Civ: Beyond Earth release tonight!

[Nazrark]

Finding the ruins was interesting. Required me to excavate it then build a laboratory and then send a military unit it. Afterwards I finished on I proceeded to try and find them all. It led me to war with a few of them trapped in the Slavic nation territory. I've gone to war over resources in Civ 5. It was strange to go to war over ruins. Considering the bonus they have is pretty impactful on the game itself.

[SirRobin]

Lord save me from boredom on Friday nights. Before kids I would go to bars and strip clubs. Now? Once they are in bed its game time. At least I got it for less than $40 through GMG. Not bad but agree with most of the complaints. Meh... Let's see what dlc and mods bring.

[Duncano]

According to my personal taste - 4/10.

- It's quite easy once you understand it.
- Click, click, next turn, click, click, next turn - victory.
- Boring in general
- Simple AI (suicidal attacks)
- Horrific diplomacy
- Cultural perks don't provide any meaningful impact

All in all, it's like Civ 5 with less options.

[looorg]

I find it fairly good, not as good as I would have liked or hoped tho. It's clearly not as polished as the standard civilization games, or even as polished as SMAC was. I expect BIG patches and fixes to come. I think I would have been fine waiting until the eventual xmas sale that is just over a month away on steam to buy this instead of buying it now.

There are interesting things about the game, most of them have to do with being new I think. So there is an element of exploration in both the game world and the system. But that is fading quite fast as I play thru my marathon games.

The AI is as stupid as ever, it seems like they never learn from game to game how to improve that aspect. On marathon it seems the AI spawn aliens every 25turn, hives return to where they got wiped up last time so you can basically "farm" hives for energy (gold, cash) and science (if you have that virtue) until the end of the game if you like.

One thing I find really annoying is that there isn't a scale for the UI so everything is HUGE. There are standard things they hid to such as finding the damn build-queue for your citites (it probably took a few hours of play to notice that ACTIVATE checkbox while in the city). The whole cityscreen is more or less a joke that could have been done away with.

Someone clearly didn't think thru how trade works, having to every turn micromanage a large amount of trade-caravan-units manually is a giant pain in the ass that needs to be automated or guided by rules and not for me to have to decide upon. It works when you have a couple of them and few cities but as your empire grows it seriously starts so suck; until i just said fuck it and started to click randomly at whatever comes up available in the list. In late stages of the game you have to be some kind of masochist to do that, it's either mindless random clicking or you just put them to sleep (since there is a virtue bonus for having them) or you turn them into credits.

There are a few processing bugs in the game that are quite annoying; buildings you buy don't affect the city. You have to save and load for them to process some of them -- such as buildings that give health. Units works fine.

Sometimes the "heal" icon doesn't show up so you just have to pass or sleep to heal units; usually non soldiers or alien units.

Still not entirely sure how the spying aspect work. It's an endless stream of fire and forget and hope for the best. Go place X, establish base, do a 52-57 turn mission and hope for something good. There seems to be a limit on how many spies you can have to and the intrigue goes down to fast, I have still to be able to run a lv4 intrigue mission (it's a quest). So you have one spy running HQ mission, one running counterintel and the others are out and about in the world.

The satellite system, you can really live without. It hasn't done much for me. There should be some interesting ways if you say in early conquest games make haste for planet carvers and then you just blast the world and your foes to pieces.

I like how the soldiers develop, instead of having to keep track of countless units and upgrade etc they all just do it automatically depending on your affinity upgrade.

Explorers in miasma that are doing an expedition. God how annoying that is that it won't break out of it. I lost quite a few that you sort of put someplace and then you forget about them and then they work themselves to death. I would like some way to quick overview them instead of having to zoom across the world looking for them.

The virtue system works fine I think. Good spread and interesting bonuses. The building bonus gets a tad annoying tho after awhile -- (almost) everything you construct you have to choose a specialization for the first time (that can never be changed).

I don't know if it's me and my playstyle or the questsystem but it seems to be drawing me to the Contact victory condition in every single game.

[SavoirFaire]

This game caught my eye because Alpha Centauri was the last turn based strategy (4x I guess they call them now) game I played heavily.

Seeing how long ago that was, grab this, or grab Civ 5 + expansions?

[cudomix]

I'd rather get Civ5+expansions (if you can wait till winter sale you'll be able to get it dirt cheap), it is first civ I liked since civ2 (once expansions came out). I was on the verge of buying this, then said fuck it and reinstalled Alpha Centauri. Morgan Industries, here i come...

[Frozenbeef]

After playing it all day i much prefer civ 5 , this doesn't even add buildings onto the map...like in civ 5 if you built a wall a wall would be placed around your city, same with wonders

[looorg]

After playing it all day i much prefer civ 5 , this doesn't even add buildings onto the map...like in civ 5 if you built a wall a wall would be placed around your city, same with wonders

Wonders show up on the world if you build them, they are found on the hexes around the center cityhex -- most of them are probably hard to see tho since they are mostly just higher tower with things pointing out etc.

[Raiju]

It didn't grab me on my first play last night compared to Civ 5, gotta say.

Agreed having siege worms attacking so early into the game was awkward. Manageable, but awkward.
AI on the standard difficulty does appear to suicide itself, not even along a hive mind mentality, just straight suicide.
as much as I thought I'd enjoy it more because of the new setting - I found a lot of the buildings just sounded like gives bonus X or Y because the names didn't always even sound relevant. I will probably get used to this though.
City states appeared to practically give me money after waging war on me and then doing nothing. I don't really know why as I wasn't aggressive, but it felt more engaging in Civ 5 when htey tried to rip me off given the opportunity (like I would them)

[Ytlayol]

I got so confused playing it yesterday, between the new web tree and all the new space terms thrown at me, I couldn't grasp on what's what with 80 turns in. Seems like I need to play it a bit more to get familiar with it. I haven't played civ 5 in months so I can only barely remember of how civ 5 played like.

[endersblade]

The one thing that sticks out the most when I read reviews, is that it is pretty much just a mod for civilization 5, and should not have been priced as a full game. It sounds like a lot of the parts that made civilization 5 fun, got stripped out. I was looking forward to this game, but after everything I have read, I may have to pass until they fix things.

there is actually another game, I think made by a third party company, that comes across as a better Alpha Centauri sequel. I got it on steam, can't recall the name, but it was actually enjoyable.

[Deleted]

If you still like playing Civ 5, play Civ 5, if like me, you've already put nearly 400 hours in Civ V, and your pretty bored of it, then Beyond Earth is a pretty nice change of pace. I knew it would be, not worse, but "lacking" when it came to coming up against Civ V comparisons, but at the same time, when Beyond Earth has been out for as many years as Civ V, I think it'll be a fair comparison, so it's more of an investment, imo, into a game that will continue to grow.

[FobManX]

I like it, but it hasn't gripped me the way Civ V has. Civ V I could play for hours and hours and just completely lose track of time. BE I'm kinda just out of it after a couple of hours.

Definitely feels more like a Civ V mod than a brand new game. Lot of the same things just replaced with different names. Energy instead of gold for example. It doesn't really feel new the way Civ V felt new after playing Civ IV.

I also think the way the tech tree is set up is just way too confusing and overwhelming. Like they just overload you with so much information right from the getgo and you have no clue what to do so you kinda just randomly pick things that look/sound appealing only to discover you really hurt yourself by not getting an earlier tech.

I think the overall vision was good but the game is not very well fleshed out or polished. They probably could have worked on it a few more months.

[Thyranne]

+I love the research web.
+The alien AI is interesting.
+Quests are cool (but will probably get boring after more matches).

-Trade is OP
-I hated having to tell my traders where to go every few turn in CiV and I'm surprised they didn't add a "Remember my last trade route".
-Diplomacy is worse than CiV (which was already bad).
-Social policy in CiV is better than the virtue system. They really allowed you to change your strategy while virtues...just feels like a bonus that you get every few turns.
-Wonders are really bad.
-The AI (not alien) is really dumb.
-I'm hardly bothering with production. I just focus on energy and instant buy the stuffs that I want.

It's a good game but it has a lot of flaws (just like CiV vanilla had). Hopefuly a DLC will make it a 9.5/10 for me, but for now 7/10.

[LilSaihah]

From what it looks, it's basically a Civ 5 expac, but it costs $90 because lol Australian prices. =/

Guess I'll be waiting for the game+expansions bundle.