Returning Civ IV Player -- Will I like BE?

[Mavynn]

Hi All,

I'm a first-time poster here but I've visited these forums many times, although not for a while. I only just learned that a new version of Civ was coming out and haven't had time to look into it much. I'm wondering: based on the below, will I like it?

I played Civ 1-2 and 4-5. I really enjoyed 1 and II and thought IV was amazing. I really liked the depth of play in IV in terms of how there were hundreds of small decisions that had big impacts on the game. I thought it was very well done (although I had a few gripes about how war happiness was handled for the AI on high difficulty). I probably played hundreds of hours of Civ IV.

I played two games of Civ 5 and absolutely hated it. I mean haaaaaated it. I bought it a while after it came out, after they patched it to supposedly fix a bazillion balance issues. The things I like least about it were: (1) that maintenance on buildings was so expensive that usually it was best to do nothing; (2) there did not seem to be the same nuance to the game in terms of empire building and decisions mattering; (3) diplomacy seemed non-existent; and, maybe most importantly, (4) the 1-unit-per-tile system was maddening, mostly because the AI was horrrrrrrrible at it. A lot of the problems I had with Civ 5 were also written about here: http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html

I don't know anything about whether Civ 5 was made better over the years or whether an expansion fixed some of the issues or anything, and I don't know much about BE. So my question to the forums is: Does BE seem like it does not have the same problems as vanilla Civ 5?

Thanks in advance.

 

[rastak]

If you hated Civ V that much I'd forget this and head straight over to the Civ IV forums. Not being a smart guy....no stacks of doom here.


I guess unless the Sci Fi theme really appeals to you.

 

[OldEarthRelic]

+1. If you disliked Civ 5, you'll hate this.

 

[Eisenhart]

A bit of a segue: Why do people want stacking anyway?

Stacking units seems like such a stupid thing to me. :/ Going around in just one "superstack" and killing shiz seems like a no-brain activity to me.

I mean, imagine playing Starcraft with no collision with all them units on top of each other. It becomes a snooze fest.

 

[OldEarthRelic]

Yeah, we really need another Civ IV v Civ V argument. That's never been done before.

 

[gunnergoz]

If none of the expansions for Civ V tempted you, I really doubt that BE will bring anything to the table that you would find appealing. But I don't know you and really cannot say for sure.

My advice is to look at the many available BE preview videos and interviews with the BE designers & developers, then decide for yourself.

 

[rastak]

A bit of a segue: Why do people want stacking anyway?

Stacking units seems like such a stupid thing to me. :/ Going around in just one "superstack" and killing shiz seems like a no-brain activity to me.

I mean, imagine playing Starcraft with no collision with all them units on top of each other. It becomes a snooze fest.

I started a Civ I game, first in probably 20 years, inspired by Polycast. You do NOT want to march around with a stack. Whole stack can be killed so you have to spread out. Civ I was ahead of it's time......

 

[Japper007]

Yes 1UPT is still there, if anything it is more rigidly enforced (trade routes finishing halts production of other civilian units now).

As to your other concerns:
buildings and decisions seem to matter a lot in BE.

Diplomacy System: bah, it's not like the one in Civ 4 was all that good, but Beyond Earth doesn't seem to do much new with it.

Most of the ICS problems that Sulla pointed to were solved in the patches and expansions to Civ 5 , so I think it safe to assume they won't return in Beyond Earth.

If you hated Civ 5 you'll probably detest Beyond Earth...

 

[m15a]

Skip it. I'd only recommend BE to someone who isn't a Civ V fan if they really like sci-fi and didn't like Civ V because of the historical setting.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

As of BNW the AI has gotten pretty good at handling one unit per tile. Diplo in BNW seems pretty natural and reasonable. BE will have similar diplo and tactical AI to BNW, so I don't see these being problems at release like they were for civ5.

BE looks like it has pretty much the same gamefeel as civ5, but the game itself is very different. I especially like the idea of zerg barbarians that can multiply out of control and destroy whole nations.

 

[DarkestOnion]

I will answer your enumerated concerns about Civ:BE in light of your extremely limited experience with Civ 5 compared to my 2000+ hours in Civ 5 coupled with my having followed almost all of the information about Civ:BE to this point.

1) Building maintenance issues in Civ 5 most often occur when a player insists on building EVERY BUILDING in EVERY CITY. Thus the problem lies in your subjective decision not to adapt your play-style as opposed to Civ 5 being objectively bad. Therefore in Civ:BE, you may need to open yourself up to changing the play-style you learned in Civ 4 if you do not want to be disappointed. As a final note, BNW funneled a lot of gold into the game through Trade Routes (which are also in Civ:BE.)

2) I see a lot of nuances in Empire Building and Decision Making in Civ 5 so I am a bit confused how you see just the opposite. Since I am baffled, I won't defend Civ 5 there and will instead give you some reassurance on Civ:BE in that vein. The Quest System, the Affinity System, the Seeding System, and the Intrigue/Espionage System in Civ:BE will provide many more Decision Making Points. Empire Building will be more complex and interesting as well.

3) Diplomacy was not non-existent in Civ 5. Such hyperbole is too dismissive for me to wish to argue with you at length here. In Civ:BE there is a Diplomatic Favor element which allows you to trade a Future Favor for a Resource or Diplomatic Action from an AI. This is an incremental innovation from Civ 5.

4) 1UPT is fine! Most players who dislike it are less concerned with how well the AI uses it and more with how they lost Stacks of Doom from Civ 4. The link you offer points to some unspoken 'stacks of doom need to come back logic' so I would be remiss in not questioning your motivation a little bit here. However, if I am off base there and you truly care only about how well the AI uses 1UPT then I can assure you that repeated videos of Civ:BE have shown that the AI uses 1UPT much better.

5) 2K/Firaxis have developed Civ 5 considerably since Civ 5 Vanilla. Lessons learned from Civ 5 are innovated upon in Civ:BE. However, I fear that you are not going to like Civ:BE solely because it is 1UPT. Feel free to prove me wrong and try it out though...

 

[Acken]

I don't think you'd like it based on how much you disliked 5. If you thought 5 was mediocre or something I would have said maybe because there are differences and some improvements but I don't see someone hating CiV liking BE.

 

[joncnunn]

Hi All,

I'm a first-time poster here but I've visited these forums many times, although not for a while. I only just learned that a new version of Civ was coming out and haven't had time to look into it much. I'm wondering: based on the below, will I like it?

I played Civ 1-2 and 4-5. I really enjoyed 1 and II and thought IV was amazing. I really liked the depth of play in IV in terms of how there were hundreds of small decisions that had big impacts on the game. I thought it was very well done (although I had a few gripes about how war happiness was handled for the AI on high difficulty). I probably played hundreds of hours of Civ IV.

I played two games of Civ 5 and absolutely hated it. I mean haaaaaated it. I bought it a while after it came out, after they patched it to supposedly fix a bazillion balance issues. The things I like least about it were: (1) that maintenance on buildings was so expensive that usually it was best to do nothing; (2) there did not seem to be the same nuance to the game in terms of empire building and decisions mattering; (3) diplomacy seemed non-existent; and, maybe most importantly, (4) the 1-unit-per-tile system was maddening, mostly because the AI was horrrrrrrrible at it. A lot of the problems I had with Civ 5 were also written about here: http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html

I don't know anything about whether Civ 5 was made better over the years or whether an expansion fixed some of the issues or anything, and I don't know much about BE. So my question to the forums is: Does BE seem like it does not have the same problems as vanilla Civ 5?

Thanks in advance.

#1 was only ever wide only empire problem. Going tall, just about every building is useful in every city, either directly or indirectly for National Wonders.
Of course walls, etc. are only useful if the city is going to see combat, but one of the balance patches made those maintenance free.
And you only really need 1 designated military building city if it's coastal and so only need Armory etc in that city and can sell the surplus barracks needed to construct Heroic Epic after it's complete.
G&K actually added another two buildings to that category, you can easily get away with scrapping police stations in all non capital after constructing NIA, and in BNW going tall even scrap the constables outside the capital as well since if you capital is tall enough above your other cities the AI will only ever send its spy to that one.

It actually appears that there may be more tile maintenance costs in BE.

#2 Yes, the combo of unlimited number of national wonders in a given city + 100% of all cities needing X building meant that all cities needed the same buildings and normally in the same order.

BE appears to have eliminated the building requirement for national wonders.

#3 That's taken several changes post Vanilla Balance patches.
I'm afraid that a side effect of the G&K fall patch that taught the AI how to properly cash rush units made every AI extremely aggressive to their closet neighbor. (Otherwise the new embassy would keep the peace)
BNW upon release rolled that back. The flavors are coming thru again, you can expect Zulu to attack you if he's your neighbor, but the low aggressive ones are unlikely to as long as you avoid doing things they don't like. (Voting against a proposed resolution is a big negative factor if it gets defeated. In the late game, wars tend to be ideological driven.)

For BE, I would guess that having a different affinity would be a negative factor with same one a plus and that many of the other pluses and minuses from Civ V will apply. We will have to wait until release to find out which leaders have the high aggressive flavors and which ones have low aggressive ones.

#4 AI is somewhat better with formations in BNW, but still is nowhere near the human level.

For BE, we know it's still using 1 UPT.

Overall, many of the bonuses for only self founding a few cities in Civ V have been removed. It also looks like you don't need 100% of every city to have X building to build national wonders. It also looks like there's no ongoing counter generating golden ages when it cycles.
This should eliminate the mid game disincentive from self founding additional cities after early health issues are addressed.

Note that vanilla post balance patches actually had too few happiness sources, early ones were added to G&K in the form of religion and BNW added late game ones via ideology. BNW also downsized the base per city cultural penalty from 15% to 10% and added a new science one of 5% that you couldn't avoid by leaving the city a puppet forever.

BE appears to have eliminated the luxury source of happiness and instead has many more buildings provide health bonuses. (I'm sure there spread out but someone could go for all of those, but likely at the expense of something else)
It's also clear that being between -1 & -9 isn't nearly as bad in BE as it is in Civ V.
It also appears that the bonuses for positive health in BE mostly max out at +20.

I don't know if BE features either increased cultural cost per city or increased science cost per city.

 

[Bkeela]

Mavynn, I share your perspective to some extent. I only stopped playing Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword a few months ago. I was encouraged to overcome my prejudice against Civilization V (which I never played) due to my love of Alpha Centauri and the science fiction theme.

Through watching the various streaming events I feel that although the mechanics of the game are a departure from Civ IV, Beyond Earth still promises plenty of strategic depth.

I think you will like the game depending upon how much you desire something fresh. If you're still loving Civ IV, you could probably skip it. Otherwise maybe it's time to adapt to a new system, which I feel reassured is more refined than default Civilization V.

 

[Aeson]

1UPT is still in. Wide looks more viable. Outputs look higher. More "stuff" to do (Espionage game-long, Orbital layer).

So overall I think it looks more fun than V. (Which I did enjoy, just not as much as I - IV or SMAC)

Will be interesting to see how BE's mix works out in the face of a very wide/aggressive play. May run into carpet of doom situations more often since the outputs are higher.

 

[Kutuzov]

Hi All,

I'm a first-time poster here but I've visited these forums many times, although not for a while. I only just learned that a new version of Civ was coming out and haven't had time to look into it much. I'm wondering: based on the below, will I like it?

I played Civ 1-2 and 4-5. I really enjoyed 1 and II and thought IV was amazing. I really liked the depth of play in IV in terms of how there were hundreds of small decisions that had big impacts on the game. I thought it was very well done (although I had a few gripes about how war happiness was handled for the AI on high difficulty). I probably played hundreds of hours of Civ IV.

I played two games of Civ 5 and absolutely hated it. I mean haaaaaated it. I bought it a while after it came out, after they patched it to supposedly fix a bazillion balance issues. The things I like least about it were: (1) that maintenance on buildings was so expensive that usually it was best to do nothing; (2) there did not seem to be the same nuance to the game in terms of empire building and decisions mattering; (3) diplomacy seemed non-existent; and, maybe most importantly, (4) the 1-unit-per-tile system was maddening, mostly because the AI was horrrrrrrrible at it. A lot of the problems I had with Civ 5 were also written about here: http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html

I don't know anything about whether Civ 5 was made better over the years or whether an expansion fixed some of the issues or anything, and I don't know much about BE. So my question to the forums is: Does BE seem like it does not have the same problems as vanilla Civ 5?

Thanks in advance.

Seeing as how you stated that you 'haaaaaaaated' vanilla Civ V and that you posted a link to Sulla's old bashing of vanilla, I would say that you should not buy this game. People posting links to that outdated critique after all this time obviously feel extremely strongly about 1UPT. If you really can't handle 1UPT, then you're going to 'haaaaaaaaate' this too.

However, in response to your question:

Does BE seem like it does not have the same problems as vanilla Civ 5?

No, it does not. It's built off of the Civ V BNW engine which you're not familiar with. However, it still uses 1UPT which you 'haaaaaaaaaate'.

FWIW, I think that Civ V BNW is the best incarnation of the Civ engine. Just so you know where I'm coming from

 

[Gort]

The article you posted is very out of date. The majority of criticisms there no longer exist.

Brave New World Civ 5 is a very different beast to the Civ 5 that was released four years ago, and that's what Beyond Earth is based on.

However, as others have said, if you hated Civ 5 that much for 1 UPT (which admittedly, the AI still doesn't handle particularly well) then you're unlikely to find the mechanic thrilling in BE, so I'd suggest skipping BE and getting something like Pandora: First Contact instead, which is a passable 4X game with unit stacks in the vein of Alpha Centauri.

Or just keep playing Civ 4, it's a perfectly good game.

 

[Dactyl]

I don't know why people keep posting these threads about whether or not Civ BE is a re-skin. When you have a game like Civ BE that is based upon the same engine as its predecessor, whether or not one considers it to be a re-skin is a purely subjective and individual decision. That being the case, what is there to discuss?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

A bit of a segue: Why do people want stacking anyway?

Stacking units seems like such a stupid thing to me. :/ Going around in just one "superstack" and killing shiz seems like a no-brain activity to me.

I mean, imagine playing Starcraft with no collision with all them units on top of each other. It becomes a snooze fest.

because of the unit movement logistics getting annoying (it is also really bad for the AI)

 

[edingess]

I'm a civ IV player too but I'm willing to give BE a chance. My issue with Civ V was how poor the Modding community was at the time, at least in terms of Sci-fi mods. I have a good feeling about this though.