Hello to the Firaxis team if you are reading this forum,
Greetings to everyone else!
As I read the hype for the game, developer logs, and just about every hint of this game pointed to the fact that this game was suppose to be honouring Alpha Centauri. I feel like they failed wildly.
A moment if you time as I have compiled a list of features that should have been in Beyond Earth. While this list isn’t complete, it represents as much as I could reasonably find in Alpha Centauri. Feel free to post anything I missed. I am sure dedicated fans can help fill gaps. If you agree that this sort of depth should have been a game, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. I'd love to see the response, and hopefully this stuff could be revised and eventually added into the game.
1) A Storyline
The storyline in Beyond Earth may be there. It may not be. I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any inclination to tell me what that story may be, beyond the faction names and excerpts found in the loading screen. This is a horrible method of storytelling, but if this was the intention, at least make the dynamic story of the game more interesting.
A few things to point out about Alpha Centauri: It has 3 books written for it, Centauri Dawn, Dragon Sun, and Twilight of the Mind. There is also a graphics novel: Alpha Centauri: Power of the Mindworm. The Journey to Alpha Centauri as well can be read here: http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Journey_to_Centauri and http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Centauri:_Arrival for the alien factions
In comparison, it seems like there wasn’t any real thought into Beyond Earth’s lore. If you give me an improbable situation, without explaining events prior I am less inclined to be immersed into the situation. Without immersion, there isn’t a game.
2) Diplomacy
You may say there is diplomacy in the game. I would like to refute that by saying that Alpha Centauri had a superior diplomacy system.
(Just a random Google image search of Alpha Centauri Diplomacy.)
This wasn’t too complicated, but it was effective. As for specific aspects of the diplomacy part, the AI wasn’t completely insane either.
3) Moral choices
A part that I remember keenly about Alpha Centauri was that I had a drone riot. I was faced with a choice, I could let the riot continue, or I could go ahead and Nerve Staple my drones into compliance. This action was seen as monstrous. However, I was in a war and needed the compliance, so I stapled my drones and next thing I knew, I had sanctions and other issues in my boat. My actions had consequences!
4) Real Weapons of Mass Destruction
Gosh, I remember that feeling when I finally constructed a weapon of power. Not that nuclear weapon which made a flash and spread out a bit of orange goop, but a real weapon. When I launched it at the end of a war of one of my earliest games, and saw the land turned to sea, with no soul left behind, the thoughts: “I have become death, destroyer of worlds” actually came to mind.
5) Terrain
The Weapons of Mass Destruction leads me to the second part. Formers. Terraforming. The fact that this game has a better terraforming system is pretty sad, because I didn’t think much of it at the time, but looking back with the keen 20/20 vision the future has granted me, I believe I might have taken it for granted. The ability to raise and lower the ground, and create meaningful improvements to the landscape is shocking.
6) Mindworms and Fungus
I was going to make this separate from each other, but it really shouldn’t be. The fungus moved, changed and evolved according to player action. The planet reacted to your actions and your ability to cooperate and live peacefully with it was a challenge, not a path. The planet was dangerous, and I remember losing a game because I over polluted and suddenly the world was attacking me with such fury that I was destroyed under the weight of boils.
7) Weather, Pollution, Global Climate
While I could include this with the other aspects, this is really its own system. Seriously, the ability to flood the world by producing so much pollution really needs its own section.
8) Technology
That web sure is fancy, but a majority of it can be untouched during a single playthrough. Are you kidding me? What is the joy of research, expanding to new units when there isn’t any substance to the game? The technology tree is interesting but ultimately falls flat.
[EDIT: Retracted the Statement about the number of Tech, however, most of the statement remains valid.]
9) Buildings
This really is a test of limits, isn’t it? Now I can understand the simplification, and reduction of quality in buildings, but come on. This game is about as short and uninteresting as possible. Hell there isn’t even really anything unique to the Harmony/Purity/Supremacy system. Perhaps if expanded one each you’d have something a bit more worth while
[EDIT: This was originally an argument for the number of buildings. I was corrected to the correct number of buildings. They match the AC building list, though I would argue that they don't really even matter as buildings.]
10) Wonders
37 ‘Secret Projects’ versus 28, if you include the things you build on the map.
I admit this is difficult coming up with unique buildings that seem plausible. However, the total reduction in this game is a common theme at this point.
11) Factions
I understand not having a lot of factions. Alpha Centauri was released with 7 factions, however, the factions were all GOOD. Uniformily. http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Factions_(SMAC)
I enjoyed each one of the factions. They had interesting personalities and good leaders. Seriously, I cannot tell you most of the factions names, and I refer to the Beyond Earth factions as “That Indian one”, “The Asian Faction”, “ARC” (because that one is easy.), “The Brazilians”, “Slavics”, “The Africans”, “Australia” – If this is intended, please tell me. However, this doesn’t make much sense for these nations to even give a **** about their origin and would probably identify themselves with beliefs and ideologies way more than nation-state identities.
12) Unit Customization
I can go all day on this part, but I think a picture really is worth a thousand words. When I was told there would be unit customization, I got excited. This is what I was picturing:
(random image stoled from Imgur)
What I got:
I can understand, once again, the merits of a quick selection feature like this. It speeds up the game, and it makes it easy for casuals to really get into it. However, it creates identical units and identical roles. Every faction becomes the same. You don’t even need to upgrade your units, it’s like a magic beam goes out and turns everyone in your faction to aliens, or machines, or Space Marines.
(Borrowing some space magic from Mass Effect 3 I see. Even color coded it.)
13) Psionics
When attacking aliens and perhaps other units in Alpha Centauri, you had Morale and Health. It was pretty neat actually. When attacking aliens you used Psi and when attacking other people, you usually used normal attacks. This double-attack system meant you weren’t strong against everything, and required you to keep a diverse force. I mean, I understand why there isn’t a bunch of units… Afterall, you could only fit like, 20 people in your empire at once using the 1UP Tile rule
14) Collateral Damage
1 Unit Per Tile isn’t fun in Civilization. God do I hate it. You can argue the “strategy” aspect of it every day, but here’s how Hex Based Strategy gaming works:
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1739/battlearoundmlawa.png
Those maps are usually multitudes of sizes larger than massive. Give me bigger maps, or give me smaller units, or give me stacking units.
The way that Alpha Centauri attempted to deal with the wall of death was that units tended to deal 2 types of damage. Direct and Splash damage. The unit you were attacking got hit, and units in the stack took small bits of damage. More splash meant that the wall of death would quickly wither away so you were encouraged to keep units spread out. This also prevents the cluster mucking that happens with the map design.
15) Aircraft
I believe enough people have pointed out the inherent problems with aircraft, especially for AI units. However, either use Alpha Centauri’s aircraft, or use Civilization 3s aircraft. Either system was superior in my opinion. Ground units shouldn’t be able to fire at Aircraft and should require AA assistance, or interceptor support to protect them.
16) Missiles
Where is my one use missile that I can use to bomb a unit or base from afar? In most cases artillery or bombing just doesn’t cut it. If you need to hit long ranged targets and cannot afford to waste bombers, or need to strike against that carrier off the coast, you should have that tactical option.
17) Map Features
While it saw some limited (sometimes overpowered use in Civ 5) There isn’t anything worth exploring for. You scout your small area (and trust me, you only need like, 3 cities to win anyways.) and settle down. One game I never even bothered exploring at all. Lost the will to it after losing my explorer. (never ended up getting that overpowered purity point.)
Which leads me to the second part.
18) A map of the World
A standardized map of the world that. I really liked the “default world” of Alpha Centauri (Chiron):
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/6617/chirondrafthuge.jpg
It had map features, and interesting gameplay surrounding it. Though map generation is nice and allows for varied games, it kind of disappoints me that this wasn’t included.
19) Victory Conditions
Every victory condition in the game besides for conquest victory is actually just science victory reskinned for the different faction. While not necessarily a bad thing, I preferred the 4 victories from Alpha Centauri:
Conquest, Economic, Diplomatic, Transcendence. Each one of them required time and skill to accomplish.
20) Social Engineering
While I like the virtue system in Civilization Beyond Earth, it has limits to my tolerance. I think if governments and the inclusion of Drones/Citizens/Talents into the system, while virtues were reserved for “Society” and separate from “Government” there would be a lot more things you could do in the game.
21) Health versus Psyche
There is a huge disconnect in the value of health versus the punishments for it. Really, it doesn’t benefit me at all to have high amount of health. I can still city sprawl with No consequences at all. 10% hit to my research, culture, and production? Oh no, what ever shall I do with a 10% hit. Culture becomes unattainable anyways, Oh well… might as well build 20 units every turn anyways, because 10% of 10 turns is 1 turns. Not devastating to my city. It’s certainly not a drone riot, and pretty much inconsequential after a certain point.
22) Covert action that isn’t broken.
To take from alphacentauri2.info -
Probes can infiltrate and subvert enemy bases and units. They can steal enemy research information, energy credits, sabotage base facilities, assassinate key enemy personnel to slow research, free captured faction leaders from headquarters, and conduct genetic warfare (with the discovery of Retroviral Engineering) – This wasn’t broken, it was an interesting means to an additional aspect of war. It allowed you to do things that the current system cannot do. It didn’t rely on intrigue level or UI within UI, diamonds or otherwise. It was pure espionage and was a delicious aspect to the game.
23) Movies, Videos and Voice Acting
God the atrocious voice acting in Beyond Earth should be labelled a crime in and of itself. It's not like there is anything wrong with it, but hearing the actors read their lines as if someone has been sneaking Ritalin into the drinking water just depresses me. This isn't fun to watch/listen to, and there isn't any wonder movies/scenes for me to enjoy. This game is dead emotionally.
While this list isn’t by any means complete. It is the most complete I can think of at the moment. I’ve gone through it multiple times though and feel that until most of this stuff is implemented I don’t enjoy Beyond Earth. It has failed to impress me, and has done nothing but disappoint. While I feel Beyond Earth isn’t bad, and I enjoy it for what it is – However, the thought will remain: You were beaten by a 15 year old game.
I think I’ll go back to playing Civ 5 and Alpha Centauri for now.
Greetings to everyone else!
As I read the hype for the game, developer logs, and just about every hint of this game pointed to the fact that this game was suppose to be honouring Alpha Centauri. I feel like they failed wildly.
A moment if you time as I have compiled a list of features that should have been in Beyond Earth. While this list isn’t complete, it represents as much as I could reasonably find in Alpha Centauri. Feel free to post anything I missed. I am sure dedicated fans can help fill gaps. If you agree that this sort of depth should have been a game, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. I'd love to see the response, and hopefully this stuff could be revised and eventually added into the game.
1) A Storyline
The storyline in Beyond Earth may be there. It may not be. I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any inclination to tell me what that story may be, beyond the faction names and excerpts found in the loading screen. This is a horrible method of storytelling, but if this was the intention, at least make the dynamic story of the game more interesting.
A few things to point out about Alpha Centauri: It has 3 books written for it, Centauri Dawn, Dragon Sun, and Twilight of the Mind. There is also a graphics novel: Alpha Centauri: Power of the Mindworm. The Journey to Alpha Centauri as well can be read here: http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Journey_to_Centauri and http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Centauri:_Arrival for the alien factions
In comparison, it seems like there wasn’t any real thought into Beyond Earth’s lore. If you give me an improbable situation, without explaining events prior I am less inclined to be immersed into the situation. Without immersion, there isn’t a game.
2) Diplomacy
You may say there is diplomacy in the game. I would like to refute that by saying that Alpha Centauri had a superior diplomacy system.
(Just a random Google image search of Alpha Centauri Diplomacy.)
This wasn’t too complicated, but it was effective. As for specific aspects of the diplomacy part, the AI wasn’t completely insane either.
3) Moral choices
A part that I remember keenly about Alpha Centauri was that I had a drone riot. I was faced with a choice, I could let the riot continue, or I could go ahead and Nerve Staple my drones into compliance. This action was seen as monstrous. However, I was in a war and needed the compliance, so I stapled my drones and next thing I knew, I had sanctions and other issues in my boat. My actions had consequences!
4) Real Weapons of Mass Destruction
Gosh, I remember that feeling when I finally constructed a weapon of power. Not that nuclear weapon which made a flash and spread out a bit of orange goop, but a real weapon. When I launched it at the end of a war of one of my earliest games, and saw the land turned to sea, with no soul left behind, the thoughts: “I have become death, destroyer of worlds” actually came to mind.
5) Terrain
The Weapons of Mass Destruction leads me to the second part. Formers. Terraforming. The fact that this game has a better terraforming system is pretty sad, because I didn’t think much of it at the time, but looking back with the keen 20/20 vision the future has granted me, I believe I might have taken it for granted. The ability to raise and lower the ground, and create meaningful improvements to the landscape is shocking.
6) Mindworms and Fungus
I was going to make this separate from each other, but it really shouldn’t be. The fungus moved, changed and evolved according to player action. The planet reacted to your actions and your ability to cooperate and live peacefully with it was a challenge, not a path. The planet was dangerous, and I remember losing a game because I over polluted and suddenly the world was attacking me with such fury that I was destroyed under the weight of boils.
7) Weather, Pollution, Global Climate
While I could include this with the other aspects, this is really its own system. Seriously, the ability to flood the world by producing so much pollution really needs its own section.
8) Technology
That web sure is fancy, but a majority of it can be untouched during a single playthrough. Are you kidding me? What is the joy of research, expanding to new units when there isn’t any substance to the game? The technology tree is interesting but ultimately falls flat.
[EDIT: Retracted the Statement about the number of Tech, however, most of the statement remains valid.]
9) Buildings
This really is a test of limits, isn’t it? Now I can understand the simplification, and reduction of quality in buildings, but come on. This game is about as short and uninteresting as possible. Hell there isn’t even really anything unique to the Harmony/Purity/Supremacy system. Perhaps if expanded one each you’d have something a bit more worth while
[EDIT: This was originally an argument for the number of buildings. I was corrected to the correct number of buildings. They match the AC building list, though I would argue that they don't really even matter as buildings.]
10) Wonders
37 ‘Secret Projects’ versus 28, if you include the things you build on the map.
I admit this is difficult coming up with unique buildings that seem plausible. However, the total reduction in this game is a common theme at this point.
11) Factions
I understand not having a lot of factions. Alpha Centauri was released with 7 factions, however, the factions were all GOOD. Uniformily. http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Factions_(SMAC)
I enjoyed each one of the factions. They had interesting personalities and good leaders. Seriously, I cannot tell you most of the factions names, and I refer to the Beyond Earth factions as “That Indian one”, “The Asian Faction”, “ARC” (because that one is easy.), “The Brazilians”, “Slavics”, “The Africans”, “Australia” – If this is intended, please tell me. However, this doesn’t make much sense for these nations to even give a **** about their origin and would probably identify themselves with beliefs and ideologies way more than nation-state identities.
12) Unit Customization
I can go all day on this part, but I think a picture really is worth a thousand words. When I was told there would be unit customization, I got excited. This is what I was picturing:
(random image stoled from Imgur)
What I got:
I can understand, once again, the merits of a quick selection feature like this. It speeds up the game, and it makes it easy for casuals to really get into it. However, it creates identical units and identical roles. Every faction becomes the same. You don’t even need to upgrade your units, it’s like a magic beam goes out and turns everyone in your faction to aliens, or machines, or Space Marines.
(Borrowing some space magic from Mass Effect 3 I see. Even color coded it.)
13) Psionics
When attacking aliens and perhaps other units in Alpha Centauri, you had Morale and Health. It was pretty neat actually. When attacking aliens you used Psi and when attacking other people, you usually used normal attacks. This double-attack system meant you weren’t strong against everything, and required you to keep a diverse force. I mean, I understand why there isn’t a bunch of units… Afterall, you could only fit like, 20 people in your empire at once using the 1UP Tile rule
14) Collateral Damage
1 Unit Per Tile isn’t fun in Civilization. God do I hate it. You can argue the “strategy” aspect of it every day, but here’s how Hex Based Strategy gaming works:
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1739/battlearoundmlawa.png
Those maps are usually multitudes of sizes larger than massive. Give me bigger maps, or give me smaller units, or give me stacking units.
The way that Alpha Centauri attempted to deal with the wall of death was that units tended to deal 2 types of damage. Direct and Splash damage. The unit you were attacking got hit, and units in the stack took small bits of damage. More splash meant that the wall of death would quickly wither away so you were encouraged to keep units spread out. This also prevents the cluster mucking that happens with the map design.
15) Aircraft
I believe enough people have pointed out the inherent problems with aircraft, especially for AI units. However, either use Alpha Centauri’s aircraft, or use Civilization 3s aircraft. Either system was superior in my opinion. Ground units shouldn’t be able to fire at Aircraft and should require AA assistance, or interceptor support to protect them.
16) Missiles
Where is my one use missile that I can use to bomb a unit or base from afar? In most cases artillery or bombing just doesn’t cut it. If you need to hit long ranged targets and cannot afford to waste bombers, or need to strike against that carrier off the coast, you should have that tactical option.
17) Map Features
While it saw some limited (sometimes overpowered use in Civ 5) There isn’t anything worth exploring for. You scout your small area (and trust me, you only need like, 3 cities to win anyways.) and settle down. One game I never even bothered exploring at all. Lost the will to it after losing my explorer. (never ended up getting that overpowered purity point.)
Which leads me to the second part.
18) A map of the World
A standardized map of the world that. I really liked the “default world” of Alpha Centauri (Chiron):
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/6617/chirondrafthuge.jpg
It had map features, and interesting gameplay surrounding it. Though map generation is nice and allows for varied games, it kind of disappoints me that this wasn’t included.
19) Victory Conditions
Every victory condition in the game besides for conquest victory is actually just science victory reskinned for the different faction. While not necessarily a bad thing, I preferred the 4 victories from Alpha Centauri:
Conquest, Economic, Diplomatic, Transcendence. Each one of them required time and skill to accomplish.
20) Social Engineering
While I like the virtue system in Civilization Beyond Earth, it has limits to my tolerance. I think if governments and the inclusion of Drones/Citizens/Talents into the system, while virtues were reserved for “Society” and separate from “Government” there would be a lot more things you could do in the game.
21) Health versus Psyche
There is a huge disconnect in the value of health versus the punishments for it. Really, it doesn’t benefit me at all to have high amount of health. I can still city sprawl with No consequences at all. 10% hit to my research, culture, and production? Oh no, what ever shall I do with a 10% hit. Culture becomes unattainable anyways, Oh well… might as well build 20 units every turn anyways, because 10% of 10 turns is 1 turns. Not devastating to my city. It’s certainly not a drone riot, and pretty much inconsequential after a certain point.
22) Covert action that isn’t broken.
To take from alphacentauri2.info -
Probes can infiltrate and subvert enemy bases and units. They can steal enemy research information, energy credits, sabotage base facilities, assassinate key enemy personnel to slow research, free captured faction leaders from headquarters, and conduct genetic warfare (with the discovery of Retroviral Engineering) – This wasn’t broken, it was an interesting means to an additional aspect of war. It allowed you to do things that the current system cannot do. It didn’t rely on intrigue level or UI within UI, diamonds or otherwise. It was pure espionage and was a delicious aspect to the game.
23) Movies, Videos and Voice Acting
God the atrocious voice acting in Beyond Earth should be labelled a crime in and of itself. It's not like there is anything wrong with it, but hearing the actors read their lines as if someone has been sneaking Ritalin into the drinking water just depresses me. This isn't fun to watch/listen to, and there isn't any wonder movies/scenes for me to enjoy. This game is dead emotionally.
While this list isn’t by any means complete. It is the most complete I can think of at the moment. I’ve gone through it multiple times though and feel that until most of this stuff is implemented I don’t enjoy Beyond Earth. It has failed to impress me, and has done nothing but disappoint. While I feel Beyond Earth isn’t bad, and I enjoy it for what it is – However, the thought will remain: You were beaten by a 15 year old game.
I think I’ll go back to playing Civ 5 and Alpha Centauri for now.
