How is Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth?

[ToothedBomb]

I am waiting on Civ6 and hope Firaxis Main Team knows better what are they doing.

The exact same thing is probably going to happen with Civ VI. You should expect that by now. It's how games work these days. They're either early access where you pay full price for a demo, or they require multiple patches and DLC to fix. Better get used to it.
If you're that bothered by DLC, expansions and patches, just wait 5 years for the complete edition to come out for half the money, and play then.

 

[Nereus77]

I just signed up now because I heard this game was a spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri, my beloved world domination sim. However, because I've played AC and thoroughly enjoyed the setting and story I cannot play any other Civ game due to, um, sheer boredom (don't kill me!). I mean, how many times do we have to re-experience/rewrite history, eh?

I just got the game not long ago so hopefully I will play tonight and then post my impressions here. I have read a few reviews, some positive and some negative, and I have been watching a friend play it. It looks pretty sweet I must say.

PS: I couldn't read Krajzen's above post due to all the bold font. It may as well be in all caps as it makes my eyes do this: . Calm down, guy.

 

[Tinker]

If you're that bothered by DLC, expansions and patches, just wait 5 years for the complete edition to come out for half the money, and play then.

"Don't like it? Just wait 5 years!" is a pretty ridiculous notion and everyone here is completely right criticizing it.

 

[Krajzen]

"Don't like it? Just wait 5 years!" is a pretty ridiculous notion and everyone here is completely right criticizing it.

I am oficially revolting against this entire system until
1) It evolves into something better
2) Game companies at least will start being honest and will say 'beta version release date is in 2014 but complete version will be at 2016 '

The exact same thing is probably going to happen with Civ VI. You should expect that by now. It's how games work these days. They're either early access where you pay full price for a demo, or they require multiple patches and DLC to fix. Better get used to it. If you're that bothered by DLC, expansions and patches, just wait 5 years for the complete edition to come out for half the money, and play then.

Unless people stop being slaves of this system and start revolting against it, it will further degenerate games we love. I am oficially joining the resistance and I refuse to buy content for BE. I return to Civ5 and other, better games.

Also, I am really sorry I say this again, but it is such a contrast... Look at Endless Legends release. Small game of a small studio, has some problems but generally it is perfectly playable and awesome on official release date, and is actually reforming 4X genre. Nobody tries idiotic excuses 'you have to wait on patches and dlcs' but praises the game for being very good.
Probably this is because of it's extensive beta where devs were actually cooperating with players. Maybe this is future of truly great games instead of countless release - date - technical - cataclysms and great disappointments.

PS: I couldn't read Krajzen's above post due to all the bold font. It may as well be in all caps as it makes my eyes do this: . Calm down, guy.

I removed bold especially for you ;_;

 

[ToothedBomb]

"Don't like it? Just wait 5 years!" is a pretty ridiculous notion and everyone here is completely right criticizing it.

I've played Civ V for 1000 hours. Any money I spent on that game is entirely justified.
I don't mind paying 4 bucks for a new faction, or 30 for an expansion with additional game mechanics. That's a better deal than any other game out there, for me at least. If you feel you're being cheated out of money, then you should just wait for a price cut or bundle.

Game balance got screwed in BE, sure, but it's not like the game is unplayable. I don't mind having to wait a bit for a patch to rebalance some things. I wasn't there for the leaunch of Civ V (I got it before Korea DLC was released) but I still enjoyed the Vanilla version. I never really expected them to fix the AI or anything for BE either. It looked like a side project from the start. Not the game where they were going to address major issues. So maybe it's just that my expectations weren't as high.

 

[Krallicus]

C:BE is a failed re-launch of a previously excellent game (from the SM pantheon) Alpha Centauri. Previous Civ games had great video clips that heralded wonder deployment. AC had excellent video with better writing for every tech advance. These are the charms of the Civ game lineage.

C:BE has very little to support its claim of the Sid Meier name or even associate it with its dinstinctive lineage except for the 2-D drawings of wonders.

Its launch is flawed (imho) because...
- Poor development of a user friendly UI
- No tutorial
- A tech tree that is half-conceived. [Three items for every tech? Rudimentary sequencing of the research. I have to scroll around to see what I can research next?]
- "Quests" that are a sap to the 'positive reinforcement now!' crowd.
- Was there ANY playtesting done prior to release?
- If you are going to rehash an old concept, understand why the old concept was successful.

The patch to fix this 'game' and make it worthy of the Civilization or even Sid Meier franchise tag is gonna be large and it better be complete and it should be ready to publish by mid-week and should come with a letter of apology. If it isn't, then the Firaxis folks did not perform any QC on their product and it will hit their bottom line.

While I wait for the rebuild and reissue of this part of the Civ franchise, I will load up and find a way to play a real game...ALPHA CENTAURI!

 

[Nereus77]

I removed bold especially for you ;_;

Thanks, man!

I am oficially revolting against this entire system until
1) It evolves into something better
2) Game companies at least will start being honest and will say 'beta version release date is in 2014 but complete version will be at 2016 '

Yeah, big gaming studios are being quite silly right now. I think the business-types have taken over from the creative-types in the big publishing houses. As a result they are pushing quantity over quality. This means we are getting the poor quality and rehashed end of the stick, all while new games are being heavily marketed as the greatest thing since ever. Look at what's happening to Battlefield and Call of Duty with countless iterations. Need For Speed essentially died after the first Most Wanted game back in 2005. SimCity 2013 was an epic fail of titanic proportions. The list grows every year.

Our hopes lie in indie studios free of the shackles of big publishers. Games like Star Citizen and DayZ show us that creative developers are still out there and have awesome ideas they want us to experience.

We are heading to a dark time in gaming history where big business reigns, sapping the creativity out of people (yes, like the LEGO Movie). But I'm still going to take a stab at CivBE

 

[carstuar]

More fun for me than Civ5. Less fun than Alpha Centauri or Civ4 though.

 

[Krajzen]

The patch to fix this 'game' and make it worthy of the Civilization or even Sid Meier franchise tag is gonna be large and it better be complete and it should be ready to publish by mid-week and should come with a letter of apology. If it isn't, then the Firaxis folks did not perform any QC on their product and it will hit their bottom line!

Do you really believe a patch will magically fix the game? That it fixes the entire UI, lack of immersion, complete lack of balance, AI which Firaxis was unable to fix for 4 years?

In the best case it will last for 2 years and you spending twice as much money to finally become that.

I've played Civ V for 1000 hours. Any money I spent on that game is entirely justified.
I don't mind paying 4 bucks for a new faction, or 30 for an expansion with additional game mechanics. That's a better deal than any other game out there, for me at least. If you feel you're being cheated out of money, then you should just wait for a price cut or bundle.

If you are such non demanding player then it's okay, but Gems of Virtual Environment aren't born from general indifference. As long as players accept 'okay but nothing more' quality of game releases, as long truly great games won't appear and gaming industry is degenerated.



By the way, ask yourself - what do you prefer, pay 50$ for ingenious game - like 9/10 (like Baldur's Gate 2) and later 25$ for expansion elevating it to legendary level 10/10 (like an expansion to BG2) or do you prefer paying 50$ for 'good game' (6/10) and later 25$ for 'fixing it' to final version of 'very good game' (8/10)?

 

[Gort]

I think the game just needs some quick fixes to trade routes, wonders, quests and diplomacy to shine.

Trade routes need to be brought into line with other methods of generating food/production/science/energy. At the moment they're far superior. Reduce trade route quantity, or make them cap out at something like 2 Food and 2 Production/2 Energy and 2 Science, or do a combination of both.

Wonders need a balance pass to give the pointless ones a reason to exist. Tectonic anvil - 9 production per turn for a 1500 production wonder. Hmm.

Some building quest choices are complete no-brainers, see the autoplant (+1 energy per plant, or +1 trade route). See also any choice where it's 1 energy or 1 of something else - energy is generally less good than other resources, so you should be able to get more of it from decisions.

Diplomacy needs a look over - AIs need to be more willing to sign peace deals when they've clearly lost a war, and they should remove the diplomatic text that's just been copy-pasted from Civ 5.

 

[Teproc]

Krajzen, we get it, you don't like the game.

Of course a patch won't fix the AI. It will, or at least should, fix some balance issues, maybehelp a little towards the UI (though I think the contrast issue will be very hard to fix).

As for the lack of immersion, speak for yourself. Sure, the factions are bland but the flavour of the game is not about the factions, it's about exploring and settling a new world.

 

[Krajzen]

Krajzen, we get it, you don't like the game.

The problem is, not only I don't like the game according to this forum and metacritic

After few days of energetic anger I will go back to Civ5 and other games, but I am to angry on 9286363226 broken release to surrender quickly.

 

[Teproc]

The problem is, not only I don't like the game according to this forum and metacritic

After few days of energetic anger I will go back to Civ5 and other games, but I am to angry on 9286363226 broken release to surrender quickly.

Oh, I know many people don't, and I do find many problems with it, it's just that at this point you are repeating yourself over many threads. Feel free to do that, but it doesn't seem incredibly healthy to obsess over it that much

 

[Nereus77]

More fun for me than Civ5. Less fun than Alpha Centauri or Civ4 though.

This is pretty much all I needed to know

Still gonna take a stab at it, though.

 

[Sturmir]

Greetings everyone. Saw this poll and while I have been lurking here since the golden age of conquest I've finally made an account - something I've done on another review/game site Metacritic, just for this game.

I personally feel that this is an unfair poll as from my understanding leading up to the release is that this wasn't suppose to be CiV in Space, but Alpha Centauri for the new age. With that in mind though, I answer the question as: This is worse than CiV - Vanilla upon release.

Now I remember when CiV was released and I, as a bright eyed man freshly back from a deployment and loading it up. I went through the loading screen with quotes from cultural heroes Otto von Bismark. I was thoroughly disappointed after that screen as everything else frustrated me. (From the 1UP tile rule, to the horrid AI.)

God it was awful to adapt to.

Now years later I go ahead and load up the game I've been waiting nearly 15 years for (I still have the box copy of Alpha Centauri next to my computer things.) and greeted by the same familiar feeling I felt with civilization V. Now I know it has a lot to do with what the engine is, and what the game is being designed for (Casual gamers entering the strategy field) but I feel like they lost touch with their core fans and may be seeking more of those casual players.

My first playthrough was a short one, designed for familiarity before an online game with 10 people.

So I start the game up (play now), greeted by a smooth talking British sounding adviser. I go ahead and select the appropriate adviser level and crash. Oh my,
I reload the game, get into the game again and manage to make planetfall. I furiously click next turn, to no avail. I simply cannot proceed to the next turn. I restart and this solves the error.
Weird.

I then play my short game versus an AI, and manage to capture his capital (and win the game) with two units, a marine and an artillery within 50 odd turns. This was precipitated by him sending two units towards me, declaring war against me - being destroyed by a siege worm and then immediately trying to surrender. I ended the game rather quickly due to fear of missing the game with my friends.

We go to the multiplayer lobby and find that (with the short amount of factions.) only eight of us could ever possibly play. We split the group in half and (finally) begin.
We crashed.
Every person in the game crashed.
This proceeded to happen five times cycling through different hosts and trying a myriad of things. Such as verifying caches and reinstalling the game completely.

We all finally connected - and over the course of sixteen hours had a desync/reload screen every 3rd turn for the entire 300 turns the game took.

"This sort of network problem existed in CiV" a nagging voice in the back of my head shouts to me. Why certainly these problems were eliminated by Brave New World, I insisted.

Well, beyond personal taste, issues and bugs, I have played for 30 hours according to steam. Unlike CiV Vanilla though, I have realized something about an hour ago that made me soul search on CivFanatics for kindred souls: I wasn't having fun. I was forcing myself to play and trying to have fun. However, the game was completely dead. If compared to Vanilla Alpha Centauri, this game would seem like a side amusement in the vein of a mobile app released for blackberry. However, it is a flagship product. One that I paid money for, and as Krajzen and I'm sure others have pointed out, that people aren't exactly happy for the product they paid for. Concerning tastes alone I assume that a majority of people are having fun. However, past the initial wonder I began to feel like this game was a chore. I am not having fun. I had more fun at Vanilla CiV - and that was due entirely to the new system. This isn't new, and it isn't enough of a change/good game to justify the issues and frustration I get with it.

To sum it up, this game would benefit greatly from looking at Alpha Centauri, getting rid of the current factions and pasting those factions with a rename. Update the art so it's a bit more interesting and bring back every single one of the mechanics from Alpha Centauri (including the pink fungus). Hell, they can keep the trading, and satellite system. They amuse me when they aren't being utterly tedious.

 

[Karmah]

As said many times
Better than civ5 vanillia , way better than any civ4 , less than civ5 bnW.

The possibility of settling more cities, the accumulation of small building and the fast growth of new towns if much better than in any civ. I feel that my new towns contribute to my empire earlier and that s refreshing .
The units are also better than civ5 bnw imho. Especially with upgrades , like shoot twice but only once at full range thing is a good idea.

 

[KungFuCharlie]

Need more options than just better or worse. Or those options should be better worded.

 

[Bhoy]

I hated Civ 5, even after all expansions I just never got into it like Civ4 BTS (which I still play almost weekly), it's a write-off for me.

Very disappointed that BE is basically a fancy Mod of Civ5 - played about 2 hours last night before giving up (I hadn't mastered the gameplay to be fair, for some reason my capital city converted to another Civ... so I just quit). It just seems like a lazy effort - in the distant future humans are still obsessing over today's ethnic based borders? You think that loads of humans have made the leap to a new dangerous planet in a new star system they'd all be kinda friends, rather than rivals? Saving the human race would surely be an international thing, rather than every country sending their own settlers... So yeah, the nation vs nation model doesn't really work in a futuristic era you'd assume would be post-national.

 

[need my speed]

Exactly. This is just more of Civilization V, not to mention that it's extremely rushed and unoptimised. Worse than V's release, too; V at least had a workable interface (can't see the last thing that was built, can't zoom out, the tech web is very annoying, production queues are very annoying, trade is extremely annoying - I actually quadrupled the length - and ever so on). V also was a completely new engine.

And yet, the AI remains irrational-ish, weird, and terrible, to name but one complaint I have about V. 'Course, I hadn't expected this game to remove the one unit per tile mechanic, but still, all my complaints about V have basically been brought over to BE and were enhanced with BE's own shortcomings.

The only positive thing I have to say is that the inbetween turn time is lower than in IV's late game - but BE also has a lot less cities and manual trade mechanics. I also like the virtue thingy, but that was in V as well.

Now I'll go back to IV.

 

[Tony.Uk]

Played Civ 5 for over 3700 hours and still do. Bought this yesterday on impulse, and I am put off by some of the above comments. Have not played BE as yet but I think space travel is unrealistic, and I would have preferred a better historical Earth experience with info addict. And where does Firaxis go after this space thingy-back to Earth I hope.