Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

[tberton]

I don't know, not knowing anything about the planet seems pretty easy to justify within the fiction: they don't have the tools for detailed scans, didn't have time, can't make sense of what they do find out.

[brkl]

They literally would only have had to look outside for a while in order to draw a map of the continents and oceans.

[baekgom84]

This is looking more and more like a Steam sale pickup for me. I don't necessarily intend that as a negative, just that I don't know if I can justify paying fifty-ish dollars for a game that is probably going to feel and play like an extravagant mod/expansion of the Civ V base game.

[Cordeos]

This is looking more and more like a Steam sale pickup for me. I don't necessarily intend that as a negative, just that I don't know if I can justify paying fifty-ish dollars for a game that is probably going to feel and play like an extravagant mod/expansion of the Civ V base game.

 

The first time its on sale 50% off i will totally grab it

[Murdoc]

I don't know, not knowing anything about the planet seems pretty easy to justify within the fiction: they don't have the tools for detailed scans, didn't have time, can't make sense of what they do find out.

That would be some pretty poor planning if you planned to colonize a world. Again, not a big deal, just seemed kind of weird to me.

 

Any justification would be pretty easy, it's just that it anything seems like an easy way out of a design problem. It would have been cool to see if they approached little things like that and found new mechanics to justify the world fiction.

[Dewar]

I watched the GB video on the way to work today and I went back and forth several times on whether it would be worth the money or not. I'm still intrigued, but I think I'll wait for reviews and go from there. As a side note, this might be the first time this decade that I've cared about reviews for a game.

[tberton]

That would be some pretty poor planning if you planned to colonize a world. Again, not a big deal, just seemed kind of weird to me.

 

Any justification would be pretty easy, it's just that it anything seems like an easy way out of a design problem. It would have been cool to see if they approached little things like that and found new mechanics to justify the world fiction.

 

Well, there is the starting benefit you can choose that gives you an outline of the continents. But yeah, I guess I can see how it's a bit of a missed opportunity.

[brkl]

I would have loved to have started with a visual representation of the word that meant little. Obviously they couldn't know what the things they saw from orbit were until on the ground. So instead of exploring just to uncover the map, you would explore and research particular features to find out what they are. Also, you could have important subterranean features that would be hidden at the start. So many possibilities.

[Murdoc]

That sounds pretty cool.

 

Not to be too hard on a game I've never played and will probably end up playing a lot of and enjoying it, it just seems like they are so rooted into the civ 5 infrastructure that all the possibilities discussed here ended up being beyond their scope for the game.

 

Which is a bit of a shame.

 

I think Civilization test of time had subterranean map as well as the overland map, I can't recall if it added anything.

[brkl]

I just mean like... Minerals that aren't immediately visible on the tile.

I'm still getting this as soon as I can. I think the way the small choices which change what bonuses you get from buildings and such will make the game feel different. There seems to be more space for player expression.

[Gormongous]

I would have loved to have started with a visual representation of the word that meant little. Obviously they couldn't know what the things they saw from orbit were until on the ground. So instead of exploring just to uncover the map, you would explore and research particular features to find out what they are. Also, you could have important subterranean features that would be hidden at the start. So many possibilities.

 

I think it would be interesting just to have a blurry black-and-white radio topology for the unrevealed map, making it hard to tell whether the great flat area you were pushing towards was a fertile plain or an empty ice-locked sea. It would also be interesting to have the contours of the map be visible but not the degree to which they've been settled and maybe terraformed.

 

I don't know, I'm cautiously optimistic about the game, but I'm still crushed by the repeated failures of imagination by the team. I find myself wanting to talk some more about the fictional influences, but I can't really get beyond complaining that these guys are citing authors and movies like it's twenty-five years ago, especially now that we see the game is not remotely the "new wave sci-fi" theme that would explain the heavy emphasis on Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke.

[Murdoc]

That would be a cool graphical treatment and I do like brkl's idea about minreals. In context to the fiction, why do they know this or that is useful or does something specific for them? I guess maybe they did unmanned surveys before, but then why don't they know the landscape? We're about 1% into a design doc for a Idle Thumb's Beyond Earth mod.

Anyway, I'll wait until its out. 

[tberton]

In terms of "how do they know this stuff is useful", you could make the same argument about any resource in any Civ game.

[brkl]

In Civ games you generally don't see a resource until you have a use for it or very near that point. Many resources in this are also hidden at the start. What I would like is tiles that are marked as having an unknown resource at the start if it was visible from orbit. Otherwise these would be uncovered by proximity. Each of the resources would be distinguishable from others even before you know what the resources actually are. Perhaps through a colour code that was randomized for each game. Actually finding out what resource you are dealing with would require research unlocked by having a unit investigate the resource.

However, the specifics are not really that important. What I would like is a maps that's visually uncovered from the start because that's the only thing that makes sense. You'd see whether a tile was water, arid, snow and such. However, uncovering specific functionality the tile had would require proximity or special satellite technology. This would make gameplay distinct from a regular Civilization game without making it unrecognisable.

[Cordeos]

There is a new trailer that gives a broad overview of the game and goes into victory conditions.

 

 

I am glad they are modifying how winning the game works and it sounds like they are getting rid of, or at least reducing, racing for wonders, which is an annoying mechanic. I do with there could be team victory conditions where two or more factions with the same affinity (or different affinities for the non-affinity related conditions) could win the game. The issue with having one winner conditions is that it makes diplomacy only work up to a point. All alliances will break eventually as each faction tries to win on their own. 

[baekgom84]

I don't know, I'm cautiously optimistic about the game, but I'm still crushed by the repeated failures of imagination by the team. I find myself wanting to talk some more about the fictional influences, but I can't really get beyond complaining that these guys are citing authors and movies like it's twenty-five years ago, especially now that we see the game is not remotely the "new wave sci-fi" theme that would explain the heavy emphasis on Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke.

Pretty much sums up my feelings towards what I've seen of the game. The fact that they cited such vanilla sci-fi influences was a red flag for me, and now having seen a bit of the game in action I can't help but feel like the devs have taken such an overwhelmingly safe approach that the final product just looks kind of uninteresting. Even the alien designs look like they were lifted from tired b-grade sci-fi movie tropes.

[Cordeos]

Has anyone tried any of these Civ 5 mods? With my lowering expectations for the newness of Beyond Earth, I might play these until BE is afordable.

 

http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/07/the-future-is-now-5-mods-to-take-civilization-v-beyond-earth-today/

 

Alpha Centauri Civilzations

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=218992696

 

Alpha Centauri Policies

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=223960219

 

Alpha Centauri Maps

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=220026971

 

Centauri City States

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=233646245&searchtext=alpha+centauri

 

Beyond the Future

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121202555

[Brakke]

I am so supremely excited about this game that I started fiending for some space 4X. I went to install Endless Space--which I played a while ago and is great--and discovered to my joy that those folks put out a new game Endless Legend, more of a fantasy-historical take on 4X, seems more similar to Civ than Endless Space was. I played the tutorial last night and am super pumped to get into it this week.

 

Now I'm just worried that I'm going to go so deep into Endless Legend (it's called "Endless" after all...) that I'll be all 4Xed out by the time this drops. In any case: I forsee a lot of late nights in my near future.

[Thrik]

As someone who has never played a Civilization game, after watching some gameplay videos of this I'm highly interested. Stuff looks superb.

[sclpls]

Man, this game is killing me. I have been absolutely loving the non-gameplay trailers for this game, I totally am a sucker for the tone they are putting forth, and find myself getting stupidly emotional about this stuff. But all the gameplay stuff I've seen just looks so undercooked. So I get really excited about the concept of the game, but not at all excited by the actual presentation. Ugh...

[Sorbicol]

It's currently on my 'going to wait until it's patched / expanded' list. Like you say it does look just a little undercooked.

On the other hand it's the first civ game I've not pre-ordered since Civ 2 and I'm libel to crack before the end of next week......

[njoos]

Civ5 was a bit...meh in the beginning. Especially the multiplayer, that was completely unplayable. 

[sclpls]

Fair point

[Yalk]

I am so supremely excited about this game that I started fiending for some space 4X. I went to install Endless Space--which I played a while ago and is great--and discovered to my joy that those folks put out a new game Endless Legend, more of a fantasy-historical take on 4X, seems more similar to Civ than Endless Space was. I played the tutorial last night and am super pumped to get into it this week.

 

Now I'm just worried that I'm going to go so deep into Endless Legend (it's called "Endless" after all...) that I'll be all 4Xed out by the time this drops. In any case: I forsee a lot of late nights in my near future.

 

Endless Legends is great, I was dubious about the "fantasy" in the Sci-Fi Fantasy but...It's good. The factions are all unique and play interestingly. They have some pretty neat gameplay mechanics for stacking armies and territory. 

 

The game uses an odd/fascinating mix of stacking and 1upt, moving around the map you can have stacks of armies but when those armies "engage" they take a portion of the map to "spread out" and you then fight like you would in CiV....I can't really explain it, but, in multiplayer the other players can watch your fight on the big map....

 

 

Territory has always bothered me in Civ games, and any 4x land game, since alot of the time you pick the prime spots for your city and leave any unwanted land unclaimed...this leads to a stupid looking map with gaps and holes between civs until late game...You could find parallels for this in human history, early history etc. and to some extent its kind of neat to have huge swaths of unclaimed desert or jungle between you and a neighbor, but not so much when its a giant hole in your empire...... sometimes this land is "good" but doesn't have the necessary resources required to really be desirable to waste a city on claiming it. 

 

In Endless legends you place cities in "provinces" one city per province. so the map quickly loses is empty swathes of land, it also keeps the map from turing into nothing but cities...its interesting....you really only have to pick your city location based on its proximity, defensiveness and growth potential, any rare resources or mines come with the province.

 

 

Overall its different enough (very) from Civ:BE to be able to play both concurrently, which is a plus.  

[YoThatLimp]

So, I picked it up and it seems super broken because I have my TV and Monitor hooked up to my PC which is disappointing.