Like all of their modern offerings, I look forward to buying it, looking at it, but not actually having fun with it until they release the second expansion.

mixma242 wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 11:24:
I feel 'meh' about it. I actually managed to win on my first play through on the 'normal' setting. As in no restarts for a better landing spot or reload because I did something stupid or got surprised in combat or something. I have been playing ever Civ since the original (including AC) and I never would have been able to do that with any of the others. The devs have said that at higher difficulty there is no different AI logic...

Satellites seemed interesting but not necessary, as was diplomacy. I didn't need any of the higher end techs other than to achieve my victory type. I only did a minimal number of quests.

It took me just under 400 turns / 11 hours to achieve the Harmony Trancendence victory. Last 100 turns / hour or two was waiting on stuff to be researched/built and waiting on the PC to take its turn.

I didn't think it was any easier or harder than Civ5 on the same settings. Playing on the default difficulty when it starts your game is just the 2nd (Chieftain in earlier Civs, I think?), so it's not very hard; losing on any of the lower difficulties is fairly tough if you've ever played Civ before. 400 turns seems like a lot, too, since I finished in just over 300 and was actually competing for victory conditions at the end with another civ even at the newbie difficulty.

The aliens are definitely harder to deal with than barbarians in Civ usually are. Siege Worms on early turns are all but impossible to get rid of and they'll screw up your trade routes any chance they get; if you have bad luck with alien nest spawns you can be up to your ears in aliens that, even if they're not aggressive to you, still disrupt anything you need to do outside of your territory. Even if you burn the nests they have a tendency to come back in the same spots if you haven't put something down to prevent it, too.

Satellites are necessary depending on what you're doing and your luck with the map. Miasma negation satellites can be pretty important. Defense satellites are great, and definitely a must on higher difficulties if you're having trouble defending your territory.

Other civilizations are more aggressive than they are in Civ 5 from what I've seen, too. If they don't like you blasting aliens, they'll tell you or may attack you if they're a Harmony civ and you're Supremeacy or Purity since you probably won't change your evil ways. They have personalities, as well; ARC is a corporate power, and can be an aggressive empire builder, Brazilia is an aggressive military power a la Moctezuma, Africa is Ghandi-esque right down to the wishy-washy bipolar diplomacy, etc. etc so each game can play out fairly differently.

Once you get some more time to tweak the game and play with it I think you'll like it.

Just as with Civ5 war is most likely to happen on smaller maps where the nations have to via for resources and land. I always enjoyed playing the Europe mod because it was so cramped war was going on everywhere haha.

Prez wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 17:17:
I was really impressed by the Total Biscuit video actually. Like Civ 5, I expect this game to really come into its own with expansions, so with that in mind I will wait before buying.

My thoughts exactly. While I'll grab it at some point, I'm in no rush.

I was really impressed by the Total Biscuit video actually. Like Civ 5, I expect this game to really come into its own with expansions, so with that in mind I will wait before buying.

I'm looking forward to playing this but I know it'll never come close to matching SMAC. SMAC was just an amazing game...I would pay for a graphics update with hexes instead of squares.

To those who haven't played Alpha Centauri, it just had it all. You could make your own custom units - my favorites were the flying and sea-worthy colony pods, including fun mixtures with helicopters for everything else. That's something Galactic Civilizations is known for, but very few other games of the type have attempted it or been successful.

The dialogue/text was fantastic and a story was told as the game progressed naturally through technological progress. The voice-acting is fantastic and you get to know the motivations of each faction and their leader quite well after a few play-throughs. It was one of the few games of its type where I wanted to try and play every faction/leader in order to enjoy another piece of the game.

It was also the first game of its type to have intelligent AI - everything from automated workers/scouts to the Planet forces and the enemy factions. It was far from perfect by today's standards (well, maybe not, have things really improved with diplomacy up to and including Civ 5?) but at the time it definitely set the bar. I actually lost games to genuinely smart AI, a first for me.

I could keep going on about it but we're discussing Beyond Earth. I have it installed, I fired it up, and I intend to play it soon. My first game will without a doubt be Franco-Iberia going for Harmony, probably with Artists (to boost the F-I bonus), tectonic (city location planning early on), and perhaps machinery (I love workers!). My favorite faction in SMAC was Gaia's Stepdaughters and this seems close. I'm not expecting anything amazing, though.

ok

verybad1 wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 15:01:
Do plan on getting this, but I'll wait for a few updates, mods, and DLCs first. I played way too much of Civ3 though Civ5 I'm sure I'll get my money's worth when I do buy it though.

Flatline wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 15:36:

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:53:
Ah, mhh that is interesting In the let's plays I watched the AI factions were pretty forgettable. The AI still acted like in CIV5, it didn't really push conflicts properly etc.

Anyway, I didn't play it, I only saw let's plays. So if you guys notice something and correct me please do that. I just didn't get a very good first impression at all.

Maybe it's gonna be a good game with expansions. But it remains to be seen whether it even gets any.

Yeah I was surprised actually. The faction that did it was on really good friendly terms with me and had been for most of the game. I guess they advanced on the harmony affinity and decided I was killing their precious little grubs.

We'll see if that's a fluke or not. So far you're about right with the AI, it's not much changed, although one faction that I did have a declaration of friendship with sent a steady stream of soldiers to help contain the absolutely absurd amount of aliens that were besieging my civ without me asking. He was exploring, saw that a crapload of aliens were spawning around me and sent like 20 units to kill the fuck out of the aliens and then went off and left me on my own. Must have had the warrior culture path ramped up.

First time an alliance ever did that for me.

There's actually a lot of great ideas in the game I'd like to see pushed back to normal Civ, like the idea of favors. Instead of mooching off of you in normal Civ, if you don't have anything you want or you're hit up for charity you're offered favors in diplomatic trade to be cached in later. Which is actually kind of awesome. If they had that in Civ 5 it'd make the diplomacy game far more interesting to me.

The favor system is really a good idea, that's true. It also allows to trade favors, and the in the let's play I saw the AI give offers to "buy" a favor *back*.

That with the Aliens I never saw in the let's plays I saw The AI just bombed the hell out of any Alien getting too close (Basically had a dozen needle jets at some point) and was regularly running bombing missions on a hive, but never managed to actually destroy it. It's also worth noting that affinity units are extremely powerful.... the late game jets could 1 hit kill any alien (and any AI unit ,p).

Also the AI did not react to the victory building construction, nor it's activation phase. It send some angry letters but happily lost the game without action. In the entire let's play the AI never had declared war either and 2 AI's in the game were never even discovered, they must have been on some remote island and never got off..... In the end-game basically every round "operatives killed" and "operatives found" (dude was stealing tech via operatives by the bucket-load ,p) That system is extremely weirdly balanced, the AI doesn't seem able to handle it, it sends it's operatives on the offense, forgetting the defense.

Wolfox wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 15:17:

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:53:
I was so hyped about Rebirth and then you mocked me (well, I deserved that) ;)

Have you picked the free DLC for Rebirth? It won't be free for much longer.

And who knows, Rebirth might be a great game one day. Weirdest things have happened.

And yeah, I also pre-ordered Rebirth, and tried to convince myself it was great for 30 hours or so. I will keep trying it again every once in a while, when major patches come out, or when I have a new video card or something. I still have some small bit of hope.

Thanks for mentioning that .. I had totally forgotten about the DLC free thingy...

But my hope is like.. in the sub-zero regions

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:53:
Ah, mhh that is interesting In the let's plays I watched the AI factions were pretty forgettable. The AI still acted like in CIV5, it didn't really push conflicts properly etc.

Anyway, I didn't play it, I only saw let's plays. So if you guys notice something and correct me please do that. I just didn't get a very good first impression at all.

Maybe it's gonna be a good game with expansions. But it remains to be seen whether it even gets any.

Yeah I was surprised actually. The faction that did it was on really good friendly terms with me and had been for most of the game. I guess they advanced on the harmony affinity and decided I was killing their precious little grubs.

We'll see if that's a fluke or not. So far you're about right with the AI, it's not much changed, although one faction that I did have a declaration of friendship with sent a steady stream of soldiers to help contain the absolutely absurd amount of aliens that were besieging my civ without me asking. He was exploring, saw that a crapload of aliens were spawning around me and sent like 20 units to kill the fuck out of the aliens and then went off and left me on my own. Must have had the warrior culture path ramped up.

First time an alliance ever did that for me.

There's actually a lot of great ideas in the game I'd like to see pushed back to normal Civ, like the idea of favors. Instead of mooching off of you in normal Civ, if you don't have anything you want or you're hit up for charity you're offered favors in diplomatic trade to be cached in later. Which is actually kind of awesome. If they had that in Civ 5 it'd make the diplomacy game far more interesting to me.

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:53:
I was so hyped about Rebirth and then you mocked me (well, I deserved that) ;)

Have you picked the free DLC for Rebirth? It won't be free for much longer.

And who knows, Rebirth might be a great game one day. Weirdest things have happened.

And yeah, I also pre-ordered Rebirth, and tried to convince myself it was great for 30 hours or so. I will keep trying it again every once in a while, when major patches come out, or when I have a new video card or something. I still have some small bit of hope.

Fion wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:42:
Have you heard about the Long War mod? It's the most popular XCom: EU/EW mod that ups the difficulty, choices and really puts that classic feel into the game. I suggest you check it out.

I'm sorry, but beating EW on classic/ironman almost ended me. Why would I want to UP that difficulty?

Do plan on getting this, but I'll wait for a few updates, mods, and DLCs first. I played way too much of Civ3 though Civ5 I'm sure I'll get my money's worth when I do buy it though.

Flatline wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:49:

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 11:24:
You won't get a angry letter that you just destroyed half the planets aliens...

Actually I had a faction demand I stop killing the native aliens in the first 2 hours of playing the game and waged war on me when I wouldn't (to be fair they kept acting aggressively).

We'll see how it holds up to longer term play sessions, but I'm enjoying it for now. I'm still a little overwhelmed by the iconography of the map but that'll adjust quickly enough.

Ah, mhh that is interesting In the let's plays I watched the AI factions were pretty forgettable. The AI still acted like in CIV5, it didn't really push conflicts properly etc.

Anyway, I didn't play it, I only saw let's plays. So if you guys notice something and correct me please do that. I just didn't get a very good first impression at all.

Maybe it's gonna be a good game with expansions. But it remains to be seen whether it even gets any.

And please don't be angry with me, it's all you guys fault. I was so hyped about Rebirth and then you mocked me (well, I deserved that) And now I seriously don't buy any games until well after release. And only when I really want to play them after watching Let's plays.

Ps.: And yeah, I am still pissed about X Rebirth. Patch 2.5 fixed nothing!

This comment was edited on Oct 24, 2014, 15:14.

Jamil20 wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:48:

Fion wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:42:
Have you heard about the Long War mod? It's the most popular XCom: EU/EW mod that ups the difficulty, choices and really puts that classic feel into the game. I suggest you check it out.

No I haven't. Thank you for the recommendation. I hope to try it some day.

You really should, it makes XCOM EW what it should have been

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 11:24:
You won't get a angry letter that you just destroyed half the planets aliens...

Actually I had a faction demand I stop killing the native aliens in the first 2 hours of playing the game and waged war on me when I wouldn't (to be fair they kept acting aggressively).

We'll see how it holds up to longer term play sessions, but I'm enjoying it for now. I'm still a little overwhelmed by the iconography of the map but that'll adjust quickly enough.

Fion wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:42:
Have you heard about the Long War mod? It's the most popular XCom: EU/EW mod that ups the difficulty, choices and really puts that classic feel into the game. I suggest you check it out.

No I haven't. Thank you for the recommendation. I hope to try it some day.

Jamil20 wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:37:

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:19:
What you are really saying is that Brian Reynolds was the reason Alpha Centauri was what it was, one of the best 4x games ever made.

Actually, I've never really played Alpha Centauri. I'm just referring to X-Com. One of the few games I bought for full price in a long time, fueled by nostalgia. I had almost instant buyer's remorse when I finally witnessed how on-rails the game was, which is nothing like the original. A lot of people enjoyed it, but I found the game had zero replay value, because you ultimately don't make any choices in the game.

Have you heard about the Long War mod? It's the most popular XCom: EU/EW mod that ups the difficulty, choices and really puts that classic feel into the game. I suggest you check it out.

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 24, 2014, 14:19:
What you are really saying is that Brian Reynolds was the reason Alpha Centauri was what it was, one of the best 4x games ever made.

Actually, I've never really played Alpha Centauri. I'm just referring to X-Com. One of the few games I bought for full price in a long time, fueled by nostalgia. I had almost instant buyer's remorse when I finally witnessed how on-rails the game was, which is nothing like the original. A lot of people enjoyed it, but I found the game had zero replay value, because you ultimately don't make any choices in the game.

I've only played about an hour and was confused during most of it. Launched a satellite I found while exploring with absolutely no idea what it does. I'm going to enjoy learning all the new tricks and how to maximize these new resources.

For those saying it's dumbed down, let us remember that Civ V was considered pretty heavily dumbed down itself and had mediocre reviews out the gate. It wasn't until BNW that the game was considered 'great'.

About factions, I'd say its too early to see if they have any over-arching personality or goals. They are an a disadvantage because they aren't based on real world historical people (who had personalities and notoriety) and thus we aren't going to create our own idea of what their personality is like. A lot of the 'personality' of the civs in V is what we - the players - put into them.

As to an SDK, I'm sure one is in the works as there's a 'mods' selection menu and I'm sure at least one group is already prepping an Alpha Centauri mod.