Community suggestions for Ernie

[Galgus]

This is less of an expansion and more of an upgrade to Rising Tide's features

A. Use a Recipe system for artifact rewards, where every artifact has one "recipe" requiring certain types of artifacts and a unique reward.


B. Every artifact reward would be tied to one artifact, and vice versa. For example, a Frontier Stadium would require a Jowler Ball Field Set and two Old Earth relics. Recipes be shown as the player acquired their main artifact, and would consume the main artifact as well as two others.

This could follow the traditional Earth/Earth/Earth and Earth/Alien/Progenitor format and use untraditional A/E/E requirements.

This would require many new artifact rewards to be created, which could have many possible effects.

Additionally, I would rebalance the artifacts around the strongest ones, like Drone Sphere and Warp Spire, with much less rigid adherence to the building/ wonder / playerperk / unit bonus effect sorting.

To rebalance risk and reward, the global "one of each" limit on artifacts would be removed, but Aliens would be far more likely to kill explorers.

Players would need to escort them and sometimes even build early armies to secure artifacts first.


C. This would add much more variety to artifact rewards, both in balance and in the sheer number of possibilities.

It would also make Aliens a meaningful threat and give players a reason to build early armies to protect explorers from them - other sponsors may seize the artifacts if the player puts it off.

Finally, this would greatly improve both the clarity of the artifact system and the uniqueness and flavor of individual artifact rewards and artifacts.

I think players would enjoy deciding what recipes to complete and what recipes to abandon for components.


D. The negatives would be the need to both design many more bonuses and to properly balance them.

I think this would be easier with the building / wonder / playerperk / unit upgrade sorting abandoned and designs made in a more freeform manner rather than sticking to a quota.

In particular wonders are often just playerperks you need to build something for and unit upgrades are extremely hard to make both balanced and satisfying.

 

[darkskies]

I'm fairly sure that becomes an issue of hardware limitations than anything else.

I doubt it, it's more the number of opponents (and city states in Civ5) that causes the problem, i.e. I could use the largest map size there is on my old Surface Pro as long as I kept the number of civs down. In any case it's just like any of the graphics options if you have a computer not able to handle something than don't use it.

Seems like there would be little harm in offering a larger map size to those who want it just makes the game more appealing to those of us who like it. I also sometimes play on smaller maps especially if I'm in an early war monger mood. Having more options makes things more interesting.

 

[DefiantMars]

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy massive maps and exploration. Especially since I'm a passive player. I don't like the high tension of border friction. But I don't think "making a new map size" is as simple as your post sounds (at least as I'm reading it). Not that any of the other ideas proposed here are. I don't know code very well, but I think compounding Player # with map size results in greater and greater pathfinding calculation. Would it be nice? Hell yes. (It would be a perfect compliment to my dream Sponsor.) but there must be some reason Firaxis elected to make the largest map size Massive for both Civ V and Beyond Earth.

 

[Galgus]

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy massive maps and exploration. Especially since I'm a passive player. I don't like the high tension of border friction. But I don't think "making a new map size" is as simple as your post sounds (at least as I'm reading it). Not that any of the other ideas proposed here are. I don't know code very well, but I think compounding Player # with map size results in greater and greater pathfinding calculation. Would it be nice? Hell yes. (It would be a perfect compliment to my dream Sponsor.) but there must be some reason Firaxis elected to make the largest map size Massive for both Civ V and Beyond Earth.

To add on a bit, I think Aliens would almost need to be more of a threat/ factor in exploration and expeditions for a larger map size to be engaging.

It just doesn't feel right when one can send their Explorer far from any kind of protection and have it be perfectly safe around Aliens that, for the most part, don't attack.

I think BE is really missing that "beat back the wilds" element of colonization, which could be an excellent reason for players to build an early military over more generally useful buildings, for reasons other than a Domination rush.

Part of why maps often feel small is that there aren't significant barriers to expansion and exploration beyond a Miasma patch that needs cleared.
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Of course Harmony should eventually be able to befriend the Aliens, but I'd like that to be a more momentous occasion as a shift from what was possible earlier; and a real mid-late game asset.

Artifacts and Aliens could be a great way to encourage early militaries to claim artifacts and pods in dangerous locations, if Firaxis would just slightly adjust them.

 

[Barathor]

I agree, Galgus. The feral aliens in the game are too much of a pushover. I think there should be more, as you say it, "beating back the wilds" to expand out.

That's part of the reason why I'm planning on reducing the strength gains with each promotion. Not only will it reduce the impact of the crazy, instantaneous power jumps, but it can allow the feral aliens to be somewhat meaningful. I think basing the strength of the first tier feral aliens off of tier 2 marines/gunners is a good place to start.

At the same time, I like that the aliens aren't just aggressive barbarians and always attack and beeline to cities. I prefer for them to be more like wild animals that are curious and unpredictable. If they're near your borders, it's nice that they're a little more passive and timid (unless you've been killing them off). Only when you encroach on their territory and/or they feel threatened, then they go into attack mode.

- - - - - - - -

Oooh, this idea just popped into my head while discussing this.

Remember the old culture wars of Civ 4, where borders were always "pushing" against each other and the stronger would take over tiles of the weaker? What if they reintroduced something like that for BE, where it's the wilds vs. civilization.

The wilds have their own type of "wild" or "planet" culture that go up against all players regular culture (hmm, culture would be more meaninful with this too...). Alien nests and such emit stronger wild culture. As your units leave your own cultural boundaries, aliens get much more aggressive and even attack on sight at a certain depth into the wild. But, as you increase your culture and manage to keep outposts alive long enough to become cities, you can emit more civilized culture and lower the aggression of aliens in your boundaries. Also, nests and units spawn rapidly in wild culture, but as your civilized culture starts creeping in, it really slows down their spawn rates.

I don't know, maybe even more cool things can be done with it and it can be woven into Harmony-style gameplay somehow. Maybe another type of special culture yield, with a green leaf icon, can be introduced and does some special things when mixed into the war between wild/civilized culture.

 

[nimling]

If you want to make BE good, start from the ground up and remove all the bad Civ5 crap that holds the game back. For god's sake, bring back unit stacking, the AI can't use it and in human vs. human games it leads to exploitation.

I'm pretty sure the graphics assets and basic engine for the game is fine (well, as fine as Civ5 was, which isn't very good), but there is no need to ape Civ5's bad gameplay and copy-paste the AI into a new game. The AI flat-out doesn't realize it's playing a different game and it shows. The devs could easily lift existing graphics and not add a new thing - the problem is bad gameplay and bad fundamental design issues, mostly inherited from Civ5 being a bad game.

Release the game as a stand-alone product, rather than an expansion pack, so that people aren't forced to buy a bad game in order to play a decent game. The pricetag should be the same as an expansion pack, no charging full price for a total conversion mod as with the first BE.

I'd probably rethink the notion of sponsors, possibly scrapping them altogether in favor of a customizable blank slate and balanced loadout options. The stupid Starships content showed just how broken the game design philosophy at Firaxis is, give people overpowered crap for a little money. Didn't South Park do an episode about that sort of thing?

I think MOST of the ideas in RT and vanilla - the general setting, the tech web, and affinities related to technology - could be transplanted into a better basic game, and you'd have something I'd bother to check out. I'd think making an actually good game would be cheaper than adding new graphical doodads to a bad game, but game development these days has turned to crap. A lot of people criticize the tech web and affinities, but by themselves they're okay and actually show some promise from the development team (it is for instance far better than Civ5's narrow tech tree with only one real path for SP and a few viable paths for MP) - the problem is that they exist in a game that just isn't fun, due to fundamental flaws in the game architecture and basic economy, so the way to play the game is self-evident from the start.

 

[Galgus]

I agree, Galgus. The feral aliens in the game are too much of a pushover. I think there should be more, as you say it, "beating back the wilds" to expand out.

That's part of the reason why I'm planning on reducing the strength gains with each promotion. Not only will it reduce the impact of the crazy, instantaneous power jumps, but it can allow the feral aliens to be somewhat meaningful. I think basing the strength of the first tier feral aliens off of tier 2 marines/gunners is a good place to start.

At the same time, I like that the aliens aren't just aggressive barbarians and always attack and beeline to cities. I prefer for them to be more like wild animals that are curious and unpredictable. If they're near your borders, it's nice that they're a little more passive and timid (unless you've been killing them off). Only when you encroach on their territory and/or they feel threatened, then they go into attack mode.

- - - - - - - -

Oooh, this idea just popped into my head while discussing this.

Remember the old culture wars of Civ 4, where borders were always "pushing" against each other and the stronger would take over tiles of the weaker? What if they reintroduced something like that for BE, where it's the wilds vs. civilization.

The wilds have their own type of "wild" or "planet" culture that go up against all players regular culture (hmm, culture would be more meaninful with this too...). Alien nests and such emit stronger wild culture. As your units leave your own cultural boundaries, aliens get much more aggressive and even attack on sight at a certain depth into the wild. But, as you increase your culture and manage to keep outposts alive long enough to become cities, you can emit more civilized culture and lower the aggression of aliens in your boundaries. Also, nests and units spawn rapidly in wild culture, but as your civilized culture starts creeping in, it really slows down their spawn rates.

I don't know, maybe even more cool things can be done with it and it can be woven into Harmony-style gameplay somehow. Maybe another type of special culture yield, with a green leaf icon, can be introduced and does some special things when mixed into the war between wild/civilized culture.

I was thinking about making a mod reducing strength gain earlier, and I'm delighted to hear that a better modder is planning on it so I don't need to.

I wouldn't mind it if the Aliens generally left cities alone when not angered, but I feel they should freely attack explorers that wander off without any aprehension from seeing strange buildings.

Exploration would be much more engaging I think if early militaries were important for expansion and artifact retrieval.
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I did not play Civ 4, but I've heard of the mechanic.

I like the idea of wild zones, but I'm not sure how it could be implemented well..

There are already some solid moments that feel like pushing back the wilds in destroying nests, clearing miasma, and chopping down forests - it may be good to make Aliens locally angered by and attracted to such actions.

Generally I think cultural borders should be constantly expanding, and it would be weird if they periodically shrunk back due to wild "culture".

I'd start by just making the Aliens attack things that wander from cities freely, reducing how much they get out-scaled, and making them a genuine threat to cities when in Red hostility or when a player is at war with a Harmonist.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I am going to make a video discussing my hopes for ERNIE (assuming it comes).
I would like to make community suggestions suggestion as well.

When are you planning on making the video? I'm curious to get your thoughts on the suggestions in this thread.

 

[frnknbry]

Two things I would like to see in the next expansion.
1/A map and scenario editor in game or stand alone.
2/ Tera-forming I miss it Alpha Centuri had it and I loved it along with canal making abilities please.

 

[Enkidu_Warrior]

My preference for expansion packs is always for new content, rather than "more old" content. This would not preclude expanding old content in new ways (eg diplomacy currency). Furthermore, expansion packs need a theme around which to expand these new areas. So my theme would be to tap into the unique setting (alien planet/alien life) and interact with them more.

- Interacting with the planet should take the form of including terraforming - basically being able to change underlying terrain to whatever else is in the game. Dig a canyon or build a mountain to create a barrier, dig in a coastline to make a city a natural canal point on a continent, dig a borehole to sprout a new river, guide a river along a different path, etc.

- Alien civ(s) able to advance in competition with the sponsor civs. Aliens would have their own units and abilities that you could tap into by allying with them to trade, or infiltrating to steal, or conquering tot take. They would also evolve differently as they take on human tech. And add a victory condition where you discover the already existing Gaian consciousness of the planet itself.

- Expand upward from the orbital layer to a moon layer. Specify in planet creation how many and what types of moons, send automated and manned vehicles to harvest additional (new) resources that unlock new technologies, buildings and units. Open up the orbital and lunar layers to cooperation (eg linked satellites or missions), trade (missions creating additional resources) and warfare.

 

[EvilNed]

A few reflections;

- A new expansion is NOT going to overhaul any Hybrid Affinity system already in place. No expansion is going to expand on a feature introduced in a previous expansion as that wouldn't work as a business model. All expansions should be stand-alone - so that one doesn't NEED Rising Tide to play this new expansion.

- The game Civilipedia presents the Sponsors as separate from their leaders. This suggestion means that there could be alternate Leaders for the sponsors. I'd like to see one new alternative leader introduced to each Sponsor - with the Rising Tide sponsors getting their cheap DLC with 4 extra leaders.

- Some kind of game mechanic that rewards a Tall gameplay style. Perhaps a mid-game building (or research) that allows for a city to work tiles even further away? We should be able to build MEGA cities.

- I like the idea of Terraforming and another planetary layer as presented by Enkidu. Perhaps having moveable Orbital units? Floatstones in the stratosphere? Stuff like that.

 

[Enkidu_Warrior]

A few reflections;

- Some kind of game mechanic that rewards a Tall gameplay style. Perhaps a mid-game building (or research) that allows for a city to work tiles even further away? We should be able to build MEGA cities.

- I like the idea of Terraforming and another planetary layer as presented by Enkidu. Perhaps having moveable Orbital units? Floatstones in the stratosphere? Stuff like that.

I like both these ideas.

Oh, and I think the expansion pack needs to be something like Beyond Earth: Hyper Aliens, so that the full game acronym becomes BERTHA

 

[Packherd2]

I'll just leave this here: fix the vanishing combat animations.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=552783

 

[ItsNotDenon]

I would like to see an addition of an old voice archive as an expanded mechanic.
In Civ the old voice archive could be used via the quest system. After meeting a criteria, such as building three laboratories, a great person is unlocked.
You can then assign this great person to be in the old voice archives of a city. They then give a bonus such as +1 science to all laboratories, but at the cost of diplomatic capital per turn.
The great person has a name and a back story that shows on the panel where they are accessed.
A second way to earn a great person is to destroy a civilisation and then claim their sponsor as a great person. This unlocks their basic ability as at its lowest level for a diplomatic capital cost per turn.

The positives:
The mechanic adds a new way to play with diplomatic capital and combine it with the quest system for new gameplay.
This adds lore and character development systems to assist the storytelling element of the game and allows the affinity and culture system to have a more prominent vain impact on your civilisation.

The negative:
It may be hard to balance.
It requires a lot of investment in quest mechanics which some players may find tedious. They will be at a disadvantage if they do not do the story.

 

[ItsNotDenon]

Additionally I would like to see the Introduction of sky based cities.
The cities would work like the aquilon unit, floating over other units.
They are based around the city concepts Nasa has for Venus.

The workers wouldn't upgrade the tiles around the city as the feasible way I can see those cities working in the real world would be through drones and robotic labour. Instead they would use orbital units to gain all of their bonuses.
The expansion pack would include more orbital units and each of these orbital units may only add to a tile or so.
One such orbital unit could be a titanium extractor. This would allow it to use the titanium without upgrading the tile.

This would mean air cities are significantly slower and more expensive to use, however it also means they can be used anywhere and have a faster movement cost to be used as large units. This is similar to the roaming horde feature in Total war: Attila.

This game would likely need more Aquilon type units to work and an expanded air unit roaster. A good name is Falling skies and it could work independent of rising tide.

The positive:
New gameplay and city types add variety to the game.
It is feasible and unique without undermining the other core features of the game.

The negatives:
It is very air unit specific.
It is not a traditional version of the civ format and may alienate new players.


I generally think it would be fun to see and scientifically accurate. it would be nice to have nomadic sky cities that could be used as mobile air bases to assault other civilisations at the risk of your entire city population. Plus it would be cool to see sky sponsors or sky based resources.

 

[Dane338]

A. Make stations more important

B. Stations don't actually do much. Sure they increase your energy/culture/science and all, but last I checked the highest tier of "+10 energy" isn't very effective around turn 100, and the convoy would be better used with another civilization. Thus, all the value of stations is gone in the first 20% of the game, then they wither and die from lack of use. Have them live up to the "minor civilizations" portion of the turn merry-go-round.

A few suggestions to make them better:
-Make the output proportional to the rate of the game, like city states in Civ V. That they they are more valuable and instruments of policy in the mid to late game.
-Have random bonuses associated with them. Such as every fifty turns your have a trade route with Palatine, you get a free affinity level. Or Adept Blue gives you a free tech because of "the strong trade relationship you have formed". Fort Barca gifts you a random unit.
-More random events associated with stations.
-When you attack a Station, there is an average (30-50%) chance that they do something detrimental, but not largely impactful, to your colony. The mad scientist from Jinsoku Labs puts a siege worm "caller" on one of your cities, or Stet Mining commits industrial sabotage and you have to give up 10% of your net energy for 50 turns.

C. This fixes up what is, in my opinion, a weak spot in BE. Like religion in Civ V (and Civ IV for some) or government type in Civ III, it seems inconsequential and not very fleshed out in the final game. Who wants to use Stations when you could devote your trade routes to other civs or expanding your colonies. These are benefits that greatly outweigh station trade routes.

D. They could become too much like city states in Civ V, in which you may be doing more harm than good. There are already a lot of complaints about BE being a modded version of Civ V at it's core, and we wouldn't want that theme to continue.

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A. I'm not saying let's have Aliens, but we should have Aliens.

B. I know it's been suggested before, but I really think this is crucial. Around turn 250-300 I get complacent. I'm almost victorious and very bored. I'm conquering my foes and either saving or destroying the wretched/blessed Earthlings. Out of sheer kicks I sometimes stick around and accomplish another victory or two, but by turn 400 I get so bored I don't touch the game for a long while. But what if aliens landed, scouting to colonize the world for a much larger force, then I would stick around. Heck, I may play the first few hundred turns just to get to that point.

Have aliens trigger whenever someone is halfway to victory or a random point between 200-300 turns. They arrive, are noticeably more powerful, and you have to either court them or face a very damaging war. At the same time, a quest is started where you have to make sure that either a) your civilization is cool enough to escape the wrath of impending alien colonizers or b) prevent them from communicating with their host, and the larger force never arrives.

Once the larger force arrives, it would take a significant amount of resources to make sure they didn't overrun your nation. Not like Ghandi in Civ V, but more like something that you have to devote some resources to and slow down a potential victory.

Also, stations provide some bonuses against the aliens.

And make them little gray guys. Throw in some XCOM references since you guys own it.

C. This improvement would be a trademark Firaxis stimulus to the late game. It would be on the level of BtS or BNW in my opinion. Like I said, I would play just to get to the aliens, like I did for ideologies in BNW or all that awesome tech in BtS.

D. It has to be well planned and fleshed out, not something that you add in for a few interns to do. If anything, it would be the core of the expansion.

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A. Get to the Dropship! (Let's do dropships)

B. Dropships could only move in cities and would function much like helicopters in Civ III: transport troops within your orbital range. However they also run the risk of being shot down, otherwise they would be insanely OP. Unit upgrades would focus on getting them through (or within) the enemy ZOC with their cargo intact. There is a chance for the transported troops to be either damaged, destroyed, or mission aborted depending on the AA value of nearby enemy units.

C. This is a happy medium between airports (which have been asked for but I don't think would be compatible with BE's "feel") and troops walking everywhere.

D. May be more of distraction or unused addition (like stations) than actually benefitting the game.

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Disclaimer: In the insanely slight event that someone at Firaxis reads this, you and only you are welcome to use these ideas in whatever capacity you see fit. It's yours. It would be cool if I could know about it too, but that's assuming someone in an authoritative position actually reads this and PMs me.

 

[ZTZaorish]

When are you planning on making the video? I'm curious to get your thoughts on the suggestions in this thread.

Coming out tomorrow, so sorry for the super long wait.

Hey everybody, i goofed during our recording, We will re-record on monday. We will also add more content and it will be more compact than it would have been otherwise know that we had some practice talking about BERT again.

See you all soon

 

[ZTZaorish]

The video is done, Enjoy~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUmXJxcGEGo

 

[stormtrooper412]

I need to crank out the volume so I could hear myself, I should have cranked up the mic

 

[DefiantMars]

I would like to clarify a bit on the Negative portion of my first suggestion:

When I say this would "force" the Hybrids into tropes, I'm specifically talking about the possibility that not everyone would agree on what those foci should be.

I personally like the idea that Harmony/Purity would go full Specialist mode but I've seen arguments for all the affinities going that direction. Or what do you even give the no-hold-barred Supremacy/Harmony?

However, its not a helpless endeavor as once those specializations and mechanics are built in, perhaps mods could help shuffle and edit things to other people's liking. In any case the Hybrids... they absolutely need some love.