Rising Tide Live Stream Thursday, Aug 27, 2PM: Brasilia & FI Traits + Diplomacy

[Alkyon]

Guys, you're looking at it all wrong. Obviously Elodie has been remade into the challenge leader that you pick to play when you want to challenge yourself to win without a sponsor bonus.

In all seriousness, yeah Elodie is just bad. Every other leader uses one mechanic or another and rolls it back into letting them better dominate the game at a whole. Elodie uses the culture system to...better dominate the culture system which is entirely non-competitive. Honestly I don't know why the BE devs are so terrified of free techs because launch Elodie was actually rather balanced with turning culture into free science. Yeah she was powerful, but it was a slow-burn kind of power that was rather reasonable to play as/with. Now she just turns culture into more culture, and continues doing that with Rising Tide. Having really powerful trade agreements (and those are really powerful agreements) off of her sponsor ability doesn't help her at all, the demo showed off you can't turn trade agreements around for "I'll pay you x diplo/turn to unlock one of my own bonuses". It makes me want to play with Elodie as a neighbor, not play as her unless I put a second Elodie in the game.

Honestly they should bring back the free techs or make it so that she earns 10/20/30% of her culture as additional science or something like that. Converting culture to science worked wonderfully before and her ability really should be worked back into that direction.

 

[Cassadore]

I love the giant fungus, that food boost could be really usefull if you want big cities. The only thing that annoys me about the marvels is that the Hydrocoral Brain seems to be the only Ocean-Marvel, at least from what I have seen until now.

 

[Alkyon]

I love the giant fungus, that food boost could be really usefull if you want big cities. The only thing that annoys me about the marvels is that the Hydrocoral Brain seems to be the only Ocean-Marvel, at least from what I have seen until now.

Well, we've only seen three: Meteor, Coral Brain, and Super-Fungus. I imagine they have a pool of 4-5 at least, on top of the fact that each biome has its own unique marvel questline (like the fungus)

 

[omniclast]

Also worth noting that Brazlia appears to get the +1 diplo from killing aliens as well. VERY early game, that might be useful, in helping you buy your first couple of traits earlier. Still would like it to be some % of the strength of the unit you kill though, like the alien science bonus.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

The problem with that is, to some extent, that culture doesn't do anything. Yes, you get virtues but these don't do anything on their own either, they improve other things - cities, units, research. By requiring investment into your ability to get anything out of it, you leech resources off all these other things you could have invested in straight-away!

In Civ5, that was okay, because investment in culture usually had the side-effect of getting you tourism-enablers and great works, too, so it actively helped you to pursue a culture victory. In Civ:BE, that's not the case.

All other sponsors have abilities that improve things you do to win, they make you better at winning. FI has an ability that improve your ability to improve the things you do to win. FI makes you better at trying to become better at winning.

As promising as RT looks, there are a few things which the developers just seem to ignore (yes, I guess they just really believe their logic is valid and internal testers seem to share that opinion) that nobody else really does:

• Franco-Iberia's ability is weak
• Ultrasonic fence quest is too one-sided
• Prosperity tree outshines all others
• Stations are somewhere between bore and nuisance

*grumble-grumble*

Time for a second expansion pack then!

4 more leaders and a fix for F.I

Fix for Ultrasonic Fefnce

More Virtues!

And make Stations into City States you can allign with, I ACTUALLY miss them in BE.

Plus a planetary council! That'd be actually fun.

ALSO

I really am glad that Multiplayer will no longer suffer because the Diplomatic game was nonexistent between players in BE and Civ 5. While R/F are non-factor the other aspects are actually fun enough, so yay that!

 

[ptoss1]

So any news on types of "Marvels" that will be included in the game like Natural Wonders?

What about an international UN committee?

Is harmoney actually going to be "harmonious" this time or is it basically still kill aliens and harvest their entrails type deal?

 

[omniclast]

Can you sell your available agreements to other players? Or do you have to wait for them to come to you for it? I can't recall seeing that happen -- seems like not being able to sell would drastically lower the value of having good agreements, which they are promising will make up for crappy traits.

 

[Cassadore]

On the topic of Leader Traits:
I don't understand why the developers don't include any negative modifiers for the traits. It's quite obvious that the general design-philosophy is "only add, never substract" but that also means that none of the abilities can be powerful or have a real inpact on the game because their is no way to counter-balance this. I personally would gladly except some downsides when in turn I get an awesome ability instead of only mediocre or weak abilities with no downsides.

 

[Natura]

Looks like the minor marvels that are related to the marvel quest (giant fungus in this case, hydracoral brain previously) provide major yield bonuses around them. The giant fungus once cleaned up was giving +3 food to all tiles adjacent to it. This makes city settlement more interesting since claiming those locations will be pretty powerful.

Arg, this is so frustrating. So they've upped the cost of buying units and buildings with diplomatic capital. This makes little to no sense to me. Energy has one use: buying stuff. Diplomatic capital has two uses: diplomatic upgrades and buying stuff. This means it's never a trade-off to buy stuff with energy; if you can afford it you can grab it, so long as you're breaking even or better. Diplomatic capital however, if you want a unit or building you always have to weigh that against getting a trait upgraded. To top it off energy is way easier to accumulate than diplomatic capital, going from everything we've seen thus far, so why on earth should it be MORE expensive to buy stuff with diplomatic capital than energy?

Oh, and the devs calling +1 Dip Capital for killing units "really powerful". Are we living in some alternate dimension?

 

[Amrunril]

Honestly they should bring back the free techs or make it so that she earns 10/20/30% of her culture as additional science or something like that. Converting culture to science worked wonderfully before and her ability really should be worked back into that direction.

I agree that Elodie's bonus is underwhelming and hope that it will be buffed/reworked before Rising Tide is released. That said, there's a reason that the release version was changed. Free techs turn out to be a very dangerous mechanic when using a tech web rather than a tech tree, and with 2 of them (one from her sponsor bonus, one from the Institute quest), Elodie could discover an outer ring leaf tech without ever having to actually research an outer rim tech, allowing, among other possibilities, an obscenely fast contact victory. Either Elodie's free techs or the Institute's had to go, and while you can certainly argue that changing the Institute quest and keeping Elodie's unique mechanic would have been the better solution, the developers made the other choice, and I'm doubtful that they're going to go back and reconsider it now.

 

[ptoss1]

Elodie's bonus isn't that bad if you rush its upgrades along with some other culture saving traits. The problem isn't the bonus, it's the fact that culture is worthless in this game besides getting virtues, which by themselves don't lead to anything. You still need energy and production far more than any bonuses virtues grant you, so what's the point in accumulating culture when you can get flat food, energy, production increases instead? There's no reason to get domes. Even nodes are better as they provide energy and eventually science.

 

[Doviello]

edit: nm

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

On the topic of Leader Traits:
I don't understand why the developers don't include any negative modifiers for the traits. It's quite obvious that the general design-philosophy is "only add, never substract" but that also means that none of the abilities can be powerful or have a real inpact on the game because their is no way to counter-balance this. I personally would gladly except some downsides when in turn I get an awesome ability instead of only mediocre or weak abilities with no downsides.

Why would they? Civ 5's whole philosophy was additions.

And the traits DO have inpact on the diplomacy, your actions reflect the other leader's trait and that was seen when you hover over it, a civ could get upset at you for being stronger than them depending on their traits. So there's that.

 

[Makenshi]

Well, for all the disappointments, once thing made me smile: it seems like the internal trade route yields are finally the way they should be. The big city [Cidadela] sends supplies to the little one [Santo Adrião], not the other way around.


Portuguese tip: "ão" is pronounced like "aum"; notice the "a" in portuguese is aways like in "avacado", not like in "alien".

 

[Kaigen]

Is anyone else concerned that in two out of the three livestreams we've seen someone take a domestic trait, it's been the health one? If they don't do something to boost early game health it really looks like this will become about as stale as the prosperity opener.

I think the health trait has some stiff competition in the Domestic category, so I'm not too concerned.

 

[Alkaid]

I agree that Elodie's ability is pretty weak, and they think you'll want to take culture boosting extra traits in order to complement it, which doesn't seem quite worth it. Like Rykia said, you have to really go all out in specializing in culture buildings and bonuses to really let her ability shine, but doing that means passing up on science and production traits and whatnot instead. Unless the game's had other changes to make culture worth prioritizing so heavily(either making some of the virtues better or something like a culture victory in Civ V), even with that ability, it still seems better to go for other options.

Though it might be an extreme comparison, it'd be like the choice between blanketing a city in domes for culture when you could of done academies instead. Even as Elodie, the academies are going to be more helpful to you 99% of the time.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I think the health trait has some stiff competition in the Domestic category, so I'm not too concerned.

You can change your traits. They even tried to, not sure if they actually did.

So once you that bonus is pointless you can buy a new trait instead.

 

[Alkaid]

Oh, and the devs calling +1 Dip Capital for killing units "really powerful". Are we living in some alternate dimension?

I assume they don't purposely try to make crappy bonuses, but sometimes they really just don't seem to realize how lackluster or plain bad some of the bonuses or options they put in are. It's like the ultrasonic fence quest and how they must somehow think it's a competitive decision between the 2 options. And if instead they both realize and are fine with how one completely sucks compared to the other 99.9% of the time, that's pretty lazy.

 

[Jamadman]

Personally I think the quickest fix to FI's UA is to just have a culture Victory condition.

Something like maxing a virtue tree lets you build a National wonder to do with the tree your in, and if you have all 4 you can build a 5th wonder and win?

Or after you finish the 4th wonder your culture fuels a "get x culture to win" meter, this option means the culture is still valid after building these wonders.

It makes

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Honestly I don't know why the BE devs are so terrified of free techs because launch Elodie was actually rather balanced with turning culture into free science. Yeah she was powerful, but it was a slow-burn kind of power that was rather reasonable to play as/with.

uh, the devs seemed fine with Elodie's trait at launch. They only changed it after this forum cried "OP!". I remember the threads about how Elodie and Kozlov could their free tech to beeline for battlesuits or beeline for the institute's free tech to get a late affinity tech and get like 3 affinity levels up and so the game was too unbalanced. So, the devs nixed the free techs so to as eliminate the tech beelines. Of course, now the forum, is shouting "too weak!".