# Civilization : Beyond Earth



## tommers (Apr 12, 2014)

So I guess they're remaking Alpha Centauri..... 

I SAID I GUESS THEY'RE REMAKING ALPHA CENTAURI!!! 



I think it's being done by Jake Solomon, who did XCom , but I'll  check.   It has a date of "Fall 2014."

Whoop.  Whoop.


----------



## tommers (Apr 12, 2014)

Oh apparently not Solomon.   More info here... 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/04/12/c...-the-new-factions-aliens-technology-and-more/


----------



## Epona (Apr 13, 2014)

Apparently it's going to be great for CIV 5 fans, as it's more or less a reskin of CIV 5.

I tried to love CIV 5 and sunk more than 200 hours into it trying to love it (just saying that in case anyone thinks I made a snap decision!), but it wasn't for me - so I'm not going to get excited about this until I have seen a lot of reviews.


----------



## tommers (Apr 13, 2014)

In that interview they say they want to get "strategy gamers who play on iOS but haven't played Civ"  and also say their favourite civ game is revolution.  Doesn't exactly inspire confidence, but Alpha Centauri!!


----------



## captainmission (Apr 13, 2014)

This is ridiculously exciting.

But bring back video cutsceens


----------



## TodayIsCaturday (Apr 13, 2014)

I almost came when I read the OP.

Its going to be shit isn't it?


----------



## Kid_Eternity (Apr 13, 2014)

I thought AC was a bit meh tbh...but at least this is coming out on Mac pretty early so will be able to give is a go...


----------



## tommers (Apr 13, 2014)

Kid_Eternity said:


> I thought AC was a bit meh tbh...but at least this is coming out on Mac pretty early so will be able to give is a go...



I love you kid.


----------



## Silva (Apr 13, 2014)

Alpha Centauri is maybe my favourite game ever, but I'm not overly enthusiastic over this. Sometimes these games end up being a bit too reverent, scrap the little things that made the first title unique or with little in common with what inspired it. I remember being very excited about the new xcom, and then giving up on it after looking a much more restricted game that the 20 year old game that inspired it.


----------



## Artaxerxes (Apr 14, 2014)

Silva said:


> Alpha Centauri is maybe my favourite game ever, but I'm not overly enthusiastic over this. Sometimes these games end up being a bit too reverent, scrap the little things that made the first title unique or with little in common with what inspired it. I remember being very excited about the new xcom, and then giving up on it after looking a much more restricted game that the 20 year old game that inspired it.



X-Com actually worked pretty well, its utterly different to the original but still fairly good on its own. Worth a play.

I love Alpha Centauri anyway, one of my first PC games and one I played pretty much solidly for a good couple of years and still return to occasionally. I'll see how this pans out but not to sure how it'll pan out, spiritual successors and remakes do have a track record of being fairly poor but as its Firaxis then perhaps it'll be worth a punt.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 14, 2014)

OMG, I just completely missed this thread as I made my own 

Anyway, regardless of the potential for disappointment, I'm still going to do a sex wee every time I think about this until it releases and I don't like it.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Apr 14, 2014)

Is there a world-sim game that tries to cope with Peak Oil, Climate Change, etc?

I'm more interested in what happens to those who are left behind ....


----------



## captainmission (Apr 15, 2014)

try fate f the world (and loose)


----------



## Silva (Apr 16, 2014)

Artaxerxes said:


> X-Com actually worked pretty well, its utterly different to the original but still fairly good on its own. Worth a play.


Oh, I bet the game is great fun, but a friend of mine who actually loves the game told me to either play it thinking it's a completely new franchise or forget the original exists, or not play it at all, because knowing me, I'd quit playing in a matter of hours and throw the disc in a bonfire.


----------



## Awesome Wells (Apr 20, 2014)

I would be excited but my PC is almost as old as Alpha Centuari (the star, not the game).


----------



## Vintage Paw (Jun 9, 2014)

*does a sex wee*

It's a bit like Alpha Centauri, a lot like Civ 5, and a bit like Endless Space (that tech web is ripped wholesale from Endless Space - well, kinda).

ERMAHGERD.


YOU CAN RIDE ALIENS.


----------



## Artaxerxes (Jun 9, 2014)

Vintage Paw said:


> YOU CAN RIDE ALIENS.



Sounds good


----------



## Kid_Eternity (Jun 12, 2014)

tommers said:


> I love you kid.



Wha?


----------



## Kid_Eternity (Jun 12, 2014)

Vintage Paw said:


> *does a sex wee*
> 
> It's a bit like Alpha Centauri, a lot like Civ 5, and a bit like Endless Space (that tech web is ripped wholesale from Endless Space - well, kinda).
> 
> ...




Does look nice!


----------



## Vintage Paw (Oct 15, 2014)

Oh god oh god oh god.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/15/6981449/civilization-beyond-earth-trailer-opening-cinematic

This is an amazing cinematic trailer.


----------



## Waltz (Oct 21, 2014)

looks cool, looking forward to play this


----------



## Jackobi (Oct 23, 2014)

I know what I'll be doing later tonight.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Oct 24, 2014)

I've just started downloading it. Looking forward to losing my life to it tomorrow.

Why do all the interesting things happen when I have work to do?


----------



## Vintage Paw (Oct 24, 2014)

I may or may not have stayed up until 7am playing this >_>

I can't help but compare it to Endless Space.

The music's a bit shit. I was expecting something far more epic, but it seems to be the same track almost all of the time. Endless Space's music is fucking beautiful.

The tech tree feels like it hasn't been optimised for ideal viewing. I like that they've added to Endless Space's tree with the 'leaves', but in ES it doesn't feel as cramped.

It kinda is Civ with space paint. I never spent a huge amount of time on Civ V, so I was hoping it'd be sufficiently fresh for me to enjoy as a completely new game, and it is to an extent. I really don't know what I'm doing, which is a good thing in one way because yay new game. 

One thing I was most hopeful for was the new factions. In Alpha Centauri their personalities and backstories were fantastic. In Beyond Earth they seem to be mere avatars devoid of anything. The difference is that in AC they were organised around principles. In BE they're simply regional/continental states. You get to choose your principles (the harmony, supremacy, purity thing, plus a few other nice things) but the factions themselves might as well be cut and paste. I thought it would be better than normal Civ, where you know what to expect from Gandhi (murdering bastard ). I thought fresh factions would mean scope for AC-style exploration of new ideas, crazy new personalities and stories struggling for dominance. That doesn't seem to be the case though. It's _less_ interesting than normal Civ, because at least they _did_ have personalities, even if they were predictable. 

Because I'm comparing it to Endless Space, the factions in that are far more interesting. You don't speak to leaders in the same way, but you have a much better idea of the reasoning and backstory for them. Plus, most of them are alien. Their species and principles inform their technologies and things that are unlocked and locked off to them. Endless Space is a far less complex game than Civ, but somehow I'm finding that playing Beyond Earth is simply making me want to boot up Endless Space instead.

One thing is very clear: the Civ: BE devs played the hell out of Endless Space.

I'm going to give it a fair shot though. Like I said, I haven't played much of Civ V at all. Civ II and III were my time sinks. I dabbled with IV, and dipped into V a handful of times. So much has changed since the height of my Civ addiction it wouldn't be fair to judge it completely on the basis of one early morning play. I need to better understand the systems.

(I think Endless Space is more beautiful too. I'm running Beyond Earth on Ultra, if it matters.)


----------



## Vintage Paw (Oct 24, 2014)

Also, the unit upgrade system doesn’t appear to be as interesting as I was hoping. It’s tied to the Harmony, Supremacy, Purity system. When you get a point in one of those… _ideals_ I guess you could call them… you get to spend that point on the related upgrade to your units, with two to choose from (for example, your unit regains more health when not engaged; or your unit is 15% stronger when engaging). I only played long enough to get to upgrade one unit, so this might become more complex and interesting as time goes on. I remember the unit creation system being more interesting in _Alpha Centauri_, and indeed in _Endless Space_ you get to add whatever modules you want to the base shell of your units (so life support, different types of weapons, different types of shields, etc.).


----------



## BigTom (Oct 24, 2014)

I played it for about an hour this evening and I think what you say about it being very much civ with a space paint is true, I've played civ 5 a lot and it's obviously a mod, but there's some differences, the aliens aren;t exactly like barbarians, they behave differently, not always hostile. The culture tree has split and become the virtues and the ideologies, and the tech tree has become a web.

I don't really know how much any of that actually affects the game, the most radical apparent change is the quests, which have been happening too often for my liking so far.

Hopefully it'll show more different mechanics/interplay, I love civ so I'm going to enjoy it anyway.

They also seem to have sorted out the unit routing so that the unit keeps heading towards the destination you've set, even when it's route gets blocked.

I can't remember alpha centauri well enough, but I remember it being a very different game in terms of mechanics to civ 2 (iirc it was after that game) whilst still having the same fundamental feel as civ.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Oct 25, 2014)

I've played this quite a lot today. Been declared war against, had a city taken, wiped out an alien nest, upgraded lots of units, got to level 5 in Supremacy, and so on. I'm slowly getting the hang of things, I think. I'm starting to worry about my energy production. It's certainly starting to create the 'just one more turn' feeling, that's for sure. That said, I can't say for certain that I'm particularly enjoying it. It's weird. But like I said, I barely played V, and II and III are what I see when I think about Civ, so the adjustment period is going to be rocky.


----------



## FNG (Oct 25, 2014)

First impressions having played up to turn 67 or so a couple of times is a bit meh. The ruins excavations are a chore, having to go make lengthy journeys back and forth to the capital to replenish excavation mods just slows down exploration and adds an unwelcome level of micromanagement with no discernible benefit to game play  or overall strategy, most players will have one set of units scouting ahead to pop supply pods whilst a second group of identical units trudge back and forth between the city and popping  excavation sites.Its a pain making sure they are heading in the right direction more time seems to be spent checking the left hand panel for excavation pods than studying the map.

Miasmic mist is far less interesting than ACs tangle weed simply applying a minor health penalty rather than ACs host of penalties to movement and combat and los, trying to move a unit through an area of tangle weed without being clusterfud by a group of hidden mindworms was tense, shifting through miasma and then healing up for a few turns of inactivity again just adds a few mouse clicks to the turn counter before anything interesting gets done.

The excavation sites are a bit generic,with little regard to the backstory or faction development the first  alien skeleton i popped gave me a tame flying insect unit the second an armoured beetle this is  before i had even unlocked my first affinity, its hard to see how a purity faction could develop whilst flappy the friendly bug has scouted half the map for us and is retrieving supply pods from otherwise inaccessible locations.

Terrain is a bit ugly and because most of the scouting phase is done by explorers necessary to pop ruins i trudged over the terrain barely bothering to register whether it was hill or plain.ACs enigmatic landmarks would have been a welcome relief to orientate by [e2a apparently wonders do exist though i have yet to find any]
. Usually the opening exploration phase is my favorite and most replayable part of the game, here it felt like trudge to be gotten out of the way as quick as possible before anything interesting happened.

I agree about what has been already said about the blandness of the other factions although the slavs in both games i've started have wanted to gang up against a third party whilst the aussies have wanted to be best bro's so i am thinking the AI is going to be predictable after a few games.

Was looking forward to this,AC has to be my fave spin off from the CiV franchise (with Fall from Heaven/Master of Mana coming a close second)
overall i'd recommend people to wait until the sales as it feels and plays like a DLC mod for civ 5 than a full game in its own right.


----------



## captainmission (Oct 25, 2014)

I've played through 2 games of this now and over all disappointed.

Internal trade route are daftly over powered. City placement, tile improvements, careful building selection become largely irrelevant in face of having 3 trade route connected to your own cities. It just becomes a no brainer to get those 3 trade routes up as quick as possible. After 40-50 turns or so every city will have every building it needs and just producing science/culture/food until the next tech unlocks something to be built in 2 turns. The gold or sci from international trade routes just isn't needed. On the 2nd hardest difficultly level, with only internal trade route and without a single generator, i'm turning a profit, have a science lead and have half my territory covered in terrascapes. And when you have 25 cities having to click through 2-3 trade vessels a turn to re-establish route quickly becomes boring.

The affinity system is dull and under-realised. All three play out the same way, there's a slight difference in how i tech and a few buildings, but it does nothing to embed the philosophy of each affinity in gameplay. I build the same tile improvements (including terrascpaes as harmony), same buildings, have a similar economy regardless of affinity. In SMAC my gaian territory was a sea of forests and fungus, my Morgan industries boreholes and solar collectors ( and a guy with a big flamethrower to keep in safe). Its a shame cos it's a missed oppotunity - harmony could have been about protecting and spreading natural forests, supremacy about uploading your people having specialist that eat energy instead of food- just something to playing each affinity feel different. Even ideologies in civ 5 did it better than BE - they didn't lock you in to victory type but gave you different ways to achive each one. 

Even affinity military units play out in a similar manner. They seem to have made design decision on the basis that the civ5 engine allows interesting tactical combat. The problem is it doesn't - the map is to small to allow for that. So things like flanking bonuses, percentages for adjecent friendly units etc, don't give any tactical choice when its my carpet or units vs yours.  

Aliens are basically barbarians with slightly longer shelf life, not the game long threat we were told they'd be. By the time you get your first affinity unique unit they've basically become free xp, with only sea unit being an annoyance. If they were meant to be a threat they need to scale a lot better with player power lvl and there shouldn't be a low level cheap building that forces aliens out of your cities and gives trade units immunity.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Oct 25, 2014)

I pretty much agree with all you've said. Not having played Civ V it was a lot harder for me to get to grips with it. I set my game to the second longest game, so everything took a long time to build. I did that because it generally gives me more of a chance to understand things. So I haven't completed a game yet, but I got about 300+ turns in. 

One thing that feels like such a missed opportunity is creating real, tangible differences depending on your affinity. As you say, regardless of which road you go down it all plays out remarkably the same. 

I wish someone would give SMAC and Alien Crossfire a proper modern day make-over. I'd be more than happy it being the exact same game, the same factions, the same gameplay, with updated graphics.


----------



## sfaafs (Oct 27, 2014)

Yeah.. disappointing. A Civ 5 Mod. Anything new and interesting isn't all that new or interesting.


----------



## belboid (Oct 27, 2014)

Had a game over the weekend, all 412 turns - what a bloody stupid number. As said above, its basically Civ with a space skin, nothing particularly interesting added, and the other chiefs were all fucking annoying. If I heard the African dude tell me one more time that 'no village was ever ruined by trade' I'd have had to invade the fucker just to shut him up.


----------



## BigTom (Oct 27, 2014)

I've tried and failed to get into a second game, uninstalled it and bought tropico 5 instead, for about £10 more than I wanted to, had been waiting for a sale but I cracked. Shame cos it could have been interesting if they'd done more with it / really made a different game.
(VP - in tropico 5, your character is by default female, which I though was interesting in reference to a bit of the conversation on the gamergate thread)


----------



## Vintage Paw (Oct 27, 2014)

I think I might have bought Tropico when it was on sale a while back. All my impulse steam purchases seem to blend into one though, so I might be misremembering


----------



## BigTom (Oct 27, 2014)

Vintage Paw said:


> I think I might have bought Tropico when it was on sale a while back. All my impulse steam purchases seem to blend into one though, so I might be misremembering



I don't think tropico 5 has been on sale yet, but 3 & 4 are on steam and they will have been, it's a nice resource management game, not too complex, enjoyable, but not worth £35 really.


----------



## captainmission (Oct 27, 2014)

Why have one affinity when you can have all 3?







So on the highest difficulty setting I was able to complete every tech in the web, get 18/15/15 affinity, complete 3 virtue trees and win a transendence victory all with out doing anything to impede the AI from wining. I think this game needs some balancing.


----------



## captainmission (Oct 27, 2014)

Tropico 4 with the modern times expansion is a better game than tropico 5 and a lot cheaper. Plus the radio announcer is better in 4.


----------



## FNG (Nov 11, 2014)

My problems with BE trade is so overpowered that the only viable viable gambit on the tech route is depots,boats then miasma fences that gives you the quest option to make convoys invincible to aliens.anything else and you are soon lagging behind.

The wierd decision to get rid of allowing players to name their units, flavour fluff like that added to the story telling narrative and ultimately replayability.

The staggered start, nice idea but gives the early AI a buff over the later arrivals, and the landing sequence replaying 10 time soon looses its appeal.both aspects can be turned off thankfully

blandness of terrain tiles especially difficulty distinguishing hills from lowlands persist as do the permaswarms that spawn from nests but randomly shuffle around without really causing any sense of danger. In civ 5 barb swarms could trash your infrastructure here they just wander aimlessly ouside your boarders once fences are up,only posing a danger to explorers

minor bases spawning close to valuable resources, not sure if this is due to the AI routine using the same decision making process as the regular ai in colony placement but several times a optimal settlement site has been cockblocked by some clowns offering to trade 2 gold and 2 beakers...GET OFF MOI MOON!!!


----------



## mrs quoad (Sep 16, 2016)

I see it is, not for the first time, on sale @ £15.50 with that expansion (whatever it's called. The one that people seem to think has greatly improved it).

It's been a crap few weeks for iOS gaming, so I feel as if these are potentially available pennies.

Any more recent thoughts?


----------



## BigTom (Sep 16, 2016)

it was so shit I never even heard they'd done an expansion for it and wouldn't bother event at £15. I'm waiting for civ 6 personally anyway.


----------

