Civilization: Beyond Earth

On April 13 2014 01:18 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Judging by those screenshots it looks to be the Civ 5 engine which is good. Hopefully there is trade etc.

On April 13 2014 01:28 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:

• Do quests and side missions while exploring the planet.
  
  
• Factions are a little different than they are in Civ. Instead of playing as familiar civilizations like, say, the Romans, or Russia, you'll play as futuristic fictional factions—like the American Reclamation Corporation. Or the Panasian Cooperative.
  
  
• Pre-game preparation is a big thing here. "When you start a game of Civ: Beyond Earth, your choices start before turn zero," said Strenger. "You're composing your spacecraft on your expedition to this new alien planet." So you'll get to make some basic decisions—colonists, cargo, type of spacecraft—before the game starts. That, the designers say, will impact the outcome of your entire game.
  
  
• Negotiate with other factions, build trade routes, and do all the other little management activities that make a Civ game a Civ game.
  

Via Kotaku

Before you land on a new planet and start shaping humanity’s destiny, you must first equip your expedition. Referred to as "the seeding," this is an expanded version of your civilization selection in previous games. In Beyond Earth, not only do you choose which faction (read: civilization) to play, but also which spacecraft to take, what cargo to carry, who to bring, and the type of planet you want to inhabit. Each selection you make will greatly impact the start of your game: you could carry high-quality cargo that grants additional funds up-front, for instance, or hard-working, production-oriented colonists who build structures faster. The Civilization series has always been about defining a strategy early on, and then adapting that strategy to accommodate whatever curveballs the game throws your way. These choices should give you greater control over how you define your opening gambit.

After the seeding, you make planetfall and establish your first human colony. It is also the only human colony. The next human player won’t arrive until much later. In the beginning, you are completely alone amid the wilderness. "What’s neat about it is the feeling you get from coming into this new place," said lead producer Dennis Shirk. "It’s not the same as in other Civilization games where you already know you’re on Earth, the only threat is the occasional barbarian, and you’re going to run into other civilizations--and if one of those is Genghis Khan or Montezuma you know what your game is going to be like! With Beyond Earth, it’s basically you versus the environment in the beginning."

And by "environment," Shirk of course means alien lifeforms. Depending on the planet, these lifeforms may be indifferent to your arrival, or hostile. You must decide how to deal with them, and in doing so the development team hopes the experience will feel more isolated, more alien, than in previous games. You are setting forth into the unknown reaches of space, after all. It could be 20 turns or more before you see another player make planetfall and introduce themselves, and another 15 turns after that until the next. And if you think these newcomers are going to be easy pickings just because they were late to the party, think again. Those who arrive after you receive an extra boost to help them catch up to your civilization.

On April 13 2014 01:51 Gonff wrote:
I wonder if they'll use the same narrator that they used in Civ V? His voice is amazing.

On April 13 2014 01:48 Myles wrote:
Obviously not a direct sequel, but anything like Alpha Centauri is a 'Yes please!'.

Those differences in ideology are intended to inspire conflict and tension between factions, and almost inevitably, war. Beyond Earth will use the same one-unit-per-tile combat system we’ve seen in Civ 5, but its upgrade system is intended to be deeper and more flexible due to a multi-tiered tree system and - again - to allow you to control its evolution rather than simply progress from spearmen to muskets to riflemen. Options may be conventional boosts to attack power or healing ability (those were the early examples given, anyway) but they carry with them different effects based on the Affinity they’re associated with. Choosing more aggressive upgrades changes your army to reflect that with the jagged, sharp edges of the Supremacy Affinity, whereas others will give your units a more rounded, organic look of the Harmony line. But potentially the most exciting new aspect of combat is the satellite layer, where you can build and launch orbital weapons stations that bombard enemy troops or support stations that buff your own soldiers in a certain area, much like Civ 5’s great generals.

At the same time you’re competing with the other colonial powers on this planet, you’ll also be up against the native life you find there – much of it initially hostile. “Civ 5’s barbarians are really more like a speed bump or an early-game punching bag for you to kind of get your military chops before you’re ready to get into a real war. In this game, they’re completely different. It’s really a whole other opponent that plays completely asymmetrically to any of the human players,” says McDonough. He promises that the indigenous aliens, while not sentient, will react intelligently and with some coordination to what you’re doing on their world, and how you interact with them can range from all-out hostility to befriending, domesticating, and breeding them for your own use. (The description is reminiscent of Sid Meier’s Colonization’s Native American tribes that inhabit the new world, and can either be fought or befriended and assimilated.) You can expect them to be a major obstacle to the free land-grab expansion we’re accustomed to in Civilization games.