I went back and played Civ V a little, and I realized why Civ V was fun even during the sort of bland vanilla period:
You had so many uniques to try out.
Which is where Civ:BE stumbles most for me. I could wrap my head around the sort of lackluster affinities and what not if we had maybe double the sponsors, or had more detail to the ones we have.
Civ V's hidden strength was that each civilization could play quite differently, at times. Sure, if you started without forests that turned Hiawatha into an almost blank civ... and if you started off the coast, England suddenly had only Longbows. But that was part of the fun: rolling the dice and trying to make the different uniques line up and synergize with the terrain.
In Civ:BE, this just doesn't exist. While on the one hand I really enjoy being able to build great-person style improvements (academies, manufactories) with workers, on the other it just feels like any terrain is good for anyone. There are no terrain-specific uniques in Civ:BE, not any unique units at all. That's probably the biggest issue for me.
Civ V was far from perfect in vanilla. But it gave you more than 8 playable sides, and each one had unique stuff beyond the minor buffs (unique abilities). It meant that you could make armies with unique promotions (upgrading Minutemen to Infantry and keeping the movement promo, or upgrading Mohawk Warriors to keep the forest/jungle promo).
That's what Civ:BE lacks and needs right now: the ability to make sides feel unique in terms of gameplay. Civ:BE also has less aesthetic content, too, but that is less of a problem for me... not having unique music is a let down, but not having a unique unit or improvement is a bigger issue.
And the seeding options are pretty meager... I usually find myself picking the same 2-3 choices in each category every time, almost regardless of what sponsor I am. Only the category for '+X yield in city' is all that different from game to game in terms of what I choose.
Really, if I had to recommend anything for an expansion right now, it'd be to bring back unique units (even just 1 per sponsor would be okay), increase the number of sponsors, and drastically increase the number of seeding options. I mean, we have zero sponsors right now that have any buff or special ability for energy, nor for science. Nor does anything unique buff how stations (city-states) relate to you, nor does anything unique affect how you deal with aliens.
There's just way too much obvious stuff they could have done that didn't happen despite re-using Civ V assets to cut down how much technical work (engine, etc.) had to occur.
You had so many uniques to try out.
Which is where Civ:BE stumbles most for me. I could wrap my head around the sort of lackluster affinities and what not if we had maybe double the sponsors, or had more detail to the ones we have.
Civ V's hidden strength was that each civilization could play quite differently, at times. Sure, if you started without forests that turned Hiawatha into an almost blank civ... and if you started off the coast, England suddenly had only Longbows. But that was part of the fun: rolling the dice and trying to make the different uniques line up and synergize with the terrain.
In Civ:BE, this just doesn't exist. While on the one hand I really enjoy being able to build great-person style improvements (academies, manufactories) with workers, on the other it just feels like any terrain is good for anyone. There are no terrain-specific uniques in Civ:BE, not any unique units at all. That's probably the biggest issue for me.
Civ V was far from perfect in vanilla. But it gave you more than 8 playable sides, and each one had unique stuff beyond the minor buffs (unique abilities). It meant that you could make armies with unique promotions (upgrading Minutemen to Infantry and keeping the movement promo, or upgrading Mohawk Warriors to keep the forest/jungle promo).
That's what Civ:BE lacks and needs right now: the ability to make sides feel unique in terms of gameplay. Civ:BE also has less aesthetic content, too, but that is less of a problem for me... not having unique music is a let down, but not having a unique unit or improvement is a bigger issue.
And the seeding options are pretty meager... I usually find myself picking the same 2-3 choices in each category every time, almost regardless of what sponsor I am. Only the category for '+X yield in city' is all that different from game to game in terms of what I choose.
Really, if I had to recommend anything for an expansion right now, it'd be to bring back unique units (even just 1 per sponsor would be okay), increase the number of sponsors, and drastically increase the number of seeding options. I mean, we have zero sponsors right now that have any buff or special ability for energy, nor for science. Nor does anything unique buff how stations (city-states) relate to you, nor does anything unique affect how you deal with aliens.
There's just way too much obvious stuff they could have done that didn't happen despite re-using Civ V assets to cut down how much technical work (engine, etc.) had to occur.
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