Civers unite!!!!

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I have IV and V and will play with people. Sadly, I can't do Sunday; I have other plans.

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I'm usually good on weekday nights (I'm Eastern time).

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CEEDEEBEE AND NEXUS

do we still need to finish our game?

or did we decide to just be done with it

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nexus you didn't have nukes yet

I know because I am winning science I think

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WHATEVER BROSKI

WHATEVER THE HELL COUNTRY I WAS IS COMING FOR YOUR ASS

(actually we should probably restart, didn't we have weird issues with difficulty level being not-the-same for each of us?)

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That's quite interesting, though the conclusion they reached seems fairly obvious to me?

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I am super excited for Beyond Earth.

But sadly, my personal laptop doesn't have a separate GPU, so it can't even run Civ V. This means I either have to play on my work computer (which is fine until I get a new job) or I don't get to play Civ anymore. SAD DAY. I'm going to build a desktop eventually, but haven't started yet.

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Start on a low difficulty; the computerized advisors are actually quite well-written, and the Civilopedia is generally very thorough.

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I assume tall is few cities, all the buildings and shit in those cities, while wide is tons of cities?

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why the fuck is my first city like "oh here's a monument in 8 turns" then my second city is like "lol it'll take 25"

Every space has its own resource values (food, gold, and/or production). This is generally based on type of land (hills are production + gold, grassland is food + maybe gold, etc). Also like Mhork said, your capital has some production bonuses due to the Palace building that comes in naturally to your capital.

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Oh yeah, that's what I was forgetting. Resource tiles add additional resources as well as the resource itself.

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I will have a new computer Soon (TM) and thus will be up for MOAR CIV

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Even if you're aiming for a culture victory?

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I am currently testing out this whole streaming thing with new Civ!



twitch.tv/quadz08

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Game is completely broken apparently--trade routes are OP and they, once again, forgot that giving free settlers really early(since you get culture at a quicker rate) is stupid.

Also health is completely ignorable so you just sit there and spam cities.

Trade routes aren't OP, they're just strictly

necessary

in order to keep your energy economy running at anything near feasible levels until later in the game, IME

and I disagree that health is ignorable

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ah yeah internal trade routes are pretty silly; if you can spare an internal for a new city then you can bring it up to speed much faster (especially since surplus economy is almost entirely used for purchasing buildings and units now, since you don't have to spend energy/gold to promote units)

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Oh, man, the spy energy stealing bullshit is totally fucking broken

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Where's the first patch info?

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oh, what you WOULD like

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Remind me to post here tomorrow, I have some Opinions to share after completing my 2nd full game

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OPINIONS TIME

Let me preface this by saying that overall, I think BE is a good game. It's entertaining, I will play far too many hours of it, I enjoy it a lot. HOWEVER, there are some issues.

1 - The game simply doesn't feel very strategically deep. It feels like Civ Lite to me. Now, that might be for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the game itself (I'm older than I have been when other Civ games came out; I've only played single player, and only on the Mercury difficulty; I am used to playing Civ V with two expansions), but regardless, it still seems a bit one-note. Past games have had multiple systems that relate to one another, but you have to build them separately (religion-science-culture/tourism in Civ V), but in this one, the Affinity-Research-Virtues thing all feel very much like one thing (which I don't think is good). Thinking critically about it, I don't know why I feel that way about Virtues in particular, since they really don't have anything to do with anything else (other than the fact that it benefits the same basic statistics in the long run), but it really doesn't feel like a separate system, for whatever reason.

2 - Some of the quests are bugged / coded poorly / badly designed / something. At least a couple of times now, I've gotten quests that are literally impossible for me to complete. "Build a petrochemical plant in City X." Oh, wait, there are no petroleum deposits close enough to City X for a petrochemical plant to ever be an available building. I guess I could build all the way out to the edge of the research web for the orbital that grants random strategic resources and hope / wait for it to make petroleum appear, but unless I'm playing supremacy and think that's a worthwhile tech for me to have

anyway

, the game is going to be practically over by the time I complete that quest. OR the one where it wants you to build X number of Y building (two observatories, for example). Well, shit, I've already built 4 of them. Is that not good enough? No? I have to found

two new cities

specifically to complete this quest? Not a fan, thanks.

3 - The flavor feels extremely lackluster. This is in no small part due to the fact that the FIRST THING YOU SEE whenever you kick up the game is an utterly beautiful cinematic, which tells an incredible, poignant story in about 3 minutes of time. You never see anything even remotely similar to this cinematic ever again (which I know is standard for Civ, but this one in particular was so moving that it really made me want more). I would have happily waited for a Christmas release for a game-ending cinematics of similar length and quality, one for each victory type (and perhaps some for a loss). Maybe I'm underestimating the cost / time / effort of making a cinematic like that, and it would have been an extra for those 5 or 6 cinematics. If so, fair enough, but it won't stop me wishing. Apart from the lack of cinematics, I wish they hadn't recycled so much AI dialogue. So much of the text is straight up copied from Civ 5, which just feels gross to me. ("Oh, now I have to deal with you AND [x leader]? I guess the vermin are breeding," etc.) They also only have 8 leaders and 3 affinities; would it have been that hard to write dialogue for the AI leaders that was unique to that leader/affinity combo? When Militant South America Guy and Daoist Asia Lady both tell me the same things because they both happen to be building towards the Harmony affinity, it rather breaks the illusion. It's not that difficult to invent motivations for each of the three affinities based on the personalities they were clearly trying to create for each leader. ALSO, friggin' let me see what my own leader looks like, please? They have this mild thing going on where leaders change appearance as the move further into a certain affinity, and I want to know what mine looks like! I played the whole first game as Brazil and only knew I was a male leader because my name is Alfonso or Alejandro or whatever. I just want a place where I can see the basic info for my colony (what starting options did I choose, what are my civ's unique abilities, image of my leader).

4 - The four victory types that are not Domination are literally

the same thing,

just reskinned slightly. Build a tile improvement that is also a building, and then wait for Some Number of Turns. Yes, there are different sacrifices to be made for each (must sacrifice military units or build settlers for Emancipation Gate / Exodus Gate, must have positive energy economy for Beacon, build speedup buildings for Mind Flower), but they're all pretty much the same in practice. I imagine that in a multiplayer game, this makes having a strong military absolutely crucial, regardless of what type of victory you're aiming for, since even if you're not going for Domination, your Planetary Wonder can be destroyed by any individual enemy unit walking on top of it, and the whole planet is made aware that you've completed said Planetary Wonder. Maybe that's the case for multiplayer games in past civs as well (I haven't been much of a PVP person in Civ until quite recently), but I'm not convinced I like that. Also, for fuck's sake, let me

turn the Beacon off

if I want. Sometimes I'll decide I need the energy to help prevent Joe Blow from winning in 15 turns, more than I need to win in 23 turns.

5 - The affinity-specific resources seem frustratingly difficult to get enough of to build both your unique buildings and unique units. In my first game, I got to level 18 on harmony, but never once built a Xeno Titan, because I never had enough xenomass for it. Similar goes for my supremacy game, where I basically never built a unit that required firaxite. I mean, when one unit costs me

7 firaxite

, and some buildings cost as much as 4, and etc., it just seems like there's never enough. Maybe that's intentional, I guess, but in practice it just seems that unless I'm aiming for a domination victory, I'll just never build the Big Scary Unique Units.

6 - Deal-making / diplomacy seems functionally useless in this game. Again, possibly a function of single-player on Mercury difficulty, but my trade with AIs thus far has consisted of "Open Borders for Open Borders?" Cool. "Wanna be allies?" Cool. "Can you help me out, I'll give you a Favor (tm)?" Sure, I guess. There's nothing that the AI seems to have that I want, except maybe more of my specific type of resource (and even then, not really?) now that there are so few types of resources, and luxury resources don't exist.

7 - Aliens are basically meaningless after the first 50-100 turns , since you can build repulsor fences and extend them to your trade units (and this is despite the stated goal of making aliens relevant through the entire game). I want to be able to do more things with them, or understand how they work more clearly, or be able to see the benefits of a Harmony affinity in action (can I convert Aliens to my own units? Can I build an improvement on alien nests in my territory that give me production for domesticating this nest? etc). They're interesting, because they're extremely numerous while not being inherently aggressive, but I just want them to be more useful during the game.

8 - The UI is fairly dull, and available actions are sometimes unclear. (Sometimes important quest-y actions appear above the standard actions. Sometimes they are to the far right of the standard actions.) I appreciate that they're going for a spacey feel with the metallic-y grey, but it just makes production menus SUPER BORING.

8 - Nati's points on balance are pretty on-point, from what I can tell.

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sonic fence is basically the early game decision point "do you want to kill aliens for military experience or let them be to keep them from being Super Attack Mode Guys," but it's a bad decision point, because aliens are so strong at the point the building becomes available that anyone who

doesn't

build it is asking to get their shit kicked in by aliens real quick. They'll waste production time on units that die instead of buildings that are useful. Plus, the quest decision on Sonic Fence or whatever it's called has the Super Broken Option of shielding all your trade routes from alien attack.

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I mean, "never attack tiles with explorers on it" means only that, as far as I can tell. They'll attack all the other units around your explorer without issue, I'd imagine.

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Oh, I forgot that explorers were non-combat. That sounds like an easy fix to that issue - make explorers combat units.

what is NQ / ICS?

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I did a siege worm. Didn't seem particularly useful, though; maybe it's better if they're already being invaded.

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Titus, what's your steam?

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friend invite sent woot

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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.

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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).

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first patch is live

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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

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

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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.

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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.

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Please post replying to this post if you would be interested in some kind of multiplayer game.

yarrr

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First expansion pack announced

i hope this fixes some of the issues I have with depth (badum-tish)

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no more civ players?

EVERYTHING IS SAD FOREVER

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select a spy via the espionage screen (little spy-shaped button on your upper-right toolbar), then select the place you want to put them (your city, opponent city, city-state)

what point are you having trouble with?

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if I get time today I will try to take some screenshots and post them here

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invite sent

i am potentially interested in that product and/or service

what expansions do you have

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I am almost certianly going to suck at multiplayer, my understanding of the game is naive at best

I play on prince and have difficulty winning that much of the time

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Oh, I usually play on standard length - I think it's more fun / it's what I'm used to (I've been playing Civ for probably about 10 years now)

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Is anyone else paying attention to the reddit Battle Royale?

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haha

I'm a fan of Nam and Mexico, I think