Does Civ BE means Civ6 in 2016 is hopeless?

[iworkinct]

I am more interested to see the release of Civ 6. And I hope the version will improve Civ 5. (I still think Civ 4 BTS is the best version now). I hope Civ 6 will make the old versions' features more sophisticated and include new features as follow:

1) Vassal state:

~an indispensable element in history. I just feel disappointed with Civ 5 for not including this feature. That is also one reason why I think BTS is still the best game.

2) More sophisticated ways of spreading technologies, cultures and religions:

~instead of simply trading technologies, "scholars" can be sent by one country to another to learn its advanced technologies. Just like in the past, Japan sent a lot of scholars to learn advanced technologies from China and Korea. And the opposite happened in the modern era.

~as some of us suggested, the expansion of a civ's culture/religion may not necessarily be one of the ways to conquer a city. Instead, it may just affect minor elements of an alien civ without conquering cities. For example, the style of the buildings of an alien civ may model after the civ that influences its culture. "Scholars" can be sent to an alien civ and bring its culture/religion back to their own civ. And the popularity of a culture/religion in an alien civ may draw the 2 civilizations closer diplomatically. The above also quite often happened in the course of history. For example, hellenization in Persia and India; Japan and Korea absorbed a lot of Chinese cultures in the past. Japan also sent quite a number of scholars to study Buddhism in Korea and China. In the modern time, modern Japanese and Korean cultures also influenced East Asia a lot.

In short, I think the Civ game (history one, not about space) still has room to be more sophisticated and to be made similar to our real history. There is still room for the game to amaze we players.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I think Civ 6 in 2016 is still pretty likely. Firaxis usually announces their games in February or March and releases them in October. We had a new civ (also counting SMAC) every four or five years since the series began, so Civ 6 is now one or two years overdue. I don't think BE has delayed a new full sequel by more than that, and the main reason it hasn't been anounced yet is probably that the marketing machine was busy with XCOM 2 (which was supposed to come out late last year and was delayed).
In fact, I would be surprised if we don't have an official Civ 6 announcement before this month is over.

 

[Breezin]

Everything that I've read, Civ 6 has been in development for years. Now that BE is done and XCOM 2 is out, I suspect we'll hear about it before summer.

My understanding is that the team working on XCom and BE are different than would be working on Civ 6 so they wouldn't have had to hold off working on it until the other two games were done.

I will say that I hope that BE development is done. If not, I suspect that future expansions for BE would delay any announcement of Civ 6 which I wouldn't like. I know there are those who love BE and want more, which is fine, but I'm ready for Civ 6.

As far as the extra features mentioned by the OP, I like the idea of vassals and the tech/spy/religion spreading as long as it's done well. I don't want features just added into the game for the sake of adding them. I want them to work and be fun to use.

 

[x2Madda]

Everything that I've read, Civ 6 has been in development for years. Now that BE is done and XCOM 2 is out, I suspect we'll hear about it before summer.

My understanding is that the team working on XCom and BE are different than would be working on Civ 6 so they wouldn't have had to hold off working on it until the other two games were done.

I will say that I hope that BE development is done. If not, I suspect that future expansions for BE would delay any announcement of Civ 6 which I wouldn't like. I know there are those who love BE and want more, which is fine, but I'm ready for Civ 6.

As far as the extra features mentioned by the OP, I like the idea of vassals and the tech/spy/religion spreading as long as it's done well. I don't want features just added into the game for the sake of adding them. I want them to work and be fun to use.

Civ:BE is "done" when a complete edition is released. Right now they are selling the games as Civ:BE 'the collection' which is an oddly specific choice of words since it doesn't rule out another expansion.

That said, news on anything Civ-related has all but dried up. This could mean anything, even an end to the civ franchaise as a whole. Although we all strongly doubt that will be an option at this point.

As for the OP, I thought Civ4 complete was great and for the longest time I wanted 'civ4 meets civ5' but then I got that, it was called Civ:BE and apart from vassalage and religion, most things from Civ4 returned and as it turns out, they weren't that fun.

I think the execution was part of the problem but certainly not the whole problem. Random events weren't fun in civ4 but when they are all positive (quests in civ:be) they just feel like you 'need' them rather than they are a cool bonus. Like the +1 culture from earth relics, their is a huge difference between that triggering on turn 1 and triggering on turn 50.

 

[Makenshi]

Well if they come out and say "we need another 6 or 8 months to fine tune the AI so it lives to your expectations" I'll answer "sounds fair; go ahead and take 12, just to be sure".

 

[Callonia]

Civ:BERT feels done to me. Firaxis just should let BERT rest in it's early grave and move onto civ6. lol
Its the first civ game I uninstalled from PC in few months.

There' still too much flaws in the game.

Explorer, Workers, and some other units I forgot gets completely ignored by affinity changes = no hovering explorers to reach those stuff trapped by mountains. I colonize planets but a remote spot in mountainous region is out of my reach. Shame.

I do like the avatar it gave me though. Bugged Uh, ranger + battlesuit on bugged upgrade trait selection window. Makes it look like they're being cool together. And reminded me of that three soldiers posing in battle of anchorage during fallout 3 or was it fallout NV? Happy accident.

 

[Lightjolly]

BE is literally one expansion away from becoming a great game

 

[GoodSarmatian]

BE is literally one expansion away from becoming a great game

Well, it was a couple of good patches away from a really, really good game and a great expansion away from a great game, but if those didn't come by now we can deduce that they won't come in the future.
Which leads to the conclusion that the people who know how to actually implement cool ideas and make great a Civ game haven't been working on BE or RT because they're busy with Civ 6.

 

[Callonia]

Well, if Civ5 and CivBERT's precedent of having the biggest map size being made smaller and smaller is true. Civ6's's biggest map will be very very tiny. That's my estimation.

 

[Gorbles]

Well, it was a couple of good patches away from a really, really good game and a great expansion away from a great game, but if those didn't come by now we can deduce that they won't come in the future.
Which leads to the conclusion that the people who know how to actually implement cool ideas and make great a Civ game haven't been working on BE or RT because they're busy with Civ 6.

A great game is incredibly subjective. I put more hours in BE than I did CiV, before RT even came around.

Might be in a minority, but gosh am I tired of people saying "well I don't like this game" (which is fair) "therefore the people that worked on it are incompetent and / or stupid and / or can't make a good game" (which is insulting and makes you look completely ignorant about the realities of games dev).

 

[DWilson]

Unlike some here, I really hope there is a second expansion. That happening probably relies on how well RT sold, which I hope was enough. Firaxis certainly has the capital for one team on Civ VI, another on XCOM, and a third on BE. The main thing is I don't believe it would be hard to put together an amazing finale for BE.

An expansion which focuses on reworking the victories to make them more engaging and diverse, adds several extra sponsors (possibly extremist splinter groups), and recodes the sponsors with more distinct personality flavors (so they begin to stand out) would be enough to really polish the game off. Presumably the A.I. would be tweaked, and possibly a couple new skins and abilities for advanced civilian units, suddenly it's a whole new game.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

A 2nd expansion would definitely get me back to playing BE.

 

[SahintheFalcon]

Keep in mind that the majority of current Civ 5 players started with Civ 5. Civ 5 vanilla was terrible compared with Civ 4 BTS, and even Gods and Kings was pretty meh.

Beyond Earth still has a long way to go, but it's on the same track as Civ 5.

 

[Sauron 3]

Keep in mind that the majority of current Civ 5 players started with Civ 5. Civ 5 vanilla was terrible compared with Civ 4 BTS, and even Gods and Kings was pretty meh.

Beyond Earth still has a long way to go, but it's on the same track as Civ 5.

I'm completely agree with you!

 

[Beaver79]

Hardly anyone bought BE's expansion. Hardly anyone still plays BE either, so I don't see them making another expansion.

Average players on according to Steam Charts (last 30 days)

CiV - 38,000
CivBE - 2,500

 

[Gorbles]

Hardly anyone bought BE's expansion. Hardly anyone still plays BE either, so I don't see them making another expansion.

Average players on according to Steam Charts (last 30 days)

CiV - 38,000
CivBE - 2,500

How do you get sales data from active player data?

 

[Beaver79]

Are you implying that people bought the expansion but never played it?

Rising Tide came out Oct. 8th of 2015. At that time, according to steam charts:

Average players:

Oct 2014 (When the game came out) - 28,500
Sept 2015 - 2000 (month before Rising Tide)
Oct 2015 - 4500

I'm not trying to rip on the game, and steam charts is far from scientific, but I would be shocked if they made a second expansion for BE.

 

[Lightjolly]

Nothing to be shocked about if it happened.

BE is a side project and most definetely seems to be a place for the devs to conduct experiments to see what could be used in CIV VI.

Better in a side game like BE (That uses lots of CIV V assets thus being cheaper to make) than doing those experiments in the mainline game.

CIV BE is to CIV 5 , what CIV 4: Colonization is to CIV 4

 

[Gorbles]

Are you implying that people bought the expansion but never played it?

Rising Tide came out Oct. 8th of 2015. At that time, according to steam charts:

Average players:

Oct 2014 (When the game came out) - 28,500
Sept 2015 - 2000 (month before Rising Tide)
Oct 2015 - 4500

I'm not trying to rip on the game, and steam charts is far from scientific, but I would be shocked if they made a second expansion for BE.

I'm not implying anything, I asked you a question.

All you're doing is proving that CiV sold more. Everybody knows that. That isn't the metric for "getting an expansion" though, otherwise BE wouldn't have even gotten one.

 

[SahintheFalcon]

Beyond Earth is a fundamentally sound game, and it actually fixes many of the aspects of Civ V that veteran players found deeply upsetting.

This is not the thread to go too far into this, but for example, Civ V has huge penalties for overexpansion. It's the only Civ game in which having a few cities is considered "normal." Going to war forces you to miss out on so many of the "peace" mechanics that you end up falling behind via science, culture, religion, wonders, etc. etc. I could literally list dozens of annoying mechanics that were introduced with Civ V (and rectified by Beyond Earth), but I don't want to start a flame war.

The point is that Beyond Earth needs time to catch on. Civ 5 has the most accessible playstyle - just build a couple of cities and focus on buildings, wonders, science, and culture. All very doable for players who want a sandbox-style "city-building" game. The game rewards you for finding different combos and tweaking your build to your liking. And obviously, the historical nature of the game is very compelling for the average person.

Beyond Earth, despite superficially appearing like a bland version of Civ 5, actually has complex competitive strategies made possible by the game's fast-paced focus on affinity development and rapid expansion possibilities. Again, I won't go into too many examples, but think about this: In Beyond Earth, you can build a big army cheaply early on, and then jump to the next affinity level to immediately upgrade it and threaten your neighbors. You absolutely can't do that in Civ 5 - not only does the game forbid you from having large armies, it takes insane amounts of gold to upgrade. Beyond Earth is about war, war, and more war. It's not the game's fault that the Civ 5 bandwagon fans have never played a wargame before. The gameplay philosophy of Beyond Earth is far more similar to that of Civ 4 than Civ 5.