General impression of BERT so far.

[Lord Tirian]

I really think that's how it should be. Pods give generic, relatively weak bonuses but are readily available and "auto-grab". The cool stuff can and should come from relics, because they a bit more of a "normalized" system that doesn't allow one Civ to "get them all".

Yeah, same here, I'm happy to have resource pods as simple rewards, after all, there's no effort to get resource pods, they are freebies for simply exploring. Keep the cool stuff for the excavations, makes them feel special.

The only thing I wouldn't mind being added are "pre-built terrain improvements", have a resource pod give some food/production/energy (but less than normal) and build a farm/mine/generator on its tile (think "robotic terraforming unit") would be neat. Would add a bit of variety and flavour.

 

[poom3619]

Let's say my de-hyping factor is almost compensated by my hype for Beyond Earth. I feel that they promised with several things which either unfulfilled or fell short of our expectation. It's not just an objective "fun" but also several lacking feature and depth of the game.

I can say that I would make a greatest flash game with a long list of feature that anyone would love and enjoy even without having no idea how to made one. In short, I trust the dev as much as politician now

 

[Westwall]

And as once again Pods are purely random and don't have any limiting factor built in a good start vs. a bad start would become completely dependent on randomness and luck when scouting. Right now resource Pods are a good bonus to empire development, but they're not "game-breaking".

I really doubt getting a free explorer or a weak rover every now and then would be "game-breaking." It's worrying about things like that which made BE so utterly boring compared to past iterations. Everything has to be so equal and fair that nothing is allowed to shine. I'd like for wonders to be something truly magnificent to behold, so much that you'd want to get as many as possible... I'd like to see a Great Wall (or whatever the sci-fi equivalent would be) spring up around my cities.

But the new artifact system gives the player bigger bonuses. We saw the screen where the player gets extra research, extra energy and a unique unit ability for combining 2 specific artifacts. So the game does now give you bigger bonuses. You have to look past just what you get from a single pod.

What I'm saying is that combining all these relics better not end up giving me just a "+800 science" bonus or something boring like that. Because being able to move through the tech web a little faster just doesn't do anything for me by way of making me feel immersed in the game. In SMAC, you could even gain old alien battle ogres. No one accused those of being game-breaking.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

What I'm saying is that combining all these relics better not end up giving me just a "+800 science" bonus or something boring like that.

I don't think you need to worry, the devs have said that combining certain relics will even unlock unique wonders and buildings. And the demo video showed a special unit ability. So the bonuses will be more than just some extra science.

 

[Ryika]

I really doubt getting a free explorer or a weak rover every now and then would be "game-breaking." It's worrying about things like that which made BE so utterly boring compared to past iterations. Everything has to be so equal and fair that nothing is allowed to shine. I'd like for wonders to be something truly magnificent to behold, so much that you'd want to get as many as possible... I'd like to see a Great Wall (or whatever the sci-fi equivalent would be) spring up around my cities.

A wonder can have a really cool and strong effect, because you know you can't just randomly find 4 of them on the map. Ruins can have cool, strong effects, because you know each explorer can only get 1 and then has to go home - unless you invested in additional Excavation charges which then again counter-balances the bonus of being able to dig up more than one ruin.

That's the problem here, Pods don't have such a mechanism and therefore underlie very strong variance in outcome. Finding one Explorer may not be game-breaking, but finding one explorer that then finds another Explorer, easily gets you a very strong bonus purely out of random occurrences that you didn't have any influence on.

That's a problem in my opinion, and a general concept that works: If it doesn't have opportunity costs or mechanics that limit how much a player can profit from it, then the bonus must be relatively weak.

And again, that's only for Pods. When it comes to Ruins, they can go much further on the "Cool!" side of things without any problems.

 

[Westwall]

I don't think you need to worry, the devs have said that combining certain relics will even unlock unique wonders and buildings. And the demo video showed a special unit ability. So the bonuses will be more than just some extra science.

From the way they've been juggling wonder benefits (Gene Vault now gives every new outpost a worker instead of +10% growth in all cities), I'm really concerned about what kind of benefits we can expect from unlocked wonders. The 10% growth made sense for the Gene Vault and a free worker is a nice tangible benefit... I just don't see why they couldn't combine the two.

Many of the other wonders are even worse off in my opinion and now just seem so circumstantial... like defense bonuses for a single city. Which would only really be useful if you have a city under threat, in other words one that is on the edge of your borders and probably doesn't yet have the production capacity to quickly build such a wonder in the first place.

So many of these ideas feel so arbitrary and on the fly that I'm really starting to wonder what the devs are even thinking with all this.

 

[Gorbles]

It's funny you use the Great Wall as an example.

It's been in every Civ. game since the first. As have the Pyramids, incidentally. That's a lot of time to balance their strengths even if the main bonuses haven't been redesigned much.

With BE, they're experimenting. You'd moan at them if they reskinned Civ. wonders, so they obviously avoided that pitfall from the start. But that introduces a new qualifier in the design process - setting the Wonders apart from traditional Civ. counterparts. The main complaints were that the Wonders were too bland. Weakness took a backburner to blandness. So the devs addressed this, and were stuck with some complaints about strength, but their main thing is tech web placement and being stuck on useless techs.

We don't know what RT will change here. We've already seen Affinity additions to tech. But we can see how the developers have been changing the game. Quite easily.

 

[Westwall]

With BE, they're experimenting. You'd moan at them if they reskinned Civ. wonders

You base this assumption on what exactly? I'd actually rather see reskins than original content that feels boring and uninspired.

But that introduces a new qualifier in the design process - setting the Wonders apart from traditional Civ. counterparts. The main complaints were that the Wonders were too bland. Weakness took a backburner to blandness.

Not even sure how this became an either/or predicament. You're telling me they couldn't experiment with strong AND original wonders? That both +10% growth and a free worker is too radical a concept?

Just to add, as someone mentioned earlier, a lot of "experimenting" could've been done in a beta test, but since they decided not to hold an open beta (and still refuse to do so) people can be forgiven for worrying that they're repeating most of the same mistakes.

 

[Lord Tirian]

We don't know what RT will change here. We've already seen Affinity additions to tech. But we can see how the developers have been changing the game. Quite easily.

RT could actually make the "weird" city defence wonders quite potent if ocean cities can build them. A mass driver in a mobile aquatic city? Yes, please.

Also, since the last patch, the wonders all have unique effects that fit the lore, too. In terms of underlying mechanics, they are in a good spot. They just need some numerical tweaking and/or tech web adjustments.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

You base this assumption on what exactly? I'd actually rather see reskins than original content that feels boring and uninspired.

"boring" and "uninspired" are rather subjective terms.

 

[AriochIV]

"boring" and "uninspired" are rather subjective terms.

So is "fun," but there's no way around that.

 

[Acken]

Opinions and subjectivity are rampant on forums. Who would have thought

 

[Ryika]

I don't think the bonuses that Civ 5 wonders give are any less "boring" or "uninspired" than the BE wonders, they just have more of the bonuses that people call "boring" and "uninspired" in Beyond Earth stacked so they are overall stronger. But the bonuses by themselves are pretty much very similar in both games.

 

[Gorbles]

You base this assumption on what exactly? I'd actually rather see reskins than original content that feels boring and uninspired.

Generic "you". I'm not going to waste time trying to infer your motivations

Not even sure how this became an either/or predicament. You're telling me they couldn't experiment with strong AND original wonders? That both +10% growth and a free worker is too radical a concept?

Just to add, as someone mentioned earlier, a lot of "experimenting" could've been done in a beta test, but since they decided not to hold an open beta (and still refuse to do so) people can be forgiven for worrying that they're repeating most of the same mistakes.

They admitted they were too conversative with the base game. This is why it was originally an either / or. The patches we've seen since have gone a bit of a way towards resolving this original cautious approach. RT will take this further, possibly significantly so.

You're lumping bonuses together left, right and centre. That's not good design. Saying to copy-paste them from CiV isn't good design ethos either. The food bonus no longer applies because the Wonder in it's entirety was redesigned. This doesn't mean they might not warrant further buffs, but that's down for time to tell.

 

[Acken]

I don't think the bonuses that Civ 5 wonders give are any less "boring" or "uninspired" than the BE wonders, they just have more of the bonuses that people call "boring" and "uninspired" in Beyond Earth stacked so they are overall stronger. But the bonuses by themselves are pretty much very similar in both games.

Although you could argue that it's once again a consequence of removing GP without "replacing" it. The same way specialists currently make very little sense as a stripped down version of their civ5 counterparts, civBE wonders don't give GPPs and none of them can give the numerous free GP or GPP bonuses civ5 does.
A shame there are no specialist wonders by the way.

Having less systems in place directly make wonders less diversified.

Next problem, is that in strategy games "useless" often quickly translates into "boring". If no reasonable strategy makes use of the wonders they will be perceived as uninteresting. As are the late game buildings. The excitement come partly from fiting this puzzle piece in your grand strategy. Spy buildings are a good example of this problem in civ5 too or angkor wat. Their bonus are rather original but being useless will make you unexcited about them.

 

[Westwall]

The patches we've seen since have gone a bit of a way towards resolving this original cautious approach. RT will take this further, possibly significantly so.

Based on what we've seen in those other patches, the only thing that was resolved were trade routes finally having auto-renew. RT should take it further because hardly anything has been resolved so far.

You're lumping bonuses together left, right and centre. That's not good design. Saying to copy-paste them from CiV isn't good design ethos either. The food bonus no longer applies because the Wonder in it's entirety was redesigned.

Yes. Redesigned into something that makes even less sense. At least the bonuses in past games seemed to fit with their names and descriptions. That includes SMAC by the way so you can't use the "they've had forever to experiment" excuse.

 

[Halbbruder]

My impressions so far:

Aliens:
The hydracoral intrigues me as it harks back to the fungal tower in SMAX. Does it actually expand over time? Also, I think it should have some ranged resistance (something like +50% against ranged) because in one video, it died rather easily to ranged attacks.

With the makara, would it have a similar spawn rule to siege worms? As in, they don't spawn until turn 20? other than that, if they do spawn from nests, I think it should only be from coastal nests and sea nests, the latter of which is also a very nice touch for the game as it ensures that sea expansion is not easy, even though you have the sea dragons and krakens that can destroy early ships very easily.

It's a pity there's no ranged sea alien unit yet and I'd also like to see another land alien ranged creature that is tougher than the manticore, of course. I would also like to see aliens becoming tougher as they get angrier because then you kind of implement a similar feature from SMAC, where the aliens get stronger over time and when you kill one of them and the others around the killed aliens gain an instant lifecycle (morale/level up) boost.

There should also be a greater incentive to get friendly (blue) status with the aliens, such as capturing aliens. And if someone activates the mind flower, you could lose control of all captured aliens. They will also deal bonus damage against any sponsor that has angered the wild aliens in general.

Artifacts and expeditions:
It's good to see that exploration and expeditions are now more worthwhile with new underwater sites and the new combination feature for artifacts. I look forward to that.

Combat units:
Good to see the new sea units, but now I think there should be a couple of new planes as well.

 

[Ryika]

My impressions so far:

Aliens:
The hydracoral intrigues me as it harks back to the fungal tower in SMAX. Does it actually expand over time? Also, I think it should have some ranged resistance (something like +50% against ranged) because in one video, it died rather easily to ranged attacks.

Yes, the devs said it expands by itself over time, however, it seems like the further it goes the "smaller" its parts become and the easier they seem to be killed (the E3-Video shows ranged attacks on both, small and medium sized pieces), so unless there's some "growing"-mechanism that lets smaller pieces get bigger over time the expansion seems to be rather limited.

With the makara, would it have a similar spawn rule to siege worms? As in, they don't spawn until turn 20? other than that, if they do spawn from nests, I think it should only be from coastal nests and sea nests, the latter of which is also a very nice touch for the game as it ensures that sea expansion is not easy, even though you have the sea dragons and krakens that can destroy early ships very easily.

I think in general spawning- and behavior-patterns would be really cool. Drones should defend nests, raptor bugs should go out and hunt player units, etc.

It's a pity there's no ranged sea alien unit yet and I'd also like to see another land alien ranged creature that is tougher than the manticore, of course. I would also like to see aliens becoming tougher as they get angrier because then you kind of implement a similar feature from SMAC, where the aliens get stronger over time and when you kill one of them and the others around the killed aliens gain an instant lifecycle (morale/level up) boost.

BE already sort of has such a system - the alien spawntable changes with alien aggression towards the players, orange/red produce more of the stronger aliens and overall more siege worms (and I think also Kraken) are maintained on the map.

 

[Westwall]

unless there's some "growing"-mechanism that lets smaller pieces get bigger over time

That was my impression. That some are simply smaller because they're younger. It'd be neat if there really was no limit and they could theoretically consume the entire ocean.

 

[bite]

I would say of all the information we have heard so far the only thing I am disappointed with (this does not count the things that have yet to be said or confirmed or clarified) is that there is only 4 new sponsors, I would have thought that there would be more. I hope the resources that would have gone in for more have been spent on making the first 8 more personable but we'll see