First Impressions

Krajzen

Krajzen

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...well personally I still don't have first impressions as BE is installing/downloading on my Steam :p

But generally once the game awakes, what do you think? ;)
 
I love it. Got to bed way to late. Wanna go home and play. Franco-Iberia rules. AIs are dumb.

A treat for any civ player.
 
I have to play more, but, so far, the game did not impressed me.

Im probably just tired of playing CiV (890h) and CivBE did not change the mechanics enough, for me at least. I dont see myself playing this for long. Two or three campaigns and I will move on to other stuff (Art of War DLC for EU IV cmost likely).

I dont regret buying tough- I like to support 2k/Firafix - but my main feeling is that CivBE is just an "ok game". Its not a re-skin of CiV, but, also, its not a great step foward.
 
It's okay. Reminds me a lot of how Civ V Vanilla was, except more balanced (+) but with boring leaders/nations I cant tell apart (-1). Some objects are *really* hard to see on the map as well (-1). Nice model designs and animations (+1).


Overall it feels more like a reskin mod for Civ V Vanilla rather than a new game.


FWIW, if the option was "Beyond Earth" versus "a third expansion for Civ V" the 3rd expansion would win by a landslide. There isn't nearly as much going on for this game like Civ 5 has. BNW actually changed more for the Civ series than BE does in its entire package. Which just seems weird.
 
My only concern with the game is it is a bit of a learning curve jumping in from Civ IV with no experience of CiV. I feel like my empire is stagnating on the easiest setting. Much to learn, but it's fun.
 
It is easy to get lost in the tech web, even for someone like myself who did my research going into the game.
 
I'm having a blast. It feels a lot more complex than Civ V, just for the fact that navigating future tech/building requires more learning than history based ones. The tech web is hard but fun, and the search function surely helps. The new systems (affinity, virtues and orbital) are very neat, and I like interacting with them. Also, Aliens > Barbarians.

There are two things I'm not so wild about (yet). First I still have to find out how to go deep with a city specialization. Everything feels a little bit scattered. Second is that distinguishing affinities and sponsors is pretty hard, and I don't feel the "ah he's going for war" yet.

but all in all I'm sure I will play this for hundreds of hours. :p
 
Loving it so far. Much more free form then five, not.nearly as rigid or caddy cornering. My only gripe so far is how flavorless the game is, the leaders are boring and all of the story elements are weak and forces. Also if you thought the tech gap in V made a big difference, wait until you attack somebody with even a single tier over them, you will deeeeessstroy them.
 
First impression is between "mixed" and "meh". Reminds me an aweful lot of CIV5 vanilla: Some good ideas, but mechanical problems, questionable design decisions and TERRIBLE balance. It's an okay-ish CIV5 spinoff, but not nearly as good as I have hoped.

I really hope that they will reduce the number of trade routes (or add an automation) function, because I have spend more time with re-assigning them than anything else. They are a giant PITA and by far the worst thing about the game. Not to mention they force REXing and completely flip the balance from buildings and tile improvements during the early and mid game. Blech.

The AI is also terrible. Hutama has created a carpet of doom near my station but refuses to attack, sitting there for 50 turns now. Not even his ranged units are firing. I assume it is due to a station and a lake that block some tiles - he just can't handle it.

What surprised me is how good Knowledge is. Considering that health is irrelevant I pick Knowledge first and can get the penalty reducing virtues by the time I settle my first city. The +2 science from academies is also quite strong - a 5 science tile is a powerful mid to late game option!

What I really hate is that the aliens and the alien planet have no impact past the early game. There is absolutely no feeling of colonizing a new world once you have reached turn 100+. Aliens are passive, they can easily be repelled with Ultrasonic Fences and Trade Routes become immune to them rather quickly.
 
Fantastic upgrade from CV: BNW, I kept quitting CiV because I ended up pushing next turn, next turn, next turn, next turn and finally I get to move one unit then press next turn, it was awful. I just couldn't accept that AI turns took longer than my turn.

Seems to be the major design change that you really have a lot to do in your turn, no matter what game turn it is.
 
I played a bit this morning before work.

I can't speak toward balance or anything like that, but as a first impression I do like the overall feel of the decision making in comparison to Civ. The technology web and virtue tree make me feel like I have a lot more control in customizing my colony than I really felt with the Civ equivalents. I'm sure someone will optimize some mix/max path, but that doesn't concern me so much.

A change I really like (and didn't really think all that much about up to release) was the removal of luxury resources. In some ways, I feel this really opens up your options in terms of where you can settle and expand. I felt like Civ maps had only a handful of really good spots to settle, and most of them were already taken by minors. Here, I feel like I have many more options in which direction to expand my borders, which I feel is a nice return to the older style of games.

Not to mention the customization options you get right out of the gate. That seems to be the keyword for this game in comparison to Civ5: customization. Even buildings get customized through quests.
 
The AI is pretty terrible. The biggest problems Ive seen so far are AI units bouncing back and forth and alien units not attacking.
 
Well, alien units are supposed to be more or less neutral if you don't provoke them, but there is no excuse for the colony AI to not know how to use its units.
 
After playing more past T150.

The trade route system is unbearable. I don't understand why they didn't make it easier to both sort the trade list and find the "previous route". I'm SOOOOOOOO annoyed reassigning trade routes every turn.
 
GAGA Extrem said:
First impression is between "mixed" and "meh". Reminds me an aweful lot of CIV5 vanilla: Some good ideas, but mechanical problems, questionable design decisions and TERRIBLE balance. It's an okay-ish CIV5 spinoff, but not nearly as good as I have hoped.

I really hope that they will reduce the number of trade routes (or add an automation) function, because I have spend more time with re-assigning them than anything else. They are a giant PITA and by far the worst thing about the game. Not to mention they force REXing and completely flip the balance from buildings and tile improvements during the early and mid game. Blech.

The AI is also terrible. Hutama has created a carpet of doom near my station but refuses to attack, sitting there for 50 turns now. Not even his ranged units are firing. I assume it is due to a station and a lake that block some tiles - he just can't handle it.

What surprised me is how good Knowledge is. Considering that health is irrelevant I pick Knowledge first and can get the penalty reducing virtues by the time I settle my first city. The +2 science from academies is also quite strong - a 5 science tile is a powerful mid to late game option!

What I really hate is that the aliens and the alien planet have no impact past the early game. There is absolutely no feeling of colonizing a new world once you have reached turn 100+. Aliens are passive, they can easily be repelled with Ultrasonic Fences and Trade Routes become immune to them rather quickly.
Click to expand...

Agree with everything you say. I'll have to add that I'm disappointed in prosperity, as expected. While being a nice starter, I will probably never get to motivate myself to go through it's first virtues if I didn't start with it. Makes it terribly unflexible. Takes variety out of the game.

One thing I didn't expect is how badly PAC plays. I thought it would be the strongest faction and it's actually the weakest. The worker bonus makes no difference until you get another bonus, because all improvements take the same time. Additionally, wonders are pretty weak and dull. Take Deadalus Ladder for example. It has one to none additional yields over the best upgraded standard buildings and no general bonus on top of that... WOW... what a 'wonder'... :sad: Also it seems there is no efficient way to go for as many wonders as possible, since you have to ignore too much other more important stuff for that. So you end up bulding 3-4 wonders MAX. PAC is really meh... They should improve their ability, or even better, make wonders stronger and more interesting.
 
I haven't gotten a chance to play yet, I hope most of the critiques are vitriol while playing on lower difficulties and not honest assessments of how difficult the game is on Apollo.
 
I like how the game feels in general, though. I also love the whole new way how military is handled. They can still save the game and make it one of the best of the genre.
 
JokerJace said:
Agree with everything you say. I'll have to add that I'm disappointed in prosperity, as expected. [...]

One thing I didn't expect is how badly PAC plays. I thought it would be the strongest faction and it's actually the weakest.
Click to expand...
Prosperity is actually a pretty good late game tree. All tier 3 virtues are strong and useful (although I am not 100% sure if it is better to go Farm + Terrascape or Farm + Academy).

I actually like PAC a lot. I played both games with them - the worker boost is really important. In my last game I had 25 workers for 15 cities and still felt that I needed more - even with a combined ~50% worker speed boost. The wonder bonus has saved me the Ectogenesis Pod twice (finished it a few turns before the AI). The values may be small, but it has impact all game long.
 
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