Civilization: Beyond Earth

Dave_The_Sheep

Cormac... wrote: »

Found staying healthy with even 3 cities to be extremely difficult.

Prosperity tree helps that massively later on. Had a civ of about 15 cities, and was in +48 health toward the end.

ZeitgeistGlee

Just did the Purity victory and never doing that again, seems like Contact/Domination are probably the easiest two and Harmony's the easiest of the 3 ideologies.

Cormac... wrote: »

Found staying healthy with even 3 cities to be extremely difficult.

I find it really weird BE punishes you for playing Tall over Wide, logically it makes far more sense for our early extraterrestrial colonies to be fewer in number but of moderate size with growing populations rather than a large number of small ones.

Gbear

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

Prosperity tree helps that massively later on. Had a civ of about 15 cities, and was in +48 health toward the end.

It's a consistent fault with the happiness/health system.

Later on health is almost worthless.

You at least get a little bonus in BE at 20 health and obviously happiness generated golden ages in Civ 5 but largely it becomes an irrelevance.

Usually you have the game "won" a 100 turns before the end. With nothing left to manage as your health/happiness, gold/energy are rendered irrelevant so all you have left to do, unless you're going for conquest, is occasionally pick a different tech, virtue or useless structure.

Kirby

Harmony is definitely the easiest of the three options regarding victory conditions. The AI knows it too. The AI that goes Harmony invariably wins if you stay out of it. Mind flowers for all!

nesf

ZeitgeistGlee wrote: »

I find it really weird BE punishes you for playing Tall over Wide, logically it makes far more sense for our early extraterrestrial colonies to be fewer in number but of moderate size with growing populations rather than a large number of small ones.

*Patiently waits for the balance patches.*

Generic Dreadhead

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

Prosperity tree helps that massively later on. Had a civ of about 15 cities, and was in +48 health toward the end.

That just sounds broken to me, that would NEVER have happened in Civ. It's a joke. And needs rebalancing

ZeitgeistGlee wrote: »

I find it really weird BE punishes you for playing Tall over Wide, logically it makes far more sense for our early extraterrestrial colonies to be fewer in number but of moderate size with growing populations rather than a large number of small ones.

Started a new game last night. Got to 3 cities around the 160 turn mark and was once again at about -2 to -4 health with no light at the end of the tunnel.

Also there was a crazy amount of Alien nests and Siege worms. I was pretty much holed up in my corner of the map playing defensive, which I don't mind, but christ, there was like 12 aliens around my bases.

Anyone else finding the satellites part to just be a little "meh"

I'm trying to like this game but it's really unbalanced.

nesf

Cormac... wrote: »

I'm trying to like this game but it's really unbalanced.

Civ games are long term purchases. The community normally breaks the game fairly soon after launch and Firaxis have to spend time tinkering and fixing. It's quite difficult for them to do this pre launch because it's such a sandbox game, the health mechanic could be coming from an idea that people wanted to go wide in this kind of game only to find that players still want to go tall and they need to come back to it. The satellites aren't game changing but they feel reasonable, I think it's better to be somewhat meh than somewhat overpowered with a new mechanic in a game. It's hard for them to balance these kinds of games because it's extremely difficult for the devs to figure out how players will play them, you see similar issues with the Paradox games at launch.

Give it time. Same as Civ V this might be one to put aside for a few months after launch to allow them time to patch up.

Gbear

Cormac... wrote: »

That just sounds broken to me, that would NEVER have happened in Civ. It's a joke. And needs rebalancing

That happened to me literally every game in Civ 5.

Routinely my happiness would be well over 50.

MOH

Cormac... wrote: »

Anyone else finding the satellites part to just be a little "meh"

For wars, Tachub is handy. And the two attack ones (orbital laser and planet killer).
Oh and the phasal transporter, once you work out that you can only drop units on the sea if they can hover. Since all my units could embark, I assumed I could drop them all off the enemy coast, but you can't.

But they're only helpful if you're either playing a small map or can expand your orbital coverage far enough, or have already captured an enemy city and the sky around it isn't filled with enemy sats.

The miasma one is useless. Every time I've launched it it's deorbited before it did much.

Gbear

MOH wrote: »

For wars, Tachub is handy. And the two attack ones (orbital laser and planet killer).
Oh and the phasal transporter, once you work out that you can only drop units on the sea if they can hover. Since all my units could embark, I assumed I could drop them all off the enemy coast, but you can't.

But they're only helpful if you're either playing a small map or can expand your orbital coverage far enough, or have already captured an enemy city and the sky around it isn't filled with enemy sats.

The miasma one is useless. Every time I've launched it it's deorbited before it did much.

It seems to remove all the miasma.

It's handy later on for new cities on the frontier.

MOH

Gbear wrote: »

It seems to remove all the miasma.

It's handy later on for new cities on the frontier.

That's what I thought it was supposed to do
Maybe I just hadn't put it where I thought I had

ZeitgeistGlee

nesf wrote: »

*Patiently waits for the balance patches.*

Pretty much. For all its early niggles I have to say I'm starting to quite like BE. It's reawoken that "one more turn" spark I'd lost with CiV. Hopefully it gets the attention it deserves to grow.

Cormac... wrote: »

That just sounds broken to me, that would NEVER have happened in Civ. It's a joke. And needs rebalancing

It routinely does, even in BNW. I'd consider it an odd if I didn't have at least 40-50 happiness towards the end of my games (I generally go culture/science wins) with only 6-7 cities.

BE definitely needs to rework Health though, you have to go Prosperity at the start in order to just get off the ground but once you've researched most of the tech tree, built most of the health buildings and taken most of the health virtues/improvements from quests you'll hit stupidly high numbers. I reached 340ish (not a typo :pac:) health a few nights ago while I was trying to get the Purity victory with Hutuma.

Cormac... wrote: »

Started a new game last night. Got to 3 cities around the 160 turn mark and was once again at about -2 to -4 health with no light at the end of the tunnel.

Also there was a crazy amount of Alien nests and Siege worms. I was pretty much holed up in my corner of the map playing defensive, which I don't mind, but christ, there was like 12 aliens around my bases.

Anyone else finding the satellites part to just be a little "meh"

I'm trying to like this game but it's really unbalanced.

I've found with aliens you have to start clearing the nests early or else you'll just end up swamped at later points. Four marine squads can pretty much clear a continent if you're careful with them and keep them next to one another but the main thing is to bring the xenomass pools into your territory otherwise nests will just keep spawning on top of them.

As I said, you have to play Wide (lots of low-med cities) over Tall (a few high pop cities) early in BE or the health will just continue to dog you. Unlike Happiness in CiV where you could farm happiness through luxuries at an empire level, Health improvements are rooted in individual cities. You should also be using/abusing your trade routes for internal growth over external trade, the energy/science trade-off isn't even worth considering.

Satellites are kind of weird for me, they certainly have their uses like clearing miasma or energy boosting but don't feel as key to the game as they were hinted to be, especially with range units being able to target them.

MOH wrote: »

That's what I thought it was supposed to do
Maybe I just hadn't put it where I thought I had

IIRC it starts in the centre and works its way out. They do work, it just takes a while. I've dropped 4 simultaneously over a large area to make way for a few cheeky settlements in decent terrain.

Generic Dreadhead

ZeitgeistGlee wrote: »

As I said, you have to play Wide (lots of low-med cities) over Tall (a few high pop cities) early in BE or the health will just continue to dog you. Unlike Happiness in CiV where you could farm happiness through luxuries at an empire level, Health improvements are rooted in individual cities. You should also be using/abusing your trade routes for internal growth over external trade, the energy/science trade-off isn't even worth considering

I can't believe as en experiences Civ player I'm even asking this.... but how do I play wide without having too much population. Do you just prioritise production, science in cities? Avoid growth buildings, avoid growth virtues?

Gbear

Cormac... wrote: »

I can't believe as en experiences Civ player I'm even asking this.... but how do I play wide without having too much population. Do you just prioritise production, science in cities? Avoid growth buildings, avoid growth virtues?

It's annoying that there's no "Avoid Growth" button.

ZeitgeistGlee

Cormac... wrote: »

I can't believe as en experiences Civ player I'm even asking this.... but how do I play wide without having too much population. Do you just prioritise production, science in cities? Avoid growth buildings, avoid growth virtues?

I haven't played on the harder difficulties yet (stuck to Mercury and Soyez while I'm learning the game's quirks) but I never specifically avoided growth in my early games and once I had a decent bit of health (10ish) actively started to grow my multitude of smaller cities with internal trade routes.

Because Firaxis got rid of luxuries, there are a lot more health producing building so you counter any potential drop in health by a huge margin as your cities start to grow and your science/culture ramps ups along with them allowing you to get Health techs and virtues that much faster.

Also as the AI is so passive in BE and you're focusing exclusively on internal trade routes there's absolutely no downside to other factions not liking you. It's not like BNW where a coalition could slowly but surely strangle off your happiness/growth with repeated motions before the UN. Generally speaking you'll be so far ahead tech-wise and production capability-wise of the AI that even if he does attack you you'll repulse him after only a few turns.

Kunkka

Tried the route of kill all the aliens. Those worms hurt! :eek:

Kirby

There is too much emphasis on Affinity levelling in this. It's not really balanced.

For example a faction who has researched a lot of unit and weapons on the tech tree and has 5 affinity.............. will get crushed by a faction who has researched only infrastructure but they have 8 affinity. Their units are simply much better because of the affinity upgrade.

Units becoming better being based purely on your affinity level is bloody frustrating. You are better off just spamming the easy to get affinity points on the tech web early and crushing your opponents. Spoils is a little.

nesf

Kirby wrote: »

There is too much emphasis on Affinity levelling in this. It's not really balanced.

For example a faction who has researched a lot of unit and weapons on the tech tree and has 5 affinity.............. will get crushed by a faction who has researched only infrastructure but they have 8 affinity. Their units are simply much better because of the affinity upgrade.

Units becoming better being based purely on your affinity level is bloody frustrating. You are better off just spamming the easy to get affinity points on the tech web early and crushing your opponents. Spoils is a little.

Is there really much of a difference between researching a tech to improve rocket launchers and researching a tech that boosts your affinity that gives you improved launchers?

Kirby

Yes. There is. Strategy games work off a system of choices and the repercussions of them. Go for early military? You will be safe but will suffer economically later. Go for early Economy? You will be rich but be vulnerable to early attacks. Go for researching high tech stuff? It will pay off later but you might not live that long. And so on. Even games with no combat or fighting work off this sort of mechanic.

You can research Ethics and Social Design and have a better army than somebody who has researched robotics and mechatronics. It makes zero sense.

If you want a badass army, you should be forced to sacrifice something else. And you aren't. You don't have to forgo production research and buildings in order to get there. It just.....happens. Its kind of derpy.

Gbear

Kirby wrote: »

Yes. There is. Strategy games work off a system of choices and the repercussions of them. Go for early military? You will be safe but will suffer economically later. Go for early Economy? You will be rich but be vulnerable to early attacks. Go for researching high tech stuff? It will pay off later but you might not live that long. And so on. Even games with no combat or fighting work off this sort of mechanic.

You can research Ethics and Social Design and have a better army than somebody who has researched robotics and mechatronics. It makes zero sense.

If you want a badass army, you should be forced to sacrifice something else. And you aren't. You don't have to forgo production research and buildings in order to get there. It just.....happens. Its kind of derpy.

The problem is there's so few units but roughly the same spread in strength from Civ 5.

So units go roughly from 5-100.
But they're jumping by 25%-50% in Civ 5 but more like 50%-100% in BE.

But in Civ 5 not only are there the same units as BE (infantry, siege, ranged, cavalry, air), there's also hard counter units that help bridge the gap - Lancers are between Knights and Cavalry in strength but hard counter other cavalry and are on a different branch of the tech tree.

Also, the Unique Units help as well - many of them aren't just a variation but play completely differently - cavalry archers replacing knights, battering rams replacing catapults and so on.

nesf

Kirby wrote: »

Yes. There is. Strategy games work off a system of choices and the repercussions of them. Go for early military? You will be safe but will suffer economically later. Go for early Economy? You will be rich but be vulnerable to early attacks. Go for researching high tech stuff? It will pay off later but you might not live that long. And so on. Even games with no combat or fighting work off this sort of mechanic.

You can research Ethics and Social Design and have a better army than somebody who has researched robotics and mechatronics. It makes zero sense.

If you want a badass army, you should be forced to sacrifice something else. And you aren't. You don't have to forgo production research and buildings in order to get there. It just.....happens. Its kind of derpy.

I disagree, you do have to make a sacrifice here to get Affinity, there's usually an economically superior option to another affinity point. Military techs in Civ are just picked up as you go up the tree, you can't avoid them for very long due to how many beakers you need for techs one or two steps ahead. In Civ if you're behind in military tech you're probably behind in general tech level too, the choice has always been between building military units or building buildings not particularly between tech choices because the tree is so narrow and you're picking the order a small group of techs are researched in not the overall tech focus.

jobbridge4life

Honestly speaking it seems that Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire still (sigh, will it ever change?) represent the pinnacle of this genre. Will not be spending my energy credits.

Generic Dreadhead

After 3 games I found myself not interested in playing another bout of this, I knew it's probably not giving it it's dues, but I'm just not gripped by it. I'll return in 6 months when it's all balanced a bit better and give it another whirl

Kunkka

Cormac... wrote: »

After 3 games I found myself not interested in playing another bout of this, I knew it's probably not giving it it's dues, but I'm just not gripped by it. I'll return in 6 months when it's all balanced a bit better and give it another whirl

I'm the same. Very disappointed overall :(

Zulu

Haven't finished a single game yet. Started (and about 800 turns taken) two, but am loosing interest fast.

Last night started another Civ 5 game.

Gbear

Zulu wrote: »

Haven't finished a single game yet. Started (and about 800 turns taken) two, but am loosing interest fast.

Last night started another Civ 5 game.

So did I (well, Sunday night).

I picked Spain and settled right next to the Great Barrier Reef.

It's such a massively different experience playing that to playing with the Mongols or the Shoshone.

You get nothing like that kind of variation in BE.

Kunkka

Gbear wrote: »

So did I (well, Sunday night).

I picked Spain and settled right next to the Great Barrier Reef.

It's such a massively different experience playing that to playing with the Mongols or the Shoshone.

You get nothing like that kind of variation in BE.

I think that's it in a nutshell really. We're all used to being spoilt with so much side stuff in BNW that BE is just boring with very little to do or look forward to. I've played two games of it and won both on Mercury which was just zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Generic Dreadhead

Looks like Europe has just won the Science Victory :pac:

MOH

Just noticed Alpha Centauri is on sale on GOG (€2.39)

Haven't had a copy of it in years. Tempted, but worried it might be better to keep my nostalgic memories

jobbridge4life

MOH wrote: »

Just noticed Alpha Centauri is on sale on GOG (€2.39)

Haven't had a copy of it in years. Tempted, but worried it might be better to keep my nostalgic memories

It will.