First Impressions

[Lucius_]

At about 150 turns, difficulty under Apollo, the game feels easy. It also feels scattered. I feel like I'm just doing whatever and winning. I haven't had any meaningful contact with the AI. In CiV, by this point, I would be preparing for war or forging friendships.

It feels more like a building game, which is cool. CiV always felt like a war game to me. I'm hoping that changes later in the game. In fact, I like how it's setup, lots of space to create an empire, grow, remove the alien threat, then the other factions really come into play later. It's just been wierd how the other AI's have been insignificant so far.

 

[Zail]

I rather enjoy it overall. Civ 5 offers a nice clean/streamlined experience where Beyond Earth presents you with countless options. I rather enjoyed the fact that there did not feel like there was a cut off as to when you wanted to stop settling cities (made possible due to the trade route system).

The main issue that I can foresee is that there is certainly more to micro manage which will slow games down. You will need more workers, manage more trade routes, more spies and even cities. This could bother some people, but it is a trade off for the strength it brings.

Health in the early game is hard to come by and often you want to just aim for <-10 when setting up in my opinion. You tech will be a little slower but will not slow down the cities themselves. I do start to notice it past -10.

The AI seems competent to build to trigger end game, although I feel like it could be stronger on the army side. I had an unwarranted war with ARC who did have a good size army but they were running mostly 1st upgrade across it's units and I was on my unique.

 

[r0ck]

game is fun, no issues w the AI (yet). Plyaing on the advanced-Rampaging aliens, a few times they eat my units and i couldnt identify if there was a nest nearby - note that i got lifeform scanner cargo...

my main difficulty has been around the fungal world skin. It is hard to identify the miasma / xenomass / nests.

lost 2 units improving / excavating in miasma, a bit more feedback for "you are choking in the poisonous flatii of the planet" would be appreciated.

ill dedicate a few more hours to it during this weekend, i might get more used to the graphics.

 

[Rockit]

I find the graphics, interface, sound and style extremely well done in Beyond Earth. The tutorial system is a bit light but when combined with the (actually useful) Civilopedia in the game, it works well.

What I don't enjoy?
Alien critters (essentially just Barbarians from the previous titles but with a vastly greater variety) are far too numerous and powerful in the early game. Only 79 turns in and I've lost 8 units (5 of which were the entire sum of my developed military, the other 3 were my Explorers which are necessary to unlock ruins, pods, etc. for quicker early advancement) to alien critters alone. I count no less than 3 Hives (Barbarian camps) within eye-shot of my initial settlement and I've been restricted to only exploring the area about 10 tiles out in any direction from my home base.

It'snot conducive to learning the ins and outs of game play IMHO if I am pretty much just spending most of my efforts trying to develop enough military units to keep the natives at bay. I am more of a "builder" style player so it looks like I'm in for a long road and steep learning curve to find the paths in this game to support that style.

I do enjoy the game so far, but it seems extremely heavy handed even at "Mercury" difficulty when it comes to alien interference with my civilization.

 

[Cyon]

It's fun but work a standard nap size ii was not so much pods and ruins to explore, trade routes are to many and to strong, most cities hey like half of their production from trade...

I play at the level just above normal, and at turn 200 (I think) I have 11 in supremacy 1 in purity and 6 in harmony, no AI have more than three in a affinity so I guess I have to play on a harder difficulty.

But it is still a lot of fun

 

[Vermillion]

Played about an hour and half this morning until the oh I have to get to work feeling got me moving.

The left side of the Might tree is, as I predicted, a huge boost to early game research. It helps of course that I got two free affinity upgrades from progenitor ruins but I'm just mopping the floor with aliens (sub Apollo difficulty granted). So far it's very fun!

 

[JokerJace]

Prosperity is actually a pretty good late game tree. All tier 3 virtues are strong and useful (although I am not 100% sure if it is better to go Farm + Terrascape or Farm + Academy).

I actually like PAC a lot. I played both games with them - the worker boost is really important. In my last game I had 25 workers for 15 cities and still felt that I needed more - even with a combined ~50% worker speed boost. The wonder bonus has saved me the Ectogenesis Pod twice (finished it a few turns before the AI). The values may be small, but it has impact all game long.

Is there an easy way to check what my current accumulated worke speed bonus is?

 

[erhaminus]

First impression: disappointed.

It looks like not finished product. Aliens are no-brain and boring (barbarians'-like behaviour that are just guarding nests), diplomacy not improved at all. Tech web is nothing special as well, hovewer not bad. Policies have been improved a bit, but... I expected much more changes, it is just reskinned Civ5 with few new features.

I quit my CivBE's gameplay after few hours despite my good will. I was bored. It have never happened to me before with any Civ series.

 

[lemony]

I like the game so far, it makes me very nostalgic about SMAC. I feel slightly underwhelmed at times but overall I do enjoy the game (after all I was up until nearly 7am playing it ). While a lot of people seem to dislike that aliens are passive I rather love it. Once I get the ultrasonic fences they frequent my borders and I enjoy the scurrying life.
My only complaint about the gameplay is that the ultrasonic techs came way too early in the web, and did make the later part of early game kind of boring because there wasn't much fear in colonizing.

Feature wise, I'm really disappointed that there doesn't seem to be a world builder. I'm not sure if Civ 5 got the world build right away, but there isn't one (so far as I can tell) in any of the options or the SDK tool. I really like custom maps and am having a hard time convincing my friends to play without one.

I think this game has loads of potential though, and I can't wait for the first expansion.

One thing to keep in mind is that the game is brand new, and the only way to get it right is to let the public play it, critique it, and then let you improve it along the way. I think the expansions of this game will be awesome and make this game even more fun.

 

[Sequitor]

Woke up at 3:45 this morning to play before leaving for work. After spending an hour dealing with Steam issues (which I subconsciously expected) I was up and running. After 2 hours of game play I'm liking it a lot.

The quest system is much more satisfying than Civ 5: the reasons for the quests seem far more relevant to your situation and then having choices within the quests increases the role playing aspect.

 

[sickre]

I've been play BE for about 7 hours, and have played CIV5 for about 150 hours and SMAC for probably the same. I'm playing on normal difficult, standard speed, medium graphics.

vs CIV5:

Negatives:
-Units are very difficult to identify between - their logos look very similar, and are all the same colour. The 3D models dont 'pop' against the game world, in terms of contrast, like they did in CIV5.
-Taking down cities is incredibly difficult. Including casualties, you will need a force of 10-15 units for a mid-game capital, even if it only has one defender. City bombardment does a huge amount of damage, far more than any mid-game troops. (Best tactic to kill a siege worm is to lure it into range of a city).
-The characters are completely lifeless and boring. The leaderheads aren't animated (on medium) and diplomacy is essentially copied from CIV5. The elimination of luxury resources, and the smaller number of resources in general, makes diplomacy irrelevant except for bribing the AI into attacking eachother.

Positives:
-Aliens are very interesting. A better mechanic than barbarians, and present a fun challenge. (Taking down your first siege worm requires the commitment of 50% of your nation)
-The turn end times seem quicker.
-Quests are reasonably interesting.
-Units seem cheaper to build.
-Tech web design is more interesting, though more easily exploitable if you can get a free tech, and select from the outer rim.
-Covert ops is now better streamlined than in CIV5 BNW


vs SMAC:
Negatives:
-Leaders and setting is less interesting. Diplomacy was better in SMAC than CIV5 anyway, and BE diplomacy is worse than in CIV5.
-Apart from modern 3D graphics the game terrain and unit design is less remarkable.
-No animated wonder videos.
-You can only build 2-4 cities without running into health problems mid game. As a result big, sprawling empires are impossible. Even puppets cause health problems.
-Wars are much less interesting. With so few cities, and 1UPT, every war is about luring existing enemy units into range of your cities and ranged units, taking them out, then piling with overwhelming force onto the enemy cities and slowly grinding them down.
-Unit upgrades system is much less exciting than unit design

Positives:
-Hexes
-Modern UI


The game has been fun to play, though I feel this is more the initial thrill than anything else. I'm not sure if I will replay after first game.

I wish CIV would move forward and copy some aspects from games like Endless Legend (a visually more impressive, and more interesting, if flawed strategy game). Overall I think the AI simply cannot handle 1UPT, and the amazing sneak attacks and near-losses I experienced in CIV3/4 and SMAC I have never witnessed in CIV5 or BE.

This game has the potential to be fun after a 'Gold edition' with all patches, DLC and expansions included. Until then, 6/10.

 

[Razor Rex]

I've enjoyed it so far. It does have a bit of a learning curve and for those of us that
don't play four simultaneous games of CIV-BNW on Deity blindfolded, it's not a bad challenge.

I do agree that there is loads of room to improve on it though, but with major mod support and an almost predictable DLC/Expansion schedule on the horizon it's worth the money.

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: First Impressions vs CIV5 & SMAC merged into First Impressions

 

[gunnergoz]

I'm enjoying it very much. It has not disappointed from my expectations. I do have issues with the UI and visibility of elements of graphics on map but not game breakers. It is a breath of fresh, if alien air.

 

[Acken]

It's okayish... worst fears have come to fruition though.

At the top of my head.

Positives:
+New setting
+Quests Flavor
+Wide being a viable option
+Multiple tile improvement choices
+Techweb and virtue trees
+3 Affinities with many differences
+Buildings bonuses based on ressources
+Melee units more relevant

Negative:
-Difficulty is non existent. Won my first game ever on Apollo while having no idea what I was doing.
-AI hasn't improved on BNW, it's not agressive enough
-Units shouldn't all upgrade at once like that, reduces difficulty
-Trade Route requests are SOOOO annoying and the menu for them just plain sucks.
-Trade Route have to be toned down in general, in number imo so that it reduces the annoyance while we're at it (one per city would be enough).
-Many UI issues. I didn't think you could do even an even worse UI than Civ5.
-Building Icons are so cryptic, no idea what I'm building from the main view
-Health is just poorly managed.
-Stupid useless wonders

Strategy games have to pass through a serious test phase. This wasn't the case. UI clunkiness, bad AI and clear balance issues are just a sign of it. Welcome to beta.

 

[Selereth]

I agree with the complaints about the UI, it's kind of difficult to analyze, I always expect the tile yield to be at the bottom when it's really at the top, and the virtue menu is sort of hard to understand since it's difficult to tell which virtues you've unlocked and which ones you can and cannot unlock.

The aliens though are annoying as hell, which makes them fun to kill. They inhibit your expansion by simply being there, they attack your hapless explorers when all I was trying to do was get to an expedition, and having any sort of military will seemingly draw them to your borders. I like them. They're much more interesting than barbs ever were.

I like the tech web, it's confusing as heck to me for the moment and as for the AI, I have to finish my game first before I can make a solid judgement on it. For now though, I'd give the game an 8/10, mainly because the game also seems to either have more optimization issues or just be more demanding in general.

 

[rastak]

Having a great time just like I did the day of Civ V release. Just like Civ V at release, the AI needs work, as does the UI.

I'm not disappointed in the least. It has that "one more turn" feel and I had a great time last night. I'll probably be playing all weekend. I bought three copies (yes three) before release and tonight's going to be a three player multiplayer with some AIs with my daughter and her husband. I have no doubt we're gonna have a great time.

 

[Ryoga]

I played one game so far as PAC standard map Vostok difficulty.

I had a very unlucky start. Although it was a protean map I ended up in a peninsula with a bottleneck heavily guarded by two alien nests with a lot of miasma.
So while the rest of the world was happily trading with each other I've spent the early game trading with myself.

Taking out alien nests with basic units and no might police or purity bonus is practically impossible. The aliens keep spawning continuously and there's a lot of them for each nest.

I tried to always stay in positive health, a lot of knowledge virtue depend on how much positive health you have, so they are kinda pointless if you are in negative, however I don't know if this is a good strategy given the fact that health is not so important apparently. For the most part of the game I've been just behind Hutama in score and affinity then I eclipsed him in the end game reaching the max affinity level.

Considering that I was in such isolated place it was an almost completely peaceful game. Nobody declared war on me and I just declared war once when I was at about 20 turns from transcendent victory. It was my neighbor Jama Barre which was purity and was already fighting with my friends Hutama and Suzanne. I reckoned that I could easily join them and take a few cities for myself since he was already in a hopeless situation.
I was already at max affinity and he was way below, so the conquest was ridiculously easy.

The limit of 3 jets per city paired with the very short range make air units a lot less useful as they are in Civ V and AC.

The tech tree is very confusing, I've yet to understand which are the techs that I need and the stuff that I need to look for.

And yes, trade routes are annoying as hell.

 

[El Caballerion]

In general, it's more thought out than the last installment of CIV V, but honestly, it's not enough for the hardcore players like myself. I think I'll bore of it in a month, and sadly, I'm MUCH more excited for CIV 6.

 

[CaptainPatch]

Seriously disappointed. The map graphics are rather muddy, with colors running together, making it difficult to immediately recognize what it is that I'm looking at. The UI icons are rather tiny compared to earlier Civ titles, making life difficult for my decrepit old eyes. But the thing that disappoints me most is the nearly all-pervasive Miasma and hordes of alien units. Worse than Raging Barbarians on steroids. Worse still, an Explorer unit can't even begin to hope to defeat something as simple as a Wolf Beetle (which are practically everywhere). Much less a Siege Worm.

What I enjoyed most about previous Civ games was thoroughly exploring a new map, discovering goody huts/ancient ruins, encountering City States, etc. Here, the supply pods seem comparatively lifeless, offering just additional Culture, Production, etc. As for the equivalent to City States (trading posts), just how did all of those get placed and up and running before the first Colony ship arrived? Just who had they been trading with beforehand? How did they manage to get a jump start on the Colonies? But the worst of it is the Miasma; it's practically everywhere, eroding units, needing to be cleared out by Workers. It's like in SMAC if there had been alien plantlife blooms that already covered 60% of the planet, before Turn One.

Overall, exploration in CBE feels like trying to navigate a dense minefield that is heavily patrolled by super-soldiers. Instead of exploring, a player needs to focus on developing MUCH stronger combat units. That sort of steers the player into only one viable development strategy. (Focus on Superiority, at least until decent combat units become available.)