An update from Firaxis Games regarding Beyond Earth feedback

[Teproc]

The problems with CivBE is the ridiculously outdated AI and a complete lack of Diplomacy options.

Those are problems, but ones that were also present in CiV and that aren't that easy to fix. You're not wrong, but I doubt they will/can fix them, so I'm fine with them working mostly on improving the UI and the balance.

 

[bladex]

What i want
ships can capture coastal cities.
bigger maps.
color the tech tree without having to use a mod.
get rid of favors their useless.
make the promised land victory harder like colonize 50 earthlings or something.
make the siege worms easier to kill...
make the aliens guard their nests better instead of leaving it empty for an explorer to take it LOL.
make it so if your using harmony aliens won't attack you at all at some point!
fix the trade routes.
make forests useful!
Increase Embarkation speed.
in the military view if you click on a unit it doesn't jump to it.
luxury resources so i can trade them for strategy resources like i did in civ5.

 

[Lucius_]

Thanks for the update!

And a suggestion, the Exodus gate should automatically spawn a settler every turn so you don't forget to click it every turn. I would click on it 2 or 3 times a turn because I couldn't remember if I had done it this turn, or was that last turn?

 

[Justus II]

Thanks for the update!

And a suggestion, the Exodus gate should automatically spawn a settler every turn so you don't forget to click it every turn. I would click on it 2 or 3 times a turn because I couldn't remember if I had done it this turn, or was that last turn?

This! Very annoying that a critical step to victory requires you to remember to click a unit- and there is no indication from the unit if you have clicked it or not. In fact, it's not very clear when you first click on it what you are supposed to do!

 

[Sherlock]

I knew this game wouldn't be polished but I'm surprised it was released in this state.

Wake me up when the second expansion pack gets here.

 

[Breezin]

It's really refreshing to see come communication from Firaxis/2K regarding updates. It was unexpected.

 

[Breezin]

Those are problems, but ones that were also present in CiV and that aren't that easy to fix. You're not wrong, but I doubt they will/can fix them, so I'm fine with them working mostly on improving the UI and the balance.

Diplomacy is an easy fix, it just takes the will to do it. Diplomacy has been an afterthought for the Civ V/BE team from the beginning.

Civ IV had great diplomacy. They could have used that as a template and ended up with a good start.

 

[Raion]

Well, I don't mind trade routes at all. I think it is fine to have it stop so it can be changed if wanting to during the game.

I did ask if they could include an Apollo 13 level where the AI immediately declares war on the human that slipped through the Chosen Process because instead of Building a Civilization, the Warmonger, or Dissatified Human can be wiped out as quickly as possible in the game.

 

[misterchief]

Well, I don't mind trade routes at all. I think it is fine to have it stop so it can be changed if wanting to during the game.

Try playing domination or on a large map. When you have 15+ cities (or 30 cities in my current game), each with 3 trade routes, having to assign 2-4 trade routes each and every turn, when the list of destinations is huge and unsortable, is absolutely maddening . As another poster on these forums put it, we want to play Civ, not Trade Route Simulator Pro.

 

[Tomice]

It's really refreshing to see come communication from Firaxis/2K regarding updates. It was unexpected.

Agree! It seems to be an industry trend that communications are getting more direct. Might be a sideeffect of the kickstarter trend, where the devs are often very accessible.

I like it, and I think both involved parties profit from this. If they - as example - admitted that purity 1 explorers might need to be revisited, it would lead to more relaxed and constructive feedback on the matter IMHO.

Firaxis also has the great advantage that their audience is more mature and "civilized" than for many other games.

 

[misterchief]

Agree! It seems to be an industry trend that communications are getting more direct. Might be a sideeffect of the kickstarter trend, where the devs are often very accessible.

I like it, and I think both involved parties profit from this. If they - as example - admitted that purity 1 explorers might need to be revisited, it would lead to more relaxed and constructive feedback on the matter IMHO.

Firaxis also has the great advantage that their audience is more mature and "civilized" than for many other games.

I agree with you that it's great that they are opening lines of communication, but I feel like that should have been done as part of a public beta test. It's disappointing to pay full retail price for a game to beta test it, which is arguably what we're doing (same with Civ 5 at launch).

That being said, "I think we agree, the past is over" (hehe). So, looking forward, what gives me some hope is that the lead devs for BE are guys who grew up playing the Civ franchise, so I'm sure they perfectly understand and are sympathetic to the community's gripes with the current state of the game. I just hope Firaxis is making sufficient resources available to them, since Firaxis is probably also developing Civ 6 in parallel at the moment.

 

[omniclast]

So I made a list of UI bugs and requested changes as I was thinking about this the last few days. Seems like this would be an appropriate place to post, hopefully the Firaxis team will find feedback helpful.

main screen
- make miasma more easily visible (or provide toggle view to highlight miasma, as with resource icons and tile yields)

diplo/victory
- on defeat or victory screens, show player that won and type of victory (at the very least)
- on the diplomacy panel, show each leader's strategic resources available for trade
- when an AI requests a non-editable trade, show how much of the desired strat resource you have available (sometimes can't adjust trades offered by AI, so can't cancel and then re-offer to see your total amount of that strat, as you would in Civ 5)
-Make Exodus Gate generate settlers automatically each turn
-add a demographics screen or some equivalent rankings system

trade route screens
- need a way to find new stations when they appear, either a clickable notification or "locate" button on the message window that shifts focus to the station. Would be nice also to have a list somewhere afterwards to find them again easily.
- make it possible to order available trade routes by highest bpt/ept/fpt/ppt yield in assign trade route panel
- place previous trade route at top of assign trade unit panel
- make total empire trade routes (used : available) visible somewhere on main screen, rather than just separately in city screens
- allow us to move idle trade units to any city regardless of available routes in move trade unit panel (useful if trade unit finishes before depot/autoplant in city where you want to use it; hard to keep track of idle trade units otherwise)

notifications
- "construction completed" notifications should include the name of the constructed unit/building (fix announced)
- add notification card (not just text notification) for your trade routes killed by aliens / other civs
- add notification card for when a worker building an improvement / explorer doing an excavation is about to die from miasma
- make affinity unit upgrades appear before move orders in card queue (so you don't attack first and then later discover you have an upgrade)
-include spies in headquarters in "spies that need orders" number on spies panel icon, so we know when new recruits need to be placed

quest screens
- on the quests panel, make a button to open current quest decision if there is one available this turn (in particular for building quests)
- show affinity quest stage completion yields when I am making the decision (not just which affinity the decision will lead to)

city screens
- add "limit growth" option
- show whether specialists have been locked by player or set by governor
- show whether manual specialist control is on
- allow governor to place food tiles when on food focus and unhealthy (currently governor will avoid growth when unhealthy, even on food focus)

bugs
- Solid State Citizen quest jams on final decision for Supremacy/Purity path. Should create a station and tell you to destroy it or trade with it; station never appears and final decision checkbox gets cut in half on quest screen
- quests occasionally require you to build structures that are not available in a city because the required resource is not in workable distance
- in MP, occasionally production notifications do not show an icon in the focus window; clicking on the empty window does not send you anywhere, so you have to find the city and select a building manually
- veterancy notification cards appear as the "next turn" icon in the focus window
-in large cities, some tiles cannot be locked. Last 1-3 pop will move to the clicked tile, but won't lock, and governor will change them upon exiting city screen

 

[Fabio1701]

I don't know if I speak for everybody but I would really prefer a quick patch soon (in a week or so) that fixes the easiest stuff on the list, and a more meaty patch just before Christmas rather than having to wait for all fixes until everything is perfect.

What do you guys prefer one complete patch that takes longer or a quick one now and a even more complete one later?

"A good plan violently executee now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." - General Patton

 

[Wodan]

Try playing domination or on a large map. When you have 15+ cities (or 30 cities in my current game), each with 3 trade routes, having to assign 2-4 trade routes each and every turn, when the list of destinations is huge and unsortable, is absolutely maddening . As another poster on these forums put it, we want to play Civ, not Trade Route Simulator Pro.

Actually, I'd think TRSP would have that capability.

 

[Svetkavitsa]

-add a demographics screen or some equivalent rankings system

I know a lot of people have been clamoring for the demographics screen (and I was very dependent on it in CiV), but I'm actually in the camp that it's immersion breaking and I shouldn't readily know agricultural/economic/production/military strength of others. It adds increased value to spy reconnaissance. In MP, everyone clearly knows who's ahead based on demographics, when in my opinion, it should be more obfuscated.

 

[omniclast]

I know a lot of people have been clamoring for the demographics screen (and I was very dependent on it in CiV), but I'm actually in the camp that it's immersion breaking and I shouldn't readily know agricultural/economic/production/military strength of others. It adds increased value to spy reconnaissance. In MP, everyone clearly knows who's ahead based on demographics, when in my opinion, it should be more obfuscated.

I don't disagree, but you can always ignore it in SP - and maybe a pregame option to disable it in MP? The other issue is much of the info is also available by hovering over leaders' scores in the diplomatic panel, it's just a lot more annoying to read.

I think it definitely needs a post game demo screen though. Or some kind of breakdown.

 

[thecrazyscot]

It would be great if the city screen were updated so that the buildings panel was open by default and the list items were smaller, at the current zoom level there is a lot of scrolling I'd you want to sell a particular building.

Even more importantly, though, imo would be to have the production queue enabled by default. It's very frustrating having to enable it in every... single... city.

Finally, how about a notification when another player is x number of turns away from winning? Was blindsided when I was 3 turns away from contact victory and somebody's mind flower finished doing it's thing... and what gives with not being able to continue a game you've lost??? It would be awesome if you could continue the game and whoever won the game received some appropriate bonuses to give them an advantage you could try to overcome.

 

[omniclast]

And to be able to cancel production of a building at the top of the queue instead of moving it down first...

Would it make sense to compile a collaborative list of requested UI fixes, maybe in the bug report forum? Is there one already?

 

[Fr33lanc3r]

This has been an issue since Civ:5, but I still think it'd be nice to have fixed. When you have a "forever" item as the only item in a build queue (produce science et. al.), it'd be nice to not have to uncheck queueing, change the build item, and the recheck to queue up more items. Also, if there's only 1 item in the queue, being able to cancel it would be sweet, the extra clicks for queueing up something, changing priority, and then removing the offending item, or going the route of changing back to unqueued start to get a bit tedious.

 

[copperred]

Try playing domination or on a large map. When you have 15+ cities (or 30 cities in my current game), each with 3 trade routes, having to assign 2-4 trade routes each and every turn, when the list of destinations is huge and unsortable, is absolutely maddening . As another poster on these forums put it, we want to play Civ, not Trade Route Simulator Pro.

^This. It drives me insane to manage all those trade routes plus the UI fails to acknowledge when you're at your ma trade units.