New Preview with some new screenshots and concept art:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...ion-Beyond-Earth-Where-Will-You-Take-Humanity
Some highlights:
You start the game answering a series of questions about how your spaceship is equipped, what kind of colonists you're bringing with you, or what kind of electronic systems are installed. These translate to concrete bonuses in the game, which will impact your play quite a bit. For example, I chose a ship that was a Continental Surveyor that allowed me to start play with all of the coastlines revealed from under the fog of war. Other bonuses include extra population, revealed location of alien nests, and an additional starting technology. You'll also be able to scan for planets to play on, a clever representation of map selection and natural parameters in Civilization.
Each of these affinities also have a specific flavor in how they wage war, when the inevitable conflict arises on the new planet you and other competing factions have landed upon. I asked Miller if you can take what worked in Civ V and apply it in Beyond Earth. His answer was ominous: "Do so at your own peril." Each affinity has different strengths and weaknesses, such as harmony being able to fluidly adapt to danger. "Harmony units are very good about using the terrain and using the map," gameplay designer Anton Strenger said. Moving very quickly and attacking with overwhelming numbers. Lots of very cheap units."
"The supremacy affinity is all about battlefield geometry," Miller said. "It's about adjacency, units buffing each other depending on their spatial relationship. It's a finesse game. It's much more subtle, whereas purity on the other hand is going to be a brute force solution."
"Purity is about raw strength and power, having some of the highest combat strengths raw numbers of any of the affinities, but having less utility if they get cornered or something like that and being hard to move around quickly," Strenger added.
One thing that did strike me in my dealings with rivals on the planet was how the diplomacy had a new features called "Favors." Your relations with other factions or civs in other Firaxis games has always been a pretty simplistic affair. You'll trade or not, and maybe go to war over religions or something. But there was always more meaning attached to your dealings than the system could model. "When I was playing I would go and make lopsided deals and I would impart all these meanings like, 'I asked you for gold to help me out and you didn't say yes, so now I clearly have to go to war with you and conquer you for being petulant.'" Anton Strenger said, mirroring how I would put all kinds of meaning in deal that was never codified. "What happens in a lopsided deal? What's really going on? Do they owe me a favor now? Do they think I'm indebted to them?"
"In a nutshell, a favor is the promise to repay for things that you do good for them," McDonough said. When you trade something to a faction, and they have nothing to give you in return, they may offer you a unit labeled as a favor. You can accumulate multiple favors from a faction, and trade them back to them for something later down the line like resources, money, science or even declaring war on a third party.
"Favors give the player the ability to manipulate, in the long term, the balance of power in the diplomatic landscape," McDonough said. "You can literally make your opponents do things that fit your plans."
We wanted a flying, harmony alien-inspired unit and we were thinking dragons or something but we ended up deciding to do something different. We had the idea that we have float stone [resource] in the game. What if there's this alien life that floats above the ground using this float stone. It kind of latches on the float stone and floats around almost like a jellyfish. And I was like "What if could float up so high that it actually becomes an orbital unit temporarily?" It can rain down acidic ooze death on its enemies and then float back down and reposition itself. Normally orbital units can't do that. That was a really compelling concept. As for the name, we're just like, well yeah, it's got the float stones and it kinda looks like an octopus, has a lot of tendrils and stuff so I think it was Will or Dave had said, "Rocktopuss" and I was said, "Yeah, that's really cool." As time went on, I was like, "We're not really calling it the rocktopuss, are we guys?" But everyone was like, "Yeah, we are." It's like, "Okay." I realized I was taking it way too seriously. It's called the rocktopuss and it's amazing. There's actually a fun fact too. The technology that unlocks it is called Designer Life-forms. Which is like, yeah they're curating the genes and whatever, but it's also kind of a joke because it's the life-form that we, as designers, were like, "yeah, this will be really cool."
Some new concept art and screenshots, namely a Supremacy lvl 4 Carrier:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/gallery/view/35/11936/2878.5
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...ion-Beyond-Earth-Where-Will-You-Take-Humanity
Some highlights:
You start the game answering a series of questions about how your spaceship is equipped, what kind of colonists you're bringing with you, or what kind of electronic systems are installed. These translate to concrete bonuses in the game, which will impact your play quite a bit. For example, I chose a ship that was a Continental Surveyor that allowed me to start play with all of the coastlines revealed from under the fog of war. Other bonuses include extra population, revealed location of alien nests, and an additional starting technology. You'll also be able to scan for planets to play on, a clever representation of map selection and natural parameters in Civilization.
Each of these affinities also have a specific flavor in how they wage war, when the inevitable conflict arises on the new planet you and other competing factions have landed upon. I asked Miller if you can take what worked in Civ V and apply it in Beyond Earth. His answer was ominous: "Do so at your own peril." Each affinity has different strengths and weaknesses, such as harmony being able to fluidly adapt to danger. "Harmony units are very good about using the terrain and using the map," gameplay designer Anton Strenger said. Moving very quickly and attacking with overwhelming numbers. Lots of very cheap units."
"The supremacy affinity is all about battlefield geometry," Miller said. "It's about adjacency, units buffing each other depending on their spatial relationship. It's a finesse game. It's much more subtle, whereas purity on the other hand is going to be a brute force solution."
"Purity is about raw strength and power, having some of the highest combat strengths raw numbers of any of the affinities, but having less utility if they get cornered or something like that and being hard to move around quickly," Strenger added.
One thing that did strike me in my dealings with rivals on the planet was how the diplomacy had a new features called "Favors." Your relations with other factions or civs in other Firaxis games has always been a pretty simplistic affair. You'll trade or not, and maybe go to war over religions or something. But there was always more meaning attached to your dealings than the system could model. "When I was playing I would go and make lopsided deals and I would impart all these meanings like, 'I asked you for gold to help me out and you didn't say yes, so now I clearly have to go to war with you and conquer you for being petulant.'" Anton Strenger said, mirroring how I would put all kinds of meaning in deal that was never codified. "What happens in a lopsided deal? What's really going on? Do they owe me a favor now? Do they think I'm indebted to them?"
"In a nutshell, a favor is the promise to repay for things that you do good for them," McDonough said. When you trade something to a faction, and they have nothing to give you in return, they may offer you a unit labeled as a favor. You can accumulate multiple favors from a faction, and trade them back to them for something later down the line like resources, money, science or even declaring war on a third party.
"Favors give the player the ability to manipulate, in the long term, the balance of power in the diplomatic landscape," McDonough said. "You can literally make your opponents do things that fit your plans."
We wanted a flying, harmony alien-inspired unit and we were thinking dragons or something but we ended up deciding to do something different. We had the idea that we have float stone [resource] in the game. What if there's this alien life that floats above the ground using this float stone. It kind of latches on the float stone and floats around almost like a jellyfish. And I was like "What if could float up so high that it actually becomes an orbital unit temporarily?" It can rain down acidic ooze death on its enemies and then float back down and reposition itself. Normally orbital units can't do that. That was a really compelling concept. As for the name, we're just like, well yeah, it's got the float stones and it kinda looks like an octopus, has a lot of tendrils and stuff so I think it was Will or Dave had said, "Rocktopuss" and I was said, "Yeah, that's really cool." As time went on, I was like, "We're not really calling it the rocktopuss, are we guys?" But everyone was like, "Yeah, we are." It's like, "Okay." I realized I was taking it way too seriously. It's called the rocktopuss and it's amazing. There's actually a fun fact too. The technology that unlocks it is called Designer Life-forms. Which is like, yeah they're curating the genes and whatever, but it's also kind of a joke because it's the life-form that we, as designers, were like, "yeah, this will be really cool."
Some new concept art and screenshots, namely a Supremacy lvl 4 Carrier:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/gallery/view/35/11936/2878.5
