Rising Tide - First Impressions

[Ryika]

I know that's going to be a lot of work, but I do enjoy your mods. Not to sound fanboy, but if you do update your old mods, there's at least one player here that will happily use them again and appreciate them.

Well, don't worry then - I plan to update them all. Just feels a little overwhelming right now.

Either way, there's some weird stuff going on with mods. Trying to update my Loadout Mod and somehow removing the base Loadout manages to break the texture-layering of the map:

Spoiler :

I mean... looks interesting and all, but somehow I doubt people will be okay with not seeing their units in exchange of getting more options to start the game with.

 

[Lucius_]

I played 20 turns to get my feet wet. I can't really comment on much yet, but I found a city spot with algae, petroleum, titanium, fungus, chitin, resin, xenomass, and copper all within workable distance. That's an insane number of resources.

 

[Gorbles]

I didn't find one thing: is there anywhere where I can check for relative "score" of other civs? That's the game mechanic which I used to follow to find out whom to attack/who needs spies in capital the most .

Pretty sure that's the simple score menu - sometimes it needs enabling in single-player in Options (under Interface). It's enabled by default for MP games.

 

[Senteliks]

Despite problems BERT has you have to give them credit for things like this :

Spoiler :

 

[Westwall]

The Early Game is SO full of stuff to do and then, the further you go, the less and less you've got to do. It feels overwhelming at first... and then it just falls off.

Basically this.

 

[Gorbles]

You playing it, Westwall? Was under the impression you didn't buy it.

 

[JokerJace]

Some people might remember me as a big 'disliker' of BE and I still think I was very correct at that time. That being said, my first impression of Rising Tide is very good. BRB after I end my first match (INTEGR).

 

[ZarkinFardwarks]

Potential Bug(?):
- Aquatic Cites don't automatically have a connection to your capital, instead you have to build a road on the city tile. What the hell? I wonder what happens if I move that city. My bet is that I'll have a floating road.

When I tried to build a road in my water-based capital, the tooltip told me that the city tile would lose 2 food and 1 production if I did that. Yeah, I think I'll wait until the first patch is out...

 

[Ryika]

When I tried to build a road in my water-based capital, the tooltip told me that the city tile would lose 2 food and 1 production if I did that. Yeah, I think I'll wait until the first patch is out...

Yes, tooltip said the same for me. Yield didn't change though.

 

[omniclast]

I played for a good four hours last night since I took today off from work to play

Stuff I liked
- Water territory
- Academies have been nerfed. Not only 2 science but they also take forever to build now, on an empty tile standard speed it took 18 turns to finish.
- I really, really like how adaptive the diplo/trait system feels. I was constantly revisiting my agreements and switching them up to fit my current situation. "Ok I'll take 1 turn workers and pump out a few, then switch to 30% outpost growth because my next settler will be done..." Etc. Or my personal favourite "I'll take ARC's recruit spies 1 rank higher the turn before finishing spy agency please." That worked as intended.
- Further to the agreements - having only 5 does significantly nerf a lot of the "no-brainer" ones. Early on I took the extra trade route in capital, but when my five slots filled up I dropped it. You probably won't be buying up agreements just to have your slots filled.
- I liked the AI respect changes and found them fairly easy to respond to. Early on Brazilia started liking me for a few traits so I concentrated on them and traced out their respect pretty easily. Other sponsors liked me at first but began to dislike me over a handful of dissonances (not enough number of techs) and that snowballed because they didn't like Brazilia either.
- Stations are definitely useful...maybe too useful! With the +6 energy bonus from Industry, maxed out military stations trait for 60% yield, and the orbital, I was making 60+ energy and 15+ science from three stations. This might be ok if you actually had to get orbital coverage of stations the hard way... But you can just take the agreement that gives you orbital coverage over stations. Hmmm...
- water cities don't seem _that_ bad. There is definitely a higher resource density on water, so the base tile yields aren't as much of a problem. I had 3 (3!!!) titanium deposits in range of one city which basically busted my production output. Plus, with water you are pretty much guarantee to have 100% useable coverage of the territory, since no mountains etc, so placing cities is a little easier. And if it turns out you're 1 tile out of range of that titanium deposit, you can just move. That was pretty handy.
- also, some of the aquatic wonders are pretty cool and borderline overpowered, worth getting an aqua city popped up just to get some of those, though I wasn't playing with PAC so not sure how that would affect their availability.
- It is very possible to get and stay healthy without virtues. I didn't take magnasanti or prosperity but instead went with the politics agreement that gives +2 h per agreement, filled out my 5 slots, and that was more than enough to keep healthy throughout the game. Sadly, I then realized just how bland most of the virtues still are, since I didn't know what to take. Ended up opening might.
- LOTS of ways to farm aliens now. You can get like 15 culture per kill on top of the might alien science, and there are tons of aliens everywhere on water. Getting the artifacts from pillaging nests is also enticing. Much carnage.
- love the mobility of water units. Seem to get around the map much faster than on land.
- there are a lot more modifiers to specific water improvements scattered around the tech web, not sure how that will affect tech path
- the alert that you are about to lose relationship status with AIs is really handy. It doesn't just work with cooperating or allied players but with neutral ones as well, so it lets you know when you're about to drop to sanctioned or theoretically war. Though an AI never actually did sanction me...


Stuff I didn't like
- power creep is insane. I am on Soyuz, and by turn 100 I had 5 cities, 4 of them above 10 pop, affinity 8 and positive health. The AI never had a chance. I'm concerned it doesn't know how to use the new features well enough to keep up, and the game will not only be easier but even shorter now - with an optimal build I expect the game can be finished around turn 170 or so.
- The map is _way_ too big now. With all the water territory open for settlement, I did not have a single border meeting an opponent's (Atlantean). It was a standard size map. Made the decision to settle
- Most of the agreements are pretty bland and not very useful. A handful are situational and there are a couple good ones (6% discount on leaf techs please) but the AI won't give them to you even if you are allied and maxed out on respect. Grr
- Nanorobotics (3rd branch of Nanotech) just gives +1 science on manufactories. That's it. What gives?
- triple artifact turn-ins appear to be pretty much random. I got "drone command" from turning in 3 human artifacts, whereas I thought I would get "xenomass bathhouse" cuz that's what quill got. I'm not sure I will like the unpredictability of this system given how strong it is
- the 5 and 7 affinity units are still on stupid inaccessible techs we will never get.
- most of the late game techs are still very lame and we'll never get them.
- magrails are on a leaf now and they have purity points only. What's with that? How are magrails purity and not supremacy? I'm also annoyed that the supremacy free magrails were removed. Man, free magrails were one of the best parts about being supremacy, it really sucks they took that away for no real reason.
- orbitals (and the many, many agreements related to them) still don't feel all that useful, at least early game. Aside from the station buff, I'm not sure I care about extra sight or even extra health.
- the trade routes / resources thing is annoying. It's confusing, it really clutters up the trade routes list, and the energy/science yields are still pretty mediocre, so I probably won't ever use them. Please Firaxis, give us proper trade deals back.

Bugs
- you can build any basic improvement on any tile
- the advisor messages won't go away even with advisors off and they are _really_ annoying. I am pretty sure I am seeing the same recommendations more than once.


Overall
More good than bad, though the novelty and hype factor is definitely weighing in here. I will have to hold off on judgement of BERT until I've had a few more playthroughs, and see if the imbalances and bugs start to really piss me off. One thing I will say, I think they are going to need to add a higher difficulty, as all the power creep just makes it too easy to steamroll. (Yes, even easier than the base game.)

Edit: holy crap that was a long post

 

[Eji1700]

Played another game, won emancipation victory. Did purity supremacy hybrid-

I hit 6/6 and got the hybrid units literally right after getting the tier 2 units. It was insane how fast I jumped to tier 3 ground melee, and a very powerful bump at that. I was 8/8 and then shooting for purity 15 easily sub 150. I suspect with a mobile army and some planning you could probably domination victory sub 150.

On that note, the war economy seems to work (although I did not apollo).

Landing:
Korea
Artists
Coast scan
Soldier

Virtues:
Rush expedition science.
Then free worker
Then extra expedition pods
Then Science for killing aliens
Then free affinity and bonus affinity

Research was rush pioneering, then settle second city asap (ideally on the water for another super move scout to grab pods and complete marvels).

Followed by whatever the hell you want (i was testing quick rudder since I like the + science and cheap move).


Done right you slingshot VERY fast through the tree. My empire building sucks so i'm not sure if it's faster than what better players are doing, or if it works on apollo, but you get SO many resource pods/sites and that leads to a tremendous advantage, especially if you cash in your artifacts when they don't give good combos. You can literally complete the virtue tree above sub turn 70 with 2 cities. I'm sure others can do better.

You may also want to add the "get culture for killing stuff" trait. I basically declared war on the aliens and turned them into a science slingshot that carried me into the end game, and while I got the culture boost late, if gotten instantly it might be even crazier (was trying the spy game. Still seems too slow to matter, but that might have been what was helping me slingshot science as well since I maxed the two major spy traits instead).

The one nice thing about this is it gives a different, and viable, openening for sea start players. Even if most of this is wrong and older strats prevail, I cannot see wanting to bring anything other than a soldier to start with any sea starting civ.

Further this might help with the "water cities are weak" issue if you can use this sort of strat to open with a heavy military to help defend your weak cities.

 

[Ryika]

The one nice thing about this is it gives a different, and viable, openening for sea start players. Even if most of this is wrong and older strats prevail, I cannot see wanting to bring anything other than a soldier to start with any sea starting civ.

I agree with that. Not only because the boat is extremely good at picking up Resource Pods, but also because on the average water start the worker will not do much anyway.

 

[Gali]

First war here. Faced Brasilia across a strait on Soyuz difficulty. I had forward settled them in territory that I'd have to negotiate with a human so Dow was not unexpected. immediately on declaration they annhilated an auto exploring cutter near them. Then they sent a respectable navy against my forward city. plenty of tidehunters and cutters with some embarked units in the back. They rushed in but did keep the subs 2 tiles away to force my navy to spot. Even with a land city with a rocket battery they got me down to red health.

I just got peace from them 200-22 warscore. They gave me a city. I was the one to ask for peace so that is possible.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I just got peace from them 200-22 warscore. They gave me a city. I was the one to ask for peace so that is possible.

Good news!

 

[Gokudo01]

I've just understood how works respect bonus :

When the AI picks a trait, the leader with this trait will like the other leader which focus around their kind of trait.
For example, if an AI player picks suspicious, you will get respect from him if you are focusing on Improving your spy with trait and on getting more spies.

 

[Barathor]

I didn't find one thing: is there anywhere where I can check for relative "score" of other civs? That's the game mechanic which I used to follow to find out whom to attack/who needs spies in capital the most .

As Gorb said, you can enable the singleplayer score list within the interface options (though, I'm not a fan of that score list; it's ugly, takes up screen, and scores aren't efficiently calculated anyway, not even in Civ 5).

I'm pretty sure you can also see all of the scores if you look at the diplomacy overview screen. I think it's F4, but you can also click the diplomacy button at the bottom of the screen. Once in there, above all the portraits on the left is another smaller button. Click on that and you'll get a great overview of each leader, such as their affinity points, their status with you, etc... plus their scores.

 

[Westwall]

Also automated workers have been fixed... but not really.

From what I've seen, they refuse to build roads.

 

[Deon]

Once in there, above all the portraits on the left is another smaller button. Click on that and you'll get a great overview of each leader, such as their affinity points, their status with you, etc... plus their scores.

That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks a lot!

 

[bigbuns]

I so want to love this game, but after my first play through I can't help but feel a little let down.

- Still no post game report? Seriously?
- Too buggy for a released product. I couldn't raze a single city, they all claimed to be capitals, and once a war had begun, it was war no matter how many times i proffered peace.
- Why do some units have hybrids and others no? especially the sub, its brand new! this is just cutting corners. my army looks weird all different colours for the units that refuse to conform to my ideology.
- The leader looks. They are the same. i thought the idea was to be more sci fi, yet even the new leaders look boring at full affinity. seriously affinty 12 han jae moon is just yellow eyes and grey suit? come on. And the lack of hybrid appearances is slack, as I yo-yo'd between harmony and purity my leader kept changing colour back and forth.

The ideas in this expansion are great, it has so much potential. But the devs don't seem to want to release a polished product. Seriously, delay a month or two and put in the work to make this game what it could be, instead of just a bunch of half baked ideas.

 

[cazaderonus]

Basically this.

I agree as well after my first game.

I blame the tech based victory conditions. Once teching is good enough to outpace ais, which comes at mid game, the rest is just irrelevant. Warring is easy then, defending even more, culture, expeditions, growth, health, etc becomes optionnal to say the least.

But early game is damn fun