Civilization: Beyond Earth

[fragger]

It does. I haven't checked up on it, but I'd be surprised if it's doing well. If I know my fellow Civvers they'd be as disappointed with BE as I was. No doubt that's why it's on special already, like you hinted at, Binn. It's probably tanking somewhat.

If I had to describe BE's gameplay in one word, I'd say "dull". If I was allowed another word to describe its appearance, I'd say "cluttered". It's hard to tell sometimes what's what - it just looks kind of jumbled and messy. It's not an attractive game. Civ V on the other hand is so nice to look at and easy on the eyes, and everything can be seen clearly. It's also a vibrant and addictive game with lots of character and a lovely user interface.

The two games are like chalk and cheese, really.

[fragger]

When I went to Steam a few weeks back  to download XCOM I noticed that Civ: Beyond Earth was updating. At the time I thought I'd fire it up and see if the updates had addressed some of the game's issues and flaws, much like they did with Civ V in its early days, but then I started playing XCOM and any thoughts of giving BE another go went out of my head.

When Civ V first came out I found its gameplay somewhat unbalanced and thought that some aspects of it hadn't been thought through very well. It wasn't just me, apparently - several subsequent updates not only fixed its balance issues but improved the game out of sight and made it into the stand-out it has become, especially once the two major expansion packs, Gods and Kings and Brave New World, are added.

So last night I pulled BE out of the mothballs and had another go at it, and right away I felt a sense of deja-vu about it. Not just because I'd played it before - something else was chiming. After a short while it struck me - the eight factions in the game, and their leaders, are the same ones in Sid Meier's Starships. Not only that, but the three "Affinities" of Harmony, Supremacy and Purity in BE, which are kinds of overarching philosophies that you can level up to boost various aspects of your faction, are also present in Starships. (In BE, when any of these Affinities are leveled up enough, they then each allow one of three of the six Victory types in the game to be attempted. The other three Victory types don't require Affinities).

So I looked into it a bit more and it turns out that the two games are linked to each other, after a fashion. Victories and Achievements accomplished in one game unlock things in the other, and it works both ways. If you have both games installed, and you're playing BE, an additional item appears in the main menu, "Play In Starships", which when clicked will transfer various stats for your faction in your current game to your My 2K account (provided you're online and logged on there). if you then fire up Starships, a new menu item will appear there, "Load From Beyond Earth". A new game will then begin based on your BE stats, including your Faction and Affinity (based on whichever Affinity you were strongest in in BE), strength of your fleet, and various resource, population and startup bonuses. Achievements reached in one game will unlock bonus material in the other, like new maps, missions and abilities, and as mentioned above, that feature is a two-way street.

This is the first time I've heard of Achievement bonuses being transferred between two quite different games. Interesting idea 8)

The two games are set in the same universe, with Starships taking place about 500 years after the events in BE. The idea is that sometime after the game is over, the factions go on to ultimately develop faster-than-light capability, venture out into the universe and start colonizing other worlds, resulting in the Starships premise. So you can kick off a game of Starships based on stats from BE, but not the other way around, because: 1) SS is set in BE's future, and; 2) BE is a much more complex game than SS and has totally different gameplay so the process just won't w@&k in that direction. In terms of the two titles' differing gameplay, you can reduce complex to simple but not expand simple to complex.

Incidentally, the BE update has actually improved the game, but it still hasn't resulted in a total game-changer for me. Some things are definitely better and I'm actually enjoying the game a lot more, but I still find it a tad lackluster compared to Civ. It's taken a few steps in the right direction though.

[PZ]

Good to read that improvement rather than breakage is the result of the updates

[Art Blade]

interesting concept indeed, fragger :)

[fragger]

I played quite a bit of Beyond Earth today, and I actually got right into it. Most of the improvements have been made to the UI and it's now far more attractive and accessible. Gameplay elements have also been fine-tuned and finally it's becoming a fun game to play.

I read up a bit about it on a Wiki and some fansites before starting a new game and it's evident that it needs to be approached in a different way to Civ, despite the two titles having much the same gameplay concepts. Trying to throw up too many colonies too early (an approach known as "going wide" in Civ fanspeak) can serve to hamstring you later - Civ is a bit more forgiving in that respect. A more cautious and methodical approach is required, starting with just one or two colonies, building them up and advancing your tech before expanding (known as "going tall" in the parlance). Becoming familiar with the Tech Web is also very important, and this will only come with experience. Taking the time to conduct a close examination of the Tech Web and adopting a more restrained approach in the early game has resulted in me doing a lot better this time around. I'm now on the 450th turn of a 500-turn game and I'm tantalisingly close to a victory...

So maybe I didn't waste my dough on this game after all. I just had to wait for it to blossom :-()

[Art Blade]

 :-D

[PZ]

Good to hear, fragger  :-X

Have fun in the game(s)

[fragger]

Thanks :)

Heh, after I posted that I went back into the game and one of the other players stole victory from me two turns later :-()

As if in response to my posting, Steam did another update of BE last night and refined the Tech Web a little more, in the very place where I'd thought a small tweak would really help. So yet another small but positive refinement has been made :-X

[Art Blade]

 :)

[fragger]

Won my first game today, a "Contact" victory 8)
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This is achieved by making contact with the long-vanished extraterrestrial race which left some of its relics behind on your newly adopted homeworld. The process involves discerning the nature of the alien signal apparatus based on those relics, solving the "Transcendental Equation" derived from the result, transmitting a signal based on the new knowledge and constructing an orbital Deep Space telescope to watch for a response, deciphering that response once received, building a Beacon as per the instructions they relay to you in said response, activating the Beacon (which costs an awful amount of energy), then waiting for the ETs to utilise the Beacon from their end to facilitate a meeting. As the name of the victory type suggests, it's all very Carl Sagan.

This is typical of the multiple-objective nature of four of the six Victory types. They're well thought out, and quite challenging to achieve.

The Contact victory seems to be the easiest of the victories to pull off, relatively speaking, and potentially the quickest (it "only" took me 412 turns). The most straightforward (but certainly not the easiest) way to win is to mong war and beat up your opponents, but if you want to finesse your way to glory by taking one of the more circuitous routes, be prepared to do a lot of building and planning on top of sleuthing your way through the labyrinthine paths of the Tech Web and researching your hard-suited butt off.

A year or so ago I didn't think I'd end up getting hooked into this game to the extent that I have now :-() The updates have certainly made a difference.

[PZ]

Nice  :-X

It's great when something is actually improved

[Art Blade]

 :-X :)

[fragger]

Second victory type achieved: "Emancipation". Two down, three to go (four if you include the basic points victory, but I was never one for playing solely to rack up points).

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I won't go into the details like I did with the Contact victory, but suffice to say it took a good dollop of planning and it was touch and go for a while.

Here's just a few more screenies. As always with Firaxis' strat games there is some really nice animated splash screen art:

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Here's how the Tech Web looked when I posted this pic last year, very soon after the game's release:

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And here's how it looks now after its facelift (and with the Tool Tip turned off ;D). It's way more informative now, with improved colour-coding and better icon design:

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But the biggest improvement to the Tech Web is that you can now scroll to see the techs around the periphery of the web, which are actually off the screen when the view is centered, as in the pics above. Previously, it didn't scroll - instead it had a crummy one-level zoom out, and when you zoomed out to see the whole thing the icons became very difficult to discern and the Tech labels disappeared altogether, displaying vague little symbols in their place which no doubt seemed meaningful to the devs but just looked like alien hieroglyphs to everyone else ???? Why they couldn't make this display scroll in the first place I don't know - deadline rush, probably. But the poor earlier design was one of the chief reasons why I gave up on the game. For such a vitally important part of the thing, it was next to useless.

I'm getting quite addicted. BE is still about 75% "Civ in space" in terms of the core gamplay, but the innovations and additional strategy layers have breathed some new life into the franchise. Having said that, the rich character of Civ still makes that title my overall fave. BE is now running a very close second though :-X

[Art Blade]

 :)

[fragger]

"The Promised Land" victory nailed.

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To achieve this, I had to meet the requirements which allowed me to build a hyperspacial "Exodus Gate", which then allowed me to bring settler units through from Earth (one unit per turn), fix them up with settlements to live in, and protect them from any kind of harm until I'd brought the minimum required number of settler units through (20) to win the victory. And once again, it was a multi-stage process.

And this, apparently, is the Promised Land. Looks a bit like that city from Logan's Run.

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Well, when the settlers find out that they're not allowed to live past the age of thirty here, it'll be their own damned fault for not reading the fine-print >:D

[Art Blade]

 :-D

Logan's Run, man, I was impressed by that film back then. ^-^

[fragger]

Transcendence! Ommm...

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I now no longer hunger after the base profanity of gaming, for I have become as one with the higher reality of the Cosmic All... yeah, right.

I kicked off a new game of Civ as well and I have to say, Civ is far and away my preference between the two titles. BE is fun and I still want to achieve a Conquest victory in it, but Civ is just a slicker and more polished product. It's more engrossing, the cultures are more diverse (and with the two EXPs there's over forty to choose from, as opposed to just eight in BE), the diplomacy is better, there are far more options and stacks of things to do and attempt. And it just plain looks nicer.

Also, BE gives you no post-game stats, which kind of sucks. You just win or lose and that's it - no comparisons as to how you fared against the other players, no rankings, no graphs, no nothings. The victories themselves have a slightly anti-climactic feel to them, which I think stems from the way they've been conceived.

If I were to give Civ a ten, I'd give BE about a seven.