This game has great potential but....

[Vlyxnol]

I wanna start off by saying, as it does in the title, that this game has the potential to be a great game, ranked up there with Moo2 and civ3&4. However with this being said while there is alot of depth to the game which is awesome, it just doesn't feel flushed out, balanced properly, or difficult enough.


The AI for me is the biggest problem, I play on Apollo every game and I never lost in the 5 games I've played since RT's release. 3 of these games were playing as Supremacy, and 2 as Harmony. I did not use Array spam for any of them. I used different strategy's and races for each, but losing seemed impossible and for me, losing makes games fun and re-playable!

Unit Control - The AI does not control units very well, when controlling naval forces it seems to avoid taking out units(especially submarines) and focus on sending small fleets of 4-5 ships to attack a city while bypassing everything that can kill said fleet. The AI does not control Air forces very well either, they never set aircraft on Interception and the only time I see them air-sweep seems to be when they have a harmony affinity.

Strategy - The AI also lacks overall military strategy, generally they seem to choose 1 city to attack and they send small groups of units to take care of the job, then when they lose a few they run away for a round or two and later come back in with damaged fleets to "try again". They never choose secondary or tertiary targets, setup multiple groups to attack with, or even use a majority of their forces in a war offensively.

Building Patterns - The last big flaw with the AI is a problem that was introduced with RT. When the AI decides to build cities it seems to favor building on the naval side without any logic checks about where its placed. I recently played a game where an AI started in the center of a large continent and decided to build 1 additional land city next to where is started and than build 3 water cities 25 tiles away to the nearest coast. Also when the AI builds units it doesn't seem to consider its military goals in mind, if it wants to attack land cities it won't favor land units it will just build its general balance of naval / land units, and thus never succeed's in its goals.

I personally believe a large part of overall difficulty has to do with the lack of the AI to conduct warfare properly, and if they did so this game would be much more difficult.




Another other overall issue with RT i'm seeing is a lack of balancing. Certain diplomatic agreements are clearly very overpowered. Smart Grid not having an energy cap is one good example. Another is the Estate Tax, which should also have a cap.

Improvements - The academy improvement is just one example that seems totally broken, but specifically for this improvement the reason it feels so is because as many have said science in this game is currently king, I personally believe the array should be nerfed by 25-50%.

Science - In general, science shouldn't be as powerful as it is, this could be mainly solved by reducing the combat difference between tiers of units. It often seems that if one side has even a 1 tier unit advantage they become unstoppable, now granted their should be an advantage in combat bonus but it should take at least two tiers before it feels like your killing "warriors with tanks".

Trade routes - I know alot of people seem to be on the love or hate side of this topic, but I personally think they are a good mechanic as they are and add another strategy element in combination with diplomatic agreements and if you are playing Hutama. However they aren't balanced. Domestic trade routes are way to powerful by default, but now there are ways to increase the yields by near 100% which just makes them broken beyond belief. Food and production should never yield more than science and energy and as it is now they do by default. The yields for domestic trade routes should be nerfed by 50-75%.

Artifacts - I'm not sure I would have put this into RT as I don't feel BE needs even more mechanics, but its not a bad addition. The goody bag reward is nice and combining artifacts to get something special is cool. However their is no clear way to see which artifact when combined with another two produces X. I think some more information could be used in the Artifact screen to help clear this system up. However again its not balanced, we have to keep in mind that Artifact wonders and abilities are a unique addition and as such do not have to be nearly as powerful as they are to make them cool and impactful. Warp Spire, Drone command and Machine-assisted free will are a few that should be nerfed by 50% at least. Another way to balance artifact abilities and wonders would be to put a Cap on how many each civilization could posses, maybe 3?


There is much more I could say on this game, specifically Affinity Strategy, but I have a feeling this wall of text is already big enough. I hope this game gets flushed out a bit before the next expansion or it will be impossible to do so.

Thanks for reading my rant, Vlyxnol.

 

[Galgus]

I've been an advocate of reducing the combat strength difference between unit tiers and instead emphasizing their perks, and I generally agree with your points with some exceptions.
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I'm not sure that internal trade routes are broken vs international ones, given the current strength of Science both military and for non-domination victories.
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I'm kind of the crazy guy who always wants more mechanics, so I love how Artifacts spice up the early game and exploration.

(Above all I want an Affinity trait system, to add powerful bonuses based on one's core affinity or hybrid of choice to increase asymmetry.)

Drone Command and Warp Spire are powerful, but fine in my opinion since they are somewhat specialized: I'd like to see the others buffed up to their power level.

The 30% tech discount and half policy cost bonuses are completely overpowered, though.

I'd rework them into 50% progress on some random free techs and Virtue kicker bonuses being lowered by two respectively.

There already seems to be some limitation on how many artifacts can be found, but I personally think there should be no limit: reward proper exploration.

If they really wanted to reign it in, I'd reduce the chance of finding artifacts from Alien Nests and Resource Pods, increase the chance from Colony Landers and Derelict Settlements to 100%, and make Aliens prone to attack Explorers so that they require escort.
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To make the artifact combination system more transparent and intuitive, I proposed this simple rework:

1. Each Artifact is tied to specific reward(s).

2. These rewards are selected in the form of Recipes, which are revealed when one acquires the primary artifact for the Recipe(s).

3. Recipes require the primary artifact tied to them and two more of varying types and/or qualities.

For example, the Frontier Stadium recipe would require a Jowler Ball Field Set and two other Old Earth artifacts.

As need be, Recipes could have multiple valid primary artifacts for that one slot or artifacts could have multiple Recipes tied to them.

4. Three artifact combination rewards would be chosen by selecting the Recipe, then slotting in the requirements for it.

 

[Vlyxnol]

I'm not sure that internal trade routes are broken vs international ones, given the current strength of Science both military and for non-domination victories.

Since food ultimately produces science, not to mention production, I think were going to have to disagree here, domestic trade routes in my mind are way to powerful. Look at civ 5, you'll notice domestic trade routes are generally half or less than what international ones are.

There already seems to be some limitation on how many artifacts can be found, but I personally think there should be no limit: reward proper exploration.

I played a game were I had 6-8 different abilities/wonders. If there is a cap on artifacts found its a very high cap. Granted in that game I was playing a massive map on epic and I took the 20% chance to find artifacts first, which was around turn 25. In that game on Apollo difficultly I had a score of 1000+ with the highest AI around 350. Totally broken just due to the quantity of Artifacts recovered.

make Aliens prone to attack Explorers so that they require escort.

This would require additional AI scripting which if they are going to work on the AI it shouldn't be on something like this.

To make the artifact combination system more transparent and intuitive, I proposed this simple rework:

1. Each Artifact is tied to specific reward(s).

2. These rewards are selected in the form of Recipes, which are revealed when one acquires the primary artifact for the Recipe(s).

3. Recipes require the primary artifact tied to them and two more of varying types and/or qualities.

For example, the Frontier Stadium recipe would require a Jowler Ball Field Set and two other Old Earth artifacts.

As need be, Recipes could have multiple valid primary artifacts for that one slot or artifacts could have multiple Recipes tied to them.

4. Three artifact combination rewards would be chosen by selecting the Recipe, then slotting in the requirements for it.

I like this idea, anything to clear up the artifact system, but I still think there needs to be a hard cap on the amount of abilites/wonders gained, and even if you hit this cap in a game any artifacts beyond that still give a large early game bonus to resources. As the game stands now you can win easily just by building 3-4 explorers early and getting the 4 additional expeditions perk after the free colony.

 

[Galgus]

Food into Science is much less a thing in BE than it was in Civ 5 due to a lack of food from population buildings.
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My game was similar, but at a point I just stopped finding them.

Massive map on Marathon, though I did not get the 20% chance to find them until later.

(And regretted it.)

That said the AI should either be better at using Artifacts or get more bonuses to compensate.
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I think Aliens used to be more likely to attack Explorers, so I doubt it would take much to improve.

Alien AI could generally use a facelift, though faction AI is much more important.
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I don't see a need for a cap on the number of artifacts: if players invest in finding them, they should get a reward when those investments pay off.

Sending explorers alone would be much less viable if Aliens were willing to attack them - and perhaps drawn to expeditions like the Xeno Siren satellite.

 

[nimling]

Internal routes need to seriously be looked at. Oddly, trade routes with pop 1 cities tend to be more lucrative than routes between equal sized cities.

I never liked the idea of food/hammers coming out of nowhere, especially in the quantities present in BE, given how many routes can be cross-spammed and how the outputs can be manipulated through processes. In RT with Al Falah's bonus it really really ought to be apparent, but balance in RT lol.

I do suppose internals have to be pretty good, because those routes can be pillaged, but being better than most terrain and recyclers is way too much. They were silly enough in Civ5, to the point that internal routes are generally preferred to international routes in MP play. Oddly enough in BE I am more likely to use international routes than Civ5, due to the broken trade route formula favoring smaller cities - typical MO is to use the capital routes for feed and satellite cities on international routes/station routes, at least once the cap hits pop 10. In MP international routes basically don't work unless you like having your convoys destroyed by war declaration, and any route that can't be secured is prone to getting picked off so internals and safe routes are much preferred.

Anyway I think that internal routes should be around the range of station tier routes, with boosts for cities with different resources. Say one city has copper and silica and the other has tubers and fruit, both would have a lot to offer each other in a trade route and that would add food/hammers at the appropriate ends of each pole. Theoretically internals could add sci and culture for specific combinations of resources, like gold exporters giving culture to other cities. The base yield would be 4 total resources (split between bases) for small bases, with the larger city getting a greater part of the yield, and routes between two developed cities would have up to 8 total resource base yield, and up to +2 extra yield for differing resources. (I haven't played RT and don't know what they did with trade routes so maybe all of this is outdated.)

Finally, international routes should be fixed to function more like they did in Civ5, where trade between larger cities generates more. Right now trade in BE is inverted in favor of smaller cities, which makes no real sense.

Most of the AI's problems stem from 1UPT, which I will always maintain was a terrible idea and will keep saying until Firaxis fixes it. I have noticed the AI showing a bit more competence recently, perhaps the base game's AI has been patched, but the game has many inherent flaws that affect human vs. human matches.

Dunno about RT but I saw some of the sponsor bonuses and laughed my ass off. Didn't see why PAC needed a new bonus, their original bonus was plenty strong without being OP. The new one is just dumb in concept, and saying it's balanced because wonders are garbage doesn't make it less dumb. I like Al Falah's bonus, but apparently it breaks the game due to the whole diplomatic capital thing and how internal routes work. I don't think the diplo capital idea is really well thought out but apparently that is going to be patched over.

Reverting to g+k naval combat is a bad idea. The idea of ships capping cities was bad from the inception and trivializes amphibious attacks.

 

[Galgus]

I know how much you love to talk about 1UPT, but it matters far less on the open ocean, which is more important than ever.

I don't see why we should need to cart around land units on the water to capture coastal cities.

 

[nimling]

Because in MP Civ5, Frigate rushes are insanely strong. There is a reason England is especially feared in MP. I can see using sea melee to cap sea cities. Also, sea combat really highlights what is wrong with 1UPT, given the move range of naval units and predominance of ranged combat.

The best solution to carting around land units would be for Marines to actually function like, ya know, Marines, and have bonuses on embarkation; for instance, their base speed brought up to the speed of your mainline naval units, and for embarkation to take 1 move.