Anyone else think trade routes are a bit too good?

[lordrune]

Sure. And you can pick honor or piety as openers in BNW if you like. What was the need for them to change the game so it was non-optimal though?

 

[Gamewizard]

It's a different game, not just "Civ V in space". What is wrong with trying something new?

Plus the game is highly moddable, shouldn't be too long before someone makes a "Small and Tall FTW!" mod.

 

[Aeson]

We don't know that Small/Tall isn't viable. It looks like on tech rate a small empire can do pretty well, and the VCs in single player are mostly about tech rate. PAC in Maddjinn's latest game is doing well with a small empire (4/5 cities?). It won't be able to hold out militarily simply because it's the AI, but as far as going for the VCs it's ahead of Maddjinn.

A human player should be able to perform better than the AI even without the bonuses. So 3 to 5 cities on a standard sized map definitely looks like it can trigger victory pretty fast. It won't be as fast as a player not self-limiting (in regards to expansion) ... but then again, it shouldn't be.

 

[HecatesLover]

The Apollo bonuses to the AI are pretty heavy. In MadDjinn's ARC game Brasilia is more than doubling his science per turn and this is later in the game after hes been building up and has a lot of science buildings including a science specialized city. I saw it in a diplo window at one point and thought: he needs to start pushing his wincon or Brasilia is going to squish him.

 

[Aeson]

Remember that tech costs (and culture costs) scale by number of cities. Brasilia is big, so their techs will be more expensive. It's a good example of how small/tall can compete though since both PAC and Brasilia have the same Apollo bonuses, yet PAC (small/tall) is almost to a VC while Brasilia (wide) doesn't appear to be as close.

 

[GhostSalsa]

But I'd just comment that it's very unusual for me to feel this concerned about a mechanic in new game in a franchise. Most of the time I can see some positives, even in controversial design changes. This time, I can only see negatives and I don't understand why they had to go down this path

I'm no fan of small empires, but as a wide player who still tries to make his cities fantastic I feel just as turned off by the limitless TRs - more so by the day. (It doesn't matter as much for me since Mac release appears to be 2 months off.)

Why bother settling my cities somewhere nice, if the TRs will grow and do all the work for the city anyway? Why fuss over which building to make next, if the TRs are generating most of the production or science in my empire anyway? Why go through the trouble of specializing two or three cities for unit training, when most of the productive output of my empire is completely modular now?

Remove limits, remove choices. What about the fundamental choice of whether to make your empire production focused or gold (energy) focused? The whole point of gold and production being two separate resources was that production was powerful, but slow (cannot transfer), and gold was weak, but fast (can be spent anywhere) - the same elegant division we see in military units. Now production can go anywhere - there's no real need for gold/energy focused strats anymore. It's like starting the game with X-Coms on the field.

Limitless TRs take out all the builder-y choices in the game. I just see no reason to even care what my cities are doing at any time.

 

[TLHeart]

I'm no fan of small empires, but as a wide player who still tries to make his cities fantastic I feel just as turned off by the limitless TRs - more so by the day. (It doesn't matter as much for me since Mac release appears to be 2 months off.)

Why bother settling my cities somewhere nice, if the TRs will grow and do all the work for the city anyway? Why fuss over which building to make next, if the TRs are generating most of the production or science in my empire anyway? Why go through the trouble of specializing two or three cities for unit training, when most of the productive output of my empire is completely modular now?

Remove limits, remove choices. What about the fundamental choice of whether to make your empire production focused or gold (energy) focused? The whole point of gold and production being two separate resources was that production was powerful, but slow (cannot transfer), and gold was weak, but fast (can be spent anywhere) - the same elegant division we see in military units. Now production can go anywhere - there's no real need for gold/energy focused strats anymore. It's like starting the game with X-Coms on the field.

Limitless TRs take out all the builder-y choices in the game. I just see no reason to even care what my cities are doing at any time.

As a builder I see trade routes as a great benefit. They actually INCREASE the choices a builder has to make, on where to build what building, when. There is NO reason to build every building in every city, except the depot. And with all the different tile improvements, that one can use buildings and specialists to increase the yields for that city, city specialization is going to be important for the small/tall builders. NOT one LP has even looked into city specialization, or controlling the city specialists.

Maddjinn has done just a little specialization in the last LP, by building academies in the snow, and then building the building that boosts science for that city.

There are 100's of options via the virtue tree, and the tech web, and the trade routes makes those options viable.


Playing with the tech web, and virtue tree, I see how a builder of tall empires can approach this NEW game, and build those wonderful cities...

and with all great plans, the approach will change once into the game.

 

[Kordanor]

Gamestar.de (One if not the biggest German gaming magazines (on paper + internet) just released a review.

Conclusion: 82%
One of the Negative points listed:

Too powerful traderoutes
So in that case it had an impact on the rating.
http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/sid-meiers-civilization-beyond-earth/wertung/50903.html

 

[Arkangelus]

Escapist magazine disliked the trade route focus too.

 

[TLHeart]

reviewers, want quick fast easy to understand games. They always hate any game that requires thought, planning.
Moderator Action: Please don't attack the reviewers. They aren't here to defend themselves.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[True_Candyman]

Gamestar.de (One if not the biggest German gaming magazines (on paper + internet) just released a review.

Conclusion: 82%
One of the Negative points listed:

Too powerful traderoutes
So in that case it had an impact on the rating.
http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/sid-meiers-civilization-beyond-earth/wertung/50903.html

I would bet any amount of money the reviewers process in generating that article was 1st) search civ beyond earth, find this forum, quickly glance at a few threads like this one. Next step, play the game for 2 hours, and supplant forum opinions onto narrow view of game. Third step link them in the article, confirming fears of the game to gamers to create plausibility and clickbait.

Never trust gaming journalism, it's almost as useful as astrology. I can't blame the individual journalists though, they are often just doing as instructed.

Trade routes may be an issue, but we won't know properly until many, many varied plays of the game have been completed so different emphasis can be gauged. And gaming journalists simply haven't had the time to properly quantify this.

 

[Haggbart]

Obviously the reviewers were playing the same game build we have seen in LP's over the last weeks. So we knew this from before. What I'm curious about is to learn if anything has been tweeked or changed for the release build.

 

[Camikaze]

AFAIK, the review build is the same as the release build in terms of trade routes.

I think it's safe to say that the unequivocally correct answer to this thread is 'yes'. The consequence being that new cities can always pay for themselves.

 

[Haggbart]

AFAIK, the review build is the same as the release build in terms of trade routes.

I think it's safe to say that the unequivocally correct answer to this thread is 'yes'. The consequence being that new cities can always pay for themselves.

That's too bad. Did you play it or watch a video? I just saw a little bit of the Global Launch vid, but not enough to get a consistant picture of trade route yields.

 

[Camikaze]

From playing the game.

I should add, I don't think REX in itself is a bad thing - after Civ5 it's quite liberating to be able to use up the space on the map, and there are still limitations on expansion (e.g. other factions, aliens), just not so much from internal empire management mechanics. If there's a problem, it's more that trade routes dominate too much in allowing you to REX.

 

[Haggbart]

From playing the game.

I should add, I don't think REX in itself is a bad thing - after Civ5 it's quite liberating to be able to use up the space on the map, and there are still limitations on expansion (e.g. other factions, aliens), just not so much from internal empire management mechanics. If there's a problem, it's more that trade routes dominate too much in allowing you to REX.

Lucky you

Yeah, the combination of high yields for the trade routes, the fact that the number of routes is pr city and small health penalties seems like an invitation to REX.

 

[Selereth]

From playing the game.

I should add, I don't think REX in itself is a bad thing - after Civ5 it's quite liberating to be able to use up the space on the map, and there are still limitations on expansion (e.g. other factions, aliens), just not so much from internal empire management mechanics. If there's a problem, it's more that trade routes dominate too much in allowing you to REX.

What difficulty level were you playing on, and how did you find it? Which difficulty level do you think it compares best to in Civ 5?

 

[Jimbo30]

I wonder if they've thought that health would be a natural barrier to REX, but it's not really working out that way.

I'm not pushing trade routes in my games so far because anything obviously broken will get fixed eventually. I had one station route giving me 6 food while my city was only at +2 though, and it felt like it was seriously too much.

 

[Camikaze]

What difficulty level were you playing on, and how did you find it? Which difficulty level do you think it compares best to in Civ 5?

I generally play on King in Civ5. My last BE game was on Gemini difficulty and it was a walkover. So the difficulty seems a fair bit easier than Civ5. Trade routes play into this too, I think. In Civ5, if you started a game in the modern era, the ability to have multiple internal trade routes gave you a huge advantage over the AI, which didn't seem competent to do the same. I can't say for sure, but the same might be the case for BE.

I wonder if they've thought that health would be a natural barrier to REX, but it's not really working out that way.

I'm not pushing trade routes in my games so far because anything obviously broken will get fixed eventually. I had one station route giving me 6 food while my city was only at +2 though, and it felt like it was seriously too much.

I wouldn't say that it's broken. It's working just as intended. It's just a matter of taste as to whether trade routes should be so dominant. For me and probably for most people, they are too good as compared to what they should be. But that's not the same as it being broken.

Health does provide some constraint, but currently not enough of it if to prevent REX. Of course if you're taking over a lot of enemy cities, then health will likely become a problem, but the health penalties you're likely to suffer through your own REXing are not likely to outweigh the advantages of that expansion.

 

[ThERat]

People, question from some ignorant person here, do trade routes work as in Civ2, meaning you need to send caravans to establish them? I hated that MM festival.