Still waiting for at least two expansions.

[lindsay40k]

When I was first given a go on Civ 5, it was an interesting proof of concept of how a simple hex map can overheat a two grand laptop. Two expansions later, we finally got an enjoyable game out of it. I've dipped in to CBE, and come away thinking yep, we're still at the first stage for me; the lack of steam friends playing past 50 hours would seem to agree.

What gives? Well, for me, there's two things that make it a no-go.

- There are the same seven species present on every single planet, ever. Yeah, a Harmony fan can customise them and everything, but really, there needs to be at least thirty more critters added to a list from which the indigenous fauna are selected by the map generator. Make it feel like a different planet, every time; Utopia on the SNES managed this, for pity's sake.

- There are no alien civilisations. Come on, a sci-fi 4X that's just about human settlers? There needs to be at least three non-terran playable factions with at least three sub factions. They needn't be blatant Eldar, Orks and Necrons, but you know, all these planets with sentient life and none of it's gone sapient?

- Bonus: with the above sorted out, we could have invasion scenarios/setups, where a planet has an established dominant life form that's reached a certain level of sophistication (equivalent to the eras in Civ5), and an alien invasion arrives. Be it Zargons landing on Earth with their infestation pods, or Space Marines stomping on Xenos to terraform the planet they weren't industrialising properly.

These can of course be mostly divvied up into DLC to milk money out of people lacking the impulse control to wait for the inevitable £20 all in sale after most of the worst bugs have been patched.

Here's some smilies to offset my grumpy belligerence footprint

 

[Bandobras Took]

- There are the same seven species present on every single planet, ever. Yeah, a Harmony fan can customise them and everything, but really, there needs to be at least thirty more critters added to a list from which the indigenous fauna are selected by the map generator. Make it feel like a different planet, every time; Utopia on the SNES managed this, for pity's sake.

See SMAC.

- There are no alien civilisations. Come on, a sci-fi 4X that's just about human settlers? There needs to be at least three non-terran playable factions with at least three sub factions. They needn't be blatant Eldar, Orks and Necrons, but you know, all these planets with sentient life and none of it's gone sapient?

See SMAC. More notably, pre-expansion.

- Bonus: with the above sorted out, we could have invasion scenarios/setups, where a planet has an established dominant life form that's reached a certain level of sophistication (equivalent to the eras in Civ5), and an alien invasion arrives. Be it Zargons landing on Earth with their infestation pods, or Space Marines stomping on Xenos to terraform the planet they weren't industrialising properly.

These can of course be mostly divvied up into DLC to milk money out of people lacking the impulse control to wait for the inevitable £20 all in sale after most of the worst bugs have been patched.

I would expect scenarios to be DLC in this day and age, yes.

 

[Stringer1313]

Your suggestions are good but I don't see Civ BE going anywhere in that direction. You're basically trying to create a SMAC-sequel (which I would LOVE, don't get me wrong), but that's simply not the direction this is going. They can make the existing game much better by enhancing and deepening what it already has.

 

[mellojoe]

Honestly, I agree with you, for the most part.

The aliens are already coded as an AI. The behind the scenes stuff is handled nearly identically to regular AI anyway, so the hard part is already done. Why in the world are there not more options to interacting with the native species is beyond me. It really should have already been implemented:

#1) Easily allow for more diplomatic options with current AI in regards to the aliens.

• "Please don't attack the aliens."
• "Please eliminate as many of these stinking bugs as you can."
• etc.

#2) Possibly include a leader of the aliens with which to interact:

• "Hello invading creatures, we are the natives to this planet."
• "We hate you, and hope to destroy you (Declare War)"
• "We love you and wish to share with you (Receive unit)
• Etc.

#3) Allow a planet with zero native species and have the current aliens as an AI that spawns similar to existing AI

• "We found this place first, and it will be ours!
• "We hope we can live in harmony and share this new utopia
• Etc

Just my two cents

 

[Gorbles]

1. Laptops are prone to overheating and have notorious issues with fan setup. The price of the laptop doesn't necessarily solve this problem in any way.

2. Factions. The species is human. And they all intended to land on the same planet. Or reached the same planet. Because they're all human. From the same set of missions. From Earth.

3. There is an alien civilisation on the planet. It isn't comparable to the human factions in terms of intelligence or industrial ability, but in terms of hard science this is actually incredibly unlikely.

That said, if a game isn't for you, don't buy the next one in the series, perhaps? And if you didn't buy BE, that would explain why you're getting a lot wrong about it

 

[HandyVac]

- There are the same seven species present on every single planet, ever. Yeah, a Harmony fan can customise them and everything, but really, there needs to be at least thirty more critters added to a list from which the indigenous fauna are selected by the map generator. Make it feel like a different planet, every time; Utopia on the SNES managed this, for pity's sake.

Actually, this would be nice. Even if it's a purely cosmetic change that has no affect on gameplay mechanics I would like to have Fungal biome aliens that look different to Arid biome aliens. If those aliens behaved differently too then so much the better, it would add to the replay value by giving more variety between playthroughs.

- There are no alien civilisations. Come on, a sci-fi 4X that's just about human settlers? There needs to be at least three non-terran playable factions with at least three sub factions. They needn't be blatant Eldar, Orks and Necrons, but you know, all these planets with sentient life and none of it's gone sapient?

I'm hesitant of adding alien species to the game just for the sake of it. I'd want them to play differently from the human factions somehow, rather than be just another faction with a different name and leader face. E.g. the way Venice in Civ V played differently from all other civs by being unable to build cities but able to buy city-states, or the way the caretakers/userpers played differently from other factions in SMAC by having restricted diplomacy and enhanced tech research.

- Bonus: with the above sorted out, we could have invasion scenarios/setups, where a planet has an established dominant life form that's reached a certain level of sophistication (equivalent to the eras in Civ5), and an alien invasion arrives. Be it Zargons landing on Earth with their infestation pods, or Space Marines stomping on Xenos to terraform the planet they weren't industrialising properly.

This sounds fun. I like randomness in my games, especially in games I expect to replay several times, and having large scale random events such as an alien invasion, which may or may not occur in any given playthrough, sounds loverly.

One of my least favourite aspects of the quest system in BE is that you get the exact same quests every game, with the exact same outcomes for each choice. If one game in 10 humongous alien death robots stomp across the planet destroying all they see that would make me smile... and encourage me to play another 10 games.

 

[lindsay40k]

Glad you like my ideas, @HandyVac. There's so much potential fun to be had from getting the V tech/policies system on speaking terms with BE's jazz!

To represent planetary unity, upon the aliens' arrival, everyone immediately gets a free policy, and an ideology if they haven't got one yet. Plus, big bags of free beakers when destroying enemy units!

 

[edingess]

If you want scenarios, play Pandora First Contact and its expansions.

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions.

 

[V3N0M]

they really need to make more use of the quest system. At least in BTS the events were somewhat random but here it's all the same events every game (and I'm not sure the AI gets any of them, has anyone seen an AI player get the culper lodge?) Firaxis missed an opportnity to create paradox style events the could potentially allow late game recoveries.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

When SMAC came out they said the factions were all human because what are the chances we land on a planet and find seven alien races present all at the same technological development stage as us? They got away with it in the expansion with one alien races with two factions that crash landed in scout ships which explains how aliens from a spacefaring civilization would function at our level of technology.

 

[Gorbles]

And even then they were still horrendously broken

 

[Blaz3]

I haven't played Beyond Earth in a bout 2 months, went back and playing Civ 5 more than I ever have. Just sick of being surrounded by mass amounts of aliens and than having the world hate me because I'm defending my units by killing said aliens.....Being constantly contacted by the other civs for dumb reasons (oh look, we're still trading w the same civs, let's announce it for the 10th time), (you're killing bugs! i hate you!) (you arent killing bugs, i love you!) bla bla bla bla bla

Barely any diversity in units, with the exception of the small amount of Affinity Units.......

Just feels very limited compare to previous Civs since they're based on several different cultures, and now we have like 7 groups of humans.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Just feels very limited compare to previous Civs since they're based on several different cultures, and now we have like 7 groups of humans.

That was what we had before