1. Although I don't recall playing Civ V on day one, I did play it early one. At the time I didn't think it was horrible. The AI was terrible at war, but the game itself, in terms of design made sense, the wonders art was beautiful, the game was simple to learn and hard to master, and it all fit in. It was just not enough content IMHO.
Rising Tide adds some content but I struggle to say it adds enough. You see, Civ BE, again in my opinion was a shell of a game, it still is to some degree. It is missing what makes it captivating, whether that is immersion, or the "it" factor that would make it stand out. Civ V had that, and having this "it" factor is the reason people played Civ V so much, and it brought so many new fans.
Your experience with civ5 vanilla and BE is very interesting to me because it is almost the mirror opposite of my experience. I felt like civ5 vanilla was a shell of a game because it was missing some really key historical concepts. It did not have trade routes, espionage nor any religion system! In addition, horseman were hugely OP. You could take cities in the classical age with just 4-5 horseman. You did not even need any ranged units. Also, units were too soft so they were one shot killed a lot (This was fixed in the expansions that increased HP to 100 points instead of 10). So, for these reasons, I feel like civ5 vanilla was basically a prototype designed to test 1upt and hexes, two radical ideas at the time. It desperately needed the expansions to really make it work and put flesh on the bones.
BE was a fun game that felt pretty complete in terms of core features. The major problem with BE was the OP trade routes. Every game was just spam cities and trade routes as fast as possible, beeline to your affinity techs and win. It desperately needed the patches that reworked trade routes. Now the expansion does add new content like water cities, hybrid affinities, new diplomacy and artifacts that enrich the game. These features were not technically necessary but by adding them, they make the game much more interesting IMO.
I think a big difference between civ and BE is the fact that one is historical while the other is scifi. History is in the past so it is known. For example, we know religion played a huge role in history so a religion system is not optional, it is a "must-have" feature in any historical civ game. Whereas the future is unknown. So what scifi features to put in a BE game will be more open-ended. So, for example, water cities will be a very obvious feature to put in a BE game, but they won't quite feel as "must-have" as say religion.
2. The reason I think the game needs two more expansions is twofold. Firstly the game has many problems, health system is bland and uninteresting, diplomacy isn't great by any means, hybrids are unfinished, small unit roster, short games ect ect.. And secondly the game needs to capture the "it" factor which it can get from more immersion within the game, and fleshing out affinities as a core part of BE. Not to mention that if you sell an expansion you also need to add something new to the game as well, so I guess my reasoning is threefold.
Speaking of the health system, I personally feel like it would be better to have two separate systems for health and happiness. Have a health system like in civ4 that is local and affects city growth. And have a global happiness system like in civ5 that could spawn rebel units. One area of BE that is really missing in my opinion is the concept of civil wars and rebellions. Considering how philosophically powerful and transformative affinities are, you would think that they could cause some major schisms in your society. I mean, if some of your population want to go harmony but you go purity, I would think that the harmony population might try to revolt and split because their values and ideals are so opposite your the main affinity.
I would also add that the areas that you want fixed could be adressed in a couples patches + 1 expansion rather than 2 expansions. But debating which option is better would be nitpicky.
I just think it restricts our ability to use the tech web as it was meant to be, a tech web you can feel free to explore.
I think that was definitely true for BE vanilla. I would always just beeline for the leaf techs that gave me my preferred affinity with no regard to the tech itself. In the late game, I would often grab techs that I literally did not care about, but I just wanted the affinity points in order to level up. But I do feel like RT made progress towards fixing this. By spreading affinity points and adding hybrid points, more techs have value now. I have found myself getting techs that I never cared about before because I wanted what the techs offered and I was ok with getting affinity points in other affinities since I would be getting some hybrid bonuses and maybe unlock a good hybrid unit.
I actually think that players are free to explore the tech web for the units and buildings it offers if they want to and let the affinity points fall where they may. It is just not an optimal way to play so many players don't want to do it.
I think the problem is more with the victory conditions. When you have a multi-directional tech web and certain victory conditions only require certain techs, then players are going to ignore certain parts of the tech web. Civ5 is different because it uses a linear tech tree with victory conditions at the end so players basically have to research everything anyway.
4.To discuss your point on the tech web having nothing left if affinities are removed, i'd say that if you have to rely on affinity buildings, and units to make your tech web interesting, you have failed to make a proper tech web.
Well, I agree that the tech web should be interesting. I guess my question is how do you do that when so much of your world is going to be connected to an affinity? If the tech web is separate from affinities, then everything in your tech web has to be generic, non-affinity stuff. How do you keep the tech web interesting when it can only contain those non-affinity generic stuff? So, I think keeping the tech web interesting, could be a challenge. Your tech web can contain basic units pre-upgrade like infantry or a rover or a carrier and it can contain basic buildings like a trade depot or a clinic or a factory. But the cool stuff like a neurolab has to be moved over to the affinity system.
In terms of my affinity idea, I am afraid I didn't explain myself well. What I meant to say is that science points would generate affnity points that could then be used to level up your affinity. That is what I meant to say, so, 8 science per turn would generate 8 points that could be used in your "My affinity Tree". An additional comment I had meant to make was that I would like for this affinity tree, to solely use this science per turn income to unlock everything affinity related, but I wouldn't be 100% against having a sort of tech requirement if anything was too strong (i.e. Unlock at least 10 techs before getting unit A or w/e.) That being said, I think my original systems is superior in that it makes more sense intuitively, and strong units could be moved farther down the affinity trees to be made harder to get.
I do have a question and forgive me if you mentioned it in the video and I missed it. In your system, would players pick an affinity first like with ideologies or would they be free to pick policies from different affinities like social policies? So, for example, can the player mix and match? Can they use that 8 science per turn on an supremacy policy and then a few turns later, use it for a harmony policy?
