Civilization: Beyond Earth Rising Tide Review - Surface-Level Strategy

[Dosbilliam]

Civilization: Beyond Earth Rising Tide Review - Surface-Level Strategy

When compared to the base game of Civilization 5, Beyond Earth: Rising Tide sometimes subtracts from the overall experience.

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[Dosbilliam]

...Eh, not happy with some of the phrases added in, mostly at the end where it takes away from the last sentence. :|

 

[Jburton9]

Thank you for the review. I was really hoping it would fix the base game and it just feels to me like spinning plates that are already in the game a bit more.

One example of several items I am still looking for, where are my terraformers? Raise mountains, lower the land space to below sea level, not happy with that giant valley nearby a city? Fill it up and refresh it into fertile land.


Well crud, *sigh*. In my opinion, February 12, 1999 on that day Firaxis Games still produced a far better game than what I am seeing here.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

I haven't played this or the base game, though I will likely get it at some point. But your review seems a bit weird, from the wording I'd expect something like a 3/5, not 4/5.

 

[Weaver]

Shame it doesn't expand the game in a large way. The base game was a solid foundation but it lacked depth, complexity and variety. I played 3 games going each mutation route, then never played again.

 

[Dosbilliam]

I haven't played this or the base game, though I will likely get it at some point. But your review seems a bit weird, from the wording I'd expect something like a 3/5, not 4/5.

It's mostly a Yahtzee thing; if I didn't mention something, it's probably alright. The aquatic cities suck, but that's mostly because you need to waste turns building a "move city" to expand territory without buying it.

If there was anything that I really liked about the game that I wasn't able to put in the review, whether due to oversight or just simple space, it would be the Virtues that replaced 5's Social Policies. (Also, before anyone mentions the expansions, I don't have them yet)

Also, the playing Civ 5 is also kind of required, since the review copy didn't revert to Beyond Earth yet. :S

 

[RedDeadFred]

I didn't see anything in this review about the expansion fixing the complete lack of personality this game has. It's sort of hard to explain, but I always feel a hollowness when I play this game and within an hour or two, I begin to wish that I was just playing Civ 5 instead.

 

[Scytail]

Thank you for the review. I was really hoping it would fix the base game and it just feels to me like spinning plates that are already in the game a bit more.

One example of several items I am still looking for, where are my terraformers? Raise mountains, lower the land space to below sea level, not happy with that giant valley nearby a city? Fill it up and refresh it into fertile land.


Well crud, *sigh*. In my opinion, February 12, 1999 on that day Firaxis Games still produced a far better game than what I am seeing here.

I believe it's the game engine that keeps terraformers from happening.

 

[Dosbilliam]

I didn't see anything in this review about the expansion fixing the complete lack of personality this game has. It's sort of hard to explain, but I always feel a hollowness when I play this game and within an hour or two, I begin to wish that I was just playing Civ 5 instead.

It doesn't. Given enough time, which by my estimation, should be at least 100 hours, you might be able to discern different personalities between each sponsor, but given that I put in about 30 hours in four days and was barely able to see the beginnings of it, I doubt it's really worth the effort.



It's still a decent game, hence the 4 stars, but it just feels shallow and soulless compared to 5. Everyone I've seen in 5 has a distinct character based on their historical persona, but since this game has no history to go on, there's nothing really separating anyone.

On a related note, I just remembered another problem I had with the diplomacy system; there's no choice about negotiating peace terms with what happens; it's based entirely on War Score, so if you're stomping someone into the ground militarily and you want peace, the terms will usually involve them handing over cities without any player input. It's not enough to change my score because of how much I dislike wasting time with fighting in this type of game, but it's still really annoying when I'm about 20 turns from winning and I've got someone poking me with invisible subs outside my city bombardment range while I'm trying to send military units back to Earth to "liberate" them.

 

[Gretha Unterberg]

Reads like finetuning rather then tackling the core.
My problem with beyon earth was that (maybe because of the techweb) that there were no defined stages and civ interaction.
And apparently that won't change with with the addon.

In Civ you've got the early stone age/classic age time of landgrabbing expansion. (watch out for Aztec rushes)
the power struggle to get the advantage in the medieval/renaissance.
and finaly the endgame in the atomic/modern age where you push for your wining condition of choice
and hinder those who might be closer to theirs.

in beyon earth it feels like everyone is going for the science victory (in the ideology flavour of your choice ) right from the get go. millitary might, economics, political influence, size of your empire .... just means to an end. What matters is how far your research progress bar is in compairision to theirs.

If you neglect your defences in civ V and put everything into science and production , then even the none agressive neighbours see their chance. In beyon earth the default response seems to be "oh, then I will try to outreseach you even harder" resulting in little to none interaction with other civs beyon the progress bar if you aren't going for world domination.

 

[Frankster]

So yeah this won't be the expansion that makes BE super interesting I think.
-Water stuff: there was already a mod for this and from the sounds of it the mod did a better job
-Still no terraforming
-Mixed affinities! You can actually find me asking about this way back when BE was first being previewed on the escapist.
Now I finally got what I want so yey for that at least.
-Relics: they sound cool
-Diplomacy: Can't comment on that until I see it for myself.

Overall I might end up getting this expansion during a sale at some point, but I'll still be holding out for a few more BE expansions or big mods before I get interested in this again. Fact of the matter is Alpha Centauri still seems to be the better game xD

I begin to wish that I was just playing Civ 5 instead.

Replace that with Alpha Centauri and I'll agree with ya. Civ5 leaders might have had more diverse leader reactions then BE but otherwise personality wise they were also souless. AC is the civ game that had its leaders full of personality

 

[Dosbilliam]

If you neglect your defences in civ V and put everything into science and production , then even the none agressive neighbours see their chance. In beyon earth the default response seems to be "oh, then I will try to outreseach you even harder" resulting in little to none interaction with other civs beyon the progress bar if you aren't going for world domination.

That actually HAS changed. With the way the new diplomacy system works, it's possible to have Cooperating sponsors sanction you because you don't have enough military units of high enough strength. However, sometimes it's fairly difficult to tell what they're annoyed with you about because the alert says something like "RE: Your Improvement Strategy" and then the complaint and a minor loss of respect. The only reason the situation mentioned above with the submarine poking happened was because I tried to ally with all three AI sponsors, which didn't go well since they were all warring with each other. One got eliminated since they'd never really gotten off the ground (their points were around 270 for almost the entire match up to that point while mine were well over 1,000) and the other just wouldn't give up, mostly because peace required them handing over 4-5 cities I didn't want so I could focus on my victory instead of trying to defend a building that wasn't able to be destroyed by ranged units.

Actually fighting stuff is irrelevant; just having the units is enough, and the really good ones require a lot of research. I think most of that problem is that every victory aside from Conquest requires research, and even then you need to research to get the good military units unless you want to have a horde of second-tier Soldiers and a couple of Missile Rovers.

The upgrades do tend to get fairly silly, though. Having a Missile Rover that has about 5 times the base attack, doesn't need to set up to fire, and gets about +60% damage to cities isn't uncommon if you pick the right upgrades.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I begin to wish that I was just playing Civ 5 instead.

Replace that with Alpha Centauri and I'll agree with ya. Civ5 leaders might have had more diverse leader reactions then BE but otherwise personality wise they were also souless. AC is the civ game that had its leaders full of personality

I don't disagree, but I was talking about the game as a whole. Civ 5 is colourful and exploring the map is fun and rewarding. BE is muted and actively discourages early exploration. This made me spend a lot more time in boring menus, whilst making boring decisions, brought about by boring quests. Everything you do in Civ 5 is rooted in some kind of familiarity, so it can get away with only surface deep leader personalities and exposition IMO. BE isn't rooted in anything, so it's significantly less successful when taking this approach.