Gamestar 08/14 Civilization Beyond Earth

My Dad's cousin Kurt just sent me images of the remainder of the article.

Thank you so much.

Just a quick observation. It seems like the reviewer is pretty critical of BE compared to SMAC. The reviewer seems to give BE a lot of thumbs down or sideways.
 
He seems to be strongly against the More diverse factions in BE compared to SMAC

Persoanlly I like BE better as the factions seem to be more diverse and arent one trick ponys like the SMAC factions ie Morgans was all about money, Santiago was all about Military. The BE factions seem to straddle 2 or 3 of the old SMAC factions ie Brasilia seems to be a cross between Spartans and the Peacekeepers (at least going off the history of the group) The Kavithan Protectorate might be a cross between Miriam and the Hive. Polystralia Morgan and Peacekeepers. ARC Morgan and University etc

I suspect Slavic Federation will be a cross between Spartans and the Hive
 
Thank you so much.

Just a quick observation. It seems like the reviewer is pretty critical of BE compared to SMAC. The reviewer seems to give BE a lot of thumbs down or sideways.

German rewievers are generally more critical than angloamerican ones. Only abolutely glorious games get a score over 90% and even then, the reviewers often still find some points of criticism. They just decided one day that such a thing as a 100% game cannot exist philosophically, because it would be so perfect that after it no game could be developed any more out of sheer awe. It would be perfect bliss and the end of history. Therefore such a thing cannot exist.

Thanks for the scan Karl, i'm on it and will write up teh bullet points of everything new. I hope you don't expect a complete translation :-|
 
Thanks for the scan.

Here's just the stuff that I think hasn't been mentioned in other sources before. If anyone finds typos he can keep them.

Choosing a lab as cargo gives you Pioneering at the start.

There are supposedly about 1000 possible combinations between all start options, but all except the national UA only affect the early game.

When you start you can pick a specific spot for your colony ship to go down within landing zone.

The landing zone is larger if you had a ship with retrograde thrusters.

There are seven regular unit types.

One quests starts with your explorer excavating thousand years old human remains from ruins. This might be the start for a quest chain that leads to the contact victory (could be speculation on the writer's part).

There are no promotions. After a unit levels up you only get the coice between a small permament strength boost or a one-time heal.

There are four super units per affinity.

Satellites can -usually- only be launched over your territory.

How long they remain in orbit depends on the type. Economic satellites last longer than military ones.

There are affinity specific bonuses for satelites. A supremacy faction can place satellites over any Firaxite souce regardless if location.

There are satellites that allow you to teleport troops into their zone of influence. You could place one of those over a Firaxite deposit in enemy territory and invade enmasse.

They translated prosperity values with Wachstum (growth). Prospetity gives boni to food production and health.

Health works mostly like happiness, but you get different penalities if it dips into the negative. First you'll get penalties to culture and science, then to food and production.

Expansion is a lot slower than in Civ 5. Settlers are pretty expensive and outposts take 10 to 15 turns to become cities.

There are five intrigue levels. The first three allow you to steal stuff and benefit you more than they harm the other guy, but four and five enable stuff like city flippind and directed siege worm attacks. You will get a warning if somebody reaches critical intrigue levels in your cities
 
translation bullet points (continuing from page 3):

  • There are 1000 possible ship loadout combinations, but only the faction bonus (presumably better spying / longer satellite uptime / military bonus...) is active throughout the whole game, all others are only starting bonuses according to the article (presumably a small bonus in the first city you'd only notice at the start, like a flat 2 science points per turn, or a flat 2 food per turn, a unit, or map coverage). He says that in comparison BNW factions had special buildings and special units too.
  • When landing you can select your first colony site in a small radius. If you selected retrograde thrusters at the loadout this radius is wider. At start you also get an explorer unit (he does not mention a soldier unit)
  • Sea dragons at the coast (presumably the orange sea unit from the concept art wall) can devour land units that get too close.
  • Wow, this one is mindblowing and a major spoiler, i'll better hide it:
    Spoiler :
    When excavating an alien ruin the explorer stumbles upon the starting point of a quest: a several thousand years old human skeleton. You have to build a laboratory to follow up on that (maybe the start of the contact victory quest chain?).

  • The purity faction has an affinity for ranged units(!), firepower and heavy armor. Harmony uses hordes of cheap units *sigh* (zerg after all i guess).
  • Unit window (left side of page 3) no new information compared to the older german article i already did translate. Well one new information: unit upgrades through affinity level are free of charge, but we already assumed that.
  • there are no selectable unit promotions like in Civ5, but only flat combat strength increase (10% ?) with experience like in SMAC. Or a one time self heal.
  • affinity upgrades to units are given on different affinity levels. The "best light vehicle" (presumably afflvl 4 Rover/Tank) is only available at afflvl 13 (so afflvl 5 for the lvl3 rover was probably correct in the other article).
  • the author strongly suggest focusing one affinity over a broader research approach, encompassing more different affinities :-( to reach the "super units" like the Xeno Titan or the Flying Fortess (no word on supremacy's super unit)
  • Satellites: increase research rate, bombard enemies, increase combat strength. They can only be launched around our own cities (from gameplay vid: 4 tiles radius), can't have overlappping influence areas, can be shot down by artillery and deorbit after a set amount of time. Economical satellites have a longer uptime than military ones. Supremacy players can launch satellites over every firaxite ressource globally, e.g. a Teleport satellite for fast troop deployment :eek:
  • Virtues (sadly no new info): culture gives virtue points we can put into the known 4 trees (might, growth, knowledge, industry). Growth increases growth rate (duh!) and health. It was all very vague in the article, i don't think it was fully implemented in the version the author played (which was probably the 100 turns version we already know about).
  • if overall health is negative, the faction suffers science and culture penalties first, food and industrial production penalties later (so this would have to be carefully managed and not be pseudoautomatic like in Civ5). Some ressources can increase health.
  • Expansion speed is seriously curbed. Not only is the colonist unit pretty expensive, it also takes 15 turns for the defenseless outpost to grow into a full city. The devs did this to keep factions borders from bumping against each other too soon, and that the player would focus on his suvival against the planet first. Thats why the author fears pacing could suffer, because it could be tedious to only explore at the beginning and not have some action (I personally as a long time builder don't agree with this assesment ;-) )
  • Roads cost maintanance, money/energy can be gained by trade with foreign cities or stations. The player can select which stations get built next to him. Trading with stations near foreign borders might deteriorate relations.
  • Espionage: more than one spy can operate in the same enemy city. They rack up "Intrigue" ammounting to 5 levels which determine what we can do in the enemy city: the first 3 levels are quite harmess and don't harm the enemy player, e.g. you can steal a tech. On level 4 and 5 you can flip cities :eek: or attract siege worms. The enemy gets a warning though when one of these levels are about to be reached.
  • Conclusion: Civ in Space (Box last page) (opinions are of the original author)
    Lena did not want to tell the author, how long the team already worked on CivBE, to "not make a wrong impression" (he assumes it would not be that long therefore). CivBE also forfeits many ideas the author loved in SMAC, like social engineering and the very individual factions. So he is very sceptical.
    CivBE is not a milestone á la SMAC, not a new evolutionary step of the Civ series, but a good game nevertheles. The player would notice that the same team is behind BE that made Civ5 to the grandiose strategy game it is today through the two addons. The game mechanics of BE seem cleverly intertwined and well balanced. He really likes the development and individualization options that come with the affinity system, virtues and unit upgrades (sic). He identifies a high replay value and says the firaxis people had to use a crowbar to pry him off the mouse after the demo games. The SMAC fanboy in him would have liked more hommage to the original, but he is positive that granted the game pacing would turn out well (it imho will, since aliens will be more aggressive in release) that the game as very good potential (which is a very positive bottom line for a german game reviewer).

Important: This is not a test of the final game, but only an extensive article based on the 100 turn demo and on information that is out there today. The author might even be a reader of this forum or of artiochs wiki, since he pointed out a few topics we too discussed here.

There are no new infos in the 3-page long comparison with SMAC, so i will not translate them en detail. The author just misses the fleshed out factions, the unit workshop, more terraforming options, social engineering ("the best politics system ever in a strategy game" sic), the planetary council, faster expansion (but not marine bases) and SMACs immersive storyline. Its just a box of more or less justified nostalgia ;-)
 
Super Units?! They better not go all the way until October without more info, else I will lose my mind.

The slower expansion makes sense. I was always under the impression Civ 5 was intended to play out similar, but instead fell into an awkward pattern of settling as many cities as you reasonably can right away, then never expand for the rest of the game. I wonder if there will be additional mechanics to further promote later game city creation, such as newer cities starting with free buildings or whatever.
 
1. Wow, the Satelite over Firaxite and mass teleport sounds brutal! +1 for Supremacy. :D

2. I'm also loving that there are 4 super units per affinity.

3. 1000 years old Human remains on an alien planet you've just colonized? That sounds very intriguing.

4. I can see ARC flipping cities like crazy with their spy bonus.
 
Choosing a lab as cargo gives you Pioneering at the start.

The article does not specify that it would necessarily be Pioneering. Maybe he just planned on selecting that as bonus tech on landing. Thats why i did not include that info, since we already know that a bonus tech can be selected as ship cargo.
 
The article does not specify that it would necessarily be Pioneering. Maybe he just planned on selecting that as bonus tech on landing. Thats why i did not include that info, since we already know that a bonus tech can be selected as ship cargo.

Presumably, your bonus tech would be one of the early leaf techs, Pioneering OR Planetary Survey. Starting with one of the stem techs like Physics or Engineering would be OP.
 
1. Wow, the Satelite over Firaxite and mass teleport sounds brutal! +1 for Supremacy. :D

Oh yeah!!

2. I'm also loving that there are 4 super units per affinity.

Me too!! Can't wait to learn more about these super units! Sounds like Firaxis is definitely holding back some of the really exciting stuff. I bet CivBE will have a lot of good stuff that we don't know yet.
 
Me too!! Can't wait to learn more about these super units! Sounds like Firaxis is definitely holding back some of the really exciting stuff. I bet CivBE will have a lot of good stuff that we don't know yet.

I think every affinity will have 4 special units. The "super" might just be an exageration. The "cndr" or the "harmony floatstone orbital bombardement unit" (forgot its catchy name) might be examples of these 4 units. Having 4 ultimate units sounds a bit strange. But who knows?
 
I think every affinity will have 4 special units. The "super" might just be an exageration. The "cndr" or the "harmony floatstone orbital bombardement unit" (forgot its catchy name) might be examples of these 4 units. Having 4 ultimate units sounds a bit strange. But who knows?

I was wondering that too. You are probably right. Yes, I think the CNDR unit counts as one of those "super units". Although, I've looked at the game video and I still can't figure what makes it a unique unit. Strength wise it seems to be not much different than a supremacy marine unit. So, it must have some cool special ability that we don't know. And if you look at the tech tree, it seems that the CNDR is a mid game unit. So, we actually don't know yet what the late game Supremacy unique units are. There are still lots of affinity unique units that we don't know about yet.
 
No promotions?? That's a bit weird. So every infantry will be exactly the same? No bonus for rough terrain vs flat? Seems odd.

I'm curious about the health system and expansioning. I've always been an expasionist up until CiV where I rarely build more than 3-4 cities; which is why i prefer domination in CiV, it's the only way to expand beyond the initial couple of cities. With BE, we have aliens, health, and colony growth timers then eventually competing AIs that will limit expansion. I'm really curious how the devs imagine expanding to go. It will obviously be slow and difficult at first. Will it get easier as we tame the wilds or will health constantly be preventing further wide growth? Will the expansion phase be longer than CiV, where you generally won't be building new cities after about t100, or will be still setting up new cities well after t200?
 
I guess the lack of promotions are offsetted by the different units available for different affinities, since obviously the "general warrior" of Harmony will work differently to the one from Purity. Still makes me feel a bit sad, but guess we gotta wait to see how it actually plays.
 
Much interesting info but overall this reviewer seems kinda strange for me with his contradicted views (there is no unit upgrades but he especially likes unit upgrades lol) and unique taste (he is sad that you can't immediately conquer empires in a game with 'wild planet colonisation' theme)
 
Much interesting info but overall this reviewer seems kinda strange for me with his contradicted views (there is no unit upgrades but he especially likes unit upgrades lol) and unique taste (he is sad that you can't immediately conquer empires in a game with 'wild planet colonisation' theme)

Maybe i overemphasized this points in the translation. Its not that contradictory in the original. He just feels like pacing would be off, like too many turns to click through maybe. He does not mention combat. I personally don't aggree with him on this point though because imho there will be plenty to do in this phase. Maybe he would just have liked to get some action in the 100 turns demo.
There are no experience upgrades, but there are affinity upgrades. So that one aint contradictory either.
 
I kind of like the idea of no promotions, and I think it opens up the possibility of better unit balance. For example: Infantry. Without promotions, they are lacking. With double cover, medics near by, they are quite strong. So if you buff the base version, the promo version becomes nigh unkillable.

This is all dependent on the base units, of course. I just think that if giving up promotions for a generic damage boost means better combat balance, I'm all for it.
 
I think the faction are meant to be less unique on purpose. The affinities are designed to gradually make the faction more unique as the game progresses.
 
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