What went wrong with Civ V and what CivBE should avoid

I agree with much of what you say but point 11. I like 1upt, I just wish the A.I. controlled it better. By having layers to the combat scenario, I think it might make it better, but we shall see.
 
Moderator Action: Remember that this is the CivBE forum, not the Civ5 forum. So please make sure your discussion is focused on how CivBE can be influenced by Civ5, or what lessons can be learned for CivBE, not on why you think Civ5 is bad.
 
If Beyond Earth still uses the Happiness system with luxury resources, I hope they make them all equally good.

Why is it in Civ V that you can build additional buildings if you have marble or elephants, yet there's no bonus for having furs or citrus within your borders? Marble even gives you a boost to building early Wonders. Pantheons are part of the problem as well. Plantations can receive +1 culture through a pantheon, yet wine and incense give +1 culture and +1 faith. If you happen to have silk and dyes in the surrounding area, you're screwed. It all comes down to luck at that point. I hope they can think of different bonuses and benefits for each luxury, or just get rid of the extras altogether.
 
All I can say that Beyond Earth can learn from CivV is that players like complexity more than some people know. Gods and Kings and Brave New World greatly expanded the strategic options for players, and Civilization V without BNW is on the same level as CivIV without BTS: Almost unfinished in feel.

And with Gods and Kings, I felt like there was a feeling on the board that it wasn't an expansion that was adding more, but merely an expansion filling in holes, whereas BNW feels like an expansion-expansion.

So, I will say that I rather BE be delayed than for BE to pop up this September in the same alpha state Civilization V popped up in.

As much as SMAC is great, it really would be nice to see a new sci-fi setting with good writing.
 
has anyone yet broached the topic of Wonders in B.E. ?? because it seems to me that, in the context of a brand new world, there won't be Wonders in the traditional sense? maybe there will be like advanced high-hammer-cost alternatives to basic bldgs like Libraries/Granaries/etc
 
One challenge CivBE has to avoid is to feel like a big mod for Civ5. Looking at the screenshots, it still looks like something that could be made by a good modder given enough time. Does it use the same graphics engine?
 
civ54lyfe said:
has anyone yet broached the topic of Wonders in B.E. ?? because it seems to me that, in the context of a brand new world, there won't be Wonders in the traditional sense? maybe there will be like advanced high-hammer-cost alternatives to basic bldgs like Libraries/Granaries/etc
Click to expand...
On a gameplay level, there's no need to scrap wonders: they're rewards for investing in something (getting the tech first and sinking lots of hammers into it).

One a "story" level: Why not? The point of a wonder is not that it's impossible to replicate, but that it's a sea change in history, hence the civ that builds it will change forever. The first civilisation to discover a treatment for aging will be defined by it, even if it spreads to others. The first faction to build the planetary datalinks will become a centre of data exchange.

They just might need a different name than "wonder" - SMAC used "Secret Project" (and it would work well with the national wonder equivalents, call them "National Projects").
 
civ54lyfe said:
has anyone yet broached the topic of Wonders in B.E. ?? because it seems to me that, in the context of a brand new world, there won't be Wonders in the traditional sense? maybe there will be like advanced high-hammer-cost alternatives to basic bldgs like Libraries/Granaries/etc
Click to expand...

I don't see why there can't be wonders inspired by science fiction architectural ideas or even just made up. It's not like humanity has stopped building world wonders in the modern era. They are just generally being built in the middle east and east asia these days, and i don't see why we would stop building them any time in the near future :goodjob:
 
Hoping that BE will learn from IV and V and take the best from both. While I agree that the early Civ V was horrible in balance and management, I think BNW does a good job of forcing decisions on you without being too imbalanced.

What I would like to see from IV is more city specialization. There was nothing more satisfying in civ4 than in your top 3-4 cities, you find the perfect specialist city and the perfect production city. I do miss that in 5, where it feels like my cities are either a jack of all trades, or they just kind of suck at everything. Maybe it's my playstyle, but I can't seem to "optimize" my cities. It doesn't have to go as far as 4 took it, but I'd like to see more of that in the new game. I'd actually like to see a higher cost/high reward for buildings. If something like a Stable cost 4 maintenance, but gave like +50% production for mounted units, and like +3 hammers on horses, it would make me think more about it. Same with a building like the Gardens. As it is not, it's not enough bonus to want to build it early, but it's too cheap to forget about it forever. If it actually cost 3 maintenance, but gave +50% or +100% instead, I would build it much earlier in some cities, and not at all in others.

So I would argue that more specialization is good. Or maybe buildings are spread along 2 lines - one are the general buildings that are cheap and every city needs, but maybe the next tier of buildings like Universities are only built in some cities.

I don't mind Happiness as a limiting factor, but I'd certainly like to see us be able to manage that better. Even moving some happiness away from buildings like zoos, and move it to more stuff like religious pantheons, social policies, etc... So maybe you have lots of horses around, and you find a social policy that will boost your stables. The one thing I didn't like about Pantheons in 5 is that I often wanted multiple of them at the same time. I'd like there to have been twice as many pantheons possible, but each civ should be able to adopt up to 4-5 over the course of the game, some of which are tied more to the civ than to religion (so that a rival civ missionary spamming you can't get rid of one of your choices). Similar to how I can't get enough culture to complete enough of the social policy trees - I'd like to see a way to get further through those trees in a regular game.

I do look forward to seeing what this will do. I actually see a lot of points in civ 5 that I think will translate well to an alien world. Just hope that they can bring along the fun storyline that we saw in SMAC and combine it with some of the good new features.
 
The civilization be sort of looks like civilization 5bnw in a way according to the screenshots in the other be threads. This also seems similar to the civilization 4 bts model where the space program wasn't really given that much of a priority like it is given now. Final frontier and other space games that were included in the bts expansion of civilization 4 weren't really used that often or hardly even talked about. No one really made a forum about the space program before (or maybe there was a final frontier forum but I missed out on it) and instead gave Colonization a higher priority since colonization was given its own forum as well.
As for the 1upt and the civilization 5bnw that was mentioned above, I agree.
 
I'm hoping that the devs tweak the 1UPT rule if they're going to keep using it. It's the largest reason that I won't play Civ5 (and I do own BNW and quite a bit of DLC). Shuffling units around on a map, crashing into each other, and moving each one individually each turn is tedious at best.

I like the idea of tactical combat, but I would like to see a way of conveniently moving an army. Stacking limits or linking units for movement would be nice, even if you could only attack with one unit in combat. Just improving the logistics of troop movement would be a welcome bonus in BE.

Are you listening, Firaxis?
 
I was excited at the prospect of 1 UPT, but in practice (granted this is based on the very little I played the original iteration of Civ 5 and they've likely improved some things since) it added too much micro management, and I really missed strategic elements of being able to stack units. Not stacks of doom mind you but specializing units in certain ways to protect others, building fortresses at chokepoints with a few defenders, stuff like that. I just did not feel 1 UPT was an upgrade but a downgrade. In hindsight, I wish they hadn't tried to fix that which wasn't broken. There could have been many ways to tweak gameplay to limit the "stack of doom" scenarios while still allowing the stacking of units. (ie, in Civ 1 where killing 1 unit in a stack destroyed the entire stack as long as it was not in a city or fort.)

Yes I know, this will queue 10x more defenses of Civ 5 and how it is so much better than it was at release. Realize that the majority of the people that still post here are those that either liked Civ 5 enough to stick around and give it another chance or those that have primarily only played Civ 5 out of the Civ series. Those such as myself who hated 1 UPT and Civ 5 at release so much that they've basically been in "Civ hibernation" waiting for Civ 6 are not going to come around much.

That said, I'll probably still give this game a chance. It's been so long since I played Alpha Centauri and vaguely remember the combat being a bit different than that of Civs anyways.
 
One of the features that's been mentioned is the 'orbital layer'. If there's an additional dimension, I imagine you could have one unit on the ground and one directly above it in the air, at least. That would essentially be 2upt, or at least add additional flexibility to a 1upt rule which already allows multiple units per tile (air, land civilian, land military, sea military, sea civilian).
 
Civ 5 + G&K + BNW is a good game. the problem was Civ 5 vanilla.
Why?
It was utterly broken and an offense to the whole Civilization franchise.
The AI was beyond stupid (still is actually), there was NOTHING to do, diplomacy (HA!) was none existent (aaaand still is) and it basically felt like a mobile app. Only with no meaning. And with so much bugs it wasn't even playable. (I couldn't even start the effing game for 6 months)

Lets hope for more features in CivBE than we got in Civ 5 vanilla, or this will be like the "SimCity" disaster (yea we still remember that one EA).

Moderator Action: Removed offensive word and replaced it with something acceptable without changing meaning.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
Countmonte8242 said:
I was excited at the prospect of 1 UPT, but in practice (granted this is based on the very little I played the original iteration of Civ 5 and they've likely improved some things since) it added too much micro management, and I really missed strategic elements of being able to stack units. Not stacks of doom mind you but specializing units in certain ways to protect others, building fortresses at chokepoints with a few defenders, stuff like that. I just did not feel 1 UPT was an upgrade but a downgrade. In hindsight, I wish they hadn't tried to fix that which wasn't broken. There could have been many ways to tweak gameplay to limit the "stack of doom" scenarios while still allowing the stacking of units. (ie, in Civ 1 where killing 1 unit in a stack destroyed the entire stack as long as it was not in a city or fort.)

Yes I know, this will queue 10x more defenses of Civ 5 and how it is so much better than it was at release. Realize that the majority of the people that still post here are those that either liked Civ 5 enough to stick around and give it another chance or those that have primarily only played Civ 5 out of the Civ series. Those such as myself who hated 1 UPT and Civ 5 at release so much that they've basically been in "Civ hibernation" waiting for Civ 6 are not going to come around much.

That said, I'll probably still give this game a chance. It's been so long since I played Alpha Centauri and vaguely remember the combat being a bit different than that of Civs anyways.
Click to expand...


I agree, what I would Like to see is a 1 army per area rather than 1upt

Essentially one Stack of units (army) does combat like one single unit (with stats based on the units making it up)

AND it does combat by covering an Area of multiple tiles (similar to the way Fighters intercept.. although with terrain limitations)
 
The ridiculous amount of penalties for building new cities, and how tedious it was to keep global happiness high enough to build a wide empire.

CivBE should not have this. Also as much of the OP says, why has the AI in these games declined so significantly since SMAC?

How to make CivBE perfect, take 90% influence from SMAC, 8% from Civ IV, 1% from Civ II, and 1% from Civ V.

And done.
 
They need Civ4's empire limiting mechanics. Happiness determines maximum size of a city, maintenance determines how many cities you can afford. It was a great way to balance how tall and wide your empire could be. Conquering a large city didn't suddenly ruin your economy by plunging happiness into the negative.
 
Settlers turn into Outposts now, who cost a lot (money?) and grow very slow. So I think thats the way they limit expansion these days. Which sounds good imho. (source; the french article...)
The "happiness" system in Civ 5 was just ridiculous.
 
bhavv said:
The ridiculous amount of penalties for building new cities, and how tedious it was to keep global happiness high enough to build a wide empire.

CivBE should not have this. Also as much of the OP says, why has the AI in these games declined so significantly since SMAC?

How to make CivBE perfect, take 90% influence from SMAC, 8% from Civ IV, 1% from Civ II, and 1% from Civ V.

And done.
Click to expand...

The AI was pretty bad in SMAC if you played enough apparently (I didn't), that's why one of the fields of improvement of the fan patches is the AI. They were really bad at using terraformers especially.

What was really nice in SMAC was that there was a neutral state, an "armed neutrality" of sorts where you weren't hostile but weren't at war. I didn't like how this has never really been in Civ since then, you are either at war or not. In Civ 3 and 5 it's instant peace when you meet (though the Civ 5 AI is backstabby so it isn't really a peace), in 4 you can choose. In SMAC the factions could actually be neutral instead of these weird "I really actually hate you but am putting on a friendly face" or "DIE DIE DIE" diplomatic relations. Just let them be, Firaxis -- they can decide later (perhaps with a gift of gold/energy).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

GeneralZIft
Genius Design in Civ5 should come to Civ7
6 7 8
Replies
141
Views
5K
leif erikson
leif erikson
H
What game should I play?
Replies
0
Views
133
Hafenguy
H
GeneralZIft
Civ III Newbie
Replies
15
Views
468
GeneralZIft
GeneralZIft
stealth_nsk
Civ 6 vs. Civ 5 in regards to future 7
5 6 7
Replies
121
Views
6K
Ekmek
Ekmek
Tigranes
Oppenheimer and DoC
Replies
9
Views
914
brett0007
brett0007
Top Bottom