Firaxis Devs Q&A - Send me your questions!

Ga1Friday

2K Community Manager
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Apr 2, 2013
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Hello everyone!
I hope that you are as excited as I am about Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth!!

I am sure that you have questions about the game, so let's start our first Beyond Earth Q&A!

Please respond below with your questions, I will pick some out and send them to the devs. I can't promise that everything will be answered, but I know that the Firaxis team loves to hear from CivFanatics and will answer what they can. :) I will get the answers together and post them in a blog post for everyone to check out.
 
It's great to see Firaxis and 2K interacting with the community. (Don't forget Apolyton!)

Question: Beyond military units and victory conditions, are there any other mechanical differences between affinities?
 
One of the lead designers said in an interview to PCgamer that they're trying to appeal to mobile and casual gamers. He even stated that his favourite civ game was Revolutions. That got me and a lot of people worried.

Here is the quote:
We want to get to those XCOM fans who may not have played Civ because history wasn't their thing, or strategy gamers that are playing a lot of these strategy games on IOS, that haven't tried Civ before. We want to reach those people, so we're trying to make the game more accessible for them

So, my question is: How will that pursuit of the casual or mobile market affect the complexity and immersion of the game? Will it be even more simplified than Civ V?
 
Q: How different the factions are going to be from each other? Will different factions play differently through the game (due to different abilities, bonuses and other features)?
 
Question:
How will you combat current popularity of Paradox's games with CBE, and did their games influence CBE in any way?
 
Can we expect the USS enterprise floating on water set to defend us from a terror from the deep, in a screenshot sometime soon?

Thanks!
 
Will Miller mentioned a reading list of sci-fi canon in one of the interviews (i.e. the books used for inspiration for BE). From each of the developers, what were the most influential works towards the development of BE?

D
 
If I am understanding correctly, one of the disadvantage of the Civ V engine was that it could not handle changing the actual terrain (things like mountains and grasslands) in game, but I have heard that Civ:BE is both going to have terraforming (for Purity) and is based off of a only slightly modified Civ V engine (we can certainly see this from the screenshots). Does this mean that terraforming will be inherently limited to something like improvements (ergo no mining down mountains into flatland or filling in ocean)?

If the game is successful, is there a chance of expansion of game concepts and factions or is Civ:BE more analogous to Civ IV: Colonization?

This might have been answered already, but: will there be World Wonders, National Wonders, or Natural Wonders?

Thanks! :)
 
Can we expect the USS enterprise floating on water set to defend us from a terror from the deep, in a screenshot sometime soon?

Thanks!

This one I can answer. No. No you should not expect to see that. Not from Civilization: Beyond Earth at least. :p

Keep the questions coming! :)
 
Can we get some insight on singleplayer/multiplayer setup and interaction features? Like able to choose game speed, x number of map types, Trading with other factions, teamplay.
 
With there be voiced quotes for the technologies like in Civ IV and V? Who is the voice?
 
I was disappointed that multiplayer with mods was never fully implemented in Civ5. How is Civil:BE going to look?
 
In Civilization V, multiplayer was really fun, but was also lacking in some aspects (e.g. interaction with A.I., team cooperation, dealing with game length). How important is the multiplayer aspect for you in CBE?
 
For multiplayer, how will simultaneous actions like combat be resolved? Will there be wonder's or anything following a highlander (there can only be one) mechanic? If so, how will ties be broken in multiplayer. Finally, I'm quite excited for the game, can I be a beta tester?
 
How will Beyond Earth compare to say Civilization Colonization and Civ4. It seems similar to Civ5 in that there are 1 unit/tile and hex shaped maps but how different will it be in gameplay, mechanics (gold, science, food, specialists, etc.)? Aka how good of an analogy is BE to Civ5 as CivCol to Civ4.

Also, how much importance will be placed on customization and modification? I'm honestly not too impressed with how civ5 mods compare to civ4. In civ4, there were comprehensive modpacks that included very different gameplay in everything from wonders, techs, resources, etc. (Rhye's and Fall, Sword of Islam, etc.). Will these extensive of mods be encouraged and aided by the SDK for Beyond Earth?
 
Would you be able to shed some light on what the new civilizations/factions and leaders are? I know many of us are absolutely dying to find out. Additionally, what were the main influences behind the design choices for some of the leaders you chose? I heard that one bears a striking resemblance to Yuri Gagarin, but I'd be interested to see what other leaders were influenced by.

Also, in terms of modding support - will the tools available be any more extensive than that of Civ V? I know that the modding community hopes there will be robust modding support and the tools given to us in Civ V are brilliant but less than optimal. We are only now just uncovering some of the major roadblocks that allow us to make comprehensive modpacks that are very high in quality. I guess the main question is - Is Civ:BE going to be any easier to mod than vanilla Civ V was?
 
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