Beyond Earth does a lot right, but also has room for improvement: My thoughts on the content after three games tl;drContent-wise, feels better than Civ V vanillaKnowing where you stand progress-wise with the AI can be difficult with the tech webNo technologies or Wonders are really powerful enough to change your game; its a slow burn.Affinity bonuses could be more useful; a lot of Affinity perks are attached to military units, which might be pointless in a peaceful game.Aliens are disappointing and are never a real threat.Quests add more customization, but are sometimes unpredictable.Victories are a lot of waiting around.Ive played three games now, all on normal (I play Emperor in Civ V), as each Affinity.First off, as has been pointed out repeatedly, the UI is a stepback from Civ V in many aspects. I want to keep this focus more on content because I think weve all discussed the UI to death, but suffice to say, there is a lot of room for improvement. Among the most obvious missteps are the transparency and darkness of the minimap, which makes telling what you have and havent explored rather difficult. As someone who played Civ V in strategic view, Id also like to see (toggleable) icons for tile improvements as well. The tech web requires a ton of scrolling around because if you scroll out too far it becomes useless.Content-wise, Im thrilled with Beyond Earth. The tech web especially is a huge change to the game, and every game Ive started off researching different technologies, rather than beelining each science tech like in Civ V. However, the non-linear nature of the tech web makes it difficult to gauge your progress relative to the AI (something that isnt as much an issue on normal). You can check how close they are to victory through the victory screen, but Im pretty sure that just checks for whether or not youve researched the prerequisite techs you need to have in order to complete the victory. Knowing where you stand militarily is more difficult, though that could also be due to our general inexperience with knowing which units are how far in each affinity so far (the visual cues are a great help though).However the tech tree does lack real game-changing technologies, even toward the end. Theres no point, like on researching Education in Civ V, that the game really seems to start to take off and youre producing significantly more yields than you were before. In part, this may be a balance issue; if there were such a technology, it would create too much of an optimal path and the tech web would turn into a linear rush for that tech before opening into a web again. It may also be that we simply havent yet discovered the most efficient combination of techs and virtues yet that really kicks your empire into high gear.This leads to my next point: the Wonders in Beyond Earth are extremely lackluster, relative to the Wonders in Civ V. In Civ V, there were wonders that helped out to a great extent with victories (Forbidden Palace, any cultural Wonder, Porcelain Tower, Brandenburg Gate/Alhambra), and Wonders that were more generally useful (Alhambra, Pyramids, Machu Picchu). Importantly, their bonuses were unique and couldnt be emulated through buildings--they were more like social policies in terms of what they did for your empire. Many of Beyond Earths Wonders, on the other hand, are just buildings on steroids. They provide bigger yields but no real huge boosts to your empire. Add to this their relatively high cost (my cities, save for my second game, havent broken 60 production) and the uncertainty of the Wonder race due to how the opponents may be on the completely different side, or may have researched it 20 turns ago and are just about to finish it), and you have a mechanic with unpredictable risk and little pay off for it. On the other hand, that no one Wonder can make or break your game may also have been a design choice to balance things out.The Affinity system is another big mechanic that has a significant effect on how you approach the game. Although I was able to pick my Affinity with no regard for the surroundings, its clear that if you want to make the most out of it, youll need to settle on specific resources, thus shaping your decisions on where to settle. However, I also feel as though the Affinity levels could offer more bonuses. As it is now, there are only a handful of bonuses and few of them really shake things up (free roads in Supremacy and immunity to miasma in Harmony come to mind). The higher level bonuses are kind of a moot point: from my experience with the spy system, the unique covert ops is going to be incredibly difficult to pull off and you can already capture even enemy capitals well before that point (and presumably with a higher rate of success--I captured two of them in my game as ARC). Tying buildings to Affinities is neat too, even if the bonuses dont always mesh thematically (Harmony getting bonus energy from its unique satellite and Supremacy getting bonus food seems odd). Unfortunately, the biggest impact of each Affinity seems to be on its military units, which is the real point of leveling up. If youre not warmongering (which I think would be difficult due to the miasma, unless youre Harmony), then a lot of the perks of each Affinity wasted. Every time I level up, I pick out an upgrade for a unit I will likely never use.The aliens are a weaker point of Beyond Earth. In none of my three games were they a real presence past about turn 100-150. Even when I was clearing nests and blasting bugs as Supremacy, I was only warned from other leaders to knock it off; the aliens did nothing to retaliate. Even in the early game, Wolf Beetles are easy enough to handle with a Marine or two and maybe a Ranger. To remedy this, there should be more aliens that have higher strength, and their aggression should rise more quickly. Only when I built the Mind Flower, which explicitly states that it rustles their jimmies, did the aliens ever become orange, indicating higher aggression. Hell, in my second game, I barely saw any aliens at all once I cleared out the nest near my capital. The only reason I ever build the Ultrasonic Fence is to protect my trade units; at no time do the aliens ever feel like a threat to my cities otherwise. In part, this may be a balancing act--make the aliens too aggressive/too difficult to take down, and the early game becomes a tedious struggle against both the AI and the aliens as each is eager to declare war on you.The quest system is another big addition to Beyond Earth that adds a degree of customizability to your buildings. Unfortunately, it has a very poor level of transparency: for instance, in my first game, I put off building an Ultrasonic Fence because I was playing as Harmony and didnt feel threatened by the aliens. However the trade units I was building kept getting destroyed by aliens, so I was losing out on gold and science. Only hours into the game when I had nothing else to build did I build the fence and in so doing had the option to protect my units (why would you ever not choose this?). If I had known that I would have been able to do this, I would have built the Fence much sooner. I suggest having an icon, similar to the advisors icons, that indicates whether or not a building will initiate a quest, so you can better gauge how useful it may be. Similarly, although it doesnt make much narrative sense, from a gameplay perspective, knowing what the rewards for each quest would be nice as well. I dont really that extra city strength or extra agent from the Command Center, but that trade unit invulnerability is really nice. This will be less of a problem once we play the game more and know which buildings are used in this way and which arent.Finally, the victory conditions are a sort of mixed bag. I wasnt thrilled with tying each victory condition (save the defaults) to an Affinity, since it introduces some level of predictability to the tech web and how youll play the game. I havent replayed any of them yet to see how true this is though. On the mechanical level, every victory is relatively boring, although to be fair none of the victories in Civ V were too great either (except the Tourism Victory, which was introduced much later and shows its complexity compared to the others). Conceptually, I can see how each victory is supposed to work: you spend 20 turns or so making a Wonder, and then a roughly equal amount of time protecting it against the AI who are now suddenly alarmed at your progress. In practice, it turns out to be 20 turns making a Wonder, then another 20 turns waiting for it to make you win. Harmonys Mind Flower is the worst offender, while Supremacy and Purity at least make you do things. I like Supremacys the most--having to send a total of 1000 strength back to earth is neat, and you can actually prepare for it beforehand. Assuming they get the AI to actually get its ass in gear when youre about to win, it creates a neat dilemma of how to defend yourself while also sacrificing military units. Puritys victory, however, is trash. Having to summon 20 settlers (thereby taking at least 20 additional turns) at the glacial pace of 1 movement/turn is an exercise in tedium. Even playing on a small map, I had no problem settling them, but their Civilopedia entry implies that they can ignore the 3 hex limit that settlers have to obey. On archipelago type maps, I can see how this would become nearly impossible.All in all, I love Beyond Earth and have played 22 hours even with confetti graphics. Content-wise, it feels a little more fleshed out than vanilla Civ V, and I certainly look forward to future DLCs. Hopefully some patches will be released in the meantime that balance some game mechanics and fix the plethora of UI issues. ift.tt/1ww8UaC
Posted on: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 13:28:56 +0000
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