Cid Meir Byond Spess

[srifenbyxp]

Yeeerrrrppppp. If you've played any civ game this one is no better. It has a confusing ass tech tree but by god I do get a hard on when spess marines comes in and fucks shit up. I'm playing as the Sudakas and I just got done subjugating the entire continent I started on.

If anyone wants to play and get wrecked by 100% imperial sudaka might hit me upppppp.

[dezzmont]

From what I read and heard about it, it actually is a decent departure from regular civ. Apparently it is sort of like Endless Space in that the tech tree gets less and less linear as you go up resulting in civilizations playing differently, only the tree is even less linear than Endless space. That bodes very well for multiplayer potential, in the same way DOM 4 has good multiplayer potential because even within one nation research branches and pretenders cause very different counter strategies to form mid game.

Also apparently the alien system is bad ass. One reviewer I read said "I wrote half the continent off as uninhabitable until I researched fighter jets" which is an interesting mechanic. I mean even in SMAC fungus and mindworms didn't seriously limit your ability to expand, so the main gateway to expansion into new territory was waiting to get the OP as shit sea colonies. It also naturally solves the continent problem civ always had: Multi continent games either just segregated players into a pseudo tournament where one player runs a continent only for the player on the largest one to win, or there had to be an uninhabited new world that didn't really reward you when you colonized it. Barbarian meatwalls that reward you for teching up by giving you perks and potentially lucrative places to colonize that are already directly neighboring your current settlements actually is a decent mechanic, it is why it a similar mechanic in terms of colonization tech is used in nearly every space X4.

It could totally suck and be bland, but from what I head about it it sounds like a well designed multiplayer 4x. Even if it wasn't SMAC I would appreciate a smart 4X that has better multiplayer design than ES and that isn't needlessly complicated and bloated like SOTS 2 was.

Also please tell me that there is an Indian subcontinent faction that is amazingly war happy.

[ColonicAcid]

it's
shit
after the first game and the novelty runs off.

[srifenbyxp]

Nope, only the Sudakas have anything remotely war happyable with 10% melee for all units. Max out your infintry's level and their nothing short than killing machines abled to take on a level 5 city and win. I was going to research how to make my own Civ. Nanotransen Syndicate Twinkers shall be victorious

[Riley]

It's a 6/10, 7/10 at best, even if you reign in your hopes of it being a spiritual successor to SMAC. Unless you're absolutely starved for shit to do, I'd wait until it goes on sale.

At brief, things BE does well:

- The Affinity system is both fun and fairly meaningful
- Tech web is more fun and flexible than a tech tree, though it needs some balancing
- The quest system was surprisingly well-done and helps contribute to the game's atmosphere
- The new unit upgrade system is decent, though it's sacrificing some of the older game's customization (no Logistics, Blitz, etc; 'level ups' are a choice between a 10% attack buff or a 50% heal)

At length, things BE does poorly:

- Aliens. They stop being a threat after 100 turns, or whenever you get your first T2 unit, and do not scale into the lategame. Upgrades from buildings/quests completely neuter them - your scouts/traders become immune to their attacks, and they can't approach your cities.

- The writing is a flop. I hear 'it's not meant to be Alpha Centauri!' a lot, but it manages to be worse than Civ 5. Quotes accompanying wonders/techs are extremely bland - often to the point of leaving you wondering just what the fuck you even built/researched - and they're all read by the same female narrator. This is extra perplexing when, if you look into the Civilopedia articles attached to these things, you find several examples of fairly solid writing that could've just as easily served as quotations.

- The wonders are so bad they're often worse than normal buildings despite having 2x or 3x the production cost.

- AI is shit. This isn't surprising for a 4X game, but it feels worse than Civ 5, somehow. You can beat Apollo (Deity, though I use the term lightly) difficulty with your eyes closed.

- 8 factions is not at all enough to populate a standard-sized map, especially with independent stations not claiming territory.

- Poor balance in general. The tiered web system makes free techs OP, affinity-rushing is encouraged since that's what your units upgrades are tied to, health is a lot less punishing than happiness but it might as well be meaningless, internal trade routes are fucking broken, etc. All of these will probably be fixed in time, though.

- AS ADAM SMITH SAID, NO VILLAGE WAZEBA RUIN BY TRADE, FOR A PRICE

[dezzmont]

I am more interested in the multiplayer frankly. No X4 is meant to be played alone.

SMAC is a fairly weak X4 when played alone, the AI is just terrible and the interesting terraforming options didn't matter with the AI, nor did the balance of psi-traditional-resonance weaponry. Many factions were ridiculously strong in single player as well such as the peacemakers and the accademy. It is great because of the multiplayer dynamic you get with ecos vs non-ecos and how they both had proactive ways to fuck with the environment for personal gain, how meaningful the faction bonuses were to how you played without being overwhelming (Until the expansion), and how much nuance wonder specialization was, and because the gameplay was good we remembered the truly amazing story elements.

In B4 I was the only person playing SMAC with other people. Shit was amazing, using a planetbuster to turn an opponent's cities to deserts by teraforming a mountain to their east goes beyond novelty and becomes a great way to break a stalemate in multiplayer, and the psi-mechanic was a great way to deal with high armor unit spam from anyone besides Santiago.

As for my thoughts on specific points:

In my mind Aliens only need to be able to limit the potential of early game expansion by preventing you from blobbing out early and winning just by some lucky expansion spot that gave you a compounding +1 hammer a turn. If they do that, then mission accomplished, they are better than barbarians.

The inability for your borders to encapsulate the map is actually a pretty interesting and important thing because it prevents an end game stalemate that is very common in other X4s. It is a decent alternative to having weak borders that don't matter like Endless Legend or SOTS 1. It does require borders to be a very strong mechanic though. It sounds like from what I read it is for Harmony and Purity, with Harmony basically poisoning their lands and getting free chaff defense from aliens where as Purity tends to habitat super inhospitable areas that with the combination of border restrictions and movement restrictions heavily limits the types of units that can attack. Civ games have traditionally had moderately strong borders to the point it interferes with the end game heavily, so this is a change I can get behind. The point is one faction needs to establish a new stable world order, it isn't like civilization where you want to simulate a balkanized world.

Internal trade routes seem deliberately very strong considering one sponsor's entire bonus is "Start with 2 extra." However considering how many anti-expansionist mechanics they added that is an odd design choice that probably should be limited to that one sponsor.

Encouraging tech rushing and mindlessly pushing affinity is a pretty terrible flaw considering the point of a tech web is to allow people to nab techs to create a unique playstyle ala SOTS 1 or to some extent Endless Space that will be different than everyone else at the table. My question there is "Do players of the same Affinity feel the same in essence?" Or is it more like SOTS 1 where two similar races may end up with a totally different tech path that changes how they play on the tactical level and creates a unique ship identity for that game different than any other player?

[Incomptinence]

Well sots 1 kinda cheats by making the available techs random but decisions based on what was feasible to be unlocked for you radically changed play style yeah.

[Riley]

I'm mostly a single player guy, myself. I like the stories 4X games can create with good narrative. I have a lot of fond memories playing Fall from Heaven on Civ 4, for example - fighting the Sheiam to stop them from bringing about the end of the world. Failing anyways because my Elohim allies summoned the Mercurians. Its strongass barbarians kept you on your toes well into the midgame, too. I do remember playing SMAC with friends and the implicit agreement to nuke anyone trying to build the Empath Guild, though.

BE's multiplayer has potential. Affinities turned out to be more unique than I thought. Supremacy was talked about a lot in reviews/interviews for their formation-based combat bonuses, but they also have some of the best unique buildings and the strongest ranged units. Harmony units heal quickly and get ridiculous bonuses for fighting away from allies, promoting a strike-from-the-satellite-spread-miasma guerrilla playstyle. Purity units can cross canyons and water and get sizable bonuses for attacking with unspent move points.

You can double-dip affinities, too, and I think it's encouraged since the unique buildings are locked behind affinity level. Purity can make their explorers immune to aliens early on, while Supremacy gets no-maintenance roads and magrails 3 levels in.

The spy system is also really good. They'll always be doing something, and if unchecked can even steal capital cities from enemy players, though I imagine that'll be patched at some point.

[dezzmont]

Well sots 1 kinda cheats by making the available techs random but decisions based on what was feasible to be unlocked for you radically changed play style yeah.

That mostly is there to prevent an easy strategy read based on player and prevented you from rushing for a specific tech. You couldn't go for some super awesome laser or deflector, so you needed to play around stuff that you had that was realistic and on top of that try to counter what your enemy was doing. If you got lots of kenetics your enemy may get directional deflectors. You may go into lasers then, but you may not have the option and instead need to go into comparitively worse fighters or missiles for this situation, or you may be forced to go for having such powerful engines you can get behind your enemy quickly and kill their turning.

I'm mostly a single player guy, myself. I like the stories 4X games can create with good narrative. I have a lot of fond memories playing Fall from Heaven on Civ 4, for example - fighting the Sheiam to stop them from bringing about the end of the world. Failing anyways because my Elohim allies summoned the Mercurians. Its strongass barbarians kept you on your toes well into the midgame, too. I do remember playing SMAC with friends and the implicit agreement to nuke anyone trying to build the Empath Guild, though.

BE's multiplayer has potential. Affinities turned out to be more unique than I thought. Supremacy was talked about a lot in reviews/interviews for their formation-based combat bonuses, but they also have some of the best unique buildings and the strongest ranged units. Harmony units heal quickly and get ridiculous bonuses for fighting away from allies, promoting a strike-from-the-satellite-spread-miasma guerrilla playstyle. Purity units can cross canyons and water and get sizable bonuses for attacking with unspent move points.

You can double-dip affinities, too, and I think it's encouraged since the unique buildings are locked behind affinity level. Purity can make their explorers immune to aliens early on, while Supremacy gets no-maintenance roads and magrails 3 levels in.

The spy system is also really good. They'll always be doing something, and if unchecked can even steal capital cities from enemy players, though I imagine that'll be patched at some point.

Fall from heaven is a fucking amazing mod and is the only X4 I ever seriously played solo.

And I was thinking that a lot of design choices were based around multiplayer X4 play to open it up a bit. The fact that you are supposed to not sprawl out and instead focus on select settlements has been a goal from Civ 5 (Which failed) and clearly a lot went into trying to do that here, with the health system coming back and the aliens preventing early hyper-expansion.

[Remie Richards]

- AS ADAM SMITH SAID, NO VILLAGE WAZEBA RUIN BY TRADE, FOR A PRICE

These quotes! My god, They're soooo annoying, it's like they only have one voiceclip for trading with you.

[Timbrewolf]

This game made me excited for a new Alpha Centauri and it's not that at all.

This game stands as proof that they have no fucking clue what people want or how to give it to them. The passion has gone out of the thing and it is just a skeleton being dragged from its crypt and cast at the front door of our homes.

Is there still any hope for Gal Civ 3? http://www.galciv3.com/

[srifenbyxp]

Just got down 100% owning da fucking world through muderdicking everyone. Don't know why health is important besides it effecting city growth, trade with random people in the beginning and when you got enough generator builts murder dick the nearest Civ. The only important factor is power and loads of generators to sustain that power. Supremacy and Might all the way.

Forgot to say the French are god dam cowards, at war with them and their polakian brother they saw me roll up on a polak base and instantly gave me every resource they had to end the war. Then the second time around they gave me a lvl 19 city to leave them be, mainly because the peeps super grande' size battle tank.

Spoiler:

This was on hard by the way

[capi duffman]

This is not Alpha Centauri, I never hoped it would be Alpha Centauri.

Since I didn't got my hopes high, I'm not even phased of this game being a letdown for some.

But seriously, knowing how CIV V was. Did anyone really expected to see those lines from AC again? Science fiction done so well, not only it manages to pass as credible science, but even bothering to include moral and theological issues in some of them? We must dissent.

Is there still any hope for Gal Civ 3? http://www.galciv3.com/

It's in early access, isn't it?

[Steelpoint]

Like the past two Civilization games (Civ 4 and 5), they were bad and broken upon release but are now considered some of the greatest games ever after patches and expansion packs, I'm hopeful this will be the case for Beyond Earth.

I'm currently playing the game and I'm quite enjoying it, I think the early game is extremely well done but the game starts to petter out in the mid to late game.

[Kot]

I hate that there is literally one type of planet ever. I mean there are modifiers but all of them are pretty much same, just like the ones from Civs.
But hey, Alpha Centauri didin't had more than one too.

[Steelpoint]

Depends on what you mean, I've just won a game that is set on a very icy planet.

[Kavaloosh]

- AS ADAM SMITH SAID, NO VILLAGE WAZEBA RUIN BY TRADE, FOR A PRICE

screw you man adam smith didn't even say that

[srifenbyxp]

I was doing a game of Hard, I was trying to not attack a faction because felt like making an outpost in between two of my city and just as I was about to start minding my own business.

[Kot]

Depends on what you mean, I've just won a game that is set on a very icy planet.

I mean something that changes gameplay very much, like different gameplay mechanisms. And BS has that weird (miasma?) gas everywhere, same aliens, same cracks in earth, etc.

[oranges]

Enjoyed it at first, but not enough new mechanics to get over my CIV v burnout

[Ricotez]

It's Free Weekend on Steam so I'm trying it out.

Won't buy it whatsoever, though. Not because I already made my mind up, but because I'm out of money.

[Tsaricide]

I still prefer civ5 and Endless Legend over this, hopefully the expansion packs will make it more fun.

I just wish I had saved my money instead of pre ordering this.

[Cipher3]

I just wish I had saved my money instead of pre ordering this.

I almost pre-ordered but after Rome II I TRUST NOTHING.

[mrpain]

Is this shit worth the $30 steam is selling it for right now?

[Ricotez]

Looking at the Steam reviews - no.

I haven't played enough of it myself yet to really be able to judge it, but it looks like the kind of cash cow game that should've been 30 bucks when it launched.

[srifenbyxp]

Made this thread a while ago so I felt like I should post this. In fact I will post this in every old thread that some how manages to get back to page one. And yeah it's worth $20 at most not $30.

[Reyouka]

Necroposting, but Rising Tide is actually pretty fun.