Mafiascum.net

Maybe time to go above King setting? Won a diplo victory yesterday and a culture victory today.

Hmm.

Maybe it's my nostalgia filter, or maybe it's just me not really ever getting into any of the others, but Alpha Centauri was always the best civilization to me. I was hoping Beyond Earth would be AC2, but it doesn't seem to be the case from Quadz' review.

A shame.

Oh, it's absolutely AC2 from a feeling perspective. My (admittedly very limited) experience with AC felt very similar to playing BE. AC had, I think, a more story-driven feel to it than BE does, though.

Oh okay, will have to check it out then. Does it have the same customization system? Amazing custom units were the best part of AC, as well as just having a more streamlined feeling than civ to me (civ has like 40 resources, AC had 3). It was that kind of simple-yet-complex feeling that really made it work for me.

There is some amount of unit customization, but not nearly to the level AC had. When you level up your affinity, you can upgrade your units, and every time you upgrade units, there's a decision point on what extra buff you want to give them (+20% attack when flanking, or +30% attack in your territory?, etc).

I played a ridiculous amount of AC when I was a kid, and even got AX back when you could still buy it in stores (even kept my original CD in that brief period before digital downloads when it was worth $100+). AC/AX was ridiculously customizable, and BE doesn't really come close. Not only did you have unit customization to a greater degree, but you had government customization as well, and could even build water cities. I really miss being able to screw around with that.

That said, AC wasn't flawless, either- a lot of customization allowed you to utterly break the game. Get into Free Market, and you rack up enough cash to buy an army; get to the level 4 weapons with Nerve gas, slap them on an armorless rover, and you've got an early game unit that trumps anything the AI can build- they'll slap you with sanctions, but it won't matter once you've conquered them all. Plus, there's all the weird mechanics like city unit support inherited from Civ 2.

If we could get a game that was a combo of the two games, I would be in heaven, honestly.

I liked city unit support. It represented kind of an ongoing supply line needed - your units needed food, ammo, fuel, etc. From a game perspective, it heavily punished you for building huge armies and sitting on them. If you had a huge army, you needed to use it for gain, or you were going to fall behind really rapidly.

Sure, there were some balance changes you could do, hell, that's what I wanted - balance changes, AI upgrade, a few new mechanics, maybe make the native lifeforms a little more interesting (AX did some good things there, but a lot more could be done). And some new mechanics, hex grids, that sort of stuff.

I dunno, I do love the idea of super-unique units to go with the customization, but I'd love to be able to "build your own titan" type of thing.

Bah, maybe someone will do some modding.

Well, except that the city unit support I think was done poorly. It meant that empires that built tons of cities, even if those cities were low-quality and low-population, were favored since they could spread out the penalties. Of course, ICS was a problem for all the early civ games. Then you get to clean reactors, and suddenly city unit support is just an ability tax and nothing more. It might have been nice thematically, but it was a mess balance wise. The current method of support coming from the central treasury is a lot better.

What I really would like to see, above all else, is the return of probe teams. Being able to bribe your opponent's units was a godsend for builder empires. Being able to capture native units was really nice for green empires, too.

Frankly, I feel like the native life just isn't really anything in this game- in AC (and especially AX), you could get a lot of mileage of out native units and xenofungus. In BE, native life is really only a hassle until you get your fences up or a level in Purity, and then you just ignore them.

shit can't buy trade depots with energy anymore DAMMIT
sponsor ability changes are nice
I love the new harmony level 1 bonus - explorers getting miasma'd is awful and sucks
<3 cheaper affinity unit resource costs

Personally, I really like that they changed Purity 1 so you can't make your front lines invincible against aliens anymore.

Oh, I missed that change. That is much better, yeah.

They changed naval units, too; I think there was a bug before where naval units would use their melee defense instead of naval defense when attacked, which is why they were so squishy.

Yeah, I saw that change and thought it seemed like a thing they should've already been doing. Does this mean they'll be less likely to just melt to cities and ranged attacks? cause that would be lovely.

I haven't played the new patch yet, but hopefully.

Do people still go in with CIV anymore? I saw some AC talk . . .

Still play both occasionally, with some small mods; mostly ai things.

I still play a lot of civ. Slowly making my way through all of the civs so I can get the achievements.

I got bored with Civ. I'll probably pick it up again sometime.

I play a fair amount of civ, though not as much as I used to.

I've also gone back to Civ 5 for the most part - BE just isn't scratching the itch effectively.

Yeah I didn't really enjoy BE.

Is 5 worth playing without its DLC now?

I stopped back when the Inca were new; when Scarchers ruled the world, a single properly promoted Legionnaire could Kill an empire, and human cities were neigh untake-able.

To be fair, the DLC is on sale a lot.

I really hate religion in the game. If you get it, you can rofl stomp, if you don't get it, then it's just an irritant.

In post 220, pisskop wrote:Is 5 worth playing without its DLC now?

I stopped back when the Inca were new; when Scarchers ruled the world, a single properly promoted Legionnaire could Kill an empire, and human cities were neigh untake-able.

They've done a lot of balance fixes, however it's still better to get BNW.

In post 221, Nexus wrote:To be fair, the DLC is on sale a lot.

I really hate religion in the game. If you get it, you can rofl stomp, if you don't get it, then it's just an irritant.

I love religion, online it causes war an the AI hate you for it. It's hilarious.

Anybody know how "Score" is calculated? I find myself inevitably falling behind in when I play games (MP or SP - doesn't matter which) and I assume it's a problem with my build path but I don't know where the problem lies. It must be somewhat of an accurate indicator of how well I'm doing so far, since I usually lose when I have a significantly lower "Score".

Is there a "standard" start?
What's everybody's "standard" starts?