Played some 20+ hours - some thoughts and opinions.

[flying_dug0ng]

After binging on BE for the past 24 hours, I'd like to share some thoughts and feedback. I did not watch any LP or preview streams beforehand - dove in totally blind. And a scan of forum threads quickly show that I'm not the only one disappointed by the release version.

Quick breakdown of my single player experience:
1. Trade route shenanigans - 'nuff said. There's the 10+ pages thread about it.

2. UI is a complete mess. Mini map is too small and useless. City screen buildings list on the left is way too large! You gotta scroll down multiple times to view all your buildings late game. When you enter the city screen, the production panel is hidden, having to click the button every time is plain bad interface. Citizen allocation slots are huge - now that we have tiles with multiple food/hammer/science/culture/energy yields, the circle usually blocks the tiny yield icons. And that tiny 'eye' button in the top-left mini map? How did that pass QA?

3. AI is too passive, even on Apollo. I played 10+ games so far, all on Apollo, and on all speeds/map sizes, and Apollo feels like Emperor at best. In many games, the other sponsors had planetfall 10-15 tiles away from my capital and they did the usual sabre-rattling without actually declaring war. Where's the rush of facing a Zulu Impi... rush?

4. Factions are, to put it mildly, 'bland'. I understand this is no SMAC. Remove every sponsor name and color and they could all pass for the same person. I was hoping to encounter kooks like Lady Skye. Perhaps there is an XML of leader personalities like in CiV, but right now I can't see any individualism in the way the AI plays out in game.

4. Missing demographics and strategic view. Absolutely NO reason why these were removed. If you're going to reuse the engine/XML files right down to the diplomatic cues and wordings - why was a conscious decision made to exclude them?

5. Tech tree is okay, I'm sure the MP folks will have a blast figuring out the tech beelines and affinity timings. In SP this is all moot as the AI fails miserably either way.

6. Aliens are random enough to add an exciting new dimension to early game. Miasma also adds another layer of strategy. This is good. There were many times I planted a juicy colony only to realize it was cut off from trade routes due to miasma.

7. Orbital layer is okay, I guess? The way my games panned out, spam and forget. Again, this should be more dynamic and useful in MP.

8. Affinities - I like how it relies on the resources you get. In CiV you could preplan a playthrough (India + CV etc). But in BE, what if you want to have mass orgies with aliens, but your cities only have 20+ floatstone? Adapt, roleplay, or do whatever you need to do to stick to your original plan.

When you have hundreds of hours in BnW, you'd expect a similar product coming out of Firaxis. This is, quite literally, Vanilla Civ all over again, while we wait for fall patches and expansions to bring BE up to standard with BnW.

The music is single handedly the most polished part of release. Epic, sweeping, and majestic, if only the rest of the game feels the same.

I will still continue to play the game of course. Please take this rant as honest feedback from a Civ fanboy.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I've been trying to find an answer to this observation: Why do the different AI land at different turns in the early game? Or is this a "belated" diplomacy experience.

Wouldn't it be better if all the factions/sponsors (whatever they are called (the AI)), all landed on the same turn?

Also it seems that after you've landed, established your capital, that your explorer finds an Expedition site only to have another AI land it's colony right next to it. And of course they claim the site while you are fighting aliens trying to get your explorer there to start excavation. Bad luck on this one? Or purposeful design?

Sorry to clutter your thread but I've just not been able to get an answer to these questions. And I did not play CiV so this system is new for this old Civ II, III, IV player.

Thanks for any replies.

JosEPh

 

[Cymsdale]

I've been trying to find an answer to this observation: Why do the different AI land at different turns in the early game? Or is this a "belated" diplomacy experience.

Wouldn't it be better if all the factions/sponsors (whatever they are called (the AI)), all landed on the same turn?

You choose to have the AI all land on turn 0 if that is your preference.

 

[Browd]

Yes, you can disable staggered start in Advanced Setup.

 

[m15a]

I've been trying to find an answer to this observation: Why do the different AI land at different turns in the early game? Or is this a "belated" diplomacy experience.

Wouldn't it be better if all the factions/sponsors (whatever they are called (the AI)), all landed on the same turn?

Also it seems that after you've landed, established your capital, that your explorer finds an Expedition site only to have another AI land it's colony right next to it. And of course they claim the site while you are fighting aliens trying to get your explorer there to start excavation. Bad luck on this one? Or purposeful design?

That's bad luck, but that bad luck is by design. If everyone landed at once (which as others have said is an option), you'd probably not get to that site first. But with staggered landings, you have a chance to get more sites, possibly at the cost of building a lot of units. There's the same sort of situation with building cities. You might have a plan for your city layout, but then you'll have to adjust. Or else you might be able to rush a good spot before the other colonies arrive. I guess the staggered start adds a bit more risk and surprise. Also, it sort of gives the player the idea that they *should* be able to take advantage of the land they explored, which I guess is, psychologically if not strategically, incentive to be more competitive with the AI.

 

[Eji1700]

I do kinda wonder about the passive AI. I've only played a few games, but in 2 of them(normal difficulty) i've lost a city on turn 150 to a DoW that I didn't see coming followed by a rush. Granted after that rush is eventually turned they fall apart, but it still seemed a little bit better than the civ 5 mess.

 

[sherbz]

Like the OP, i didnt watch any lets plays before release.

My first game was a failure. I played it like civ and didnt really get to grips with the tech web. And realised way too late the power of affinities. So even though i was whooping everyone on science, i lost having spread my affinities out (2 each in the minor ones and 13 in my major). My first game was on Gemini difficulty.

2nd game was much better, and i won, again on Gemini. I think i will speed up considerably now i know how it works. Completed the earthling thing on turn 296 and no AI was even close to me.

Its certainly not perfect IMO. Its not terrible either though.

PRO'S

- Aliens are good. They just need to be developed a bit more, so that they have a personality of some sort.

- Affinities are good. I kinda messed up in my first game, in thinking that there were certain things that you had to get. But really, you dont. You can go 100% for one affinity and have enough stuff to do what you need to. it also makes spying more useful because invariably other AIs who are on a different affinity will always have techs that you can steal.

CONS

- Trading is poor. The AI buys your special resources when it doesnt even need them.

- The AI personalities are incredibly bland. I can understand that Firaxis wanted the player to invent the story themselves. However, in a sci fi game you need narrative, and this is something BE suffers from in general.

- The AI is too passive. They have not declared war on me at all. It might be down to me being on too easy a skill setting (Gemini). Not sure though.

- Its a bit too easy. I know i lost my first game, but that mistake will never happen again. I dont trust that the AI has the intelligence to beeline techs properly. There are also a number of slingshots you can employ to good effect. I have not played it yet, but i suspect that Apollo wont be too difficult.

- the UI is sh1t. Please introduce some icons and stuff to make it easier to navigate. Like on trade routes. It would be so much better if you just had a button that sent your trading vehicle to its last location, rather than searching through the list finding the city you went to last time, which is not even highlighted, the font is in the same colour as everyhting else making it difficult to see.

- No demographics? WTH

- No end screen recap? WTH

- No wonder videos? WTH - this IMO is really important. It helps to drive a narrative, which is what this game really needs.

- Wonders in general are rubbish. High level play in Civ 5 meant that you didnt build them (in general). So it seems that they made them worse. Not too sure on the reasoning for this. I actually think wonders were well balanced in civ 5. In BE they have basically made them almost pointless, even for lower skill levels.

So in all i guess you can say my over all impression is fairly negative. But then it was with civ 5 vanilla. I would give it a 6.5/10 in its current state. It could be really good with a few changes. But i dont think its ever going to reach the level of civ 4, which is still the best civ in the whole series (IMO).

 

[ShaggyCan]

I think this game has as much potential as right out of the box CiV, maybe more. I can't wait till the best modders we have rip into it.

The biggest thing is the blandness, CiV had it when it came out, it's what I call the Firaxis +2 problem. They seem to think, X with a +2 on it is really cool. Look around the game, you'll find 1000 things that are X+2. It leads to everything seeming really bland. Remember all the buildings in CiV till they basically went and incorporated half of the Communitas mod into the game?

Also each faction NEEDS something unique they can do, each civ is basically: Random thing +10%. Boring! The only faction now that is half interesting is ARC because the new covert ops system is way better than CiV (See there are good things!)

Also, and this is HUGE: Wonder have to be WONDERfull, they should almost always do something that no other building does. A wonder that costs 1000 production shouldn't just give you +X production, it should do something cool.

BUT I am happy there have been so few bugs so far, the only one I have really noticed is the "if you attack a station they bug you about it for the rest of the game" bug.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Ok, my honest fan rant:

Where is the interface? I can't look at anything, no trade routes, no units, no demographics of any kind. Can't even see what I just built? That's ridiculous. Like OP said, if you're going to reuse so so much, why, WHY do you remove the convenient stuff? Remove the useless crap, like "very well" and "you're going to pay for this", which has no impact whatsoever. Why remove something that works and leave something that never did? I don't understand.

Everything is slow and tedious, like it was in civ 5 vanilla. Why? Haven't you learned that lesson?

Health needs something to be done, it's a bit weird. On one side its aquisition is tedios, slow and often next to impossible without sacrificing everything else. Then again, on the other hand its impact is so minimal. Why not make different stages of impact (below 0, -5, -10, -15, -20), to the point of it totally paralizing your colony if went too far?

I didn't expect aliens to be this passive. Not sure how I feel about it yet.

Music is great. Never had a doubt, firaxis always delivers on this part. Great guys.

AI is passive and useless, they don't even want to try. Just talk the talk, and when I attack and take their colonist that came to settle on my continent, they don't do anything, they just offer peace after a few turns and give me all their gold and resources. All this while mocking my military before. To clarify: I did not expect anything more than this, so nothing new here actually. Maybe something should be FINALLY done here? No? Oh, well...

That's all for now