First Impressions

[Acken]

I know what rating situation reminds me of
...
Welocme to the club, Firaxis

You know we got your point. But continue posting that kind of stuff, that certainly looks like a fantastic hobby

 

[Monado]

My impression of the game so far:

1. Factions are uniform and flat. Almost all UA's are simple boring modifiers that do not change gameplay between each other. Not creating the series staple UU's for the civs looks like a big mistake for civ differentiation.

2. Seeding options. Like factions, are not interesting. These mostly invisible modifiers do not help develop any sort of personality for the AI's. Leading to a more lifeless gameplay.

3a. Unit promotion system. Terrible. +10%, +10%.

3b. Unit upgrade, via affinity level. It was an interesting idea, but I think its a complete failure. Forcing every unit to have the same affinity promotion even further leads to a flat, boring gameplay. There is no difference between fighter A or B. Why can't we decide to make one excel at city or unit attack, or at interception. Not being able to upgrade a unit to serve the purpose you want makes military battles extremely lackluster to me. (Also, I really don't like how every old unit is automatically upgraded instantly and for free, it removes the decision of whether to upgrade a unit or two or spend the money elsewhere...basically dumbing down the decision making).

4. Wonders. Garbage. One or two usable wonders, the rest are a joke. Who balanced these?

5. Health. The one thing I've never liked about Civ V compared to 4, was the global happiness and lack of individual city growth prevention. BE of course uses the same global "health" system. This time though, the penalties are hollow. I've just won two games with global health around -90. -10% modifiers, and extra spying against isn't enough to stop any type of huge military build up, domination win.

I've never been so dissappointed in a game of Civ. With Civ V, at release it had imbalances and imperfections, but was made great by patches and expansions. With BE, I get the feeling its a lost cause. I would say I hope Firaxis instead focuses its' attention on Civ 6, but BE is so bad to me, I'm doubting the company's ability to make another good game.

EDIT: Oh yeah, completely forgot about the single biggest problem, Mustakrakish reminded me.
6. Trade route economy. Way to powerful, I feel like I'm playing Civilization: Trade Route Simulator.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Something needs to be done about trade route reassigning... I'm so tired... it's unplayable... just... make them run nonstop, until I decide to reassign them or other obsticles comes ther way...

 

[need my speed]

Something needs to be done about trade route reassigning... I'm so tired... it's unplayable... just... make them run nonstop, until I decide to reassign them or other obsticles comes ther way...

Go to:

assets>Gameplay>XML>GlobalDefines.xml

Find:

<Row Name="TRADE_ROUTE_BASE_TURN_DURATION">
<Value>25</Value>
</Row>

And change the 25 to 100, for example. That will make trade routes last four times as long.

 

[Stalker0]

Something needs to be done about trade route reassigning... I'm so tired... it's unplayable... just... make them run nonstop, until I decide to reassign them or other obsticles comes ther way...

There is a mod right now called weaker trade routes. Drops it to 1 TR per city, -25% to route yield (except to stations), and no autoplant +1 TR.

It makes all the difference in the world. I put it on and have never looked back.

At first I thought that it would wreck the economy, but it doesn't. It actually balances the AI a little bit more against you, and things still build in a reasonable timeframe.

 

[LDiCesare]

You can. There's a button in the city screen to add to queue.

Thanks, I found it. I still find the queuing/buying hard to understand. For instance, I want to buy the stuff in the queue, not something else. The buy system shwos me everyting. How does it relate to my current production? I want toi rush a production, not to buy something different. Just give me the price of the thing I'm building, not all the rest. That's a waste of space and hard to understand.

 

[LDiCesare]

Some have complained that the worker icons are too big in the city screen. All you have to do is zoom out (use the scroll wheel on your mouse if you have one) and the icons get smaller and you can see the tile yields.

Sure. Every time I go into a city, I must spend 3 seconds zooming out. That's bad design. They should make the icons smaller. It shouldn't be that hard.

 

[Thormodr]

I know what rating situation reminds me of
[snip]
Welocme to the club, Firaxis

Lol. You made my day!

Moderator Action: Quoting a troll post is also trolling.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[PeterDR]

My impression of the game so far:

1. Factions are uniform and flat. Almost all UA's are simple boring modifiers that do not change gameplay between each other. Not creating the series staple UU's for the civs looks like a big mistake for civ differentiation.

2. Seeding options. Like factions, are not interesting. These mostly invisible modifiers do not help develop any sort of personality for the AI's. Leading to a more lifeless gameplay.

3a. Unit promotion system. Terrible. +10%, +10%.

3b. Unit upgrade, via affinity level. It was an interesting idea, but I think its a complete failure. Forcing every unit to have the same affinity promotion even further leads to a flat, boring gameplay. There is no difference between fighter A or B. Why can't we decide to make one excel at city or unit attack, or at interception. Not being able to upgrade a unit to serve the purpose you want makes military battles extremely lackluster to me. (Also, I really don't like how every old unit is automatically upgraded instantly and for free, it removes the decision of whether to upgrade a unit or two or spend the money elsewhere...basically dumbing down the decision making).

4. Wonders. Garbage. One or two usable wonders, the rest are a joke. Who balanced these?

5. Health. The one thing I've never liked about Civ V compared to 4, was the global happiness and lack of individual city growth prevention. BE of course uses the same global "health" system. This time though, the penalties are hollow. I've just won two games with global health around -90. -10% modifiers, and extra spying against isn't enough to stop any type of huge military build up, domination win.

I've never been so dissappointed in a game of Civ. With Civ V, at release it had imbalances and imperfections, but was made great by patches and expansions. With BE, I get the feeling its a lost cause. I would say I hope Firaxis instead focuses its' attention on Civ 6, but BE is so bad to me, I'm doubting the company's ability to make another good game.

EDIT: Oh yeah, completely forgot about the single biggest problem, Mustakrakish reminded me.
6. Trade route economy. Way to powerful, I feel like I'm playing Civilization: Trade Route Simulator.

I just wanted to say this is a great post and reflects the way I think about Beyond Earth. I would add one more thing though:

7. AI is still horrible and more passive than ever before. Even when their army is 10 to 1 compared to mine, the AI does not even bother to crush my empire.

 

[hlx]

the big issue I have with BE is that while playing all I can think of is switching back to BNW.
that game has polish - not only in terms of mechanics but also (that goes for prev Civ5 versions) in terms of outstanding user interface. UI in Civ5 is like a tiny piece of art - both fantastic UX (user expeerience) and it is well done aesthetically in a kind of a art-deco style.

I think I saw a behind the scenes from Civ5 where artists were saying how they created little drawings of every icons and tech tree markers and so on. You can feel the time and creativity that went there.

BE on the other hand has the UI done on a level of pre alpha where everything seems just clumped up together. And don't get me started on the font choice or rather lack of thereof.

The big thing that keeps me coming back to BE is the Sci-Fi setting and that in the current state of play you can go *really* wide. I love massive wide plays from the days of Civ1 and 2 and I felt Civ5 really didn't want such wide strategies.

Your thoughts? I would love to hear if anyone has similar feelings.

 

[PhilBowles]

My impression of the game so far:

1. Factions are uniform and flat. Almost all UA's are simple boring modifiers that do not change gameplay between each other. Not creating the series staple UU's for the civs looks like a big mistake for civ differentiation.

There are affinity UUs instead. You can hardly call a feature that didn't exist until Civ IV a 'series staple'. For the inevitable Alpha Centauri comparisons: that didn't have unique units either.

Agreed that the UAs don't impress, but the cumulative bonuses from the crew and cargo selections are nice even if the cargo is the only one that's close to balanced across most of the options.

3a. Unit promotion system. Terrible. +10%, +10%.

True, but then I never much cared for the addition of promotions anyway so I can take or leave this.

3b. Unit upgrade, via affinity level. It was an interesting idea, but I think its a complete failure. Forcing every unit to have the same affinity promotion even further leads to a flat, boring gameplay. There is no difference between fighter A or B. Why can't we decide to make one excel at city or unit attack, or at interception. Not being able to upgrade a unit to serve the purpose you want makes military battles extremely lackluster to me. (Also, I really don't like how every old unit is automatically upgraded instantly and for free, it removes the decision of whether to upgrade a unit or two or spend the money elsewhere...basically dumbing down the decision making)

I don't mind the 'choose unit type X over unit type Y' effect, given the sorts of bonuses on offer, but tying unit progression to affinity level is a problem that turns the game into an affinity race. And because most affinity is tech-based, turns it into a tech race - "science is king" is a feature of all Civ games; Civ V actually took steps to partially decouple many of the game's systems from tech, but BE puts the link straight back again. Everything comes down to affinity, and affinity comes down to science.

4. Wonders. Garbage. One or two usable wonders, the rest are a joke. Who balanced these?

Most of the effects seem fine for what they cost and their place in the tech tree, it's just not at all clear why they're Wonders rather than unrestricted buildings. The Wonder idea is an awkward fit for the setting, and should just have been scrapped for all that it's a core feature of the main series. Colonization could do without Wonders, after all.

5. Health. The one thing I've never liked about Civ V compared to 4, was the global happiness and lack of individual city growth prevention. BE of course uses the same global "health" system. This time though, the penalties are hollow. I've just won two games with global health around -90. -10% modifiers, and extra spying against isn't enough to stop any type of huge military build up, domination win.

I prefer the implementation of health bonuses and maluses in BE to happiness in Civ V, but I agree that its effects should be more noticeable. Before fixing that, though, they really need to find a way to control population - the tools just aren't there to keep your population from growing to unhealthy proportions. Spamming biowells has been suggested, but you need to work a biowell to get the health bonus and working a biowell gives you food. So you're still stuck needing to shift the excess. Adding health resources to the landscape a la Civ IV might help.

I've never been so dissappointed in a game of Civ. With Civ V, at release it had imbalances and imperfections, but was made great by patches and expansions. With BE, I get the feeling its a lost cause. I would say I hope Firaxis instead focuses its' attention on Civ 6, but BE is so bad to me, I'm doubting the company's ability to make another good game.

There were probably people saying much the same about Civ IV: Colonization.

This is a spinoff. No, it's not going to get the full two expansions treatment or take development time away from Civ VI - it's not even got the Civ V design team. It will get patched and the intention is obviously there to give it DLC, possibly an expansion in the same way AC got one. But it's still ultimately a side project rather than a main release in the franchise.

 

[jozef57]

can not say to much yet but in general i like it.
i only hoped for different aliens on different planets and that seems not be the case

 

[rastak]

PhilBowles, I noticed also that it isn't really the full Civ V team working on it. I'm hoping they can run two teams and maybe make themselves some cash (and me some fun) by doing maybe a few DLCs for BE and perhaps one expansion while Civ VI team rolls forward.

 

[Giorgi]

There are some annoying things that really needs to be polished: Like swarming alien nests, jet animations still broken, auto-mode does not worth it, etc, etc

 

[PhilBowles]

Probably third or fourth rather than first impressions, but the more I play the more I like - but also the more I see to take issue with.

On the plus side, I'm playing a Slavic game with an intent from the start to go Purity. I had early 'kill nest' and 'kill alien' quests, and the aliens didn't take that very well - I found the early game turned into a pioneering struggle with my trade convoys continually being eaten by wolf beetles (something that hardly ever happened in sessions when I was less aggressive early). I was on an archipelago map, and sea dragons were also a meaningful (and numerous) threat.

So this was great, and early game exploration is fun with the ruins lying around, assorted aliens, and the need to actually find sites to settle that have hills. Early tile improvements are handled better than in Civ V, with more variety and decision-making involved (until you get biowells and farms are suddenly obsolete, or you get perks to some of the other improvements). Aliens' tendency to scrupulously observe your borders means they never put much pressure on, however there's a definite pioneering feel when you find an infested island you have to clear before you can settle it.

Such combat as exists in the early stages works better than in Civ V since ranged units are fewer and relatively weaker, but aliens that decide to attack still suicide into you.

I was looking forward to the affinity system, which kicks in in the mid-game. Unfortunately I find it badly-executed throughout, and this impacts all elements of the game. It's mostly tied to technology rather than game actions, so tech web or no tech web all your teching is still mainly along a single path defined by your favoured affinity.

And you need to rush your affinity at the exclusion of all others, because since your military strength is determined wholly by your affinity level rather than, say, choosing to prioritise military over non-military techs, any rival who gets an affinity lead will be able to defeat you in pretty much any arena. There's no real trade-off for affinity techs, since these are all 'leaf' technologies and most building options are associated with 'branch' techs - you're not sacrificing one branch of research to obtain levels in your affinity, for instance.

The way affinity plays with military units also interacts negatively with the tech tree in another way that should have been foreseen - you don't research units. Instead, after a while it seems that all the techs blur into those that give you +health buildings, those that give you +culture buildings, and so forth. Everything is yield-based, so pretty much all teching does is give you bonuses to yields or flavour number 5 of 'science + health building'. Yes, there are Wonders ... which give you bonuses to yields or represent flavour number 6 of 'science + health building'.

So, for all this, what does affinity actually give you once you specialise in it? Better units with a different graphic for each affinity. A couple of unique units. A unique 'science + health' building or two, perhaps a unique bank as well. That seems to be it. Yes, the Purity missions prompt me to be more aggressive towards aliens and that may flavour the early game differently from a Harmony start, but at least as far as I've got so far an awful lot of the game is devoted to not much more than getting a different skin for my units.

If you read the Civilopedia, it puts a lot of effort into the background - they even try to develop a plausible explanation for levitating rocks. That makes it a particular shame how little of this comes through in the gameplay.

Stations should probably have been ditched as a concept if they couldn't make the city-state system work in BE. In fact, the idea of city-states only giving their yield to a trade partner is something that could be profitably retrofitted to Civ V, but stations have no personality or strategic value as independent entities and mostly just get in the way.

Diplomacy is irrelevant. This need not be a huge problem - this is not a Civ game, and I'm quite happy to imagine it as a game where the player is intended mainly to compete against the environment and have their culture develop and adapt to it, rather than one about interacting with other human factions also struggling to survive. But if that's the tone the game really needs to capture that a lot better. Affinities are as abstracted as ideologies in Civ V - I want the way the game develops to push me along a particular path, and to see the consequences of doing so, not to decide 'I want to play Harmony today' and just do that.

There will be factions in my society supporting each affinity; how about a system to reflect that in levels of colony unrest or dissatisfaction with particular decisions? How is my society governed? There's no system of government in this game, yet if founding a new colony that's bound to be an important feature. This could be an opportunity to play the Mars Trilogy, but we don't get to see how or whether increased moves towards terraforming result in a backlash from Harmony types, for example.

Resources are too readily available from the landscape from the start, and outposts (a nice idea) grow too readily, in fixed sequence in numbers of turns rather than, say, based on the amount of production or energy invested in making the surrounding landscape habitable. Apparently humans can eat alien fruit and tubers with no need for any research into them (but they need to learn how to eat a cow in Civ), and an alien forest is just as good as one back home for supplying food and production needs. Given enough water, grass will grow anywhere and everything can be farmed.

 

[Vohbo]

And we're not even talking about victory conditions and how utterly boring they are :/

 

[Chaos Blade]

indeed, I was looking forward to player versus environment, like in SMAC, very disappointed. not only there is no terraform option, the terrascape, the closest thing, is clunky, situational and maintenance heavy.
There is no feeling of we are taming with world, no feeling of this world is fighting me, mind you even with raging aliens I only lost a few marines to them.

Needs some serious work under the hood.

 

[PhilBowles]

indeed, I was looking forward to player versus environment, like in SMAC, very disappointed. not only there is no terraform option, the terrascape, the closest thing, is clunky, situational and maintenance heavy.
There is no feeling of we are taming with world, no feeling of this world is fighting me, mind you even with raging aliens I only lost a few marines to them.

Needs some serious work under the hood.

The tech web is a bit odd - things like domes should be early, the ability to build Earthlike parks late, and possibly then only unlocked by the 'plants run wild' quest (which currently has no consequences, though it's very much the sort of story element that should). No farms from the start, but biofuel plants are okay since biomass is biomass - yet they unlock moderately late. Water purifiers and some sort of water source should be essential for early settlement - how about something akin to the Civ !-IV irrigation mechanic? etc. etc. Things like alien forest should be basically unusable, needing technology developed to clear them before the tiles can be productive, not just an easy source of apples and wood. Practically every tile should start as something resembling tundra, with such things as copper and basalt eagerly sought for the early boost they provide; colonies could start with a base food output that satisfies the needs of a certain number of colonists, but the surrounding landscape is not exploitable for food until hydroponics or other technologies are developed. The whole settlement might start as an outpost but one that can produce things, and expanding territory should be hard, laborious work.

If it's enough of a struggle, the aliens shouldn't need to be the ones doing the fighting - this isn't Alpha Centauri and I'm fine with the aliens being giant pest animals mostly doing their own thing rather than a malevolent planetary hive mind that will eat you if you don't assimilate yourself into it. I do want the aliens to have more of a role in one way or another, though - for a game with a major exploration component the quests and gameplay suggest a distinct lack of curiosity about the aliens right from the start (and please make the 'kill aliens' quest trigger only if - as the text of the quest indicates - the aliens have already shown themselves to be hostile. I've seen it trigger with aliens taking no hostile action at all).

 

[Chaos Blade]

The tech web is a bit odd - things like domes should be early, the ability to build Earthlike parks late, and possibly then only unlocked by the 'plants run wild' quest (which currently has no consequences, though it's very much the sort of story element that should). No farms from the start, but biofuel plants are okay since biomass is biomass - yet they unlock moderately late. Water purifiers and some sort of water source should be essential for early settlement - how about something akin to the Civ !-IV irrigation mechanic? etc. etc. Things like alien forest should be basically unusable, needing technology developed to clear them before the tiles can be productive, not just an easy source of apples and wood. Practically every tile should start as something resembling tundra, with such things as copper and basalt eagerly sought for the early boost they provide; colonies could start with a base food output that satisfies the needs of a certain number of colonists, but the surrounding landscape is not exploitable for food until hydroponics or other technologies are developed. The whole settlement might start as an outpost but one that can produce things, and expanding territory should be hard, laborious work.

If it's enough of a struggle, the aliens shouldn't need to be the ones doing the fighting - this isn't Alpha Centauri and I'm fine with the aliens being giant pest animals mostly doing their own thing rather than a malevolent planetary hive mind that will eat you if you don't assimilate yourself into it. I do want the aliens to have more of a role in one way or another, though - for a game with a major exploration component the quests and gameplay suggest a distinct lack of curiosity about the aliens right from the start (and please make the 'kill aliens' quest trigger only if - as the text of the quest indicates - the aliens have already shown themselves to be hostile. I've seen it trigger with aliens taking no hostile action at all).

Wholeheartedly agree. there are too many things that kill immersion at the moment. a good mod might be able to work fixing it, but it will take planning and time.
The first fact is that all food improvements shouldn't be available from the start, farming included, making plantations and other improvements that take from the local "resources" should require some sort of starter tech to unlock on top of the basic farming one.

call the first "Ground Survey" or some such and the second "Local Exploitation"

Make satellites a midway tech, space tech is expensive AND difficult. it should be an achievement to recover the access to the orbital layer, much like recovering flight. it requires infrastructure and knowhow that aren't wholly compatible with the knowhow needed to maintain a colony's early years.
Actually, if possible the launch center should be a requisite for launches of any sort and no goody hut should provide free sats. though it would be interesting to have a sat as additional cargo, left in orbit as the crew left the ship for the planet-side.

Also, given than sats are of the geosynchronous type greatly increase its life expectancy/ those kind of stats don't de-orbit either.

It pissmes me off that just for showing up the orbital layer we are given goodies to use it early on. it is a serious mistake, then again the game suffers from a lack fo coherent midgame thanks for the contact victory.

 

[PhilBowles]

Wholeheartedly agree. there are too many things that kill immersion at the moment. a good mod might be able to work fixing it, but it will take planning and time.
The first fact is that all food improvements shouldn't be available from the start, farming included, making plantations and other improvements that take from the local "resources" should require some sort of starter tech to unlock on top of the basic farming one.

call the first "Ground Survey" or some such and the second "Local Exploitation"

Make satellites a midway tech, space tech is expensive AND difficult. it should be an achievement to recover the access to the orbital layer, much like recovering flight. it requires infrastructure and knowhow that aren't wholly compatible with the knowhow needed to maintain a colony's early years.
Actually, if possible the launch center should be a requisite for launches of any sort and no goody hut should provide free sats. though it would be interesting to have a sat as additional cargo, left in orbit as the crew left the ship for the planet-side.

Easy enough to just change the text of the pod to say that it contains communication frequencies allowing you to re-establish contact with a satellite left in orbit, so that it can retain the same effect without requiring you to be able to undertake planetary launches.

Though it's never stated that there's any kind of disaster befalling the crew a la Alpha Centauri - as far as we know the ship and its knowhow make it down intact so the crew probably wouldn't have lost access to orbital facilities. If this is the case, though, why are they so deep in the tech tree (except for miasma repulsors)?

It pissmes me off that just for showing up the orbital layer we are given goodies to use it early on. it is a serious mistake, then again the game suffers from a lack fo coherent midgame thanks for the contact victory.

It's the particular goodies that bother me - the solar collector is deep in the tech tree for a reason; it's ridiculously unbalanced to happen across one early in the game.