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HF Makalov Fanboy Kai
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I agree that the lack of variety in terms of the number of playable factions is disappointing but I don't really get what you mean by "lack of unit, variety, building and no clear faction"? All I can think of is that you mean that because there are so many choices to make other than just your faction, two different factions which make all the same initial choices otherwise end up being not very different? Which is true I suppose. I would like units/buildings that are unique to each faction as well, rather than just unique to your affinity.

Also, I thought the terrain was cool personally, and while you could probably see the similarities in some of the terrain to Civ 5 if you played both in black and white, the colour scheme of the two games are so different that the map felt very unfamiliar to me.

I've never played Master of Orion so I can't compare to that game but so far I'm not displeased. I think that with more factions this game could be almost as good as Civ 5.

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It’s fun, though (so far) seems way (way) too easy. Not that BNW Deity is hard, but Apollo is the new King. >_>

(I haven’t actually played King in a while)

First game was all standard Apollo (random'd Kavithan, picked Artists, Tectonic, Machinery) but I quit when my 8 cities each had comparable/more pop than the AI caps (and some had like 2 cities) and my cap had like double the pop. Tbh had no idea what I was doing beyond picking the seeding, observing the trade route yields, and "ooh that looks cool". And many things went wrong in terms of like 3 siege worms pillaging and killing my stuff, plus losing explorers and workers to miasma by accident.

Second game was all random (Brasilia, Aristocrats, Retrograde, Machinery) and I did a CNDR push and messed it up pretty badly timing wise. Yet it was still pretty fun squishing 1st tier units in 1 hit. <_<

But I’m still playing. Looking into ways to make it harder; probably non-staggered starts and the trade route mod to start.

Re: factions. I think the idea is each Civ is effectively a combination of Sponsors + Seeding. In the far future, given present globalization trends, you would expect (mostly) homogeneous Earth cultures (ofc ymmv). I expect there will still be additions in the future though, plus endless mods.

Re: terrain, etc: imo atmosphere and music is pretty top notch. UI (if coming from BNW EUI) is quite annoying though.

Edited by XeKr
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My few major cons with Beyond Earth are as follows. Yes I will be referencing Alpha Centauri a lot:

1.) The diplomacy system is still awful and impersonal. They ripped a lot of Civ V out and transferred it into BE, but this was one such piece they should have left behind. Just as with its predecessor the options you have in interaction are fairly limited and feel too dry to warrant much use. Basically anything that was really annoying in Civ V's diplomacy is here in full force, with such favorites as, "What, you want to borrow some floatstone? Three floatstone? Interesting. Well I have no idea how much floatstone I even have so I guess I'm gonna say no just to find out, sorry."

2.) Piggybacking off of one, none of these faction personalities have any character whatsoever. Because of the function of diplomacy, everybody uses the exact same lines of text and so never references one another in an individual fashion. Faction personalities have like two genuine voiced lines (I am not exaggerating, you will hear the same short voiced lines over and over again forever), permissible for its predecessor which had dozens of civs but quite worrying for a game with eight. There is some expository information given through quotes when gaining technology, but I've researched each one and I can't think of a single line in the entire web that stood out in the slightest. What's even worse, none --you heard me, not one-- is spoken by the faction leader themselves. This is an unforgivable offense, as this is the bread and butter its predecessor built its world upon. I can't even fathom what the hell they were thinking.

3.) The Wonders are too numerous and incomprehensible to feel worthwhile other than for their pure bonuses. Everyone's already aware of the many wonders of the world, so when AC made Secret Projects a thing they had to really work to give them character. Each one of them was accompanied by a cinematic, which could be as terrifying as it was insightful and explanatory as to what was being built. Unfortunately, now all that is shown is a very confusing picture of a schematic of the device and a vague quote. It can be difficult at times to even decipher what is specifically being built. In fact, this can usually be attributed to many general buildings in the game.

4.) The UI in this game is atrocious. It is pure ugliness. In addition, the tactical map given to the player in the top right is pathetic, I don't even know why it exists.

5.) The victories are practically all the same. I don't understand why they did this. Whether you're Domination, Supremacy, or Harmony, you build a building you have to protect and spend time getting it working --with very slight variations-- and then win. I haven't tried contact but from what I've seen of the requirements it seems very similar to the other three.

The game is still quite a blast. But it suffers from being drained of color and vibrancy. Everything feels extremely detached and clinical, and thus it suffers as an experience. It's been fifteen years since Alpha Centauri came out and I still have fun listening to the quotes and personalities. It has been two days since I started playing Beyond Earth and so help me god if I hear anything about villages never being ruined by trade, Adam Smith, or something being mine for a price one more time I'm going to kill somebody

Edited by Esau of Isaac
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Also, I thought the terrain was cool personally, and while you could probably see the similarities in some of the terrain to Civ 5 if you played both in black and white, the colour scheme of the two games are so different that the map felt very unfamiliar to me.

Because Civ 5 happens on EARTH. At least, there are desert and snow in Civ 5. You just cant makeup a totally new terrain out of nowhere. This game setting is in another planet. You have the right to create a ton of new weird looking terrain with your creativity, just like what they did with the new resources. But they didnt. The terrain of BE reminds me a lot about...Earth. It's not a good thing, obviously.

2.) Piggybacking off of one, none of these faction personalities have any character whatsoever. Because of the function of diplomacy, everybody uses the exact same lines of text and so never references one another in an individual fashion. Faction personalities have like two genuine voiced lines (I am not exaggerating, you will hear the same short voiced lines over and over again forever), permissible for its predecessor which had dozens of civs but quite worrying for a game with eight.

This is exactly what I meant to say.

And of course, I honestly believe that the DLC will take care all of these problems. Damn DLC.

Edited by Magical Amber
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Some strategic/tactical impressions:

- Sponsor-wise. Franco-Iberia, Slavic Fed, Polystralia are top. Pan-Asia and KP are next. Then quite a gap, then Brasilia and ARC. African Union are the worst because of the health requirement as far as I can tell.
- Seeding wise. Artists > Engineer/Scientist/Aristocrat > Refugee. Culture is the most scarce, expands borders, and Artists give health. The middle 3 are all nice, Aristocrats mostly for health. Not that Refugees are that bad, but midgame, in my experience it’s so hard to get positive health with the food (unless going straight for Eudaimonia).
- Tectonic > Retrograde > Continental > Lifeform > Fusion. Seeing Titanium initially can be ridiculous because of +5 production. Then it’s just scouting stuff, and the reactor which is useless imo. But the first 4 are pretty similar.
- Machinery > Weapons > Laboratory > Hydroponic > Raw Materials. Worker synergizes with seeing Titanium really well and is more expensive than the Soldier. Soldier can be used to scout resource pods (I usually build one if I didn’t start with that). You don’t need Pioneering that super early, but should still tech it first. So Laboratory is mainly good so you can tech Engineering for Titanium first if you didn’t go Tectonic scanners. Last 2 are just small bonuses.
- I find doing all random pretty fun so you don’t do Artists, Tectonic Scanner, Machinery every time, which seems so far the best on average.

I’m not going to talk too much about trade routes. Wide play is my preferred, but because of decision-making and trade-offs when building stuff (having not enough production to build everything). When nothing really matters except trade routes (and more cities for trade routes, and autoplant for trade routes), it’s just tedious and uninteresting.

- The weaker trade mod does help matters, primarily because the trade-off involved when only having 1 route. The choice between boosting your cities and the international beakers (and diplo bonus) is very significant.
- Even with weaker trade routes, wide play and rex is still very strong since health doesn’t matter until -20. Though at some point later you probably want to go happiness virtues/buildings/biowells to get positive, for the effective +20% Science (with Knowledge opener).
- The AI seems to do slightly better on non-staggered starts, but I suspect that’s because the player gets less excavations and resource pods. It’s actually small difference overall (the AI doesn’t do well at all). Still, it’s a lot more fun to do staggered starts imo. More to explore and more interaction with the aliens.
- I don’t know if it’s coincidence or not, but my last games with the mod the AI did multiple early dows on me. I had trade routes going to them and couldn’t bribe them anywhere. So that was nice.
- However, while combat tactics are slightly improved, the affinity upgrade system doesn’t help them. It’s too easy to keep par or be superior on affinity, tier-wise, and defend with far less troops. The AI’s 20 Combat Rovers (aren’t upgraded until level 3) can’t do much against affinity level 1 Marines fortified (at least it’s a change from ranged units only). Timing attacks (prebuild, then get the affinity to mass upgrade) are extremely powerful with the current system, which ofc AI is notoriously bad at.
- The level 4 Affinity UUs are just broken. They are extremely cheap to build and are like double to triple the strength of everything else around the same tier. They are stronger than cities. You can just mass them if you have the strategic and roll over the AI. They’re easily relevant for 100+ turns.
- Prosperity to the free settler seems by far the best initial option. After that, should nearly always do a minor hybrid build in tier 1 for the free virtue, but all the other trees (or continue in Prosperity) seem viable to mess around in. I really like Might for the affinity boosts.
- Wonder-wise, Ectogenesis Pod is op, and you can usually get it, but it’s still easy to win without it. Most wonders seem like placeholders.
- Difficulty is even more map and land dependent. If you just get screwed with siege worms, miasma, and stations taking your expansions, you’ll fall like 50+ turns behind (still winnable). This is probably why certain mechanics are designed that way (in terms of the affinity, spies, etc), but eh.
- In addition, the randomness in ruins is also very high. Getting affinity from progenitor ruins is ridiculous when it comes to early rushes (can cut like 20++ turns). Getting culture from resource pods (which can happen twice in a row) gets you like a turn 5 Prosperity settler. Contact victory can occur in like 100 turns. Etcetc.
- Similarly, randomness in quests matters a lot for Autoplant trade routes, Fence for route immunity, and Institute free tech. Plus some affinity quests rely on randomness like alien nest locations/aggressiveness or certain buildings (that you’re not guaranteed the resource for), which is really relevant for the early pushes.

Finally, some of the design seems like it’d make for a more competitive mp if not for lolfiraxis, lolcivmp, lolrandomness. For example, the outpost mechanic, combined with the Might tree, plus cities retaining most of their pop on capture, and halved puppet time if you choose, hinders the ics of standard play and trade route spam. Ectogenesis pod is far more risky as a world wonder and especially if others are rushing the level 4 UUs. A lot of the city hp/defense quests don’t matter in sp, but could in mp.

Tl;dr, wait for patch (but you knew that, fwiw, that’s the status quo for these strategy games. >_>)

late edit: To emphasize that point, based Firaxis nerfing Tradition (a bit) and buffing early warmongering in BNW today. :DD

Edited by XeKr
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idk, I've been running through srw og2 instead of playing civ 5 during my sem break.

[a]and reading basics of political philosophy. :/ [/s]

I'm planning on getting civ:BE when the first expansion pack comes out.

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hey guys i noticed there were changes to civ 5, like the tradition tree, what exactly did get changed?

Basically you’re forced to take Oligarchy before Legalism (and therefore Monarchy/Landed Elite). This nerfs Tradition because:

- You can’t really skip the capital Monument anymore, so you usually have to trade off some Scouting and the immediate Shrine after researching Pottery (so possibly no/delayed pantheon on higher difficulties).

- Monarchy is delayed so you might have more happiness issues when expanding.

- Landed Elite is delayed so pop (and therefore prod/gold/sci) is lower, especially if you have to take it after Monarchy.

- Aristocracy is delayed so it doesn’t time with National College/Oracle/Petra/etc as well.

It’s still stronger in the ideal case (Culture ruins), but imo isn’t so much better than Liberty on average now. Liberty also got another indirect buff because early warmongering is less penalizing, and it’s (usually) better at that.

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Some strategic/tactical impressions:

- Sponsor-wise. Franco-Iberia, Slavic Fed, Polystralia are top. Pan-Asia and KP are next. Then quite a gap, then Brasilia and ARC. African Union are the worst because of the health requirement as far as I can tell.

- Seeding wise. Artists > Engineer/Scientist/Aristocrat > Refugee. Culture is the most scarce, expands borders, and Artists give health. The middle 3 are all nice, Aristocrats mostly for health. Not that Refugees are that bad, but midgame, in my experience it’s so hard to get positive health with the food (unless going straight for Eudaimonia).

- Tectonic > Retrograde > Continental > Lifeform > Fusion. Seeing Titanium initially can be ridiculous because of +5 production. Then it’s just scouting stuff, and the reactor which is useless imo. But the first 4 are pretty similar.

- Machinery > Weapons > Laboratory > Hydroponic > Raw Materials. Worker synergizes with seeing Titanium really well and is more expensive than the Soldier. Soldier can be used to scout resource pods (I usually build one if I didn’t start with that). You don’t need Pioneering that super early, but should still tech it first. So Laboratory is mainly good so you can tech Engineering for Titanium first if you didn’t go Tectonic scanners. Last 2 are just small bonuses.

- I find doing all random pretty fun so you don’t do Artists, Tectonic Scanner, Machinery every time, which seems so far the best on average.

I’m not going to talk too much about trade routes. Wide play is my preferred, but because of decision-making and trade-offs when building stuff (having not enough production to build everything). When nothing really matters except trade routes (and more cities for trade routes, and autoplant for trade routes), it’s just tedious and uninteresting.

- The weaker trade mod does help matters, primarily because the trade-off involved when only having 1 route. The choice between boosting your cities and the international beakers (and diplo bonus) is very significant.

- Even with weaker trade routes, wide play and rex is still very strong since health doesn’t matter until -20. Though at some point later you probably want to go happiness virtues/buildings/biowells to get positive, for the effective +20% Science (with Knowledge opener).

- The AI seems to do slightly better on non-staggered starts, but I suspect that’s because the player gets less excavations and resource pods. It’s actually small difference overall (the AI doesn’t do well at all). Still, it’s a lot more fun to do staggered starts imo. More to explore and more interaction with the aliens.

- I don’t know if it’s coincidence or not, but my last games with the mod the AI did multiple early dows on me. I had trade routes going to them and couldn’t bribe them anywhere. So that was nice.

- However, while combat tactics are slightly improved, the affinity upgrade system doesn’t help them. It’s too easy to keep par or be superior on affinity, tier-wise, and defend with far less troops. The AI’s 20 Combat Rovers (aren’t upgraded until level 3) can’t do much against affinity level 1 Marines fortified (at least it’s a change from ranged units only). Timing attacks (prebuild, then get the affinity to mass upgrade) are extremely powerful with the current system, which ofc AI is notoriously bad at.

- The level 4 Affinity UUs are just broken. They are extremely cheap to build and are like double to triple the strength of everything else around the same tier. They are stronger than cities. You can just mass them if you have the strategic and roll over the AI. They’re easily relevant for 100+ turns.

- Prosperity to the free settler seems by far the best initial option. After that, should nearly always do a minor hybrid build in tier 1 for the free virtue, but all the other trees (or continue in Prosperity) seem viable to mess around in. I really like Might for the affinity boosts.

- Wonder-wise, Ectogenesis Pod is op, and you can usually get it, but it’s still easy to win without it. Most wonders seem like placeholders.

- Difficulty is even more map and land dependent. If you just get screwed with siege worms, miasma, and stations taking your expansions, you’ll fall like 50+ turns behind (still winnable). This is probably why certain mechanics are designed that way (in terms of the affinity, spies, etc), but eh.

- In addition, the randomness in ruins is also very high. Getting affinity from progenitor ruins is ridiculous when it comes to early rushes (can cut like 20++ turns). Getting culture from resource pods (which can happen twice in a row) gets you like a turn 5 Prosperity settler. Contact victory can occur in like 100 turns. Etcetc.

- Similarly, randomness in quests matters a lot for Autoplant trade routes, Fence for route immunity, and Institute free tech. Plus some affinity quests rely on randomness like alien nest locations/aggressiveness or certain buildings (that you’re not guaranteed the resource for), which is really relevant for the early pushes.

Finally, some of the design seems like it’d make for a more competitive mp if not for lolfiraxis, lolcivmp, lolrandomness. For example, the outpost mechanic, combined with the Might tree, plus cities retaining most of their pop on capture, and halved puppet time if you choose, hinders the ics of standard play and trade route spam. Ectogenesis pod is far more risky as a world wonder and especially if others are rushing the level 4 UUs. A lot of the city hp/defense quests don’t matter in sp, but could in mp.

Tl;dr, wait for patch (but you knew that, fwiw, that’s the status quo for these strategy games. >_>)

late edit: To emphasize that point, based Firaxis nerfing Tradition (a bit) and buffing early warmongering in BNW today. :DD

I think its telling that I've been using literally the same strats, and this is the first time I've read about what anybody else has been doing. The only difference is I havent really bothered with warmongering, its too chance dependent on getting early affinity quests and not having a huge swathe of aliens and rugged terrain between you and you enemies. Also, Ive been tending to go Harmony each time because Transcendence is so much simpler than Emancipation or promised land, which is just BAD. I haven't really tried Contact yet, mostly because I haven't bothered and Ive never gotten a piece of the signal from a ruin despite having played a good number of games at this point. I could never consistently beat Immortal on Civ 5 and I find even Apollo pretty easy, although honestly I would say it is a little closer to Emperor than to King.

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  • 3 weeks later...

won my first deity victory yesterday!

I'd tried a couple times the last few weeks with Inca but unfortunately it just wasn't working out, maybe due to bad starts where I got no mountains near my capital all three times and could only settle near mountains with my secondary cities once or twice. Anyways I switched to Poland and it was a relatively smooth ride to the spaceship. Germany was threatening Diplo but I ruined it super-early by putting all my spies into city states and putting all my votes into America so that he wouldn't become the host. He switched to a cultural/domination type of victory but he wasn't smart in terms of which civs he took over. He captured Spain and America's capitals but he was already influential over both of them when he did that. He should have aimed for Egypt and Songhai, who were the main civs slowing down his CV (he was influential over me too). Near the end he put up the Apollo Program and then three spaceship parts in just a few turns but it was too late at that point. I was a little worried I was taking too long to catch up in tech but I passed Germany somewhere in the Modern Era and it was fairly easy after that. It helped that Germany/America/Spain all became friends in the early-midgame to give me RAs and Egypt was nice at the end after Spain got wiped out and Germany/America stopped wanting to be friends (though they were still nice-ish).

I'm really starting to like the idea of putting spies in city states; I think I only stole maybe two or three techs and then just put them all in city states and the increased culture, luxes, and happiness was all really helpful.

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Stealing technologies might be useful at first, but once you hit the industrial age it's a 50% gamble that takes 60 or more turns to pay off so generally you want to steal a couple easy techs with your first spy to raise his level and then hit city states.

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So they released the first major patch for Beyond Earth.

I dunno. A lot of the changes were necessary to make sure everyone wasn't doing literally the same exact thing, but I feel like the game is still barren and without any real personality. I played Pandora months before this game came out, it was clearly made to cash in on Beyond Earth's hype. And you know what? They're almost the exact same. Both of them feel way, waaaaay too clinical.

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kind of have to agree; played BE for a while but now I'm back to Civ 5 and it's just so much more fun.

Tried Deity with Maya this time but it seems I have some way to go in perfecting my strategy.... got wiped out by Siam just as I was starting to catch up in tech (around Modern era again). In hindsight I should have helped out my buddies India while Siam was attacking them because I should have realized that Siam would go after me next, but I was struggling with unhappiness problems because ~ideologies and that was giving me gold problems too, because I was having to pay ridiculous amounts for luxes to civs that weren't giving me fair deals. It didn't help that I wasn't able to become allies with CSs this time around; a lot of the civs were pumping money into the CSs or putting their own spies in there which wasn't the case last time. It was also harder to fulfill trade route quests because my capital placement sucked. My second city was also kind of far away from my capital and my third city (settled there for a natural wonder and some luxes).

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The last patch fixed the incredibly overpowered trade routes and that makes the game much more tolerable but it still has the same issue: After turn 100, the game spirals out of control because expanding is the best possible tactic and there's no actual drawback to it or alternative to it.

Concerning personality, yeah, CivBE has none and I doubt it ever will. Our only hope at this moment is to have someone mod the SMAC factions in, which will inevitably happen.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Unless one particularly likes the space setting (which is not that innovative here. Doesn't help a lot of the lore is hidden or presentation is lacking), I think BE doesn't differ enough from Civ 5 (which can be modded/overhauled more too), a substantially more polished and involved game, to be that fun. Basically just the "I'd rather play Civ 5" feeling.

It's not like Civ 5 ever really loses replayability either. Or at least I always find myself coming back after some time. >_>

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I've heard good things about Endless Legend being a great alternative to civ be, can anyone illuminate me as to why?? Most reviews just say that it does the things civ be wanted to do, and does them right.

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I've never really understood the comparisons between Endless Legend and BE, they're not very similar aside from being 4X games. Endless Legend has a few novel mechanics, notably that you manually expand a city's borders and thus have to strategically decide the placement of hexes to get the most yield. It's generally similar to Endless Space in its application of workers and generals, but it has several small mechanics that really help to make matches fun. Strategic resources, for example, can be either hoarded for use towards buildings or expended to offer faction-bonuses for a duration. Another one that is small but interesting in practice is the need to subsume smaller city-states in your borders, whether diplomatically, economically, or forcefully, and thus gain permanent benefits and new military units.

If I were to compare BE to anything it would be Pandora. They are almost entirely alike, in all honesty, they even sound like they have the same emotionless announcer droning during technology breakthroughs.

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My problem with Endless Legend is that it’s too easy on all but Endless where it’s not that easy but also not that fun. BNW manages to remain fun in Deity (for me), and moreover the modding community is far more significant, though clearly a function of popularity.

It was incredibly fun to learn to play though, moving up the difficulties. Just feels more and more broken as you gain game knowledge. >_>

Also random note wrt to BE postpatch, for those curious, generally they addressed the major concerns, but the some of the “solutions” are quite inelegant. Trade routes in particular are rather counterintuitive and require a reverse, colonialism type interpretation (even then, weird stuff happens).

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Civ 5 with all dlc >> Endless Legend >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> BE. Also, I hate Firaxis now. I will never buy or play another game of yours ever again, you sell-out AE wannabe. I have never played any game that is as barren and lacklusting as BE. Have fun with chopping the game into pieces and selling each of them as an overpriced dlc. I am out.

Edited by Magical Amber
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