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[Chiefwaffles]

I honestly think the only real thing connecting BE to SMAC is the fact that they're both on alien planets, and have similar-ish themes for what happens with the more advanced technology encountered in both games. (Although admittedly, SMAC does that better.) I have no idea what "worst parts" of SMAC are present in BE.

I see BE as not really linked to SMAC at all, and instead as its own game with its own features and aesthetics. They definitely took SMAC as inspiration, but it's pretty obviously not a spiritual successor to SMAC.

[IronyOwl]

It's like someone added the worst aspects of AC with the worst aspects of Civ

Part of me believes that these mistakes HAD to be made so that the developers never try to half-heartedly recreate AC again.

They weren't trying to recreate AC, they were trying to make Civilization In Space. Which AC was, but not all rectangles are squares and all. The lesson, assuming there is one, isn't "Don't half-ass Alpha Centauri," it's "Don't half-ass Civilization, your players have like eight games and a dozen expansions to compare it to."

Well, that or "Don't try new things, you might screw them up," but everyone knows that one already. "Don't bother with anything that might be mistaken for Alpha Centauri" gets an honorable mention for noise level, but I assume that's the sort of cultist wailing that doesn't actually affect sales much. XCOM is still getting that and it's got a sequel coming out in a few months, for instance, while Dungeon Keeper has nothing but a handful of indie remakes and stylistic successors despite fans clamoring for its return since forever.

[Greenbane]

(delete)

[Greenbane]

The problem with Beyond Earth isn't that it's not SMAC. It's that:

a) Its innovation is not well thought-out, brainchildren of presumably inexperienced devs. And said lack of experience prevents them from knowing how the hell to fix it.
b) It inherits Civilization V's worst flaw, an overwhelmed AI who can't manage the more complex post-Civ4 environment, let alone BE's numerous additions.

I mean, if the game worked as intended, the systems were balanced, and the AI was competent and played distinctly (Elodie focuses on culture, Rejinaldo is Monty in space, Fielding focuses of espionage big time, etc.), a lot less people would be complaining it's not SMAC II. SMAC II, and it's hypothetical, impossibly good lore, would fail almost as badly if it suffered from the same gameplay malfunctions CivBE does.

[Tarran]

First patch that does major things is out. You can now end wars without being forced to take all the enemy's cities now, apparently.

Also does some other minor things. Welp, at least they released it before a month passed.

[thegoatgod_pan]

So major fix with balancing, but still free wonders for China?  I am giving it another six months to come to resemble a game.

[Chiefwaffles]

I agree with the unbalanced free wonders thing, but how does a single balance issue make something not a game?

[forsaken1111]

Its one free wonder per city. How many cities do you guys found? My most recent win I only had 3...

[Graknorke]

Being able to snatch a useful wonder for the cost of a settler rather than the wonder itself is pretty big.

[forsaken1111]

Being able to snatch a useful wonder for the cost of a settler rather than the wonder itself is pretty big.

I guess so. I tried them out and having one free wonder didn't seem too overpowered. If you want to keep taking advantage of the ability you have to keep popping out new cities, which gets expensive and unhealthy fast

[thegoatgod_pan]

I found endless cities, if I am not founding one I build a colonist.

I don't even play China, it is just the resource gain from trade and the strategic resources far outweigh the malus from poor health if you keep it manageable (and since many cities mean massive income: why wouldn't you simply buy the health buildings with your massive income).

The free wonders thing is nuts considering the game already rewards rapid expansionism and the addition of water cities effectively double your ability to expand.

Everyone I play with also realizes there is no reason not to always expand. So right now China is broken, the game is functional without China, but it still means you have agree with friends not to play it and pick instead of randoming to avoid letting the AI get it.  I am going to wait until they play test it some more and fix it.

[IronyOwl]

Its one free wonder per city. How many cities do you guys found? My most recent win I only had 3...

Not many, though I tend to go light and large on cities regardless of whether it's a good idea or not.

That said, the relative unimportance of special resources helps a lot. In CivV you always wanted more tasty Luxuries, so a good city could pay for itself even if your only goal was to have the most awesome capital in the history of the world. There's a little of that in BE, mainly with orbital requirements, but unless you need more special military units you're usually either expanding for More Everything or not bothering.


Speaking of which, that ties into another of my gripes about the game: the cities are too generic. You don't usually have or notice "industrial outposts" or "population centers" or "agricultural plants" or anything like that. Which most certainly isn't new to BE or anything, but it still makes me sad. I wonder if they should have expanded on the "if you have X resource, you can build Y building" mechanic more, or maybe even gone with a variant of the Affinity or Virtue systems, to try to give your individual cities more character than "resource production blob #4."

And again, in complete fairness to BE, I've never seen a game that does this especially well. Warlock comes impressively close considering its lack of focus on city management, but still mostly boils down to "pick a tree, it'll boost everything including relevant special terrain."

Everyone I play with also realizes there is no reason not to always expand. So right now China is broken, the game is functional without China, but it still means you have agree with friends not to play it and pick instead of randoming to avoid letting the AI get it.  I am going to wait until they play test it some more and fix it.

I don't have RT, but in my experience the AI doesn't expand much faster than I do. I mean, they catch up eventually, but I'm not sure what you've experienced to convince you that an AI China means you never get any wonders ever again. Or, for that matter, that you being China means you're too powerful to have fun anymore.

I mean, hell. In the early game, it's not uncommon for me not to have the techs to build any wonders. I have to wonder how much of that bonus gets lost because you're not always going to have a wonder you want when you have a city you want (and vice versa, though presumably less so in your case).

[IronyOwl]

Heh. There's a handful of amphibious units that I assume could do that, but one's an alien and the rest are probably pretty deep into their affinity/tech trees. Lake fortress ftw, I guess.

[Aoi]

I just finished my first game (8 factions, large map, difficulty gave slight advantages to the AI) and... tremendously underwhelmed. Hopefully this'll be useful for somebody fencing about the Humble Bundle that didn't read the last 55 pages...

The UI feels like it was designed for a tablet interface, and left half-baked. There was no information-- Colonel Mustard wants me to declare war on Miss Scarlet. Eruhm... who are you again? Is she the behemoth on the map waiting to stomp my face in if I agree? Why couldn't I seem to conduct diplomacy from the diplomacy tab; I had to look for one of their cities on the map. Why does it take extra clicks to view my units or city info; there's plenty of room on the interface. And I get that WASD has other uses. But seriously, not even giving the option to adjust those keybinds? A thousand niggling interface problems... (For all its numerous other faults, I want to say that, out of recent 4X games, I liked Endless Space's diplomacy interface best. I think it was ES, at least.)

As posted slightly back, the quotes don't seem to do much for me. In addition to the voiceovers giving each faction additional personality, the addition of actual quotes lended it a bit more gravity, I think.

All the data went away. I liked seeing the charts showing how population and military might changed over time ("Hey, I didn't realize that battle for Pleasantville ended up taking out 3/4ths of their army!"), or seeing how wealth correlated to other factors. Or the timelapse maps of territory. Or, to a lesser extent, something from Civ1-- 'Ptolemy's List of the [greatest, wealthiest, etc] Civilizations in the World' that showed up every once in a while (I think it was called that?). And the holobooks from SMAC ("Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Organic Superlube (But Were Afraid To Ask)", XD)!

The technology tree being a radial web with leaves was an interesting change. Wish you could zoom out on it, to see the entire thing though. Affinities are a fascinating addition. Unfortunately, something I can't quite pin down just didn't work because I ended up feeling that my units were incredibly constrained and equally useless. Benefits from technology felt less gratifying-- probably due to how units mostly got stronger from affinities, and not tech directly.)

Major new addition-- satellites. Personally not a fan, but I think they work out okay? I don't really like how they're mostly limited time effects though.

This one's more of a series of design decisions: I noticed this in Civ5 and was hoping they reverted this one, but why do they seem intent on trying to penalize you so much for having lots of cities (I remember one epic SMAC game where the Morganites ended up with like 140 cities...). And why are cities built like brick walls in the early and mid-game. I felt like Zapp Brannigan, hurling men at the gates until their kill counter maxed out and shut down.

So yeah. UI felt horrible, didn't feel too connected in general, wars took forever. Looking at some of the recent posts in this thread... yeah, it's Civilization in Space. I probably should've known this walking into it, but it just kind of solidified that I don't really like the direction that Civilization has gone recently.

[Chiefwaffles]

It feels like a lot of that stuff applies to Civ 5 as well, but they're all valid complaints depending on your opinion.