Mechanics from Beyond Earth

As much as CivBE was a disappointment to many, I thought there are some laudable elements that can be brought over to Civ VI:

Micro Decisions
Construction of your building triggers a "quest", which describes a certain event that happened to your faction/civ and require choosing 1 of 2 options. Each option gives you a boost in one small area or the other. These quests essentially allow you to tack on specializations to your civ based on your preference - e.g. you can make your monument building give more culture, or make them free to maintain, etc. In Civ IV (I think?) there were also events that require some choice with rewards/risks (disaster strikes the city, pay x gold to stave off the worse effects, or let the population burn anyway, etc.). Adds flavour, give more nuanced customization to your gameplay.

Layers
In CivBE, you can launch satellites and choose where they are deployment. Satellites offer limited-time specific AOE buffs (e.g. energy boost, defence boost, etc.). The layering idea to give specific zones some buffs for units/production can be used in Civ VI - e.g. trade, culture, or religion layer that allow you to plunk specialist units to boost certain aspects of the game. e.g. a scout might improve combat ability of your troops, religious worker might boost culture or productivity of your fields, etc.

Victory Path
There are specific Quests in CivBE that are part of the progression towards one of several victory conditions. Placing this in Civ VI can help players decide early in their game which victory condition to go for (e.g. conquer x capitals, discover x social engineering, etc.).

Espionage
The espionage in CivBE is better than the one in Civ V (imo). More options, graduated levels of success/risk, etc. Espionage activity also does not immediately lead to anger to the targeted Civ (which frankly makes sense - the public can be very angry with spies but governments know that spying is par for the course on both sides).

Diplomacy Capital from CivBE Rising Tides
This also feels like a refinement on the standard diplomacy system in Civ V. You generate certain diplomacy capital resource through deals, which you can use to buy favours/deals with other Civs, etc. It also allows some civs in the game to have diplomacy savvy, which is a new way to play the game. Anecdotally - I tried INTEGR and it was quite a fun/different way to play the game.

Artifacts from CivBE Rising Tides
Found by explorers that dig on Alien/Crash/Ruin sites, you sometimes come across Artifacts of certain grades (Alien tech, Old relics, Alien biology, etc.). Combining these artifacts unlock special abilities, buildings, wonders, or tech. Civ VI can have equivalents like ancient unexplained relics, fossils, natural science discoveries, etc. It's one way to add historical content that may not otherwise make it to the game.

Edit: sorry I didn't realise I posted this on the main forum. Moderators pls feel free to move this to the suggestions section.

Micro Decisions:
Those were extremely boring in Beyond Earth and more often than not there was a clear best answer. A lot of clicking for little effect.

Layers:
That again seems to be a lot of micromanagement without much of a "visible" effect on the Empire. (edit: If used to add more stuff instead of solving things like traffic jams is what I mean by that)

Victory Path:
Yeah, I agree, Beyond Earth's Victory Quests were a cool idea. Badly implemented, but definitely something that could be built upon.

Espionage:
I agree, it's a cool system conceptually. Again not very well implemented in Beyond Earth (high-level Operations are gimmicks, not effective; they never solved the problem of being able to completely avoid getting high Intrigue via Micromanagement and without much of an investment otherwise), but something that could be used to create a more interesting System.

Diplomatic Capital:
As long as it's used to fuel actual Diplomacy and not replace it like they did in Rising Tide, sure.

Artifacts:
I don't think a system as "deep" as in Rising Tide really fits into the game. Beyond Earth's pacing was very different, it was used to make the early game more interesting. In Civ it would inevitably be a Midgame-thing, that's where Civ-Games are usually already very busy.

Ryika said:

Micro Decisions:
Those were extremely boring in Beyond Earth and more often than not there was a clear best answer. A lot of clicking for little effect.

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Well that was an implementation issue, and they could have done a lot with that... say there are 3 'actually balanced' options, but you only (randomly or dependent on other factors) get 2 of them as options.

Then you'd still have tons of small, meaningless decisions that have no real influence on the game. ^^

Such things are good for more important decisions, but those pesky little decisions all over the place are just a waste of time.

Ryika said:

Then you'd still have tons of small, meaningless decisions that have no real influence on the game. ^^

Such things are good for more important decisions, but those pesky little decisions all over the place are just a waste of time.

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Balanced=/= no influence

Balanced means there is no clear 90% of the time better option.

If those choices had balanced but distinct influences, then they could be worthwhile.

The word "Micro" already tells the whole story. The case you're trying to make is nonsensical.

Ryika said:

The word "Micro" already tells the whole story. The case you're trying to make is nonsensical.

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small influence=/= no influence

Putting a Farm v. a Trading post on a tile is a small influence, but it is still an influence and can still (in theory) be balanced.

You don't want to make those too often, but having 1 every few turns would not be bad, particularly if they Were balanced but distinct options.

Reboot said:

As much as CivBE was a disappointment to many, I thought there are some laudable elements that can be brought over to Civ VI:

Micro Decisions
Layers
Victory Path
Espionage
Diplomacy Capital from CivBE Rising Tides
Artifacts from CivBE Rising Tides

Click to expand...

The micro decisions tried to bring more meaningful decisions but fell apart in BE. Too many decisions were just one sided. Like plus a trade route versus a couple more gold (while a trade route could easily give +15 gold)

The Satellite layers idea was nice, but again in implementation they completely botched it. It was too easy to put up satelittes anywhere and the blockading part of it was just annoying.

Victory path? maybe... idk

Diplomacy Capital, well it feels like the envoys are kinda a part of it. I do think civ 6 could use major components of this.

Artifacts combining. Well you don't get archaeology until mid-late game as Ryika mentioned.


To elaborate a bit more on the layers:
While the satellite system of layers was weird and ultimately fell flat as it only served to provide bonuses, I do think a separate layer for other stuff could be potentially serve as a counterweight to military power.

For instance we could have a full fledged cultural and religious layer where cultural units like artists/singers fight each other for control of tiles, completely separate from military units.

KrikkitTwo said:

small influence=/= no influence

Putting a Farm v. a Trading post on a tile is a small influence, but it is still an influence and can still (in theory) be balanced.

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Yeah, but if I had to make a decision whether I want to build a farm or a Trading Post every single time I want to construct the next Improvement that would still be needless and nonsensical. But that's not how it works, instead I have a grand strategy ("I want as many farms as possible!"), and that's how I construct my improvements. The skill comes from deciding where to build stuff and in what order, to be as efficient as possible. That's still micromanagement - and a case can be made that it's needlessly tedious as well, after all, we get a new system in Civ VI, partly for that exact reason - but it involves an overall strategy and planning, not just hovering over 2 buttons and picking the one that has the yield that you want.

KrikkitTwo said:

You don't want to make those too often, but having 1 every few turns would not be bad, particularly if they Were balanced but distinct options.

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I'm not even saying it would be "bad". I'm saying that in my opinion it simply doesn't add enough to outweigh the Micromanagement required. I'd rather have a system that is designed for 3 or 4 big decisions that actually shape your empire than 2 dozen small decisions that all add a little dot to the overall picture.

The only real benefit a see in a system with very many small decisions is that, in theory, you can finetune them exactly how you want. But even if it's implemented perfectly - and that's very unlikely, most likely it would end up with one dominant yield every single time - that's a rather small bonus compared to the things such a system is missing - the feeling of big impact, meaningful decisions and - and the micromanagement involved.

Ryika said:

Yeah, but if I had to make a decision whether I want to build a farm or a Trading Post every single time I want to construct the next Improvement that would still be needless and nonsensical. But that's not how it works, instead I have a grand strategy ("I want as many farms as possible!"), and that's how I construct my improvements. The skill comes from deciding where to build stuff and in what order, to be as efficient as possible. That's still micromanagement - and a case can be made that it's needlessly tedious as well, after all, we get a new system in Civ VI, partly for that exact reason - but it involves an overall strategy and planning, not just hovering over 2 buttons and picking the one that has the yield that you want.


I'm not even saying it would be "bad". I'm saying that in my opinion it simply doesn't add enough to outweigh the Micromanagement required. I'd rather have a system that is designed for 3 or 4 big decisions that actually shape your empire than 2 dozen small decisions that all add a little dot to the overall picture.

The only real benefit a see in a system with very many small decisions is that, in theory, you can finetune them exactly how you want. But even if it's implemented perfectly - and that's very unlikely, most likely it would end up with one dominant yield every single time - that's a rather small bonus compared to the things such a system is missing - the feeling of big impact, meaningful decisions and - and the micromanagement involved.

Click to expand...

Well I think the big problem with those micro decisions as implemented is that they didn't really "add a dot". Once the decision was made (with its little "color commentary") you never saw it again, unless you examined the stats of your buildings.

If it did actually "add a dot" that might be worthwhile.
so if you choose option A over option B, there is a little tab off to the side that describes "French Society/Culture/etc" as having these characteristics.
(in the same way As you could look and see what Social Policies/Tenets you had chosen in Civ5... there you made something like 20-30 "small" decisions, that were part of bigger patterns)... the bigger patterns would be useful as well, say picking option A is a tolerant option and B is a populist option... in your "society" tab it would have a total of 'populist, authoritarian, diverse, tolerant, pious, etc.' points you had accumulated and what each choice had added.

Ideally, those characteristics (as well as things like government type) would shape what other options would appear in later "microdecisions".

One aspect of BE I'd like to see, in some way, in Civ 6 is the ability to choose a prime location for your starting city (without having to spend turns moving your settler).

That was nice (it was also interesting in that you didn't Have a starting settler)

Late game SMAC terra forming's what we really need, followed by mind worm invasion. All after future tech of course. More seriously choosing (and/or staggered starts) would be a nice optional feature, if only for quality of life (I know we don't have spaceships in 4000BC, AFAIK).

I feel like Eureka moments effectively prove upon the micro-choice system. Might be cool, but likely it'd end up like beyond earth's.

I actually loved the satellite layer: albeit not that greatly implemented, it's something that I would like to see implemented in CiV once satellite are discovered.

The issue is that is has to be powerful because late tech/unit, but not OP as well.

The weather control with +food would fit nicely with the "late game less farm" approach they have on CiVI.

For ex, unlocking the satellite tech, would unlock satellite units used for free fog of war. And military satellite to counter nukes/find spies/laser beams?
Just tossing ideas around but it would spice up late game

Mort_Q said:

One aspect of BE I'd like to see, in some way, in Civ 6 is the ability to choose a prime location for your starting city (without having to spend turns moving your settler).

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I disagree. I'd much rather see a prime city location 3 tiles away and have to make a difficult decision about whether to take the time to move than see one 3 tiles away and only be able to shift my city location 2 tiles.

Regarding the building "quests", I don't think it makes sense to describe them as micromanagement. To use a hypothetical example, deciding whether each monument you build will increase border expansion or provide additional culture towards the civics tree is a much rarer and more consequential decision than deciding whether to build a monument or a granary first in any one city. The problems with them in BE were balance, transparency (there was no way to check in engine what options a future building would provide) and the random nature of quest timing.

One of the few things I liked about CivBE was the "Seeding", which presented the player with some early-game, moderately impactful choices.

Civ6 could have an analogous mechanism called the "Stone Age era" or something. Instead of a menu before the game launch, it could take place right after the start of the game, in the first or few first turns before the settlement of the capital. The player would be prompted to choose between Parietal Art (+Culture in the Capital) or Venus Figurines (+Food) or Stone Tools (+Production) or Burial Rites (+Faith) etc.; there could also be bonuses toward techs/civics progress, population, starting with a worker unit (maybe with reduced charges), settler with increased vision and movement points, exploration, barbarian information, extra gold etc., just like CivBE.

Regarding Micro-decisions, I agree with commenters that the choice doesn't feel consequential enough - maybe this can be addressed with a chart/screen to summarize all the changes effected. City growth in BE is also slower and that might contribute somewhat to the feeling of lack-of-difference?

Some of the choices do feel like no-brainers. Overall, we might not want to put decisions on every building, nor should it be triggered always by building the first one if your civ, I think. Still, the concept of some story-driven choice is something I really hope Civ VI will introduce.

For Layers, I felt under-used in BE. So while I suggested it here, I'm less sure how Civ VI can improve on it.

I think Artifacts can make beginner-hut exploration less hit-or-miss. It's a good way to introduce players to pre-history and archeological oddities too.

I like that micro decision but I can understand it can bother some people so why not an option to play with or not like barbarians.

I agree about espionage that can be upgraded

I also like the idea of victory path but it needed to be enough flexible so I could change my mind later

I've bought BE/RT a few days ago. One problem I think there is with the implementation of building decisions is that it seems that almost all buildings get them, within a few turns of first building them.

Not only does this cause a lot of distracting spam when I want to be concentrating on something else (and forcing me to make decisions before I really have an idea about how I want my civ to develop), it means I will presumably have exactly the same decisions to make every playthrough.

If there is something like this in Civ VI, I think it should be much more infrequent, and only affect a few (randomly chosen) buildings. So you never know what ones you will get, and if you do get one, it will be a rare bonus that will be useful to have whatever you chose. (As opposed to 'I have a choice of adding a bonus to production or something to this building. I've gone for 'production' on the dozen or so other buildings I had that option for so far, so I guess I might as well go for 'something' this time, just for variety').