Beyond Earth - Civilization Sequel

[Nadevoc]

The aliens aren't a threat even when they can attack your trade routes. I didn't even build a USF the first two games because I didn't realize they could protect routes and wasn't concerned about aliens coming within two squares of my bases. There were a few times it was a bit annoying, but as long as there are no siege worms, there's no problem.

[Luzahn]

Well, on my part, the one time my fence wasn't up I lost a trade vessel every couple of turns to sea dragons.

[tonberrian]

Are you walled off by aliens? My most memorable game so far involved going purity-military in response to a similar situation and embarking on some xenocrusades.

Speaking of which, I think my most desired change would be to remove the ultrasonic fence's trade route immunity buff. The aliens would suddenly become a lot more threatening if you actually had to police your trade routes.

Not really. Until you research immunity to miasma (or, I think, get healing in Harmony), trade convoys can't enter miasma tiles. Which means, if there's a solid wall of miasma/water/terra incognita, trade units can't pass by.

[Artanis]

So. Favors and science trading are pretty much a waste of code. I realize that they were erring on the side of making it harder to cheese the AI, but seriously...


Hutama: "Hey man, can you do me a solid and let me have 120 science per turn? I'd totally owe you one."
Me: "How about instead, you give me 30 per turn in exchange for the seven favors you already owe me."
Hutama: "Maybe if you also throw in a bunch of all six resources, including all your remaining petroleum. Oh, and some energy too."
Me: *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click*
Hutama: "What're you doing?"
Me: "Oh, nothing to worry about. I'm totally not waking up forty fully-upgraded rovers, boats, carriers, and LEV destroyers and sending them towards your capital, I swear."
Hutama: "Oh, cool. So do we have a deal, man?"

[Luzahn]

IMO the favors should be retooled to be a guaranteed demand for something within a certain value, ignoring any attitude the AI has towards you. And much less common for an AI to give out.

I'd prefer it to be, say, a desperate AI losing a war requesting you declare on their side or throw them a bunch of energy in exchange for a favor. Later, you can use it to demand they attack somebody in turn, give up a city, etc.

[druid91]

You actually can use favors to demand they attack someone. It's just somewhat counter-intuitively done through the diplomacy "Should we declare war on..." option.

They'll decline and you'll get a response that says "I must insist, in return of past favors (-1 favor)" or something like that?

Whereas if you just try to trade them the favor to get them to declare war, it doesn't work.

[Luzahn]

Huh, I didn't know that; definitely a useful option.

Still, that would require you to declare war as well, rather than use the ai as a proxy or something more fun.

[Destro_Yersul]

I think that the stuff they ask you for in return for a favour is based on percentages. This is most noticable with energy. One time when I had a huge energy income and nothing really to spend it on, they ended up demanding thousands of energy in return for a single favour. It was hilarious.

[Artanis]

It's definitely based on percentages. But they offer one favor for almost half my science, and then my earlier example happens when asking for less than a quarter of theirs.

I'll keep druid91's tip in mind. Favors might become slightly useful after all that way.

[Surrealistik]

I don't see how Prosperity is so much better than the rest. I usually go Industry + Knowledge instead, which already gives me way more health than I'll ever need, and very useful science/culture/production bonuses on top of that. Also, while tier 2/3 Prosperity virtues are good, its tier 1 virtues are kinda sucky, while tier 1 Knowledge and Industry are very good - and I find early game bonuses more important than lategame ones, because early on you struggle much more while you tend to dominate at the end anyway.

What other people have already said.

Honestly, nothing accelerates expansionism early, mid and late quite like Prosperity does and again, expansionism is normally _the_ optimal way to play as both single and multiplayer will attest; I've consistently won 4 player games with more than the total combined scores of players that have gone non-Prosperity and/or tried to build up rather than out. Beyond Earth is best played with the mindset of a ruthless, infectious pathogen.

[Luzahn]

What other people have already said.

Honestly, nothing accelerates expansionism early, mid and late quite like Prosperity does and again, expansionism is normally _the_ optimal way to play as both single and multiplayer will attest; I've consistently won 4 player games with more than the total combined scores of players that have gone non-Prosperity and/or tried to build up rather than out. Beyond Earth is best played with the mindset of a ruthless, infectious pathogen.

It's been long enough that I don't quite remember, but didn't Civ 5 suffer from infinite spread being too powerful at launch too?

[Surrealistik]

It's been long enough that I don't quite remember, but didn't Civ 5 suffer from infinite spread being too powerful at launch too?

Wouldn't know, never played Civ 5.

[Artanis]

I don't know about right at launch, but even if city spam was effective right at the start, it fairly quickly switched to building "tall" for many reasons that fundamentally do not apply to Beyond Earth. Beyond Earth has MUCH less focus on the big-city-favoring multiplier-type buildings, both direct (e.g. "+X% science") and indirect (e.g. "+1 science per 2 population"), and it also lacks Civ 5's long list of "you must have Building X in every single city" National Wonders. While some of the cityspam-favoring things - like trade routes' stupidly powerful yields - can be altered with patches, it'd probably take an expansion-level DLC or three to get BE anywhere near Civ 5.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I've only played the demo, so I've only had early game, but I preferred Industry for the standardized infrastructure - easy construction of Clinic, Cytonursery, and Pharmalab in all three cities I manage to get up before turn 100.

[Driderman]

Wouldn't know, never played Civ 5.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I find it rather humorous that you're debating Civ 5 engine mechanics without ever having played the game :)

[Surrealistik]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I find it rather humorous that you're debating Civ 5 engine mechanics without ever having played the game :)

I'm not debating Civ 5 engine mechanics so much as I'm detailing what has been consistently and by far the most effective strategy I've yet seen and used in Beyond Earth specifically.

[Binks]

Beyond Earth has a lot of potential. Once it gets its two expansions as per the norm for a Civ game I think it could be a significant improvement over Civ 5. My wishlist would be:

Fix the victory conditions to be more interactive. Right now they feel a lot like Vanilla Civ 5's Culture victory, you can win out of nowhere without ever involving your neighbors pretty easily. I would prefer something more along the lines of Gods and King's various victory conditions, have something for uniting everyone diplomatically or some such, Contact can stay non-interactive but gets better notifications to enemies that it's happening (don't just popup that someone has finished 'Decode Signal', tell me what that means if I'm not super experienced with it. At least having some kind of 'Player X's Beacon is active. They will win in 30 turns.' message and higher AI aggression while yours is on would be nice. Just finished a 260 turn game where I built 2 cities and put up a beacon basically unnoticed by anyone else, felt like I was playing solitare Civ or something.

Make the Orbital Layer actually matter. Right now the whole 'no overlapping satellites' thing is kind of small, and the number of orbital units is too tiny. I would say do away with the deorbiting thing, make them more expensive, and allow limited movement for all satellites. Maybe add an Orbital Debris mechanic (rather than just a sidenote in one of the quests) and a satellite killing satellite and you could have a fun little side area. I'm thinking something like building a few planet carvers, a tacnet, and a few satellite hunters, expanding your coverage over a neighbor, and moving in to death from above them while holding off their satellite killers and avoiding the ranged attacks. Right now it's more of just a side thing and it needs to be central to the game IMHO.

Fix automation. Worker Automate AI is awful and often builds and replaces the same two improvements on a square over and over again (had one worker continually build a terrascape, then tear it down and build a farm, then tear that down to build a terrascape in my second game for the entire second half of the game. I would have stopped him, but I had plenty of money to replace him and I wanted to see how long he'd go. Over 200 turns of busy work...) What's worse is that previous civ games have had great worker AIs, so not sure how this one got so screwed up. I think it might be related to the Terrascape itself, since it kind of just sets the terrain features rather than improving them the AI seems to get confused on tiles where a farm would give 3 food/1 production and a terrascape 2 and 2. This just needs to be fixed. Also explorer AI needs to prioritize avoiding nests unless Purity 1 has been researched. I don't like having to babysit units just because the computer can't manage them.

And finally, on the topic of terrascapes, I would like to see them work a bit differently myself. Rather than just being 'another improvement' it would be cool if the 'scape changed the tile type to a terraformed tile and still allowed upgrades to be placed on it. It just feels weird that it's the same mechanic to terraform the planet and...build a generator. Also removing terraforming is a no-no in my opinion, I would prefer being able to stop funding it and then it just decays to damaged state like it had been sac'd, but there should never be a reason to remove it IMHO.

Just my 2 cents on the game. I am enjoying playing Beyond Earth, but it feels a lot like Vanilla Civ 5, fundamentally fun but flawed.

[Tengu_temp]

What other people have already said.

Honestly, nothing accelerates expansionism early, mid and late quite like Prosperity does and again, expansionism is normally _the_ optimal way to play as both single and multiplayer will attest; I've consistently won 4 player games with more than the total combined scores of players that have gone non-Prosperity and/or tried to build up rather than out. Beyond Earth is best played with the mindset of a ruthless, infectious pathogen.

Well, this game is already easy enough in single-player for me, so I'm not going to break it completely by picking the maximum cheese option. And I don't really play 4X games in multiplayer.

[Artanis]

Two questions about alien aggression:

1-Will they automatically attack civilian units (namely Colonists) on sight, or are there other conditions that need to be met? I'm pretty sure that sending an unescorted Colonist within two tiles of a nest is almost certainly a death sentence no matter what, and the wiki seems to imply that Raptor Bugs will hunt it down, and sufficiently pissed-off aliens are probably going to be a danger regardless. But if said Colonist won't go within a screen and a half of a nest while the aliens are relatively passive, do I really need a military cordon (or Purity 1) to keep it from being nommed by a stray Wolf Beetle?

2-On a related note, just how d*** many aliens to I have to kill to get them angry? In my current game - with Frenzied Aliens turned on - me, Brasilia, and probably a couple other factions are killing every alien we can get our hands on, but the only change I've noticed is that there seem to be more Manticores spawning of late. No Siege Worms, no swarm attacks, no yellow or red icons, nothing

[tonberrian]

Two questions about alien aggression:

1-Will they automatically attack civilian units (namely Colonists) on sight, or are there other conditions that need to be met? I'm pretty sure that sending an unescorted Colonist within two tiles of a nest is almost certainly a death sentence no matter what, and the wiki seems to imply that Raptor Bugs will hunt it down, and sufficiently pissed-off aliens are probably going to be a danger regardless. But if said Colonist won't go within a screen and a half of a nest while the aliens are relatively passive, do I really need a military cordon (or Purity 1) to keep it from being nommed by a stray Wolf Beetle?

2-On a related note, just how d*** many aliens to I have to kill to get them angry? In my current game - with Frenzied Aliens turned on - me, Brasilia, and probably a couple other factions are killing every alien we can get our hands on, but the only change I've noticed is that there seem to be more Manticores spawning of late. No Siege Worms, no swarm attacks, no yellow or red icons, nothing

1. From what I've seen, aliens won't seek out colonists... unless they can reach them in one turn. So as long as you stay 3/4 tiles away from any aliens you should be fine.

2. I've only managed to anger the aliens in one game, trying to march into and take out 3 nests at the same time, attacking and killing 1-2 aliens a turn. They eventually went hostile for one turn, then normal, then hostile for one turn again after I killed one. Probably, if you didn't have Harmony 1, eventually killing one alien a turn would turn them hostile. AFAIK, aliens do not incur hostility for attacking you, rather you have to attack them to build up hostility.

[Artanis]

1-Thank you

2-But I'm personally killing 4-5 aliens per turn, and the other factions are contributing plenty as well. Maybe it's because I'm using naval bombardments? I dunno

Edit: Come to think of it, I do have a level or two of Harmony. Maybe Harmony 1 is bugged to speed up aggro loss a hell of a lot more than it says?

[Corvus]

I'm coming up to the end of my 4th game and realise I have no desire to play again in the foreseeable future. Its a shame as I 4x space games and building games - have ever since Civilization 1 and Master of Orion 1. Its just that BE feels so bland at the moment. Maybe when some killer mods get released to rectify many of the current flaws it'll be worth a revisit.

I think I came to that conclusion when I realised that affinities are not affinities after all. If they were you'd choose just 1, but being able to level up in all 3 sort of defeats the idea. That happened when I had a mixed force of xenotitans, LEV destroyers and angels all attacking together. You should not be able to get the all.

[Artanis]

I think I came to that conclusion when I realised that affinities are not affinities after all. If they were you'd choose just 1, but being able to level up in all 3 sort of defeats the idea. That happened when I had a mixed force of xenotitans, LEV destroyers and angels all attacking together. You should not be able to get the all.

How the hell do you have that much tech without having long since won?

[Vitruviansquid]

The broader you go on affinities, the more your military suffers while the more you beeline for one affinity, the more your economy can potentially suffer if you don't use up your resources. If you find yourself able to go broad on affinities all the time, it's probably time to go up a difficulty because the computer should be able to exploit your lack of military upgrades and just wipe you off the map.

[Artanis]

The broader you go on affinities, the more your military suffers while the more you beeline for one affinity, the more your economy can potentially suffer if you don't use up your resources. If you find yourself able to go broad on affinities all the time, it's probably time to go up a difficulty because the computer should be able to exploit your lack of military upgrades and just wipe you off the map.

That goes double for having all three capstone units. IIRC, each unit's relevant tech is quite expensive and provides ONLY affinity and that unit. They also require a huge amount of the relevant resources as well. That amount of investment could win any of the five victories many times over long before you get all three to the front lines of a battle.

[tonberrian]

I was thinking that I'd like Affinities more if they were their own tree of perks. You gain Affinity points sort of like science, and you use it to buy upgrades. But the more perks you buy in one tree, the more expensive the other ones are.

[Luzahn]

I was thinking that I'd like Affinities more if they were their own tree of perks. You gain Affinity points sort of like science, and you use it to buy upgrades. But the more perks you buy in one tree, the more expensive the other ones are.

Funnily enough, my preferences run in the opposite direction. I'd love for future expansions to support hybrid affinity builds; you know, special units for 6 Purity/6 Supremacy and the like. As it stands, the affinities are slightly too monolithic for my tastes, having only three of them makes things less interesting.

I mean ideally, I'd like us to have six+ different affinities, but that sounds much more unlikely than allowing for hybrids.

[tonberrian]

Funnily enough, my preferences run in the opposite direction. I'd love for future expansions to support hybrid affinity builds; you know, special units for 6 Purity/6 Supremacy and the like. As it stands, the affinities are slightly too monolithic for my tastes, having only three of them makes things less interesting.

I mean ideally, I'd like us to have six+ different affinities, but that sounds much more unlikely than allowing for hybrids.

I'd definitely have affinities be a bit more broad. Probably have two trees each, focusing on different things. Like Harmony might get evolution and aliens, Supremacy robots and ai, and Purity terraforming and guns.

[Destro_Yersul]

I think having three affinities is fine, but I'd prefer if picking affinity-based unit upgrades didn't lock them in. If my affinities are high enough, I'd like to be able to pick which upgrade a unit gets when I build it. That way, if you balance affinities, you're rewarded with a mixed force of specialised units, rather than units locked to whichever affinity hit the upgrade point first.

[tonberrian]

I think having three affinities is fine, but I'd prefer if picking affinity-based unit upgrades didn't lock them in. If my affinities are high enough, I'd like to be able to pick which upgrade a unit gets when I build it. That way, if you balance affinities, you're rewarded with a mixed force of specialised units, rather than units locked to whichever affinity hit the upgrade point first.

Not quite the same, but you can choose not to take a perk when it's unlocked, if you would prefer using one from another affinity.