The Great:
--The game overall is super fun, and I'm really enjoying watching cool futuristic units battle it out!
--The affinity system is really cool and I can't wait to splatter my buddy's hippy peace-loving aliens with my mechanized firaxite army.
--One of the oldest problems in every Civ game is whipping through the late-game tech tree with a huge empire so fast that you can't build all the cool buildings. With trade routes (despite being broken, see below), I have a reasonable way to trade beakers for hammers.
--The music is very epic, and ORIGINAL. I like classical music but after playing the Renaissance era in Civ 5 I want to set off firecrackers next to my ears when the songs they took from Bach come on NPR.
--There's a large number of tile improvements, and the significant energy cost of some of them makes them interesting choices. The fact that they're powerful also adds a good element of strategy to what techs you want to research, as tile improvements are frequently not on the affinity-bonus techs.
The Good:
--Happiness is gone, and health will be a good replacement after a few tweaks (the penalties for massive unhealthiness aren't severe enough yet, but I'd also like to see a few more early ways of getting more health).
--The starting bonuses are really nice, and they're all valuable enough that it's a tough decision to choose. Seeing the coastline definitely helps with scouting.
--The good ol' land grab is back, but unlike Civ 1-4 it's not a given that the AI will attack you as soon as you do.
--The aliens being difficult to deal with is fun, and the worms and krakens make for some interesting play.
--The counter-intrigue system is good.
--Barracks are gone and good riddance. Now I can build units to crush my enemies instead of building buildings to slowly prepare them instead.
--No nukes. They were rarely a factor in the style of games I normally play, but I didn't really like them.
--Work barges are so much better than fishing boats. The whole embarkation thing is one of the best additions to Civ 5 in general, transports were so tedious.
--The orbital layer is a good addition
--No camel archers or keshiks. (And if there's a longbowman unit I haven't found it yet?)
--Stations don't have a culture border, which is kind of nice. They do block city placement, but at least you can kinda work around that.
--The game seems difficult...I got whomped on Hardest minus one difficulty, and when I knocked it down to hardest minus two the computer still managed to repulse one of my early attacks. Although it remains to be seen how I'll do now that I'm past the learning curve.
--Outposts unfolding is good, you have a chance to crush a puny annoying city before it gets out of control.
--So far I like what I see about the synergy bonuses from culture.
The Bad:
--The city UI. The worked tile icon is too large for one.
--Gimme back Avoid Growth!
--The combat upgrade (there's only one!) is boring. Although it's good they baked the really powerful ones (+1 shooting range, moving after attacking) into the affinity system, upgrades like rough terrain/open terrain/cover/attacking a specific unit type would have been better.
--I want to be able to do cool things with my forests, but I guess colonists hate trees! This was a missed opportunity to do something imaginative with what an alien forest would look like.
--The pendulum has swung a little too far to the "wide" side of wide v tall. Although I'm really glad that the +50% science from National College is gone, I think if libraries (labs?) gave +5-10% science instead of a flat +3 that would help. Although I do like the Beyond Earth system better than the 4 mega city BNW system. Ideally playing wide, medium, and tall should all be viable, and I think in BE only wide and medium are realistic (until trade routes get their nerf anyway).
--I'm curious if the games will end before all the cool end units come into play. I'm hoping I don't have to make every game domination if I want to see the best units on the field.
--I shouldn't have to chat with everyone to see their beakers per turn, throw it back into the demographics tab.
--Some of the wonders are underwhelming.
--The relic system...I think it adds more complexity than fun. I feel it's more of a thing to not screw up than a real bonus to my civilization.
--The upgrade that makes aliens not attack your convoys is OP. Having to build a navy to defend my trade vessels would be pretty cool, but it's not needed after that.
--I want SAM missile launchers or some other mobile way of dealing with aircraft. (Like soldier/gunner upgrades.)
--The number of stations should be configurable.
--Faction bonuses could use some tweaking, they don't seem to give a whole lot of flavor to how I'm going to try to win.
--Better trade UI is needed..."previous route" should be on top, and I should be able to find the route with the most beakers by sorting.
--I would have liked to have "the wonder city", "the military city", and "the energy city" like I did in Civ 4. Like I said above, although I'm glad the massive +50% beakers bonuses are gone, I would like to able to specialize my cities more.
--Buying multiple buildings per turn may be broken. I saved up 5000 energy from my massive trade routes and basically built a new capital the first turn after the outpost finished.
--Free technologies are extremely powerful given the way the unit upgrades and affinity system work. Fortunately there's only a few ways to get them, though.
--The game would be better if there were more steps on the affinity ladder with more gradual differences in the units as you went up. For example, if the winnning wonder was unlocked at 25 affinity (instead of 13) and then 10-12 more techs in the web gave affinity. Then adding additional unit upgrades that would be in the range of 25-50% stronger than the previous version instead of the 75-150% stronger than they are now.
The Ugly:
--No throne room!
--No wonder videos!
--Trade routes are broken, but people are raging so hard they'll be fixed soon. I personally would like to see a solution where the size of the sending city is much more of a factor in what trade routes give. Or something that scales down the rewards for multiple trade routes going to the same place (i.e. once the megacity has trade routes from cities with xenomoss, firaxite, silica, chitin, etc. there's no benefit to making new trade routes to the megacity). Also, I think trade routes could be well balanced if they provided food OR hammers and beakers OR energy. Separating beakers and energy in particular would add a lot more depth to what tile improvements you could pay for. And beakers are definitely good enough to justify a trade route for them by itself.
--My workers forgetting how to build roads once they get maglev is pretty stupid.
--Instant upgrades for free makes it possible to fight an evenly matched oppon....oh wait I'm now 50% stronger because I researched one tech!
Questions:
--Do stations disappear if I don't trade with them, or is it because a worm killed them?
--What all do I earn affinity from? I seem to be getting a little progress (shown on the top bar) when I don't finish techs or choose quest rewards.
--What determines what you get from trade routes?
--How many decent tiles should an area have before you decide to build there? I'm thinking 6 tiles is the magic number in this game, which is much much smaller than BNW.
Random observations, neither good or bad:
--Firaxite/Floatrock/Xenomoss spawning near you may be critically important, but I want to play a little more first.
--Base tile yields aren't as powerful as in Civ 5 because there are more ways to modify them. I guess I'd like to see them be a little more important, particularly through the nerfing of trade routes.
--So far all victories seem viable, although I want to play more to see. I always felt the culture victory was kind of pointless in Civ5.
--The decision to make artillery extremely low health is kind of interesting. I'm still on the fence about this, but I think they should be able to take an attack from a heavily wounded tank and live...not sure if they can right now.
--There aren't a whole lot of units you can build, which is definitely a massive difference from the completely customizable units from Alpha Centauri. Although I like the Starcraft design mentality (if you can build 5 units but 2 of them are better than the other three, then you really only have 2 choices), I think there are ways they could have made more units than warrior/archer/horseman/catapult.
--I'm looking forward to diplomacy coming back in a future expansion.
