'Rising Tide' expansion announced!

[Creamy Goodness]

I am glad they are doing something, anything actually. I am also curious about Civ:BE 2.0, but I know that I will not be paying $30 for this one.

Is $30 a large sum of money to you or something?

I gladly support devs whom put out my favourite game franchises, getting bent out of shape over giving them a relative pittance here and there just seems so incredibly miserly and ridiculous to me.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I found this article from PC Gamer with some good info on the expansion:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2922910/civilization-beyond-earths-rising-tide-expansion-focuses-on-alien-seas-diplomacy.html

On the new diplomacy traits:

Each character will have a unique trait, but over the course of the game will acquire traits that affect the way they run their faction and interact with others. Frederiksen gives me a quick example. "If I'm interacting with a leader that has a trait that favors people that engage in trading, and they see me trading, their respect for me is going to grow. That's going to open up newer or better options with that leader. Conversely if they see that I'm not trading, they're not going to respect me.

On hybrid affinities:

Rising Tide allows you to mix and match affinity technologies, with even more unique hybrid units and modifiers. McDonough also promises the new affinities take the science fiction aspect even further, calling them "a lot stranger" than the three in the base game. He also says they're rebalancing the entire tech tree to make sure hybrid players are not at a disadvantage to those who drill down the tree towards a specific affinity.

 

[beetle]

I gladly support devs whom put out my favourite game franchises, getting bent out of shape over giving them a relative pittance here and there just seems so incredibly miserly and ridiculous to me.

Firaxis has a track record of charging full MSRP for games that really do not seem that they have completed quality control. They did this with III, IV, V, and now BE. What is ridiculous that early adopters are not in short supply. I actually think their games are priced fairly, they just ship too soon.

 

[thecrazyscot]

30$ seriously? I know mods that change more then that to CIV 5 for free. It better be 10-15$ expansion after what they did with BE.
Instead of patching the so called '2.0' they ship it under a price, thanks a lot but after doing the mistake of purchasing BE I dont trust the developers.
And for all of you saying - "Civ 5 vanilla was lacking in content too and felt weak, but they fixed it with expansions", the Developers have the EXPERIENCE of both Civ5 and all its expansions, so either their memories and experiences were removed or these developers ought not to be trusted.

Rising Tide is right in line with past Civ expansion packs in terms of content.

Ugh. Aquatic cities were the worst feature of Alien Crossfire.

Personally, I'm pretty excited about them. I'm glad they didn't go the route of underwater cities - I think floating cities fit much better and will work better gameplay-wise.

I'm reminded of Anno 2070. You had an awesome game, then they make it even more awesomer by expanding the naval aspects of it.
It's rather brilliant actually. Everyone loves a good navy

Same! Anno 2070 was a pretty awesome game.

 

[cinattra]

For those that have not picked up BE yet, I will say that it is definitely worth playing now. Yes, of course it still has lots of room to grow, but at least now it is palatable. When before even this fanboy has to admit it was a dreadful game.

If $30 improves the current gameplay then it will be well worth it. Strategy games are never perfect out of the box. You should always expect a patch here are there to balance things out and you should expect an expansion to add some new options and new gameplay elements.

 

[Ari Rahikkala]

Something worth noting that I haven't seen anyone mentioned yet, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md5wzKsjK_8#t=10m44s: Biomes will have gameplay differences, not just aesthetic ones. Exactly what kind of differences there will be wasn't mentioned, but there will be some gameplay impact.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Something worth noting that I haven't seen anyone mentioned yet, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md5wzKsjK_8#t=10m44s: Biomes will have gameplay differences, not just aesthetic ones. Exactly what kind of differences there will be wasn't mentioned, but there will be some gameplay impact.

Yes, I noticed too. It sounds promising.

 

[winddysphere]

Firaxis has a track record of charging full MSRP for games that really do not seem that they have completed quality control. They did this with III, IV, V, and now BE. What is ridiculous that early adopters are not in short supply. I actually think their games are priced fairly, they just ship too soon.

Probably being forced to ship out before polishing anything by their publisher?

Anyway about AI. I don't think that they will even make complex or really wow-woah-wow AI. But it would be nice to see them doing it.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I fully agree! I can't believe how many people are saying this is a crappy expansion when nothing has really been seen.

I've been waiting for someone to explain how this still proves that Firaxis has abandoned BE and it is never getting updated. Or for someone to appoint themselves as leader of a boycott and tell me I'm stupid for not following him.. Maybe they already have but I have them on ignore.

 

[oldag07]

Two questions. . .. .
Is there going to be a summer patch for vanilla BE?

Are they going to put back the history map after the victory as seen in Civ V?

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Two questions. . .. .
Is there going to be a summer patch for vanilla BE?

We don't anything about a summer patch but the devs have said that there will be a big patch for the base BE, presumably the 2.0 we've heard about) released at the same time as the release of Rising Tide.

 

[Barathor]

Two questions. . .. .
Is there going to be a summer patch for vanilla BE?

Are they going to put back the history map after the victory as seen in Civ V?

Speaking of maps, I sure would love to see the strategic map ("layer") returned.

I'm sure Firaxis still has some additional cards up their sleeves to play in the coming months.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Speaking of maps, I sure would love to see the strategic map ("layer") returned.

I'm sure Firaxis still has some additional cards up their sleeves to play in the coming months.

I remember the devs saying that they couldn't do a strategic map because of the new orbital layer. But I am sure those creative Firaxians can figure something out.

 

[AriochIV]

Hybrid affinities seems a move in the wrong direction. Isn’t it a pretty big problem that affinity choices are not that distinctive and don’t steer gameplay enough?

Hybrid affinities are already in the game. All I heard was that hybrid affinities will now unlock some new, specific units. Doesn't sound like a bad thing to me.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Hybrid affinities are already in the game. All I heard was that hybrid affinities will now unlock some new, specific units. Doesn't sound like a bad thing to me.

This is my understanding as well. it seems to be designed to give players who like to take a hybrid approach with affinities some extra incentives and bonuses to reward their play style. In BE vanilla, there is no incentive to take a hybrid approach at all since it would delay your affinity victory. Now, it seems that a hybrid approach will pay off since you will get unique units and bonuses for your efforts. This can only add more strategy to the game.

 

[Makenshi]

This is my understanding as well. it seems to be designed to give players who like to take a hybrid approach with affinities some extra incentives and bonuses to reward their play style. In BE vanilla, there is no incentive to take a hybrid approach at all since it would delay your affinity victory. Now, it seems that a hybrid approach will pay off since you will get unique units and bonuses for your efforts. This can only add more strategy to the game.

Maybe there is no incentive to go 100% deep into hybridism, but I'll be damned if Supremacy and Purity are not worth their own weight up until LV3. Free roads and +20% vs aliens is too good to pass - unless you're in a hurry to win the game, playing Apollo level, yada yada.

Even then I think the LV1 tenets from Harmony and Purity are absolutely essencial to explorers, no matter what.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Hybrid affinities seems a move in the wrong direction. Isn’t it a pretty big problem that affinity choices are not that distinctive and don’t steer gameplay enough?

What makes you think they aren't addressing that? The fact that they are highlighting hybrid affinities to me proves they are making affinities more distinctive. Would a dog breeder make a big deal out of a hybrid Siberian husky/Alaskan malamute? No, they're very similar so there's not much to that combination. But a Doberman/poodle is something to see.

 

[Barathor]

I remember the devs saying that they couldn't do a strategic map because of the new orbital layer. But I am sure those creative Firaxians can figure something out.

Oh, is that why? That's a shame. I guess when they said "couldn't" it meant they couldn't just use the same one from Civ without putting some extra time into it and tweaking it to work with the new orbital layer. It understandably wasn't a priority at the time. Hopefully, that will change; it was a useful tool.

Some refinement to the orbital layer would be nice too. It would be cool if anti-orbital strikes switched to the orbital layer when targetting and showed the satellite being hit and exploding before returning to the main layer. Using it would be so much more satisfying than it currently is.

 

[AriochIV]

The strategic layer seemed like a cute feature, but in practice I never used it.

 

[thecrazyscot]

The only people I know of who used it regularly were those with certain visual disabilities or who used it for better performance.