my cities with spies, which was cool) In fact, at one point 2nd place asked me to be friends and join their war against 3rd place just a few turns after I finally stopped bombing the shit out of 2nd place for the past ~50 turns.

 

I really, really wish the AI reacted more strongly to aggressive/hostile play.

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The AI has been hilariously passive in all of the games that I've played except for the one where I chose to build up a crazy military. Then it decided to suicide attack with one or two units.

It's pretty aggressive about attacking every alien nest I hope to expand to though.

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The AI has been hilariously passive in all of the games that I've played except for the one where I chose to build up a crazy military. Then it decided to suicide attack with one or two units.

It's pretty aggressive about attacking every alien nest I hope to expand to though.

 

What difficulty are you playing on? I started playing on the highest (Apollo?) and the AI was noticeably more aggressive.

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What difficulty are you playing on? I started playing on the highest (Apollo?) and the AI was noticeably more aggressive.

 

I've been playing on the equivalent of King difficulty in Civ 5. Can't remember the name. 

 

I don't think that every element of 5 should be in BE, as they are  unique games and I'm sure there are mechanic specific AI tweaks that the devs needed to throw in. That said, the AI really is a lot more aggressive at this level in Civ 5. I think I'll just step up the difficulty, but it makes me wonder how Apollo difficulty stacks up to Diety. 

 

All told, the game is pretty enjoyable. I like the aliens a lot, and the narrative elements that were thrown into the victory conditions are right up my alley.

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I've been playing on the equivalent of King difficulty in Civ 5. Can't remember the name. 

 

I don't think that every element of 5 should be in BE, as they are  unique games and I'm sure there are mechanic specific AI tweaks that the devs needed to throw in. That said, the AI really is a lot more aggressive at this level in Civ 5. I think I'll just step up the difficulty, but it makes me wonder how Apollo difficulty stacks up to Diety. 

 

All told, the game is pretty enjoyable. I like the aliens a lot, and the narrative elements that were thrown into the victory conditions are right up my alley.

 

My Apollo game is giving me more hope, earlier in it I defeated an attacker and grabbed several of their cities to reduce the size of my boarders. I had smashed most of their army by the time we made peace and another nearby faction immediately declared war on the weakened attacker and captured what was left.

 

last night two factions, similarly powerful to myself declared war on me on the same turn. Then a third much weaker faction joined in a few turns later when my forces were stretched thin by the other two. I believe I can win, but if the last strong faction joins in, I will be in serious trouble and may have to retreat back to my starting continent. This is the kind of dangerous AI I love to play with.

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I'm taking advantage of the free-weekend and I'm 200 turns ito my first game. So this will largely be extrapolation based off of my partial experience.

I'm not poking at the other factions and it's relieving that they don't seem to default to aggressive behavior. I think the non-aggression fits well into the narrative where initially resources are plentiful, we are all in a dangerous and alien place, and we don't know how much we need each other against a shared threat. Additionally, personally, I'm much more interested in how to send signals of potential military-strikes in Civ 5 than actually executing them. In my small amount of time in Beyond Earth, the alien life-forms have provided me with a great artificial-intelligence to play with in this way. I am not agressive towards them directly, but I have played very territorially and somewhat expansive; so I've used a very small military (about one unit per colony or outpost) to effectively herd the native life-forms. Thus far, this ability to influence these potentially dangerous creatures that I have little knowledge of is the most interesting part of the game. If they expand the game, I hope it takes the direction of having more intimate relations with a more various, consistent but unpredictable, bestiary of life-forms who have interesting and evolving survival-strategies. I enjoy thinking that I am herding them into maintaining no-mans-lands that I don't want settled (or if they are settled, then I want it to be costly for the other factions. At 200 turns, I'm starting to see this type of strategy be acknowledged by the game's systems as miasma is benefit for some technology-paths, a nusaince for others, and a little bit of both for me. I want more of that and maybe I'll get it.

I'm divided on the tech-web based on whether I value what it says about the narrative or if I value the ability to know what I'm doing. Early in the game I felt that I was making potent decisions based on immediate, percieved needs. 200 turns in, the tech-web has begun to highlight my lack of direction towards any of the victory-conditions and it's stressful in a not fun way. I like the narrative that we are a pioneering colony on an exoplanet just throwing all our scientific curiosity on whatever someone happens to write a grant for, and it might be designed for flexibility once I've become familar with what they do and how they are connected, but I'm frustrated with it at its particular combination of high-investment and I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-commiting-to. I have a lot of amateur ideas on how to solve the tech-web and I'm sure that if any of them were implimented, no one but me would like it. I'll tell you anyway because it's fun to do so:

Option 1.

-I don't want all these choices listed out in front of me. I'm sure that most people want to play this like Civ 5 where youcan see that astronomy leads to aircraft carriers, but I don't; it would piss everyone off, but I think the tech-web should be randomized and everything but your current options should be obscured. That would be interesting. Remind me to bring this up in reference to affinities.

Additional to this, it would be so cool if you could make trades for specific technologies. This would work especially well if the use of a technology was telegraphed clearly. An obvious example of how to do this would be running into a military unit unlike one you can make; click on it and it opens up a negotiation screen. Selling individual units or the ability to manufacture would be so exciting to choose between and cost/benefit analyse. You could negotiate for individual orbitals too for example. Ideally each manifestation of a new tech would be noticed by the player in world-map interactions, but when not possible, or just in combination, new techs available for negotiation could be presented when other factions are actively looking for sales or through the quest-system.

A lot of interesting stuff could be done within this system narratively and mechanically. Some trades would require actual trade-routes; this would be a new type of incentive for a geographically scattered empire. Another possibility is that maybe you could have the option to observe and/or capture alien life for additional risk and gain a alien-specific technology that way. I guess my main point is that I want the selection of tech put into the other systems rather than it being its own. Science as currency could still work in tht system, but it would probably be better to treat it as maintance costs rather than as one initial expenditure.

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As far as affinities go, I'm only 200 turns in, but when I looked at affinity-specific victory conditions it was a turn-off. I may be completely misreading this, but it looks like I'll need to focus on an affinity to get an affinity-specific victory. I don't like that at all. It takes all the fun out of affinity decisions for me if that's the reason I chose them. I want to chose them for diplomatic reasons or urgent needs (that I perceive in my gameplay rather than ones I'm just reading about) during quest decisions. 200 turns in on my first game, affinities feel like how-I'm-going-to-fuck-up more than anything. I going to come off as more of a know-it-all with this because the game might already have it, but I'd like the affinities to make you blind to other options more than anything. Treating them like an addiction would be cool; I get the impression that this is already the case in the sense of trying to concentrate on one for affinity-specific bonuses, but I'd love it to be like "you don't even know that that faction that became a bunch of alien nests is still normal, it's you who have changed" kinda stuff. Also your affinity could determine which techs you are even aware of.

----

I got a little side-tracked designing my own game there.

I like Beyond Earth so far mostly because of the miasma and the aliens. If there was more of that stuff that distinguishes it from Civ 5, I would view it as something different than a optional mode for Civ 5.

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Sounds like they are planning a patch to overhaul the Diplomacy and Wonders as well as increasing/expanding the backstory. Its a good first step towards making BE into the game it could have been. Happy to see that the devs have noticed that people are unhappy and are working to fix it.

 

 

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/03/12/big-2-0-update-to-fix-conservative-civ-beyond-earth/

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I just wonder how big they are prepared to go with the overhaul. From my perspective this game looks like their Elemental.

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I wouldn't go that far. Elemental was just broken and completely unfinished. BE isn't broken it's just incredibly dull and lifeless compared to all the other civ games. It's good to see that that are trying to sort it out (you tend to expect that from Firaxis) and as patches rather than DLC. If you look at the Arstechnica steam reviews though BE is one of the most purchased and most played games of last year. I don't think it did that badly.

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