'We should have been more audacious' - A Civilization: Beyond Earth retrospective

[Socratatus]

A couple of things Firaxis needs to do for their Civ games...

1. STOP being so cautious. It`s called paralysis through analysis.

2. Add stuff to make the game more immersive. make the Player feel like he leads a living city. Examples: Include walkthrus of a city or flybys, so we can zoom down and see our civilization functioning. have little cars and people moving about.

3. Add News events either as an optional newspaper or futuristic vid event of important things.

4. Add dozens of customisation options, not just your name and city, but how you want the people to generally look, style of city, throne room.

5. This one is a bit of a biggie, but try to add close ground views of terrains and especially battles when they commence. So we actually see tanks versus tanks in a 3D way.

6. Stop being afraid to add stuff like religion and other social choices that the Player can have as he chooses. Also let them have REAL effects, good or bad, including civil wars.

7. Greater use of imagination especially for a Beyond Earth type of game. Allow much more random events. This game sorely needed that in spades.

8.There was and is NO imagination in this game. You also ruined Leaders which were a good start in Civ 5. I expected dynamic backgrounds, truly differnet and dynamic leaders. No sense of wonderment or going to new heights which is why your game is crap. Sorry, but it is.

But...

1. Keep the depth of discovery and tech, expand on it much further, etc.
2. make a non-Steam option. This was one reason i held off buying the game, which proved fortunate. Allow GOG versions.

 

[Halbbruder]

A couple of things Firaxis needs to do for their Civ games...

1. STOP being so cautious. It`s called paralysis through analysis.

2. Add stuff to make the game more immersive. make the Player feel like he leads a living city. Examples: Include walkthrus of a city or flybys, so we can zoom down and see our civilization functioning. have little cars and people moving about.

3. Add News events either as an optional newspaper or futuristic vid event of important things.

4. Add dozens of customisation options, not just your name and city, but how you want the people to generally look, style of city, throne room.

5. This one is a bit of a biggie, but try to add close ground views of terrains and especially battles when they commence. So we actually see tanks versus tanks in a 3D way.

6. Stop being afraid to add stuff like religion and other social choices that the Player can have as he chooses. Also let them have REAL effects, good or bad, including civil wars.

7. Greater use of imagination especially for a Beyond Earth type of game. Allow much more random events. This game sorely needed that in spades.

8.There was and is NO imagination in this game. You also ruined Leaders which were a good start in Civ 5. I expected dynamic backgrounds, truly differnet and dynamic leaders. No sense of wonderment or going to new heights which is why your game is crap. Sorry, but it is.

But...

1. Keep the depth of discovery and tech, expand on it much further, etc.
2. make a non-Steam option. This was one reason i held off buying the game, which proved fortunate. Allow GOG versions.

Or condense all that advice to just one piece of advice: analyze SMAC again and build on that for CIVBE. If you see the thread where expansion is announced, it appears that they are already following it introducing new sea bases.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

A couple of things Firaxis needs to do for their Civ games...

1. STOP being so cautious. It`s called paralysis through analysis.

2. Add stuff to make the game more immersive. make the Player feel like he leads a living city. Examples: Include walkthrus of a city or flybys, so we can zoom down and see our civilization functioning. have little cars and people moving about.

3. Add News events either as an optional newspaper or futuristic vid event of important things.

4. Add dozens of customisation options, not just your name and city, but how you want the people to generally look, style of city, throne room.

5. This one is a bit of a biggie, but try to add close ground views of terrains and especially battles when they commence. So we actually see tanks versus tanks in a 3D way.

6. Stop being afraid to add stuff like religion and other social choices that the Player can have as he chooses. Also let them have REAL effects, good or bad, including civil wars.

7. Greater use of imagination especially for a Beyond Earth type of game. Allow much more random events. This game sorely needed that in spades.

8.There was and is NO imagination in this game. You also ruined Leaders which were a good start in Civ 5. I expected dynamic backgrounds, truly differnet and dynamic leaders. No sense of wonderment or going to new heights which is why your game is crap. Sorry, but it is.

But...

1. Keep the depth of discovery and tech, expand on it much further, etc.
2. make a non-Steam option. This was one reason i held off buying the game, which proved fortunate. Allow GOG versions.

9. Have a billion dollar budget?

 

[Makenshi]

Another thing came to my mind, and I think most will agree with me... reverse warmongering! WTH is that Makenshi? Let us see:

- Warmonger penalties are THE suck, but necessary.

- They were tweaked by CiV's last patch to scale be era: in ancient age they penalty is 50%, than scales as the eras go by, until they reach 100%. IMO the numbers are still not good enough, but the idea itself is great, very solid.

- In CivBE, that scaling should be reversed! As the refugees make planetfall and start their colonies, they're all humans from earth and attacking each other should indeed be seen as a shocking agression. BUT! As affinities are adopted, people would see "the others" as traitors to the humans race, inhuman mutants, heretics, etc, etc, and thus the warmonger penalty be lightened as the millenia go by.

Ain't this a nice one? I think it is...

 

[Ryika]

Yes, 3 Affinities constantly fighting Holy Wars against each other, that would be awesome.

 

[Nelson Minar]

Well now we have the news for the Rising Tide expansion, adding new features. I wonder if that will be on top of the "audacious" fix for the core game we were all hoping for? If you recall, Civ V got some fairly substantial reworks when Gods & Kings was released; like the shift from 10 hit points to 100 hit points and other significant combat changes. Maybe they'll do the same thing for CivBE. I believe the Civ V game mechanics patch was free even if you didn't buy G&K, although honestly anyone still playing the game probably bought the expansion.

 

[beetle]

If you recall, Civ V got some fairly substantial reworks when Gods & Kings was released; like the shift from 10 hit points to 100 hit points and other significant combat changes... I believe the Civ V game mechanics patch was free even if you didn't buy G&K...

I just posted a similar observation on a parallel thread. No, the basic GnK combat mechanics never found their way into Vanilla. I would argue that was missed opportunity. Vanilla is a stand alone product -- it deserves the combat fix. No one buys GnK for melee ships -- but that sort of fit and polish is important. GnK adds enough value IMHO that the basic combat mechanics should be unbundled from a paid expansion.

 

[Ashbery76]

So adding sea colonies is the audacious factor that was missing.Did anybody actually like them in AC?

Meh.

 

[Gorbles]

You might not have, but that doesn't make them bad.

 

[AriochIV]

You might not have, but that doesn't make them bad.

They were bad in AC. But it sounds like they may have a more complicated model for them in BERT rather than just treating ocean as land. We will have to wait and see.

 

[Gorbles]

There were bad in SMAC, perhaps, but as I said, this isn't SMAC.

It's like saying knives were bad in one version of CoD, ergo they're bad in Battlefield.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

The problem with sea colonies in AC was the same as it was with all cities in AC. They were generic because the terrain was bland and city spam was everything/everywhere. It really made the irrelevance of city placement obvious when you didn't even have to consider coastlines. But civ 3 onwards had resources that weren't just more productive than average tiles, and city spam has been clamped down on more in each game. So unless you've built towards a very wide strategy, settling the whole ocean just cuz won't be a good idea. Also this will make those one tile, 10 titanium islands less irritating.

 

[joncnunn]

Let's move Rising Tide discussion over here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=547771&page=5

Moderator Action: Thread closed