Purchasing Plans for Civ VI

It really depends on how good it looks and whether or not I have a machine that can do it justice. It also matter whether BE will get quality expansions. I bought BE very soon after it was released, and although there are a lot of great things about it (the tech web is a great idea and I love the sci fi approach) there were just too many reasons to go back to BNW. I mean, geeze, a lot of the leader dialogue is IDENTICAL to BNW and that isn't a programming issue, they could have come up with some fresh text at very little cost. It plays too much like Civ V, but without the flavor added by historical leaders and wonders. If the updates are quality I will buy them and play them for hours. That might delay purchasing Civ VI. On the other hand if they can't salvage BE I'll lose a lot of faith. In that case I'll wait until I KNOW Civ VI is a quality installment to buy it... and they'll have to convince me of that.

Acken said:

CivBE is bad enough to make me worried.

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Why are you worried? Yes, if BE had good diplomacy or a good combat AI, that would make certain that those two big problems were solved for Civ6. But was anyone really expecting that?

I have not purchased BE (yet), but it sounds to be exactly about what I would have expected. Since they were not calling Civ6, I really didn’t expect the game mechanics to change much. I wished they had they not paid such homage to Alpha Centauri, since that just set people up to be disappointed.

beetle said:

Why are you worried? Yes, if BE had good diplomacy or a good combat AI, that would make certain that those two big problems were solved for Civ6. But was anyone really expecting that?

I have not purchased BE (yet), but it sounds to be exactly about what I would have expected. Since they were not calling Civ6, I really didn’t expect the game mechanics to change much. I wished they had they not paid such homage to Alpha Centauri, since that just set people up to be disappointed.

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Personally, there are two reasons I love the Civ games. The first is the fantastic feeling of living throughout the ages shaping my own Civ. No matter how many times I play Civ V I pause to listen to the W.B. Yeats quote when I research Iron Working, and the times that I've popped a GW I cringe if it's Lewis Carroll, H.G. Wells or another favorite because I want to hear the line from Alice in Wonderland, or The Time Machine or whatever. I'm a history buff. I'm also a huge sci fi fan. If I'd been given quotes from, for instance, Phillip K. Dick, Larry Niven, Blade Runner and Battlestar Gallactica it would have gone a long way to create the feeling that I was truly shaping a futuristic world. There are a number of other ways that they could have made for an engaging sci fi setting but I won't spend too much more time on this; what I was given was lacking in character.
The second reason I love the games so much is the incredibly deep strategic an tactical game play. I've logged hundreds of hours playing Civ V, I routinely win at Emperor level and I'm close to cracking Immortal. It's highly challenging and rewarding, and one of these days I'll get an honest win on Deity. That's why I loved the tech web; it brought a very deep and fresh element to the strategic (and tactical) game. On the other hand the Affinities were't defined well enough; they just felt like dumbed-down versions of the (much greater and more versatile) social policies in Civ V. Religion? Tourism? Not there at all. Not that I wanted to see them again, but there aren't any equally compelling game mechanics. Sure, there are some other new ideas (like the orbital units) and that's great, but too little and too few to compensate.
The upshot is that BE has the makings of a great game, but as it stands it feels like just a simplified version of Civ V with a new paint job. The tech web is a wonderful idea but by itself it doesn't compensate for either the lack of a compelling concept or all the other ways in which the game was simplified. I'm optimistic about the up-coming expansion (the vanilla Civ V doesn't compare to what the game became with G&K and BNW included) but so far BE has been disappointing, and I wish I'd saved my money. I bought it with no questions asked because I love the franchise; the decision isn't that simple anymore. Now I want to know more about what they're bringing to the table before I plunk down a chunk of change.

beetle said:

Why are you worried? Yes, if BE had good diplomacy or a good combat AI, that would make certain that those two big problems were solved for Civ6. But was anyone really expecting that?

I have not purchased BE (yet), but it sounds to be exactly about what I would have expected. Since they were not calling Civ6, I really didn’t expect the game mechanics to change much. I wished they had they not paid such homage to Alpha Centauri, since that just set people up to be disappointed.

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The problem with CivBE isn't that the mechanics haven't changed much or that it's not like SMAC (which I haven't played anyway). It's that the current mechanics are just poorly thought/implemented resulting in a very shallow game and the whole atmosphere is simply lacking in substance. It's no wonder there is literally 0 "competitive" community on it right now (MP, Gotm, Hof or even DCL). If the game was 100% like Civ5 I would play it actually since I quickly came back to Civ5 ! The mechanics have changed but in a bad way for many of them. And it's not that it's too different either, but they have to be good ideas.
Then the game got barely patched in 9 months. Specialists still suck, half the wonders are useless, 3/4 of the techs are useless with all their crappy associated buildings etc. etc. The game is like an engine with only two cogs working and then some extra cogs and bolts thrown in hoping everything would assemble by itself !

That is what worries me. Of course maybe it is effectively just a quickly made unimportant game but I'll watch Civ6 with caution as to not repeat the mistake. And hope they're serious about that one and will think further than throwing out a game only with a couple shinies and no substance. Let's hope CivBE is just the result of amateurism from the design team and that Civ6 has people with more 4X experience (both as a player and designer) working on it.

I will pre-order the game as soon as pre-order is available. I always got every DLC when it came out and pre-ordered BE. I don't regret getting BE nor do I regret playing it for 3 months. It's a fun game although not as well put together as BNW.

I prefer to get a jump on learning and understanding how the game works/improving skill rapidly.

Acken said:

-snip-.

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Pretty much agree with Acken on this one. The community aspect is missing and the release of this expansion will only fragment the community more. Those like myself who pre-ordered civ:be were treated to some bonus maps, cool right? wrong actually. It caused game crashes with those who did not pre-order. I am not talking about playing on those maps either, simply by virtue of owning the DLC, it caused problems.

Civ4-complete had netcode so amazing you could be forgiven for forgetting you are playing online, it was smooth like butter. Then we got simultanious turns in civ5 and it began to fall apart.
Then the DLC(nations) came and those who didn't own it/them, were not even allowed to play games with people who owned the DLC unless the owner turned it off/didn't use it, fragmenting online even more and needlessly punishing both groups of players for no valid reason.

Civ:be has taken no strides to fix MP so it might as well be sold as a single player game at this point. What's that? A new expansion pack? How exciting! Pray-tell what upgrades will it feature for MP? Nothing announced.

Not even a bone, in fact no mention of if the new diplomacy system will impact MP at all but thats okay as long as the netcode is improved right? No mention of improvements to the netcode either.

Now you might be a SP kind of person so you may read this and think to yourself how you don't really care because you only play solo offline and I can respect that. But no scenarios for SP? I admit they take time and resources that could be better spent on other things within the games design but if you haven't played a scenario in civ5 I highly urge you too as they are good and fun.
All the changes in the world are not going to stop you trading Titanium for 8Ept or equivilant trades whereby you have played the game so much you can auto pilot x for x trades.
If anything, trades should be a fixed sum in order to be more transparent for newer players. Most of us know we can trade a lux resource at best for 8gpt so why let newer players have to guess? Just do it for them. Which ties in nicely right back to civ:be, while the new(er) trade system is a mystery right now it will eventually reach the same point of 'this is always worth that unless they are mad at me' so I hope civ:be tries harder to be beginner/SP friendly even beyond the tutorials.

As an avid MP player, I can tell you from my experience that a lot of players I have met have spent next to no time trading with the AI and when they insist on including the AI in games they found it 'amazing' that not only can I trade with the AI but I can effectively milk them for gold. Probabaly because their attempts at asking for 50gpt for a horse, failed miserably

I think I'm going to wait until the price drop significantly (hopefully 70% or more) before considering whether it's worth buying. I don't mind waiting for a while for that..

whyidie said:

Civ 4 was actually the tipping point for me. By the time they released BTS I was beyond the Civ 4 experience. I had Civ exhaustion. Played too much of the prior versions and too much of 4 by the time BTS came out, which is unfortunate as I felt BTS was released to address concerns I had with the game.

So I decided for 5 I would restrain myself and wait until at least the first expansion. Its played out pretty well. As you said I think they ended up with a solid game, I've gotten more out of this game than I get out any other game in my library in the past 10 years. Could it be even bettererer ? Like any game ever made, sure, but considering the amount of time I got and continue to get out of the game I feel like I've gotten a great deal.

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Yeah I can relate to that - I had huge Civ burnout from Civ 2 years ago so I lost interest in the series until I happened to read up on Civ 5 BNW. It looked so damn good that I ended up buying it.
And like you said I didn't waste time on the Vanilla game but got in when it was actually worth playing.

Acken said:

It's that the current mechanics are just poorly thought/implemented resulting in a very shallow game and the whole atmosphere is simply lacking in substance... That is what worries me. Of course maybe it is effectively just a quickly made unimportant game but I'll watch Civ6 with caution as to not repeat the mistake.

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Thanks for that insight, as it is a perspective I missed from sitting out BE so far. Actually, I might not get BE now at all.

P.S. try a couple games of SMAC. If you can tolerate the low rez graphics, it is amazing, no matter how many spoilers you have read. Some people don't like the SciFi genre, but you tried BE, so that cannot be the case.

beetle said:

Thanks for that insight, as it is a perspective I missed from sitting out BE so far. Actually, I might not get BE now at all.

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Who knows, maybe there will be another steam-free-to-play weekend for Beyond Earth (I'm rather surprised it was even a thing.... a bit of desperation for exposure..? )

Nares said:

You're missing a fourth option; waiting until enough post-release material is out there (reviews, livestreams, general forum banter, etc.) to form an opinion.

Unlike other games, there's really nothing that can be provided as an exclusive perk for pre-orders. Maybe a map script, but they can't lock a civ behind it. If they were to, it would be an awful precedent.

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This.

Wait till it out and has some solid reviews and some YouTube LPs

Probably will get it early, but depending on reviews, may wait till an expansion.

I have more odds of buying Civ vi than be if both were purchasable. I guess i skipped be to save for civ vi.

Are there any news on Civ6? I've been looking but I can't see anything apart from BERT. I don't see how BE should take priority- even now just checking Steam stats show 40k+ players in CiV and under 3k in BE.

There has been nothing but unsubstantiated fan speculation about Civ 6. Neither Firaxis nor 2K has made any announcement about Civ 6 (they haven't even acknowledged that anyone is working on Civ 6).

Browd said:

There has been nothing but unsubstantiated fan speculation about Civ 6. Neither Firaxis nor 2K has made any announcement about Civ 6 (they haven't even acknowledged that anyone is working on Civ 6).

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What a shame. Thanks for the info!

I think it's heavily dependent on how cynical the sell situation seems to be. Some gaming companies tend to give a very cynical offering with little improvement. Hodling back quality content for expansion when it should have been in the game. Other companies, and I put firaxis in this category, put forth earnest attempts at improvement that may or may not fall flat.


I tend to buy the first release if it's from an earnest company. I typically do wait a couple weeks to see if its bug ridden or imbalanced. But if it's stable it's typically an immediate purchase.


Extra points if they put forth a honest to goodness killer feature that I have to have. For example I would LOVE the idea of the Tech Web in future Main Civ. Just so you more easily illustrate the divergence of different cultures like native American and European culture.