Civers unite!!!!

[Sudo_Nym]

I really like that the game was better synergy than Civ V does between it's systems. I feel like, in Civ V, you need to pick one of culture/religion/tourism and forget the other two. I like that BE lets you build up everything together, but it feels like it's way too easy. If they're going to offer increased synergy, they need to offer smaller bonuses or make advancement more difficult to balance it out.

And trade routes are ridiculous. Don't know how they missed that, since it was a thing in Civ V.

Aliens are tough, which I think actually breaks Purity- get level one, and they'll never attack a tile with an explorer on it, so you can just build some explorers to escort your army and the aliens will never bother you. It also makes Harmony a little worse, since you need Xenomass, but Xenomass is generally found underneath Nests.

[Sudo_Nym]

It's more than that. Explorers count as non-combat units, so you can stack them on the same square as your soldiers. Then the soldiers can march into battle without fear of counterattack, since they're on a tile with an explorer on it, which the aliens will never attack.

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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.

[Sudo_Nym]

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.

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

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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.

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

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It's been my experience that multiplayer is mostly won via domination, but I haven't played a ton.

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Play Diety Venice!

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Yeah. It's already up for preorder on Steam.

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Is the map still hexagonal?