10 Ways Civ: Beyond Earth Is Nothing Like Civilization V
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
Sounds very interesting. I hope the miasma isn't as bad as its equivalent in Alpha Centauri. Fungus everywhere used to get insanely annoying late game.
Interesting preview, and I am really looking forward to this - having fun with Civ 5 at the moment to hold off the longing. Might switch to Kerbal and imagine I'm story bridging the gap between the two.
I did note the disclaimer at the end of the preview, and I have to say good job for declaring the (very loose) financial link between the Escapist and Civ: BE. However, I think it might have been better at the start of the article to be as transparent as possible.
I did note the disclaimer at the end of the preview, and I have to say good job for declaring the (very loose) financial link between the Escapist and Civ: BE. However, I think it might have been better at the start of the article to be as transparent as possible.
In Master of Orion, I went spy and made everyone attack each other leaving me the dominant power, I hope I can do this in this game. Also, gene splicing and nano-cybernetics.
Still no Alpha Centauri.
That said I'll likely be dropping another 50 on this game, stupid sexy Firaxis.
That said I'll likely be dropping another 50 on this game, stupid sexy Firaxis.
I echo this, if the AI is stupid again then they won't get a sale.hakkarin said:
Still, it sounds awesome enough to grab my attention.
So much this. The fucking diplomacy was baffling to me when I started to play Civ5 (my first civ game) because I treated the AI like competent leaders with their countries best interest in mind. After a while I learned that they're all still in the fucking kindergartenhakkarin said:
"Greetings, friend of our empire since the ancient times who has helped us in times of need, respected our wishes and made favourable trades... wait, our borders are touching?! THATS HOW YOU CATCH THE GAYNESS! Raze that city at once or I will tell all the other leaders that you're a meanie head and sulk for the rest of the game."
or
"Well hello there, don't mind my giant army crushing this other peaceful civilization, I'm a nice guy on the inside! *a few turns later* How hilarious! You just activated my trap card! I will now go to war with you because the number on my army value screen exceeds your number, even though you have set your technologically superior units in a strategically favourable position leaving me to fight an inefficient uphill battle for many years until my empire finally collapses under the weight of my stupidity! But enough talk... have at you!"
Well, I am hoping that since it's basically Civ 5 in space, same engine and everything, it will run fine.
So I've pre-ordered it excitedly and I can't wait for it to drop.
I've watched a few Let's Plays and it looks amazing; different enough from Civ 5 to be interesting, but it is still the Civ games I love.
So I've pre-ordered it excitedly and I can't wait for it to drop.
I've watched a few Let's Plays and it looks amazing; different enough from Civ 5 to be interesting, but it is still the Civ games I love.
I doubt the AI is going to be much different, but suspect with the smaller scope of the game it will be easier to manage and run a bit smoother.hakkarin said:
Making a good AI is really tough. Not only is it the most complex thing to program in a game like Civ, but you have to keep a constant focus on performance otherwise depending on the users PC specs & the games map size you'll be waiting between turns. You want an AI that is both smart and efficient, but those two attributes often contradict each other in a complex game like Civilization.
That's not to say they're above criticism. I recall talks about Civ V's AI in the lead up to it's launch where they made it sound really good but it never lived up to the hype. I get the impression that they did put a whole lot of focus on designing a 'smart & efficient' AI in it's own design room separate from the rest of the game development, and became very proud & attached to it. And on paper it did sound pretty good, but once implemented in the game and you started thoroughly playing it a number of 'quirks' started showing up, some of which through two expansions they never bothered to fix.
One of those things being the peace calculation, an AI wants to end the war and offers you peace maybe they were never interested in trying to stay friendly with another Civ you agreed to declare war but a shot was never fired. So now the other Civ decides to put a formal end to the war so the AI goes and does it's simple army size calculation to determine who's 'winning' and decides they can... demand you hand over of your cities. Or the other way around. Which is just plain stupid, and a problem that was never there in earlier Civ's! To be fair though I've noticed in Brave New World that while they may still ask for your cities (when they have the higher army) but if they're not actually interested in your territory sometimes they'll accept peace without it.
My personal gripe though was always with the Defense Pacts, which were pretty much broken from the start and never fixed. Say you're playing Venice and have both declaration of friendships and defensive pacts with Bismark and Napoleon. The three of you are just one big triangle of friendship & prosperity and trying to stay safe from the Queen of England, and you're hoping to lead the rest of the world through peaceful diplomacy. But suddenly Bismark ruins everything and stabs Napoleon in the back, declaring war and starting their world conquest. What happens with the defense pack? By the system YOU declare war on Bismark taking all the penalties that come with it, getting the war monger label and the far more damning friendship betrayal. Bismark says "We had a declaration of Friendship but you declared war on me!", and all the rest of the world hates you for it... even though he's the one that started the bloody war!
Making things even worse, declaring war breaks all defense pacts. Makes sense in a way, if you look at a defense pact as a method of peaceful coexistence and if you turn into the aggressor and declare war on someone you lose it. But in the above situation, Bismark didn't declare war on Napoleon alone, it was the Queen of England all along! She put him up to it and they declared war together. Here's where things break though. Bismark's declaration of war is first in queue, your defense pact with Napoleon kicks in and you 'declare war' on Bismark in return. So your defense pact breaks. Next on the queue is Elizabeth's declaration of war, but guess what you know longer have a defense pact and the Queen of England gets to walk all over everyone!
Technically you can just declare war on Elizabeth after, and maybe you have to do it otherwise Napoleon is toast and you'll be next. But doing it in that matter flags you for all sorts of negative diplomacy marks. You declared war on your friend Germany and now you're declaring war on England too? Man your friend Ghandi's going to think you're a real war monger now, or former friend I should say as now he's denouncing you. Oh and that's a massive hit to your rep when someone you have a declaration of friendship denounces you, and now all your other friends in the world decide they like Gandhi better and they denounce you too! And why did they like Gandhi better? Because you lost points with them for being a fucking war monger, that's why!
And now the world will burn. All this because Bismark turned out to be a backstabber and you wanted to protect poor little Napoleon from the Queen of England. And through two expansions and numerous patches Firaxis never took the time to make a few small tweaks to the core code to make defense pacts actually work like defense pacts.
Sorry for the rant, I've been going through another round of Civ lately
I remember this one game where a civilization I'd never noticed declared war on me, left me alone for gods know how many turns, and eventually wanted to negotiate peace. I'm not even sure if they offered me a tribute or had the audacity to make demands, but it was hilarious either way.hakkarin said:
Another time, a civ that declared war on me wanted to negotiate peace, but I refused because I wanted to steal one of their cities. After that point, they refused to declare peace unless I gave them a bunch of stuff... so I had to wipe them out to end the war. >_>
"Disclosure(s): Strauss Zelnick, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., is the head of ZelnickMedia, an investor in both Take-Two and Defy Media, LLC, our parent company. This article was published without approval or consent of ZelnickMedia or Take-Two."
Honor where honor is due!
Great article, can´t wait for the game, i always liked Civ style games but as a sci-fi nut they never scratched that particular itch.
And thanks for the advice^^
Thanks to those 10 tips it will probably take me about 20 less tries to beat the game for the first time...
Honor where honor is due!
Great article, can´t wait for the game, i always liked Civ style games but as a sci-fi nut they never scratched that particular itch.
And thanks for the advice^^
Thanks to those 10 tips it will probably take me about 20 less tries to beat the game for the first time...
Personally I never really found the Civ 5 engine to be just fine. It worked great as long as numbers stayed low, but once you started gettin higher up in years and started spreadin out a whole lot more, the game slowed to a crawl. I don't have the beefiest system, but when things start takin upwards a minute between turns I start to get pissy.Leon Declis said:
Definitely gonna wait to see how it goes with this. If I see the same issues that I had with Civ V (really derp AI, bad lag later in the game) I'll wait for some sort of sale.
Interesting article, made me reconsider to pay more attention to this title come release, since it had completely dropped off my radar.
And thank you for the disclosure. However insignificant the financial ties are, it feels great to be respected as a reader and be given this information.
And thank you for the disclosure. However insignificant the financial ties are, it feels great to be respected as a reader and be given this information.
Think I'll wait and see, considering just how disappointed I was in Civ V. Didn't like a lot of the gameplay changes, and the AI was somehow even more idiotic than in previous iterations.
Heard it got a bit better after expansions, but damned if I was gonna drop $50 on 'em.
Heard it got a bit better after expansions, but damned if I was gonna drop $50 on 'em.
