An update from Firaxis Games regarding Beyond Earth feedback

[Roxlimn]

Quests are a non-tech way to gain Affinity, usually involving creating specific buildings or making new cities at specific points in the game and trading with them. In fact, there is a conquest-involved quest in the game that involves Harmony. It blows my mind how strong the zeitgeist is around tree-hugging that Harmony could be construed as a "peaceful alien-loving" affinity, when they're not really that way.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Well - think about not teching Bionics. I know, sacrilege. Just try it for one game. Bionics is a Harmony/Purity technology. You have no business going there for Supremacy unless you were just mechanically going for Biowell (which is a Harmony-theme tile) or Institute (Purity-theme building).

Bionics may have harmony and purity leaves and a Purity building, but it leads to Augmentation and the Augmentary which is a level 7 supremacy building, and a pretty good one. Also the Institute is in no way I see a Purity building. The Biowell should be a harmony improvement but Alien Genetics, the tech that enhances Biowells is a Purity tech. So at the moment, Biowells are more of a Purity improvement despite what the description says.

All the affinites Terraform. Harmony does it one way, Purity another, Supremacy yet another. Terrascapes is actually a pretty bad deal for anyone other than a hardcore Purity-Prosperity player.

That depends on what terraform means. If it just means anything you build then yes, but I think most would consider it to be making a planet more like earth. Which means terrascapes. Purity was specifically said to be about terraforming, and Harmony not terraforming. Terrascapes do seem to be a bad deal for anyone unless they take prosperity so it's really not fitting the theme at all.

If you're playing hard Supremacy with all the techs and boosts, you don't care whether it's Tundra or Desert. You're going to Generator the hell out of it anyway, so the base tile yield doesn't matter that much. They all defaut to 1 food 1 other or 2 food anyway.

I have not found anything that links Supremacy to generators. I don't see any tech boost for it. It was said that Supremacy was supposed to be energy intensive but I don't see that either. There's nothing making Supremacy more expensive than the other affinities. If they needed more of the improvements with maintenance costs but they don't seem to. The get a bonus to academies, but manufactaries get a bonus from Harmony and biowells are stuck as purity until that's fixed. If they needed extra energy then maybe tundra and desert would be fine for them but there isn't any reason for them to be less adverse to settling there than anyone else.

 

[tombakerwho]

Agreed, and I actually like the affinity boosting quests. There are not enough things like this. It also does not feel like you have to do a lot to complete them, and they don't always seem to boost you into the next affinity level, whereas the tech-based ones do. There is also the Might virtue, but I don't think they can stick any more affinity boosts in the virtue tree without making it quite a bit larger.

 

[Roxlimn]

Minor Annoyance:

Bionics may have harmony and purity leaves and a Purity building, but it leads to Augmentation and the Augmentary which is a level 7 supremacy building, and a pretty good one. Also the Institute is in no way I see a Purity building. The Biowell should be a harmony improvement but Alien Genetics, the tech that enhances Biowells is a Purity tech. So at the moment, Biowells are more of a Purity improvement despite what the description says.

I consider Augmentary to be a Purity/Supremacy hybrid building. It's too low (level 7?) for a third tier tech for Supremacy only, and it's kind of crappy in that it gives you a small amount of universal boosting as opposed to a concentrated boost, given the way TRs work. The quest reward is the best thing about it, and it's 5% universal boost.

Biowell is thematically a Harmony improvement. The descriptor says it, and the building looks it. Alien Genetics is a cheap Purity tech, but compared to Eco Farms, Biowells are a bad deal for Health-wealthy Purity. I don't see going Biowell-heavy for Purity unless I'm just going to completely ignore Vertical Farming (which is a Purity affinity tech).

That depends on what terraform means. If it just means anything you build then yes, but I think most would consider it to be making a planet more like earth. Which means terrascapes. Purity was specifically said to be about terraforming, and Harmony not terraforming. Terrascapes do seem to be a bad deal for anyone unless they take prosperity so it's really not fitting the theme at all.

The Civilopedia has an in-game definition of terraforming. By its own criteria, all the in-game factions engage in it. Purity is about expunging the alien life. Harmony is about melding human with alien, but it's still terraforming. See: Biowells.

I have not found anything that links Supremacy to generators. I don't see any tech boost for it. It was said that Supremacy was supposed to be energy intensive but I don't see that either. There's nothing making Supremacy more expensive than the other affinities. If they needed more of the improvements with maintenance costs but they don't seem to. The get a bonus to academies, but manufactaries get a bonus from Harmony and biowells are stuck as purity until that's fixed. If they needed extra energy then maybe tundra and desert would be fine for them but there isn't any reason for them to be less adverse to settling there than anyone else.

Generators is really a choice-by-default. With default Farms being so bad and Biowells being Harmony, the only real choice you have that's palatable is Generators. You don't really use a lot of Energy-expensive tiles - you just end up with gazillions of Energy. Cognition is a Supremacy tech, so you could conceivably put up a lot of those pretty early. It depends on how you focus.

The last game I tried with this, I actually did use Biowells, but used the free tech to open Bioengineering for Xenomalleum very early. With +4 Energy Generators, there was just little incentive to build anything else before Academies. I had so much energy I basically bought, well, nearly everything everywhere. It was almost like exploiting the AI for energy, except, of course, I wasn't. It was totally "legit."

I suppose Harmony can do that as well, but they have better things to do, and Purity has all the econ tech, so it's not like they have to do that.

 

[SnowFire]

Let me add an extra note to my above thoughts: my example rebalancing was just that, an example only. Basically somebody at Firaxis needs to get post-it notes for each element of the game and move 'em around. Figure out certain elements that some affinities can do that *nobody else* can do at all, some parts of the game that only 1 faction does well, and some mechanics where while all 3 affinities can do it, they do it in distinctive and notable ways. It'd be totally fine to, say, decide that Purity is terrible at industry and Harmony uses biomonsters to get lots of resources, so long as they stick with their answer and are consistent.

I will say that two notable areas where I think the answer has to be "every affinity can do it, but in their own way" are combat and science. If one affinity is the "good at combat" affinity, then that affinity becomes semi-required for competitive multiplayer games, which seems suboptimal. Science is slightly better, but with the way the game is currently structured, science is the key that opens the way to all the other win conditions. If one affinity is the "science" affinity, it risks becoming the fastest way to win peacefully, guaranteed. This isn't to say that there shouldn't be differentiation here; the differentiation just has to come in a form stronger than "slightly different upgrades and a bigger combat number."

All the affinites Terraform. Harmony does it one way, Purity another, Supremacy yet another.

Change every instance of "terraform" in my previous post to "terraform to an Earth-like world" for Purity's agenda / Harmony's counter-agenda.

This is wrong.

Boreholes not requiring Strategic Resources is huge. It means you can basically spam it everywhere and get all your cities producing a fair bit of hammers. LEV Plants are for your core production facilities - you're not supposed to spam them but use them to generate hammer differentials to spike your TR outputs. Skycranes boost core production facilities more, but require a hard choice between production and UUs. You actually don't need Floatstone that much for units as Purity. You can just rely on your Battlesuits and Aegis.

(snip)

It's not enough to just look at the files and say they're the same. They're kind of the same, but not really.

Let us assume for a moment you are 100% correct and there are indeed Deep Strategic Implications currently in BE about production between the affinities. (I *don't* grant that, but sure, let's grant it for the moment.) Would you be opposed to playing this up even more? Crank the volume way up on the differences. If the asymmetry could be interestingly balanced, would you still be okay with it? If the current "huge" differences are fun, would "gigantic" differences be even more fun? Because that's effectively what I'd like to see.

Right now, the flavor comes across very weakly, if at all, except for the part where each Affinity likes a certain resource. That part is true, at least. And yes, Boreholes are slightly better than the other options due to reliability + lack of a required resource, and part of why I'd lean toward making Purity the "Industry" faction in respect for where Firaxis already went. But... it's not THAT big a deal. You seem to focus heavily on the resource cost, which fine, is different, but the *results* are so similar if you decide to spend the resources - Microbal Mines, Skycranes, & Bioglass Furances just all appear to be the same building requiring a different resource. It's not a bad *start*, but it could be more. To go back to my StarCraft II example - it'd be like if every race could teleport around the map, but Protoss units that teleported cost slightly less gas, while teleporting Zerg units costed slightly more minerals, and and teleporting Terran units required special positioning, except for that 1 Terran unit which can teleport unconditionally, but don't pay too much attention to him, he's an exception. (Reminder: This is a hypothetical scenario, not real SC2!) Would a casual player notice the difference? If you're going to use strictly resource cost to sell it, it needs to be a BIG resource difference that can't be ignored. Like... Microbal Mines cost laughably low Production (50 minerals?) but an extreme amount of Xenomass.

To fall back to an example I mentioned earlier that's very relevant to Beyond Earth - look at Freedom, Order, & Autocracy in Gods & Kings. All 3 have a Happiness booster! Clearly they're identical! Well... no. Autocracy gets +3 Happy Courthouses that build fast. This is 100% useless if you're not busy conquering the world, so if you foolishly took this path when not doing so, you didn't use it well. Order gets a Happiness boost per city. This is obviously better in sprawling empires, and not as useful in compact ones. Freedom gets less unhappiness per specialist, so it's very good at keeping Happiness in line if you have tons of specialists churning out Great People, and not very good if you're ignoring Specialists. All three get Happiness, but they get it in their own way, and there's a satisfying "right" way to do it. The current buildings/units don't do that. Doesn't matter whether you're Purity, Supremacy, or Harmony, you'll be able to find something that will shovel some food/energy/production/culture/etc. at you largely unconditionally. I guess the tile improvement techs that buff them add a bit of differentiation?

Beyond Earth's affinity distinctions are currently subtle - or at least more subtle than I'd like. Don't be subtle. Crank up the volume.

 

[Roxlimn]

The flavor only comes across weakly if you're not actually playing the game. The resource constraints for each of the affinities are different. 2 Floatstone from Purity is almost a trivial requirement. 2 Firaxite from Supremacy is not.

What you're asking for is like asking the Workers in SC2 to each harvest a different resource. It's kind of a pointless ask, IMO, and there's already significant differentiation. Particularly in CivBE, placement on the tech web matters immensely. Microbial Mines is significantly out of the way for Harmony players. It's fairly troublesome to get it. LEV Plants are almost a gimme.

Placement on the Web and availability from a given position matter far more than what the building does on paper.

It also interacts with all the other things the affinity already does. Biowell is both a Purity and a Harmony tech, but Harmony gets nothing else, so they're likely to spam it for food, even when they don't need more Health (and they're liable to have more Health in general as a result, but less Energy). Purity players can opt for either Biowells or Vertical Farms, so they have a choice and they can switch according to their situation.

Between all those buildings, industrial farms, and Purity's easy Health, they're far more liable and more easily spam Manufactories, and have more hammers in general everywhere than the other two factions. It goes beyond just the one building to a holistic and systemic view of the matter. Viewing things from the single perspective of a single mechanic is shortsighted and leads to less flavor, not more.

I want it to be more flavorful, but a guided overview is what's needed, not a per-building dissection that fails to take the game trajectory and actual gameplay in mind.

Case in point is Order vs. Freedom Happiness. Frankly, I use Specialists in both sprawling and in small empires, so basically I just get enough Happiness to not worry about it anymore; and that's basically all that is to me. Autocracy's +3 Happy Courthouses would matter more - if I cared enough to care about Unhappiness when I'm conquering the world. In general, I don't. I just eat the happiness penalties by planning for it.

 

[Sal]

@roxlimm I get that I could deliberately restrict myself to certain techs and improvements, but that is kind of immersion breaking. Maybe biowells are a " harmony" improvement but they are powerful for everyone. If I play harmony and don't terrascape on purpose but then see automated ai workers building terradcapes everywhere in a harmony 13 civ that is also immersion breaking. It is like the way I have to choose the +1 energy for autoplants to not make my trade op. I would rather the game was balanced without my conscious choice to limit myself. Similarly I would rather the affinities were flavoured without me choosing to role-play, even though there is no built in reward for it.

 

[Roxlimn]

If anything, building things only for their benefit without looking at the Civilopedia for the place they have in the fiction is what's immersion-breaking. People, as a rule, are not logical, and they make choices often and then try to rationalize them, rather than using cold logic to dictate their path. Using cold logic and numbers to make those decisions rather than adhering to your Affinity is what's immersion breaking.

As for Terrascapes, they're not actually super-aversive to Harmony Affinity.

Point is, if you keep doing the same thing and picking the same choices, then your game will necessarily always feel the same way. If you want something different, find a different tech path.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Similar, but I meant a mobile, non-combat unit that you send through the gate, not a tile improvement or satellite. It just seems odd to send military units through the gate, unless the intent is aggressive. It is not clear to me whether you are sending back units to conquer earth, or to help it.

If you bother to read the Civilopedia for the Emancipation Victory, the implication is that it is Old Earth that is militarily resisting Supremacy's cybernetic enhancements. It is only after the first contact brought news of deliberate oppression that the armies were assembled. I'm rather in favor of the idea that no affinity is either the good guy or the bad guy. Supremacy views themselves as both increasing the standard of living on Old Earth and toppling oppressive dictatorial regimes that refuse to allow their people the benefits of modern health care.

 

[Roxlimn]

If you bother to read the Civilopedia for the Emancipation Victory, the implication is that it is Old Earth that is militarily resisting Supremacy's cybernetic enhancements. It is only after the first contact brought news of deliberate oppression that the armies were assembled. I'm rather in favor of the idea that no affinity is either the good guy or the bad guy. Supremacy views themselves as both increasing the standard of living on Old Earth and toppling oppressive dictatorial regimes that refuse to allow their people the benefits of modern health care.

That is my impression as well. I don't think they force anyone to undergo Augmentation - they just automatically Augment newborns because in their view, the advantages are so obvious and so remarkable that it would unethical to not simply do it.

Similarly, they probably see 0 downsides to having your organs on file for reprinting should they fail, or offering you neural upload in the case of an unavoidable death. Their signature end-game wonder is the Cynosure, which is a godlike AI, but humans still operate it.

If you think about it, Emancipation is a much more likely outcome than Exodus. What Old Earth country would just allow the population of an entire state to just teleport away into a new colony? Giant quadripedal mechakaiju of doom certainly sends a powerful message, but I don't think it's necessarily bad. It depends on interpretation.

Consider: with Supremacy technology, Old Earth will actually become liveable. There's no need to abandon it!

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I consider Augmentary to be a Purity/Supremacy hybrid building. It's too low (level 7?) for a third tier tech for Supremacy only, and it's kind of crappy in that it gives you a small amount of universal boosting as opposed to a concentrated boost, given the way TRs work. The quest reward is the best thing about it, and it's 5% universal boost.

Too low!?! Ridiculous. You've said a lot about playing an affinity the was it's supposed to be played, however you're saying a level 7 supremacy building that adds cybernetic augmentation to your people is also a purity building. Seven affinity levels is not a trivial amount. That's past the point where the game declares it your dominant affinity and starts charging extra for levels in other affinities. Levels 2 building are low enough that you'll pick them up as some point. Levels 4 you'll get if you do any tech stealing. But 7 takes some commitment.
Yes, the quest reward is great. It's part of the building.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

If anything, building things only for their benefit without looking at the Civilopedia for the place they have in the fiction is what's immersion-breaking. People, as a rule, are not logical, and they make choices often and then try to rationalize them, rather than using cold logic to dictate their path. Using cold logic and numbers to make those decisions rather than adhering to your Affinity is what's immersion breaking.

As for Terrascapes, they're not actually super-aversive to Harmony Affinity.

Point is, if you keep doing the same thing and picking the same choices, then your game will necessarily always feel the same way. If you want something different, find a different tech path.

Is seems like your playing this game like it's a live action role play where nothing enforces rules except your own desire to role play as best you can. I however want to play this as a computer game. I don't want to play a fantasy game as a spell caster and wear plate armour and swing a broadsword around with impunity. So I want the game to reflect a reason why is the people in the world would behave a certain way. If wizard s could wear armour they would. That's why (I'll use Dragon age as an example) armour greatly increases the cost of spells. I did however play as an arcane warrior specialization which allowed me to be a heavily armoured spell caster, which has its own benefits and drawbacks I had to consider when building my character.
You seem to be advocating for there being no rules for affinities but also strictly adhering to your own, which is some cases seem to fly in the face of the games rules. I.E. augmentary is not a supremacy building.
I would wonder how affinity world work that way . Would you just give yourself points when you felt you earned it? No, the game has to make you play a certain way to some degree.

 

[SnowFire]

For whatever it's worth, I was horrifically floatstone-screwed when I played as Purity, but perhaps I was unlucky. Regardless, I don't think the scarcity / resource requirements on floatstone / firaxite / biomass come off strongly enough at the moment; certainly there's nothing in the game that says "Firaxite is the most rare and precious of all resources, treasure it" or the like. I 100% agree that a holistic approach is needed, but I'd argue I'm the one who's taking it. ;-) You are baking in lots of current second and third order strategic implications of the *current* ruleset that will potentially be totally remixed in a rebalancing - perhaps Firaxite demands lessen in a Supremacy rebalance, for example, which would upend your assumptions. I'm talking about "if we start redesigning the Affinities from scratch, what would be fun / flavorful / interesting?" (I've said before that the LEV plant is awful unless you're swimming in Floatstone, but that isn't the kind of problem I want to solve, that's a low-level balancing concern, fiddle the numbers some and it's fine.)

Case in point is Order vs. Freedom Happiness. Frankly, I use Specialists in both sprawling and in small empires, so basically I just get enough Happiness to not worry about it anymore; and that's basically all that is to me. Autocracy's +3 Happy Courthouses would matter more - if I cared enough to care about Unhappiness when I'm conquering the world. In general, I don't. I just eat the happiness penalties by planning for it.

Ah! But you glossed over the key element. These three social policy trees encourage and reward playing in a specific way. Strategic diversity! I agree G&K Autocracy is a tad underpowered and not really something to try on Immortal or higher difficulty, but that's not really the point. I suppose in current BE, the diversity is in "if there's a contested neutral area that I can't grab all of before others settle it, I should prioritize settling near my faction-specific resource." That's a *start*. But I'd like more overwhelming strategic incentives to vary up my play, too. If I pick Aesthetics in BNW, I want to get a Cultural victory; if I pick Exploration I'm clearly doing some kind of naval / coastal city strategy. The Mayans make me want to go wide, the Koreans make me want to go tall. You get the point. "Get a lot of your affinity-specific resource" and "figure out how to spend that resource between units, buildings, & satellites" only goes so far, and just isn't as flavorful to me (personal preference, yes).

Now, you're going to tell me that there *are* such incentives in BE, and perhaps so, weakly. We're playing the same game, after all. But however much "x" incentive there is, I want it to be 10x. Like I said before - you clearly love the game, which is great, but would you like it even better if it was *more* asymmetrical? I think it's worth trying at least.

In any case, with all the Civ5 talk, I'm sure people have mentioned it before, but one band-aid quick fix: rip off BNW's Ideology building-block system (except with no Tourism). Every time you rank-up an Affinity past 4, *you* the player get to pick a bonus, with better bonuses hidden behind later ones. Make these bonuses very distinct and powerful such that climbing the tree a second time with the same Affinity can still be interesting. I'm not sure this is the best long-term idea, but it'd be something, at least.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Affinity is already determined by start location. Having affinity interconnected with play style reduces replayability and effectively causes the game to play itself.

 

[Roxlimn]

Is seems like your playing this game like it's a live action role play where nothing enforces rules except your own desire to role play as best you can. I however want to play this as a computer game. I don't want to play a fantasy game as a spell caster and wear plate armour and swing a broadsword around with impunity. So I want the game to reflect a reason why is the people in the world would behave a certain way. If wizard s could wear armour they would. That's why (I'll use Dragon age as an example) armour greatly increases the cost of spells. I did however play as an arcane warrior specialization which allowed me to be a heavily armoured spell caster, which has its own benefits and drawbacks I had to consider when building my character.
You seem to be advocating for there being no rules for affinities but also strictly adhering to your own, which is some cases seem to fly in the face of the games rules. I.E. augmentary is not a supremacy building.
I would wonder how affinity world work that way . Would you just give yourself points when you felt you earned it? No, the game has to make you play a certain way to some degree.

What I'm saying is that Civilization is inherently a calculation game because of how complex it is. (Not depth, just complexity). It's very hard to balance right. As such, there will always be a "best way" to do things. If you're always just doing that, then the game will necessarily become monotonous. Civ IV received a lot of criticism for "always playing the same Cottage Spam way" before other ways of playing were uncovered, and we can't uncover new ways of playing the tech tree if everyone keeps playing the same way.

Particularly, if you keep playing the same way, you only have yourself to blame if the game starts to feel kind of monotonous.

Another way of putting this is, Many (usually most) of the Civs in mainline Civ games impose limitations on you by dint of the advantages they don't give you vis a vis the strongest options. By choosing to play as those Civs, you're voluntarily choosing suboptimally for the sake of a different experience.

CivBE doesn't impose those limitations on you, so you have to look to managing that yourself. That's why many people view it as "bland." Aside from not reading the Civilopedia, they also don't have the wherewithal to control themselves for their own benefit.

Too low!?! Ridiculous. You've said a lot about playing an affinity the was it's supposed to be played, however you're saying a level 7 supremacy building that adds cybernetic augmentation to your people is also a purity building. Seven affinity levels is not a trivial amount. That's past the point where the game declares it your dominant affinity and starts charging extra for levels in other affinities. Levels 2 building are low enough that you'll pick them up as some point. Levels 4 you'll get if you do any tech stealing. But 7 takes some commitment.
Yes, the quest reward is great. It's part of the building.

I'm saying it's a hybrid building. The Surrogacy tech for Aegis is its only leaf tech. Ergo, you have to take Augmentation as Purity in order to access one of your UUs and it grants you Affinity points. Supremacy doesn't have to go there at all.

Seven is not a trivial amount of Affinity, but it is below what you should be your primary Affinity at that point in the game. If you're playing a hybrid (not pure Affinity) game, 7 is doable. Granted, it's slower because you're not going hard for the VC conditions.

Now, you're going to tell me that there *are* such incentives in BE, and perhaps so, weakly. We're playing the same game, after all. But however much "x" incentive there is, I want it to be 10x. Like I said before - you clearly love the game, which is great, but would you like it even better if it was *more* asymmetrical? I think it's worth trying at least.

Frankly, I don't think any of us knows enough about the ruleset at the moment to propose anything of that nature. For that matter, Civ has never been that asymmetrical anyway - CivBE is the most asymmetrical so far in that if I have no Affinity points in Harmony, I kind of hate having Xenomass around (spoils a tile).

The way the units move and wage right now is pretty different. Harmony units are about individual mobility and individual toughness. The proximity of tech and unit limitations promotes Phasal Transporters early and often for Supremacy units. Purity units pretty simply have to hoof it on land the hard way, but they're usually the toughest units.

 

[Acken]

What I'm saying is that Civilization is inherently a calculation game because of how complex it is. (Not depth, just complexity). It's very hard to balance right. As such, there will always be a "best way" to do things. If you're always just doing that, then the game will necessarily become monotonous. Civ IV received a lot of criticism for "always playing the same Cottage Spam way" before other ways of playing were uncovered, and we can't uncover new ways of playing the tech tree if everyone keeps playing the same way.

Particularly, if you keep playing the same way, you only have yourself to blame if the game starts to feel kind of monotonous.

Another way of putting this is, Many (usually most) of the Civs in mainline Civ games impose limitations on you by dint of the advantages they don't give you vis a vis the strongest options. By choosing to play as those Civs, you're voluntarily choosing suboptimally for the sake of a different experience.

While it's true that there is always a best way (otherwise choices don't become meaningful), the purpose of a developer is still to make sure each choices fill a likely needed role, so that each options can fill at least the purpose the developer gave it when designed (and that the best way isn't always the same way). This is done through balancing, modifying numbers, and observing both player behavior and comparative results. Balancing is an iterative process in discussion with actual players of the game and said iterations.

Arguably this thought comes back to an earlier one where I'm fairly confident that if they pursue in an attempt to fix everything in one patch it will be disappointing. Multiple tests by the players have to be made unless they suddenly are capable of recognizing the flaws themselves. It's even more daunting when there has been 0 communications with their dedicated fan base since release, only announcements, there is no dialogue.

Just give us a beta patch and a beta forum already

 

[Roxlimn]

Ideally, a balanced Civ game is one in which your path can take multiple forms. This has rarely been true, and definitely not in either Civ IV or V. You always get the National College. You always go for the Liberalism bulb. You always snag Civil Service as soon as you can.

With the 3 Affinities, we now have a chance to balance at least 3 paths through the tech tree to be equally competitive, which is why it annoys me so much that all anyone ever does is beeline Bionics as soon as humanly possible.

 

[Wodan]

I personally wouldn't mind if Firaxis issued little patches to balance the game.

Starting off by designing a game with multiple victory paths, the designers balance it as much as possible through pre-release limited testing. After release, the game community finds things that weren't uncovered by the pre-release testing. No need to panic as long as you have your towel.

So, if victory X is better than others so that people always go for it, or tech Y is so advantageous that it's beelined regardless of desired VC, or unit Z is so strong it's built in preference to other units. So issue a little patch that gives X more requirements, Y more cost, and Z less strong.

Many games have done this such as Blizzard for Starcraft; heck, even paper CCGs do this. I think it's a perfect solution for both CiV and BE. It's especially easy with the online distribution, so honestly I don't see the downside.

 

[AlaskA]

AI must be boosted, all other things is OK.

 

[Roxlimn]

I personally wouldn't mind if Firaxis issued little patches to balance the game.

Starting off by designing a game with multiple victory paths, the designers balance it as much as possible through pre-release limited testing. After release, the game community finds things that weren't uncovered by the pre-release testing. No need to panic as long as you have your towel.

So, if victory X is better than others so that people always go for it, or tech Y is so advantageous that it's beelined regardless of desired VC, or unit Z is so strong it's built in preference to other units. So issue a little patch that gives X more requirements, Y more cost, and Z less strong.

Many games have done this such as Blizzard for Starcraft; heck, even paper CCGs do this. I think it's a perfect solution for both CiV and BE. It's especially easy with the online distribution, so honestly I don't see the downside.

The entire problem with CivFanatics and fan bandwagonning at this point is that a popular strat is elucidated on the forums and then experimentation simply stops. I don't know if you remember, but there was a time when obsolete's Wonder Economy in the CivIV forums was openly derided as "stupid" and "impossible" and "clearly suboptimal newbie crap." After all, everyone "knew" that Wonders were for chumps.

Right now, that's Bionics. No one wants to experiment and try to find other ways through the tech tree. Everyone just does the same damn thing over and over and there's nothing to balance with anything else. It's all just the one thing.

We don't even know whether there is any other strong path because no one even tries. Heck, even if there were another weak path, the fact that no one even tries means that we don't know how that path looks like or how it may or may not work. It's maddening. And then peeps complain about it and stop playing.

I wish I could say that this was unusual, but it was like this in the CivIV days as well. We can only hope that CivBE will turn out better.