There are a number of features that are inexplicably missing.
Natural Wonders: They were one of the main reasons to explore in Civ5, they made the map more interesting and they could provide an incentive to expand your empire if you were interested in working their tile. They also had a number of interesting effects, like the Fountain of Youth making your units regenerate or Mount Kilimanjaro making your units move faster on hills.
In BE, they would also help giving the planet and the game in general a bit more personality, right now the alien planet is as generic as it gets.
Luxury Resources and a meaningful Happiness/Health System: The main reason to found a new city and the main reason you would use Diplomacy. Keeping your empire happy was a big deal, having Luxury resources to trade helped you make allies and they would often have traits that made them shape your palystyle. For example, if you started near Marble, you might want to use its production bonus to try and build some Wonders, which in turn might dictate which Social Policy you would pick.
In BE, Health is only influenced by Virtues and buildings, meaning you have no real reason to look beyond your empire to acquire what you need. Sure, strategic resources are more important, since you need them in larger quantities, but I hardly ever found it necessary to trade them.
Would it be so bad to have resources that give bonus health plus some kind of circumstancial bonus?
Meaningful terrain features: In Civ5, terrain was a huge deal, so much so that every civilization got a starting bias towards a certain kind of terrain. Aztecs and Iroquois were masters of jungles and forests, for example. Aztecs also benefitted from lakes and rivers more than other civs, making some part of the map more interesting for future colonization. Same thing for the Incas and mountains.
And of course, the upgrade system for your units meant that they could be better at fighting in a certain kind of terrain, or that they could overcome the penalities associated with terrain, like Amphibious making attacks through a river or from sea a viable tactic.
In BE I've found that not only relatively few tile improvements require a specific kind of terrain, but that penalities are fixed due to a flat and boring veterancy system for your units. There's Miasma, but it's more of a nuisance than anything else, you can just remove it or make more of it using the appropriate tech and it's very easy to make your units resistant to it.
Also, there are absolutely no civilizations (or colonies, whatever) that have any kind of terrain bonuses.
Comparing Archaeologist and Scouts to Explorers: On the surface, I liked the added value of your early exploration units. The Explorer is like a blend of the Archaeologist and the Scout, ignoring terrain cost and being able to build "Expeditions", which are similar to the Archaeologist's dig sites.
Unfortunately the Explorer is also completely unable to fight, 3 Strength means he literally can't stand a chance against even the most basic alien or enemy unit. I wonder why does it even have a Strength score to begin with? He could just be a defenseless worker unit for all that matters.
Expeditions are also uninteresting and boring compared to Antiquity Sites. All they do is provide some kind of one-off bonus and then disappear (yes, sometimes you get an alien unit, which is nice but far too rare to matter, the alien unit also can't heal). Antiquity Sites could be turned into a permanent landmark or you could get a permanent artifact out of them.
I have to wonder why they couldn't just leave the same archaeology system in place from Civ5, making the alien ruins and skeletons give 3 choices once the Expedition is complete: build a tile improvement on the site that gives a permament bonus, get a one-off bonus or recover artifacts that give a smaller but permanent bonus and go in some kind of special building just like artifacts in Civ5.
Unit Variety:
In CiV5 you had the following kinds of units:
-Infantry
-Ranged Infantry
-Artillery
-Fighter aircrafts
-Bomber aircrafts
-"Melee" ships, also doubling as a submarine counter and able to carry missiles.
-Ranged ships.
-Carriers.
-Missiles.
-Submarines, which could hold missile units, were invisibile to most units and could go under the ice caps.
-Tanks.
-Dedicated anti-armor unit.
-Dedicated anti-air unit.
-Technically you also had paratroopers and other special infantry units, but let's leave those out for the moment.
In CivBE you have:
-Infantry
-Ranged Infantry
-Artillery
-Tanks.
-Generic aircrafts
-Ranged ships.
-Carriers.
-and a few unique Affinity units, that while being a welcome feature, are basically just a straight upgrade of basic kind of units instead of being in a category of their own.
-There are orbital units, but they are mostly passive and act more like a temporary tile improvement than a true unit.
This means that BE lacks:
-Melee ships, which could be used to better fight sea monsters and capture coastal cities.
-Bomber aircrafts, which I guess would be reduntant with some of the Affinity upgrades for aircrafts, but honestly I'd like to see them make a comeback. Tougher, more specialized aircraft.
-Missiles, just think how many different kind of missiles we could get in a sci-fi setting. Miasma missiles anyone?
-Submarines, which in BE could carry and lauch satellites in addition to missiles, for example.
-Dedicated anti-air units, why not? They could also shoot down satellites, taking that ability from artillery units, which I find don't have a good reason to be able to do that. Also, could potentially become support units of some kind with the Affinity upgrades and variations.
-Dedicated anti-armor units, like the gunship in Civ5. Really fast, really hard hitting units made for taking down big scary units like the Xeno Titan or just normal tanks, but fairly weak to infantry and ranged attacks.
I don't know about you, but I think adding these units would make the game much more interesting.
I'm really hoping these features get implemented in one way or another in future patches/DLC/expansions.
Natural Wonders: They were one of the main reasons to explore in Civ5, they made the map more interesting and they could provide an incentive to expand your empire if you were interested in working their tile. They also had a number of interesting effects, like the Fountain of Youth making your units regenerate or Mount Kilimanjaro making your units move faster on hills.
In BE, they would also help giving the planet and the game in general a bit more personality, right now the alien planet is as generic as it gets.
Luxury Resources and a meaningful Happiness/Health System: The main reason to found a new city and the main reason you would use Diplomacy. Keeping your empire happy was a big deal, having Luxury resources to trade helped you make allies and they would often have traits that made them shape your palystyle. For example, if you started near Marble, you might want to use its production bonus to try and build some Wonders, which in turn might dictate which Social Policy you would pick.
In BE, Health is only influenced by Virtues and buildings, meaning you have no real reason to look beyond your empire to acquire what you need. Sure, strategic resources are more important, since you need them in larger quantities, but I hardly ever found it necessary to trade them.
Would it be so bad to have resources that give bonus health plus some kind of circumstancial bonus?
Meaningful terrain features: In Civ5, terrain was a huge deal, so much so that every civilization got a starting bias towards a certain kind of terrain. Aztecs and Iroquois were masters of jungles and forests, for example. Aztecs also benefitted from lakes and rivers more than other civs, making some part of the map more interesting for future colonization. Same thing for the Incas and mountains.
And of course, the upgrade system for your units meant that they could be better at fighting in a certain kind of terrain, or that they could overcome the penalities associated with terrain, like Amphibious making attacks through a river or from sea a viable tactic.
In BE I've found that not only relatively few tile improvements require a specific kind of terrain, but that penalities are fixed due to a flat and boring veterancy system for your units. There's Miasma, but it's more of a nuisance than anything else, you can just remove it or make more of it using the appropriate tech and it's very easy to make your units resistant to it.
Also, there are absolutely no civilizations (or colonies, whatever) that have any kind of terrain bonuses.
Comparing Archaeologist and Scouts to Explorers: On the surface, I liked the added value of your early exploration units. The Explorer is like a blend of the Archaeologist and the Scout, ignoring terrain cost and being able to build "Expeditions", which are similar to the Archaeologist's dig sites.
Unfortunately the Explorer is also completely unable to fight, 3 Strength means he literally can't stand a chance against even the most basic alien or enemy unit. I wonder why does it even have a Strength score to begin with? He could just be a defenseless worker unit for all that matters.
Expeditions are also uninteresting and boring compared to Antiquity Sites. All they do is provide some kind of one-off bonus and then disappear (yes, sometimes you get an alien unit, which is nice but far too rare to matter, the alien unit also can't heal). Antiquity Sites could be turned into a permanent landmark or you could get a permanent artifact out of them.
I have to wonder why they couldn't just leave the same archaeology system in place from Civ5, making the alien ruins and skeletons give 3 choices once the Expedition is complete: build a tile improvement on the site that gives a permament bonus, get a one-off bonus or recover artifacts that give a smaller but permanent bonus and go in some kind of special building just like artifacts in Civ5.
Unit Variety:
In CiV5 you had the following kinds of units:
-Infantry
-Ranged Infantry
-Artillery
-Fighter aircrafts
-Bomber aircrafts
-"Melee" ships, also doubling as a submarine counter and able to carry missiles.
-Ranged ships.
-Carriers.
-Missiles.
-Submarines, which could hold missile units, were invisibile to most units and could go under the ice caps.
-Tanks.
-Dedicated anti-armor unit.
-Dedicated anti-air unit.
-Technically you also had paratroopers and other special infantry units, but let's leave those out for the moment.
In CivBE you have:
-Infantry
-Ranged Infantry
-Artillery
-Tanks.
-Generic aircrafts
-Ranged ships.
-Carriers.
-and a few unique Affinity units, that while being a welcome feature, are basically just a straight upgrade of basic kind of units instead of being in a category of their own.
-There are orbital units, but they are mostly passive and act more like a temporary tile improvement than a true unit.
This means that BE lacks:
-Melee ships, which could be used to better fight sea monsters and capture coastal cities.
-Bomber aircrafts, which I guess would be reduntant with some of the Affinity upgrades for aircrafts, but honestly I'd like to see them make a comeback. Tougher, more specialized aircraft.
-Missiles, just think how many different kind of missiles we could get in a sci-fi setting. Miasma missiles anyone?
-Submarines, which in BE could carry and lauch satellites in addition to missiles, for example.
-Dedicated anti-air units, why not? They could also shoot down satellites, taking that ability from artillery units, which I find don't have a good reason to be able to do that. Also, could potentially become support units of some kind with the Affinity upgrades and variations.
-Dedicated anti-armor units, like the gunship in Civ5. Really fast, really hard hitting units made for taking down big scary units like the Xeno Titan or just normal tanks, but fairly weak to infantry and ranged attacks.
I don't know about you, but I think adding these units would make the game much more interesting.
I'm really hoping these features get implemented in one way or another in future patches/DLC/expansions.
