Civilization: Beyond Earth (Fall 2014)

[BaneTheBrawler]

Spent a few minutes poking around the SDK and game files- not much different from Civ V, so if you've modded that this should be cake. Documentation is MUCH better this time around, too. Lots of little notes explaining shit. So that's great.


For the game itself, I'm 55 turns into a Standard Massive (8 players) Terran game and overall loving it. The gameplay itself is fantastic. Tons of shit to do and lots of little interesting things going on that have lasting repercussions. I'm not really a fan of the way it looks, though. The UI is monochrome blue and the land is all blue, so it's hard to distinguish one terrain type from another. Also doesn't help that my borders are blue, too. I'm also a little annoyed with the way some UI elements have been rearranged, but that'll pass. I'm honestly more worried about everything being blue. It's kinda straining my eyes, trying to figure out "okay is that blue or purple? is there a miasma there?"

Hopefully there will be some UI/graphics mods out shortly.

[Eldelphia]

Downloading as we speak :D

[Uzor]

Spent a few minutes poking around the SDK and game files- not much different from Civ V, so if you've modded that this should be cake. Documentation is MUCH better this time around, too. Lots of little notes explaining shit. So that's great.


For the game itself, I'm 55 turns into a Standard Massive (8 players) Terran game and overall loving it. The gameplay itself is fantastic. Tons of shit to do and lots of little interesting things going on that have lasting repercussions. I'm not really a fan of the way it looks, though. The UI is monochrome blue and the land is all blue, so it's hard to distinguish one terrain type from another. Also doesn't help that my borders are blue, too. I'm also a little annoyed with the way some UI elements have been rearranged, but that'll pass. I'm honestly more worried about everything being blue. It's kinda straining my eyes, trying to figure out "okay is that blue or purple? is there a miasma there?"

Hopefully there will be some UI/graphics mods out shortly.

Are you sure that's not just your planet though? My planet has a lot of green and beige.

I'm loving it so far though. Technology web is a bit confusing, but that'll pass when you get used to it and learn what the different things do better. So far aliens seem completely useless though. Even going full aggressive against them they rarely attack my units, and they can't attack cities. They seem pretty much completely useless. The only dangerous unit they have is he siege worm, but those are slow, rare and easy to dodge. They would be a problem if they could actually attack cities, though.

[Dreamer_Soteria]

Just put in a couple hours, loving the game but I've picked up my bad habit with Civ V: Constantly restarting >_<. What sponsor/victory have you guys picked? I'm going Franco-Iberia and Transcendence, seems the most interesting.

[Athas]

Anyone have any experience with this AMD mantle?

[BaneTheBrawler]

i dont even know what that is and my pc is intel/nvidia so idk if its even meant for me

i suppose it could just be my planet, and i guess there's a fair amount of greens and purples around, but plains and forests are both blue which is annoying.

what difficulty are you on, uzor? i'm on standard and have more or less left the aliens alone, just cleared out a group that was hanging out where i'm going to expand, at which point aliens all over the map attacked my various units, but they settled down pretty quick. i think on higher difficulties they'll be more of a threat.

[noblemountain]

Aliens are kicking my ass. Went one difficulty above standard. Damn siege worms are just killing my units as fast as I can pump them out. lol

[Purrrfect]

Is there a way to see how long an outpost has left?

And yea, fucking both games I've started had nests like 5 feet from my front door, right next to the resource pods...

edit: Nevermind, if you mouse over the population number it tells you.

New question, can you refill explorers?

[Lucavi]

I'm going to wait for a holiday sale. From what I've seen its too much of a Mod to Civ V, and I have plenty of those. I'll wait till its cheeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaap. Hopefully by then someone will have modded actual alien civs into the game. I find it odd that a game about space travel only consists of Earth-based civilizations through the entire game. Once you clear the alien camps, you never see anyone else from the entire universe. Just feels lame right now.

[BaneTheBrawler]

you can refill your scouts by moving them into your city.

it's much more than a civ v mod. but i think waiting is probably a good idea.


anyway played some more today and finally realized why i was feeling dissatisfied. Exploration and quests are fantastic. Really fun mechanic. But pretty much everything about actually managing your civ- research, building things, planning your cities- is uninteresting. And I figured out why: Nothing feels important. Everything is monochrome blue or white. There is no flavor to anything. In the historical civs, we already know why Castles are useful, or why the Pyramids are a wonder. dafuq do i do with a vivarium? why is the panopticon a wonder? just looks like a bigger building, to me. Looking at my civ's production queues, all I see is some vague blue icon that is almost identical to every other vague blue icon. Even the civ borders are muted and vague. Hell, the planet itself is almost entirely muted shades of blue green purple and brown.

This game has a lot of good things working under the hood, but the hood is so uninteresting that I find it hard to enjoy the fun stuff. I'm going to go back to civ V until either firaxis or the modding community has fixed that.

[Purrrfect]

I wonder if the expansions are going to be like how starcraft was where you get an alien civ or 2.

[JigglyJam]

How do trade routes work? More specifically what am I getting and what is the other party getting? (what arrows mean what)

[Purrrfect]

left arrow is what the source city gets, right is what your partner gets.

I'm starting to miss hearing the narrator from civ5 already ;;

[Purrrfect]

So, harmony doesn't require you to not kill aliens, does it? I've been playing a game and trying to not kill them but those things are everywhere you want to be.

[BaneTheBrawler]

i think you can still kill them, yes.

[Uzor]

i dont even know what that is and my pc is intel/nvidia so idk if its even meant for me

i suppose it could just be my planet, and i guess there's a fair amount of greens and purples around, but plains and forests are both blue which is annoying.

what difficulty are you on, uzor? i'm on standard and have more or less left the aliens alone, just cleared out a group that was hanging out where i'm going to expand, at which point aliens all over the map attacked my various units, but they settled down pretty quick. i think on higher difficulties they'll be more of a threat.

Standard since it's first game.

Whenever aliens are near, I attack if it's one or two. More than that i go defensive stance or healing stance thingy. It makes you near invincible, the armor truck can take out 4 or 5 of them solo... When game first started they were more or less equal to me, but still not too hard to handle. With lvl 7 purity they're no threat though.

Probably more of an issue on higher difficulties maybe, I'm yet to try it.

[Cantih]

I can only muck about with the demo, but I liked what I got to do.

[noblemountain]

Feeling a little better on my second playthrough. I left the aliens alone and they seem to be leaving me alone for the most part. I messed up and ended a turn near a nest and they attacked me, but after I pulled away they left me alone. I am really enjoying the quest system a lot so far. Anyone know if intrigue is worth putting time into?

[Eldelphia]

I like it. But it's not different enough from Civ V. I expected more than the modernisation of the UI and different landscape

[Mazmaz]

Just started watching let's play of this game. Sorry if it's been mentioned, but who the hell came up with this massive deviation from Civ 5 in terms of interface? All the menus/building names/unit names/etc. have the same tiny grey text, tiny grey icons, and just all look the same. I feel like I'm just looking at a shopping list. I really can't get into the lack of use of colour/proper fonting to get into this enough yet. Maybe I'll get used to it?