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.

PC Gamer: You mentioned the orbital layer, briefly. How does that interact with the ground layer?

Will Miller: The planet's surface, and what's on it, is the star of the show, and that's been the case with Civ forever. The map is the coolest thing. So the orbital layer is built to reinforce that idea. You can shoot satellites up into the atmosphere, and they project an influence onto the ground. If you wanted to clear the Miasma from your capital, you would send a satellite above it and clear it over a certain number of turns. Satellites are temporary. We're still balancing the numbers, but they won't last forever, and they'll de-orbit, and it's good because they can't overlap, so they have this footprint which is the affected area on the ground, and you can't have two that have overlapping effects, and that's a pretty cool secondary territorial acquisition problem that the player are engaging with in addition to what's going on on the ground. So the strategy might be I shoot down the satellite above your capital, and I might just have time to get mine up there, and you can't - there's this bin-packing problem you're dealing with, and there are offensive satellites and defensive ones and they can't shoot each other, which is realistic, right? But they can shoot things on the ground, so you can have orbital strike platforms, and terraforming and stuff like that.

PC Gamer: How do victory conditions work in Beyond Earth?

Will Miller: They're quite different. We decided early on that we wanted victory in the game to be something you start a little bit earlier, and a bit of a gamble. This is it, you're taking your shot, you're making your run and be very dramatic, so the victories are couched in our quest system. So you get these four victory quests at the beginning of the game and it tells you step by step what you would need to do them, and they're reach tailored to one of the affinities, and then there's one that anybody can do. This is the contact victory, you get a signal through some means, either by researching it and finding it in a transcendental number, the ?mentissa?, or finding it in an alien ruin, or getting it in space when you put a radio telescope up there, and then you build a beacon, and then you have to turn it on and protect it while it's on, then several turns later the aliens, the progenitors, turn up and then you win.

There's the transcendence victory, this is the Harmony victory, this is a nod to Alpha Centauri of course. In this victory you discover that the planet is a living being, like Solaris almost, a living thing, and find a way to communicate with it, and integrate yourselves into its consciousness.

Then there are the promised land and emancipation victories, and these are my two favourite. You reestablish contact with Earth. You leave Earth in a very ambiguous state. They're on the mend, but resources are running low, and you're not really sure, so you re-establish communication with Earth and then you build a warpgate and if you're the Supremacy player and go for the emancipation victory, you send military units through the warpgate to conquer - to emancipate earth, to bring it in line with you. If you're the Purity player you bring settlers through and settle them, so that's a cool victory to go for because you have to plant these settlers and protect them until you have enough to sustain a new human colony.

PC Gamer: So once you've built the warpgate, there's more play after that?

Will Miller: That's where the gamble starts. You build the warpgate, which is a planetary wonder, which is a new concept in the game. It's a wonder that takes up an entire hex, and you have to give up that hex as part of your city to build this thing, and it takes a while and a lot of resources to build, and then if you're sending things through it or taking things out of it you have to protect it, they're very weak, so there's a military presence that has to be there, and there's a certain number of units you have to send in, and a certain number of units you have to pull out, and it it's the same with all of the other ones. It's not just "I build this thing and I win," it's "I build this thing, and you turn it on, you have to protect it and all the other players know you're gunning for it. It's a neat twist on winning Civ.

PC Gamer: Does that separate the military tree from the tech tree, so you're not actually researching new units?

Will Miller: They're kinda tied. The central ring, the first simple techs you'll be able to get to quickly unlock the generic—they're not really generic, we call them the classes—so you research your tech to unlock the cavalry and the siege units, and the battleship and stuff like that. Then, once you have those categories unlocked, you can go into our version of the workshop, the unit upgrade screen, and that's where you see their progression tree. It starts out linear and then it branches depending on affinity.

So as you research affinities in the tech tree, the various branches unlock along that. Then each time you unlock an upgrade you get to pick one of these perks, so even within that selection, the affinity-based selection, you still get to specialise even further with the perks.

On April 13 2014 01:22 Torte de Lini wrote:
This looks fucking sick, but I hope it becomes something more than just a futuristic version.

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 05:43 LSB wrote:
All I ask for is better combat, Civ 5 was a great step in the direction. And Civ 4 diplomancy. Please please please.

On April 13 2014 03:33 rezoacken wrote:
When I read that kind of stuff I always have a little voice asking "Will the AI be able to really use that kind of stuff ?"

On April 13 2014 10:22 Sufficiency wrote:
Is it just me or does this look like a civ 5 mod? Not sure if I will be into this.

On April 13 2014 12:32 Eliezar wrote:
This isn't a Civ 5 mod, that's silly. This is more like when someone builds a new game in another game's engine. Its clear it is using the backbone of Civ 5.

Lots of games use other games engines to build their game on. Games like XCom, Borderlands, and Gears of War, and Mass Effect all used the Unreal engine and are not "Unreal" mods.

Is it going to look similar and have a playstyle similar to the Civ series? Yes. Is it a completely designed game with different concepts? Yes.

On April 13 2014 01:28 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
[list]
[*]Do quests and side missions while exploring the planet.

On April 13 2014 21:42 Nazza wrote:
Read an article that stated that the beyond earth team started by looking at all the fiction and literature that the team behind Alpha Centauri looked at when they started making it to get inspiration and ideas. So there's definitely some influences from there.

On April 13 2014 23:06 Gonff wrote:
This guy stripped the audio from the original announcement trailer and played "Final Countdown" over the top. It lines up perfectly. Fate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WSgMhfuic

In the game’s fiction, humanity has endured some rough times on Earth due to an ambiguous event known as The Great Mistake. We survived but were greatly hobbled, and Earth just wasn’t the same anymore. As civilization recovered, we sent our best and brightest to create a new home.

This is where you come in.

The game begins with something Firaxis likens to “interstellar Oregon Trail.” Ordinarily in a Civilization game, you select your leader from a series of historically-based archetypes like Genghis Khan or Hiawatha. But since Beyond Earth takes place in the future, the player is given more freedom to affect how events play out.

That begins as you select not only a leader whose disposition will affect your Civilization forever, but also which culture your ship will launch from, what types of colonists you’ll bring, and what type of ship you’ll launch. From that point on, how the future plays out is up to you.

“A lot of our pre-production was spent looking at futurist writers, and looking into transhumanism and post-humanism,” said Anton Springer, one of the designers. “Not just science fiction writers, but scientists talking about where humanity is going. We’re leaving that answer in the hands of the players.”

Upon arriving on the planet, players will find a game that’s very similar to Civilization 5, the last title in the series. The gameplay will be largely the same as you explore territory on a grid of hexagonal tiles, build and improve cities, and navigate complex diplomacies with other factions.

The original Civilization games gave the player a wide range of choice in how history would play out, yet remained bound to historical context. Beyond Earth wants to remove as many constraints as possible, and make each game more unique.

“When you cast off the shackles of history, you can go to an amazing number of unknown places,” said lead designer Will Miller. “That’s with technology, with the aliens that you discover, the planet that you land on. You suddenly can go in a million new directions each time you play.”

To that end, there’s a new factor in the game: the planet, and its ecology. No longer are you merely navigating relationships with other world leaders while you exploit the planet’s resources, but you’re also attempting to live in balance with the local environment. Humanity hasn’t yet tamed this world, and ticking off the wrong species could spell disaster for a fledgling state.

The developers gave the example of something they call the siege worm, huge roving monsters plucked out of Dune. At the beginning of the game, they are completely indifferent to your species. You’re just another bug to them, but the catch is that their indifference can cause them to trample your cities or farms. If a siege worm is coming, you face a tough choice: Deal with the potential damage and stay on its good side, or attack it and risk the wrath of all wormkind.

Finding that balance is important in the early game, when you’re a fragile community. The game’s early moments, when it’s just you and your new home, will be about survival, not dominance.

“You really are alone on this planet,” says Miller. “It’s a story about survival, not just expanding your empire. You actually have to figure out how your people are going to survive.”
Before long other factions will arrive, and the classic diplomatic dance of the Civilization series begins. Factions constantly vie for the upper hand, through war or cooperation, all the while adapting to an uncertain future on a new world.

Beyond Earth‘s lead producer Lina Brink says that players will navigate a “technology web” that will be less linear than the previous games’ “technology tree” systems. A tree-like structure makes sense for a historical game, she says, because we understand how technologies begat other technologies throughout history. In Beyond Earth, players will be able to make their own way through a web of choices that can lead anywhere.

On April 13 2014 12:32 Eliezar wrote:
This isn't a Civ 5 mod, that's silly. This is more like when someone builds a new game in another game's engine. Its clear it is using the backbone of Civ 5.

Lots of games use other games engines to build their game on. Games like XCom, Borderlands, and Gears of War, and Mass Effect all used the Unreal engine and are not "Unreal" mods.

Is it going to look similar and have a playstyle similar to the Civ series? Yes. Is it a completely designed game with different concepts? Yes.

On April 13 2014 12:32 Eliezar wrote:
This isn't a Civ 5 mod, that's silly. This is more like when someone builds a new game in another game's engine. Its clear it is using the backbone of Civ 5.

Lots of games use other games engines to build their game on. Games like XCom, Borderlands, and Gears of War, and Mass Effect all used the Unreal engine and are not "Unreal" mods.

Is it going to look similar and have a playstyle similar to the Civ series? Yes. Is it a completely designed game with different concepts? Yes.

On April 14 2014 20:04 riyanme wrote:


then its definitely a MOD = MODIFICATION, customization (like skins)
modification of civ5's parameters.... tweaking everything else that it looked like a brand new...
example; barbarian = worms, iron = dilithium crystals???, terrain (civ5) = terrain (beyond)
all using the same civ5 engine
enough of that justification.... we want more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
want to see more slimy worms and cool weapons

lol at all wormkind
basically a stronger version of barbarian here (more like a homegrown planetary civ by defualt)
worms vs you vs ai, now thats more like it

never played that alpha centuary thing....
i bet miss something great T_T

On April 14 2014 20:07 Gorsameth wrote:

Its not to late. Go find it and play it ^^

On April 14 2014 20:04 riyanme wrote:


then its definitely a MOD = MODIFICATION, customization (like skins)
modification of civ5's parameters.... tweaking everything else that it looked like a brand new...
example; barbarian = worms, iron = dilithium crystals???, terrain (civ5) = terrain (beyond)
all using the same civ5 engine
enough of that justification.... we want more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
want to see more slimy worms and cool weapons

lol at all wormkind
basically a stronger version of barbarian here (more like a homegrown planetary civ by defualt)
worms vs you vs ai, now thats more like it

never played that alpha centuary thing....
i bet miss something great T_T

On April 15 2014 03:06 deth2munkies wrote:
This is literally Civ 6 but in space.

Alpha Centauri was not Civilization in space. It was much more...sophisticated. I know it wasn't 3D...

The best part of Alpha Centauri was the quotations from the faction leaders on researches and secret projects that displayed a forward-thinking look at the philosophy of the past and present projected into the future and taken to extremes. I'm not convinced they can pull that off again in this day and age.

On April 15 2014 01:34 Eliezar wrote:


I just don't think it is all that equal. Satellites = ???, customizable units = ????, not having a linear tech tree, etc

If anything its porting Alpha Centauri onto the Civ 5 platform...but even then its really not the same. It should be somewhat fresh, somewhat typical Civ concepts.

On April 15 2014 03:06 deth2munkies wrote:
This is literally Civ 6 but in space.

On April 15 2014 05:06 -Archangel- wrote:
Well it still beats playing one more game of Civ 5 (which I finished like 4-5 times), but if it will cost same as full Civ 5 then I will skip it. Even a mod made by Firaxis themselves is still a mod and should be priced as one (a price of an expansion).

On April 15 2014 09:40 riyanme wrote:

from what i read it's 50$

On April 15 2014 17:51 -Archangel- wrote:

Lol. I will skip this shit then until I can get it cheap on steam. Plenty of other good games coming up.

On April 16 2014 03:57 digmouse wrote:
I never played Civ (I do have 5 on Steam) nor any turn based strategy game, but might take a look at this since I'm a sci-fi guy.

On April 16 2014 04:31 digmouse wrote:

lol probably not, I'm simply bad at managing anything.

On April 16 2014 03:57 digmouse wrote:
I never played Civ (I do have 5 on Steam) nor any turn based strategy game, but might take a look at this since I'm a sci-fi guy.

On April 16 2014 05:41 Boblion wrote:
Looks like something between Pandora and the SMAC mod for Civ IV.

On April 16 2014 04:31 digmouse wrote:

lol probably not, I'm simply bad at managing anything.

On April 16 2014 19:14 Drake wrote:
civ5 was amazing or still IS amazing so it cant be rly bad ^^



you need a cheating AI to really have a fair game ... to be honest ... programm a good ai and you get rich ^^

On April 17 2014 00:04 digmouse wrote:
Plus I only have vanilla Civ and have no idea about how to upgrade it to something like Gold Edition, don't really want to buy all the DLCs.

On April 17 2014 01:22 digmouse wrote:

Yeah I know what you mean, but GnK and BNW cost 60$ together let alone all the smaller packs and they don't offer upgrade options to Gold or Complete, guess I'll wait till there is a price drop on Complete (and dust it since I can't really find an incentive to play it despite everyone is praising it).

On April 17 2014 01:22 digmouse wrote:
Yeah I know what you mean, but GnK and BNW cost 60$ together let alone all the smaller packs and they don't offer upgrade options to Gold or Complete, guess I'll wait till there is a price drop on Complete (and dust it since I can't really find an incentive to play it despite everyone is praising it).

In the announcement presentation, Firaxis had explained that Civilization’s tech tree was gone, in favor of a “tech web” that allowed for more lateral movement. That naturally raised the question of how pre-requisite technologies work with this new system.

“There are no pre-requisites,” David explained. In Beyond Earth you really WILL have the freedom to move laterally through the tech web however you like, though technologies that are further out from your starting point in the center will cost more to research.

On April 17 2014 01:56 Sub40APM wrote:

soft pre-reqs are still pre-reqs. If there is a tech that costs 5 turns to develop that increases your research speed by 50% then going for that and then a tech that costs 30 turns to develop is better than to just go for the 30 turn tech...

On April 17 2014 08:25 screamingpalm wrote:
Not sure if I like the tech tree idea (seems to be the extreme opposite design philosophy of SMAC). I really enjoyed the random tech in AC, but I'm probably in the minority that actually likes random elements in strategy games- to an extent anyway (not too random, I mean).

On April 17 2014 08:33 Sub40APM wrote:

what was random about AC, that you pick the different themes? But it still was a linear progression.

On April 17 2014 08:37 screamingpalm wrote:


Actually random tech was a toggle option iirc. You're right that it was still a linear progression though. I like random elements like that which make you develop strategy on the fly, rather than having a set "build order" or mathematically beating the game before even playing it... :D I guess it's still better than the linear tech of civ, but really hope they keep random research in as an option at least.

On April 17 2014 09:07 Gorsameth wrote:

Ever played Master of Orion 2 with an Uncreative race? Its about as random as a tech tree can get :p

On April 17 2014 01:56 Sub40APM wrote:

soft pre-reqs are still pre-reqs. If there is a tech that costs 5 turns to develop that increases your research speed by 50% then going for that and then a tech that costs 30 turns to develop is better than to just go for the 30 turn tech...

On April 18 2014 06:33 rezoacken wrote:


I always had the feeling that there shouldn't be techs that give you more techs (or tech speed) in 4X games. If you look at civ5 it creates an issue where you basically just go from one tech point to another. It's especially bad design (imo) when the tech jumps are exponential. In civ5 you just have to go to National College then to Education then to Schools and finally to Labs no matter your victory condition.

I always thought that science should be tied to something else. For example you could have religion give you science and then making your civ around religion would be a valid option. But another civ could use production to make science and for them production would be a bigger deal. For a science victory you could simply make science techs at the end so that it's only relevant for this victory.

A lateral tech tree is still an evolution though. Since while you will always get the science lateral lane you have to make choices for your side techs instead of being pigeonholed in the techs prerequisites by science techs (like Civ5). The problem in a classic civ game is that it doesn't really make sense that you could tech something modern without knowing about sailing :p

Edit: Another example of this problem is in Civ4 where with tech trading players were just beelining for techs that the AI doesn't prioritize. This make the player teching something they don't really care for only to get more techs out of it. To me it's just not a good idea and I'm glad they removed tech trading from Civ5. Now I'd just wish they make changes to how your beakers per turn works in Civ6.

On April 18 2014 09:06 Sub40APM wrote:

I would be interested in seeing science re-worked in civ 6 around what your civilization has around it, like if there is a lot of iron, iron working should be easier to research whereas if there is no iron then iron working should be relatively more expensive to develop.

On April 19 2014 03:06 Eliezar wrote:
Jetaap...its hard to say because I don't know what you are comparing it to. The part I enjoy is the empire building, when I can eek out a wonder, and trying to go for different win conditions.

What I don't enjoy is how long turns can take when its a bigger map with lots of AIs and how easy the game is to win if I make it to a decent position through a certain amount of time.

On April 19 2014 05:27 Jetaap wrote:

I don't have a lot of references, i played a bit of Crusader King II and Europea Universalis, and i enjoyed it quite a lot but i haven't spent a huge amount of time into these games (15 hours for CKII)
Overall i was just disapointed by the UI, and the game that i played was really easy but i think i should try again with hard difficulty settings.

On April 18 2014 16:19 Jetaap wrote:
I have tried civ5 because so many people play it and it has a good reputation but honestly i was really disapointed. The game really feels like it was made for touch device first, and the UI feels like a click fest. Moving an army across the map was insanely annoying. Overall i was expecting something much more fun.
Am I missing something?

On April 19 2014 08:55 LaNague wrote:
civ 5 plays a lot like a boardgame, some love it, some cant stand it.

If you play civ 5 because you want some epic 4x game about a civcilization that starts in the stoneage and ends with them leaving earth, then you will be thoroughly disappointed.

On April 19 2014 09:23 riyanme wrote:

sounds like your an anti 4x
we love civ5...
4x games are for people with lots of patience and more time to waste

On April 19 2014 19:36 LaNague wrote:


please, i play them since 1995 with ascendancy and master of orion.


Civ 5 simply is more of a boradgame type.
Just look at civ5 strategy forums, youll see talk about buildorders way into turn 50 or another common talk is about how fast you can win the game.
It doesnt help that the game is very biased towards having a limited number of cities.


This is all ok, but a lot of people who love 4x for empire management will simply not like it. You dont actually feel like managing an empire, they will think, you simply feel like playing a (board) game.

On April 19 2014 06:49 Sub40APM wrote:

sounds like you dont like turn based games.

On April 19 2014 10:14 screamingpalm wrote:
There was some mention of attracting XCOM players somewhere... interview maybe? But man, that would be the ultimate game for me... an XCOM 4X. Doesn't need to necessarily be an XCOM setting either.

Take the best features of XCOM... the tactical combat, perma death and attachment to squad members (could be heroes or whatever title to give on-map leaders etc), the impending doom and sense of urgency... and mix these elements with a 4X game. Like, AoW3 has decent tactical combat, but still not as good as XCOM, for example.

On April 19 2014 19:36 LaNague wrote:


please, i play them since 1995 with ascendancy and master of orion.


Civ 5 simply is more of a boradgame type.
Just look at civ5 strategy forums, youll see talk about buildorders way into turn 50 or another common talk is about how fast you can win the game.
It doesnt help that the game is very biased towards having a limited number of cities.


This is all ok, but a lot of people who love 4x for empire management will simply not like it. You dont actually feel like managing an empire, they will think, you simply feel like playing a (board) game.

On April 20 2014 02:52 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Wow so now it appears the entire game will be on just one planet. I mean this puts a downer on the whole game imo.

On April 20 2014 02:52 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Wow so now it appears the entire game will be on just one planet. I mean this puts a downer on the whole game imo.

On April 20 2014 01:43 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I really wish they would go back to tiles rather than sticking with the honeycombs.

On April 20 2014 01:06 Jetaap wrote:

I liked CKII and EU4, how does that make me someone that doesn't like turn based games?

On April 20 2014 05:27 LaNague wrote:
i wouldnt exactly say those games are real time games, you speed up time until something happens and then you pause.

Also, i think you are confusing strategy with tactics.
having the bigger army in the firstplace is the strategy.

On April 20 2014 02:52 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Wow so now it appears the entire game will be on just one planet. I mean this puts a downer on the whole game imo.

On April 20 2014 13:32 Sub40APM wrote:
So reading that PC Gamer article, there will be only 3 'base' factions and then you alter them by giving them different bonuses. Sounds a lot like...terran...protoss and zerg actually...
One holds onto being human, one is highly tecnological and robotic and one is biological and assimilates and makes new organisms...

On April 20 2014 14:31 [Agony]x90 wrote:


I think by this point it's just a standard sci-fi trope. It's not something that originated with SC either. For example, Aliens vs. Predators.

On April 20 2014 01:32 rezoacken wrote:
I don't see how that would be possible without making a split between campaign and battles, something like AoW3 where you have army stacks but battles are resolved ala XCom.

On April 20 2014 16:28 screamingpalm wrote:


It certainly doesn't appear to fall within the scope of the design for this game, but rather something I really wish for. Would really love to see Firaxis add tactical combat to a civ game, and just seems like a great time to experiment with it. I never cared about the 1upt v stack of doom debate, because I think they could do better than either lol. They certainly did it well with XCOM after all, but alas. A lot of those other elements really don't seem hard to implement in a 4X game. Attachment to squad members could easily translate by adjusting the pace of production so as not to make units disposable, give choices for unit upgrades upon veterancy, etc. It seems like it would be easily possible to me, but would require a different design focus, admittedly. Maybe it would just end up too much of beast to code etc?

On April 20 2014 12:40 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Said tiers of, i forget, faction.

On April 20 2014 20:00 Nachtwind wrote:
The only negative things i red here are for me personal their affection with CIV4/5 (i dislike 4/5 heavily) and that there´s no world council anymore. *sad tears* Oh and that XCOM players are a target audience ... dafuq??

On April 21 2014 03:40 boesthius wrote:

he's saying that in Beyond Earth there is no world congress; which they stated in the interview:

On April 21 2014 04:08 riyanme wrote:

i think its reasonable for not having a council here...
for a change... a new gaming experience so not as to be so called as 'mod of other civs'
totally agreeing to that. i dont want to play civbe and later find myself complaing, 'the heck, this is just the same as...'
and maybe implemented in an civbe expansion~

On April 21 2014 04:19 Nachtwind wrote:


Imagine that.. people have different taste, mind blowing, i know

And yes i like the civ games that are actually made by sid meier more and i heavily dislike, because of own personal flavor, the 4/5 civs

Another addition: If i would find myself in beyond earth and say "this is like alpha centauri.." than this moment is the call why i throwed 50 bucks at the sales man in the store

On April 21 2014 07:52 boesthius wrote:
I'm playing civ5 on deity on a regular basis at the moment and I can see why people dislike civ5 compared to 4 specifically. I think the biggest weakness in civ5 is in two places - tech and diplomacy. Someone had mentioned it earlier - but you're more or less going to go for the same build order on higher difficulty civ games every time - rush national college, oxford university, use the free tech to get into renaissance era, into architecture to get porcelain tower, then either sci theory or industrialization into gg. Social policies are a big problem too, you're forced into starting Tradition or Liberty(with tradition still generally being stronger) and going Rationalism once you unlock it, into ideological tenants.

On April 21 2014 08:35 Eliezar wrote:
I totally love the way they got rid of doom stacks by having tiles only support one unit.

On April 21 2014 08:40 Gorsameth wrote:

It made the AI a lot worse tho. They get so caught up in chokes

(haven't played in a while so maybe they fixed it but it was pretty bad at release)

On April 21 2014 11:10 boesthius wrote:



and yeah it's definitely smarter than civ4 but that really doesnt mean much. the AI is still pretty abusable when it comes to military - luring units out with weak units and workers and naval warfare is absolutely atrocious. you'll also notice that once you get to the point of playing immortal/deity your army isn't going to be that big, but you'll be able to take on their entire army with a few promoted siege units and 2 melee units being able to abuse the ai

On April 21 2014 15:35 rezoacken wrote:
I always felt that if tactical combat was wanted for Civ it should be done on a separate map rather than on the campaign map.

The campaign map is too small to accommodate armies and the AI has huge trouble moving them around. But if you let the AI have its stacks it will be able to gauge way better the ennemy strength and move things around. Once combat is engaged you go into a tactical mode, in which if the map isn't too complicated the AI should be challenging enough.

On April 21 2014 08:11 Redox wrote:

Well it is kind of to be expected that playing a turn-based game against the AI gets one-dimensional. But what is with playing against other players? Is the game not more interesting in multiplayer? (have not played it myself yet)

On April 22 2014 04:30 Boblion wrote:
I would really like a shorter tech tree where your tech choice really matters like in Fall from Heaven 2.

Teching in Civ is a bit boring because you don't really have many choices if you like to win lol, even in Civ IV. I mean you will have to do some choices early on (because of your starting civ, cities locations, neighbours etc...) but after that it becomes very linear.
In FFH2 you don't really have many choices either but at least they matter.

Rushing for a religion is also way more serious because of the synergies and there are more differences between let's say RoK and The Order than between judaism and hindouism in Civ IV (they get the same little boring bonuses because the developers are little cowards affraid of the public opinion).

You’ve also added a second strategic angle that’s an actual layer physically superimposed above the traditional one. How does the new orbital system relate to the planetary one?

DM: The core experience still transpires on the planet, so think of the orbital layer which exists above it as an augmentation: It’s a different way to play with the same pieces. You build orbital units in your cities, then launch them into orbit, which exists on a camera level above the planet’s surface. All of the orbital units are designed based on their effects on things on the ground (or water, as the case may be). And so everything from terraforming the ground, augmenting your improvements in your cities, buffing your military units or making military tactics possible to the point of outright bombarding holdings on the ground. And then the other way around, with things on the ground being able to shoot down orbital units. That’s how orbital play is done. Whatever your aims and ambitions and problems are on the surface of the planet, the orbital layer is an extension and complication of them.

On May 07 2014 11:27 rezoacken wrote:
Civ BE is a stand alone.

What Stealthblue is saying is that Alien races could come up in an expansion.

On April 13 2014 14:46 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Also just noticed the Pegi 18 rating... hm.

On May 20 2014 13:01 riyanme wrote:
cavalry design on the second unit doesnt make any sense...
putting wheels at the back.... WTF!

and as for naval fighers...am i looking at super sentai's mechas?

On May 21 2014 05:08 Torte de Lini wrote:
http://gamecrate.newegg.com/civilization-beyond-earth-hands-details-galore/

new info about Beyond Earth

On May 21 2014 14:21 Eschaton wrote:
It sounds a lot like Alpha Centauri, except this might actually get released as a playable game.

On May 21 2014 16:55 EatThePath wrote:

What do you mean...?

On May 22 2014 00:34 Eschaton wrote:


What do you mean, what do I mean? Alpha Centauri was a planetary colonization-themed civ-like game made my Sid Meier, that was kind of like "Civ in Space". On release it was completely and utterly broken, blatantly unfinished software. To me, this is until proven innocent Alpha Centauri 2.

Edit: I'm not the only one who thinks so : link

On May 22 2014 00:34 Eschaton wrote:


What do you mean, what do I mean? Alpha Centauri was a planetary colonization-themed civ-like game made my Sid Meier, that was kind of like "Civ in Space". On release it was completely and utterly broken, blatantly unfinished software. To me, this is until proven innocent Alpha Centauri 2.

Edit: I'm not the only one who thinks so : link

On May 22 2014 00:34 Eschaton wrote:


What do you mean, what do I mean? Alpha Centauri was a planetary colonization-themed civ-like game made my Sid Meier, that was kind of like "Civ in Space". On release it was completely and utterly broken, blatantly unfinished software. To me, this is until proven innocent Alpha Centauri 2.

Edit: I'm not the only one who thinks so : link

On May 22 2014 02:30 Talaris wrote:
@AC

-ICS
-1-turn-wonder-rushing
-Crawlers in General
-Almost-Insta-GG-2xHP-reactors/combined with helicopters
-No significant AI

It's broken stuff, in a good sense for that time.

Not sure if it would make the cut with todays standards, though. Especially the AI-part. On the other side, Unit workshop and powerful terraforming is stuff that almost no newer game even tried to tackle and for me, the reason (with fan-patches or mods) to still play AC nowadays...

On May 22 2014 00:34 Eschaton wrote:


What do you mean, what do I mean? Alpha Centauri was a planetary colonization-themed civ-like game made my Sid Meier, that was kind of like "Civ in Space". On release it was completely and utterly broken, blatantly unfinished software. To me, this is until proven innocent Alpha Centauri 2.

Edit: I'm not the only one who thinks so : link

On May 22 2014 00:34 Eschaton wrote:


What do you mean, what do I mean? Alpha Centauri was a planetary colonization-themed civ-like game made my Sid Meier, that was kind of like "Civ in Space". On release it was completely and utterly broken, blatantly unfinished software. To me, this is until proven innocent Alpha Centauri 2.

Edit: I'm not the only one who thinks so : link

On May 22 2014 09:18 marigoldran wrote:
Also, they'll need to come up with better names for the factions. Pan-American Cooperative? What sort of terrible name is that? "Altarians" or "Drengin" or "Zerg" are soooooo much better as names.

Imagine calling the zerg: "alien xenomorphs." Geezus.

There are four victory "main quests" that denote several steps necessary to achieve it. The first is called "transcendence". The aim here is to be one with the planet. To do this, the first step is to communicate with the planetary life , which requires two of the following three technologies Transgenics, Swarm intelligence and Nanorobotics. If you have researched this, one of the next necessary step is reported. Victory Condition 2 questline "Promised Land": As a brave Earth emigrants one wants to connect to the mother planet (again), includes the launch of a Lasercom satellites as the first step. In Quest series 3 ("Contact") is about to get in contact to the previously alien civilization on the new planet. There are three options in the first step: finding the corresponding signal when exploring ruins, build a Deep Space Telescope to build (an orbital unit) and to start researching technology "Transcendental Equation". The last quest line eventually called "Emancipation", the goal here is to return to Earth, and "freeing the inhabitants from their lower, non-enlightened existence." Here we go again with the building of a Lasercom satellites. You can try to track multiple victory conditions simultaneously, but you will have to decide eventually.

Explorers are used to dig (digs last five turns) four types of tiles: Progenitor Ruins (provide advanced technology or increase in affinity), Alien Skeleton (native unit or energy), crashed satellites (science boost or new resource location), not sure what the last one is (my German is rusty and basic so I am relying on Google translate a lot here, I have been told by two people it is an abandoned human settlement, and it gives pop boost or culture).

Oceanic Alien units called Sea Dragon and Kraken.

Virtue bonuses: there are two types of synergy bonuses: one type (of which there are three per virtue, for a total of twelve) rewards you if you have a certain number of virtues have collected within the three ranks. The second type (of which there are six in total) is one of the virtues collected within a rank.

It isn’t just a visual overhaul being done for Beyond Earth. Those systems that govern bonuses as you progress through the game have also been reimagined. Most significant of these is the Tech Web, an evolution of the standard tech tree used in Civ. It is designed as a nod to the fact that Beyond Earth deals with possibilities, whereas Civ dealt in reality, where we know the linear progression of science quite well.

“There is no linear tech tree anymore, because you are really in the future now and in uncharted territory. So when you start out you are in the middle of the technology web, rather than on a linear technology tree” According to Dennis. “It will change the very look of what your civ looks like”

You start the game in the centre of the web, and as you research you move outwards. This not only keeps every game different, thanks to the design nudging you to push your technological developments in a certain direction. To make the most of your research you will want to focus on an area of the tech web, pushing yourself down a path that manifests in the look and feel of your civilization and its inhabitants.

On July 02 2014 15:05 mucker wrote:
All I care about is the AI and diplomacy not being complete crap like it is in civ5. Games with less than full human players always came down to manipulating the stupid AI, paying a bunch of iron and horses in the modern era to go to war with a neighbor it had been friends with the entire game, destroying trade routes and research agreements in the process. Even in games with all human players the absurdly bad tactics of the city states could cost you the game if you got in to a war.

The beginning launch stuff seeding your game plan sounds cool. I hope there is a way to just have it randomly chosen so players (AI and human) can be forced to try different things.

On July 04 2014 01:08 rezoacken wrote:
While I'm a big fan of Civilization, 4 and 5 alike I have grown accustomed to not expect much of Vanilla 1.0 versions :/

Lack of features and ridiculous balance incoming.

On July 04 2014 04:07 Sub40APM wrote:

Well, on Civ 5 they decided for some reason to have a 22 year old kid do the lead designer for it so he stripped out what he considered 'blot' but where actually vital features of the game that the next 2 expansions put right back in while not doing anything to improve the ai -- and maybe even hurt it by trying to develop better combat via hexes and one unit stacking without importing a functioning combat ai.

On July 04 2014 01:08 rezoacken wrote:
While I'm a big fan of Civilization, 4 and 5 alike I have grown accustomed to not expect much of Vanilla 1.0 versions :/

Lack of features and ridiculous balance incoming.

On July 27 2014 23:50 Acrofales wrote:
What dig at central asia? I don't see anything that could even be construed as such