Alpha Centauri wasn't a 'Civilization' game (even though it obviously was) because at that time the rights to the Civ brand had been acquired by Activision and Meier et al had left to form Firaxis. So they had to call it something different, and Civ3 (which imo was actually kinda underrated) was released by a different team, although iirc they had some of the original microprose devs
later on Take Two acquired the rights to the brand and eventually acquired firaxis itself
I mean, it's technically true as you've outlined above. I just thought it was a bit odd after the game was talked up as being the spiritual successor of SMAC.
did Firaxis ever do that, though? all the interviews I saw were all about how "this is not Alpha Centauri 2" and whatnot
it's kind of like they were trying to deflate some of the overhype before release, so that people would be judging it on its own merits rather than comparing it to SMAC and seeing how it falls behind
if so they failed completely, obv
You have your very own wayback machine right here by clicking on the first page of this thread.
Let's say that if Firaxis was trying to manage expectations or not reference Alpha Centauri the thread showed no indication of it.
Actually most of us were expecting Civ 5 in Space and were wondering where the great people, city-states, cultural victories, eras, natural wonders and global congresses went.
+9
ShogunHair long; money long; me and broke wizards we don't get alongRegistered Userregular
should have donated all your children and not just your first born
I don't even recall 4 being that bad out of the gate (although I confess I can hardly remember 4 anymore).
I do and you're right, Civ 4 is very playable even without the expansions. Civ 5 vanilla was kind of bare especially in the mid-to-late game, but they were working with an entirely new engine while introducing new combat mechanics and hexes so its forgivable. Civ BE used Civ 5's engine though, there was really no reason for it to be so unrefined and watered down. A few bugs and rough edges here and there but not stations that didn't do anything and a planet devoid of any real sense of discovery or variety across the biomes.
At some point you have to wonder what they were thinking.
Yes this is about it - it's not like the previous iterations where you had a new engine (or major changes like 5). This was largely a mod for Civ 5, at a much higher price point than it had content for. There's some great ideas here (I love the affinity system and how you can still have a strong military without sacrificing other research), but they fell flat on their face with some areas (trade, orbital layer, wonders) and then left you with a few bland leaders that all play the same. I wasn't expecting SMAC (and honestly as much as I loved that game I don't have the fanboy crush some do for it), I was just expecting something at least Civ5 base levels of good, if not better since all they were doing was introducing new concepts, not a new engine/tile set. I've uninstalled and largely have no interest in playing BE, I still play Civ5 on a regular basis.
+2
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I'd like to think I do a pretty good job of managing my expectations for most everything in life, and they in absolutely no way tried to pare down the hype that BE was the "spiritual successor" to SMAC. Basically whenever it was brought up they'd go, "Yeah, that's where we got the idea! And it's obviously not going to be the same game but that's where we got the inspiration. Check out these really cool future technologies! And this tech web thing! Doesn't that remind you of SMAC? And factions are based on the ideology of their supporting mission! And zany aliens on these new worlds!"
The smart play would have been to manage expectations up front instead of play them up while saying, "Well it's technically not a sequel" once every few weeks.
To be honest it's one of the more frustrating things about BE. I give them credit for lowering the price point - it's a standalone game from a AAA design studio that had a $40 MSRP upon release even though they could have easily charged $60 like everyone else. But at the same time the game clearly relied so much on the Civ 5 engine that you have to wonder at some of the design decisions. It's one thing to take stuff out in anticipation of building a new mechanic in a future expansion. It's another to include it and then botch the execution so royally, both from a balance and UI perspective (see: trade routes).
They in absolutely no way tried to pare down the hype that BE was the "spiritual successor" to SMAC.
Yeah, it's literally not their jobs to say, "Woah now, try not to get too excited about our new product." They outright said on several occasions that it wouldn't be SMAC, and that's all they really needed to do.
Is time a gift or punishment?
+3
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
They in absolutely no way tried to pare down the hype that BE was the "spiritual successor" to SMAC.
Yeah, it's literally not their jobs to say, "Woah now, try not to get too excited about our new product." They outright said on several occasions that it wouldn't be SMAC, and that's all they really needed to do.
It isn't their job, but it kind of is. Managing expectations is part of selling anything, anywhere. If you aren't going to do that, then you really have no room to complain that people's expectations were too high when they inevitably slam your product for over-promising and under-delivering. This is a commonly-known issue, especially if you are trying to weigh the long-term brand value against your short-term sales.
They don't necessarily have to manage expectations, they just need to put out a worthwhile gameplay experience.
People will be more inclined to come back for an expansion if they never left in the first place.
But if the expansion is more about fixing of a heavily flawed game, that's basically asking people to risk being fooled twice on the promise that they won't be fooled again.
I would definitely agree with others - BE is not in the same boat as vanilla Civ 4 / 5 etc. The basic game was flat out broken out of the gate, all the new changes ended up being worse than the base civ game, and the game was full of fundamental, unmissable screw ups - trade routes, personalities, utterly useless aliens, wonders, minor cities etc. It was easily my most dissapointing game of the last few years, and so clearly done by their C team.
I'd also say that they didn't help with the SMAC comparisons when they copied the damn story (badly).
Like others, this will be the first Firaxis thing I don't buy on day one - they don't deserve my cash after how truly terrible BE was, and by how little they have fixed it before launching this expansion. Civ 5 had a hell of a lot more work done to it before the first expanion shipped.
It basically played like a mod of Civ V. A very comprehensive mod, no doubt, but not a particularly good one either.
I still think a fundamental problem with the game is the tech web. It seemed like one of those cool ideas, like why not reimagine science and think about future possibilities rather than past developments, but its nature really deprived the game of a sense of progression.
So far, I'm not seeing anything from Rising Tide that makes the game ... better. It adds more to the game and maybe fixes really broken shit, but I feel like it's still going to be missing that fundamental sense of progression and development.
The weird thing for me, is the steampunk factions from the Civ 5 scenarios had more character than the Beyond Earth factions. The BE factions ended up just being so bland.
Agree with most of what's been said so far. A space reskin of Civ 5 would've been one thing... but they actually gutted or botched so many things that make so much sense and add such a feeling of progress, like tech trees, eras, global congresses and city-states, that it's bizarre how this game was ever allowed to be released in the first place.
Totally agree on many complaints about stuff they took out, but not the tech tree. The web may not have been perfect, but I was glad to see them try something new and the goal was an admirable one (allow for highly varied playstyles instead of everyone researching 90% the same shit).
Totally agree on many complaints about stuff they took out, but not the tech tree. The web may not have been perfect, but I was glad to see them try something new and the goal was an admirable one (allow for highly varied playstyles instead of everyone researching 90% the same shit).
I agree, but I don't think it works in BE, and people just end up researching 90% of the same shit anyways. Possibly by accident, because the tech web doesn't really make logical sense to anyone.
1: poor organization. At a glance everything looked the same. Was it a building, tech, wonder? Maybe. It looks like they are fixing that.
2: the distinct lack of that narrator guy quoting things whenever you research a tech.
Beyond that my only concerns were balance issues about where certain techs were placed in the Web, some were never worth getting and some were auto-included in everything. But that wasn't a fundamental issue with the tech Web like the lack of great quotes.
For all the faults in BE, I'm going to say this: I enjoyed it more than I'm enjoying Endless Legend right now. I could pick up and play BE without watching 10 hours of YouTube tutorials.
For all the faults in BE, I'm going to say this: I enjoyed it more than I'm enjoying Endless Legend right now. I could pick up and play BE without watching 10 hours of YouTube tutorials.
I'm in the opposite boat. As soon as I realized how Endless Legend''s city and citizen management worked, I fell in love with it and never picked up Civil again. I loved placing citizens on resource outcomes rather than tiles. It felt so natural and right.
For all the faults in BE, I'm going to say this: I enjoyed it more than I'm enjoying Endless Legend right now. I could pick up and play BE without watching 10 hours of YouTube tutorials.
I'm in the opposite boat. As soon as I realized how Endless Legend''s city and citizen management worked, I fell in love with it and never picked up Civil again. I loved placing citizens on resource outcomes rather than tiles. It felt so natural and right.
TELL ME YOUR SECRETS
Everything feels so awkward and weird! There's no way to speed up movement! A dozen turns will go by with nothing happening! I can only build two units, and they both suck!
For all the faults in BE, I'm going to say this: I enjoyed it more than I'm enjoying Endless Legend right now. I could pick up and play BE without watching 10 hours of YouTube tutorials.
I'm in the opposite boat. As soon as I realized how Endless Legend''s city and citizen management worked, I fell in love with it and never picked up Civil again. I loved placing citizens on resource outcomes rather than tiles. It felt so natural and right.
TELL ME YOUR SECRETS
Everything feels so awkward and weird! There's no way to speed up movement! A dozen turns will go by with nothing happening! I can only build two units, and they both suck!
Its been a while since I played either so I would ask the Endless Legend thread. Furthermore, the answer to the last part would greatly depend on the class because no two classes have equivalent units. Every race plays very, very very differently.
For all the faults in BE, I'm going to say this: I enjoyed it more than I'm enjoying Endless Legend right now. I could pick up and play BE without watching 10 hours of YouTube tutorials.
This is more a function of BE being CIV IN SPAAAACCEEE!!!! while Endless Legend is...well Civ in Endless and uses a lot of the systems and ideas they use elsewhere. Civ experience can seriously wrong foot you in it. I still think I'd rate EL over BE, maybe not the main lane civs with their expansions though.
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
The EL tactical combat is also pretty polarizing. I tried very hard to love it, but it's one of those things that just turned me off. The AI is asinine and yet going out of your way to control units is an exercise in frustration, which constantly makes you beg the question of why they insist on shoving it down your throat instead of just letting you manage combat on your own.
I've never played EL, but the James Recommends on it did say that for a while initially, it's pretty clunky because the systems aren't as intuitive as in civ, but once you figure it out it's great.
I just want HD, Alpha Centari at this point.
I have alien crossfire from GOG now, and should probably play more of that.
I run a game of basic SMAC, once a year. It's still really good.
They in absolutely no way tried to pare down the hype that BE was the "spiritual successor" to SMAC.
Yeah, it's literally not their jobs to say, "Woah now, try not to get too excited about our new product." They outright said on several occasions that it wouldn't be SMAC, and that's all they really needed to do.
If the game had been a polished product instead of being the equivalent of a total conversion mod, nobody would've cared about how close to SMAC it was or wasn't. I always feel like mentioning in discussions of BE that, yup, the visual glitches in the unit upgrade screen are still present, even after all of the really heavy-handed balance patches.
Rising Tide makes me a bit sour, not because I'd have otherwise expected the aquatic content to be packed into the base game (and let's face it - the AI will not know how to interact with the aquatic content, and mostly people are just going to be playing on Pangea anyway as a result), but because the UI & diplomacy updates aren't being patched into the vanilla game. It's just bullshit. If Triumph Studios can support AoW 3's base game even while they add paid DLC expansions, there's no reason Firaxis can't do the same.
I hate Cha Dawn's guts. I hate Miriam. I hate Santiago.
I really don't care about BE's factions one way or another.
Well, maybe Hutama. That ass. But I had to look up his name to write this down, which is very telling.
Anyway, I won't bite on Rising Tide until it's for like 8$ on Steam. Fool me once...
I can't play AC. I can't make heads or tails of the interface.
The Warrior’s bland acronym, MMI, obscures the true horror of
this monstrosity. Its inventors promise a new era of genius, but
meanwhile unscrupulous power brokers use its forcible installation
to violate the sanctity of unwilling human minds. They are
creating their own private army of demons.
—Commissioner Pravin Lal,
“Report on Human Rights”
Shame, shame on . . . ? Fool me ya ain't gonna fool me again.
masterthehero on
+3
ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
edited August 2015
The UI takes a little getting used to, but it's pretty straightforward. Learning the keyboard shortcut for your Formers actions is a priority though.
I only got into playing AC a couple of years ago so I didn't really have the same nostalgia goggles as most people, and it is still an amazing game and experience. Certainly not without its flaws of course, but for its time it was a masterpiece.
Edit: They never had to describe what Nerve-Stapling is, just the name of it is horrific enough. The imagination goes places.
Yeah, most techs/quotes/secret projects made you imagine lots of stuff.
Which just doesn't happen with most of BE's stuff. A Daedalus Ladder? It really doesn't tell me anything.
They never promised that BE was gonna be AC2, but god damnit if they're not taking a few whole chapters of AC's book.
First the story is almost completely stolen from AC, now the expansion adds Ocean gameplay shit like water cities, just like, you know, SID MEIER'S ALPHA CENTAURY's expansion did.
Yeah, most techs/quotes/secret projects made you imagine lots of stuff.
Which just doesn't happen with most of BE's stuff. A Daedalus Ladder? It really doesn't tell me anything.
Well Daedalus is the father of Icarus. He built the minotaur's labyrinth and was known for escaping his imprisonment by King Minos by crafting wings for himself and his son. His son famously flew too close to the sun, melted his wings, and plummeted to his death. Daedalus went on to safety.
So a Daedalus ladder is probably something that lets you rise above the restraints that confine you. Admittedly from the name alone, I assumed it was an orbital elevator for readily escaping the grasp of gravity. However from the tech description, it dramatically improves the human lifespan and reduces our dependance on food. We rise above the limitations of our humanity. The use of the name Daedalus Ladder for such a tech seems much more fitting than my initial guess.
3DS Friend Code:
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
0
ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
To me it sounds suitably vague to the point that you could interpret it whatever way you want.
There are certainly multiple different things that could logically be named a Daedalus Ladder, but the tech description is appropriate for the name. It isn't random reverse the polarity technobabble.
3DS Friend Code:
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
0
ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
I would assume anything that references Daedalus would have to do with flight, satellites or some kind of space flight. Slipping the surly bonds of Earth and such. I'm not going to get to deeply into this as I haven't played it much beyond the demo and free weekend, but if you're dealing with myths and legends of flight, surely it should be at least slightly relevant to the name.
What's the actual tech description for it? The wiki doesn't have it.
We who stand atop the Daedalus Ladder, we owe it to those who came before us to tread the path from Old Earth to this new planet. We who seldom suffer, who see much, who understand much, who have wrought so much by our own hands and the works of all these worlds, we must bear witness to the primitive humanity that bore us until we could extend ourselves and become that which the universe meant us to be.
What was humanity, that we should care for it? Little more than an elevated ape, much less than a descended angel. Social, and yet isolated, mistrustful and fearful. Limited by a single lifespan, subject to the degradation of the flesh and the failure of the mind, ending in death. But this poor material was enough to create the Daedalus Ladder, whose rungs we all know in the very fabric of our being:
Cyberization: Augmenting the failing body with machines, maintaining life.
Reontogenesis: Repairing the genotype and eliminating the failures of heritage.
Eidetic Encoding: Creating self-replicating codes that observe and preserve the Ladder within the substance of self.
Cliosis: Perfecting the self-memory.
Xenography: Incorporating elements of the psycho-physio-biochemistry of the new world to the self.
Mnemosymonization: Embedding the species-memory and optimizing cognitive operation.
Reprogenesis: Transferring the Ladder to our unborn offspring.
Archezation: Extending the lifespan arbitrarily, creating the choice of when to experience death.
Ataxification: A shutting-down of the old self, allowing the Laddered creature to become the new self.
Observe now the facility where the Ladder was first implemented, preserved as we have left it, now that we need no machine to bring Humanity along the Ladder. Is it not strange, that a single species could uplift itself so profoundly? We can, if we wish, experience the limitations of old humanity - and we know it to be a confining, haunted existence. But we pay it homage, for without our ancestors, we would not hold this galaxy as our birthright.
TLDR; Its a combination of things all designed to make humanity generally "better" and the wonder itself is some kind of facility where all of the above procedures are performed. It also transfers between generations, meaning that future generations will already be born with perfect memories, infinite lifespans e.t.c. Although I'm not sure how cybernetic upgrades are supposed to be inherited. I really feel like whoever wrote the tech descriptions was super passionate about his or her job, and its just a shame that all of their work creating this sci-fi back story is completely separated from the rest of the game.
Posts
You have your very own wayback machine right here by clicking on the first page of this thread.
Let's say that if Firaxis was trying to manage expectations or not reference Alpha Centauri the thread showed no indication of it.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Yes this is about it - it's not like the previous iterations where you had a new engine (or major changes like 5). This was largely a mod for Civ 5, at a much higher price point than it had content for. There's some great ideas here (I love the affinity system and how you can still have a strong military without sacrificing other research), but they fell flat on their face with some areas (trade, orbital layer, wonders) and then left you with a few bland leaders that all play the same. I wasn't expecting SMAC (and honestly as much as I loved that game I don't have the fanboy crush some do for it), I was just expecting something at least Civ5 base levels of good, if not better since all they were doing was introducing new concepts, not a new engine/tile set. I've uninstalled and largely have no interest in playing BE, I still play Civ5 on a regular basis.
The smart play would have been to manage expectations up front instead of play them up while saying, "Well it's technically not a sequel" once every few weeks.
To be honest it's one of the more frustrating things about BE. I give them credit for lowering the price point - it's a standalone game from a AAA design studio that had a $40 MSRP upon release even though they could have easily charged $60 like everyone else. But at the same time the game clearly relied so much on the Civ 5 engine that you have to wonder at some of the design decisions. It's one thing to take stuff out in anticipation of building a new mechanic in a future expansion. It's another to include it and then botch the execution so royally, both from a balance and UI perspective (see: trade routes).
Yeah, it's literally not their jobs to say, "Woah now, try not to get too excited about our new product." They outright said on several occasions that it wouldn't be SMAC, and that's all they really needed to do.
It isn't their job, but it kind of is. Managing expectations is part of selling anything, anywhere. If you aren't going to do that, then you really have no room to complain that people's expectations were too high when they inevitably slam your product for over-promising and under-delivering. This is a commonly-known issue, especially if you are trying to weigh the long-term brand value against your short-term sales.
People will be more inclined to come back for an expansion if they never left in the first place.
But if the expansion is more about fixing of a heavily flawed game, that's basically asking people to risk being fooled twice on the promise that they won't be fooled again.
I'd also say that they didn't help with the SMAC comparisons when they copied the damn story (badly).
Like others, this will be the first Firaxis thing I don't buy on day one - they don't deserve my cash after how truly terrible BE was, and by how little they have fixed it before launching this expansion. Civ 5 had a hell of a lot more work done to it before the first expanion shipped.
I still think a fundamental problem with the game is the tech web. It seemed like one of those cool ideas, like why not reimagine science and think about future possibilities rather than past developments, but its nature really deprived the game of a sense of progression.
So far, I'm not seeing anything from Rising Tide that makes the game ... better. It adds more to the game and maybe fixes really broken shit, but I feel like it's still going to be missing that fundamental sense of progression and development.
I agree, but I don't think it works in BE, and people just end up researching 90% of the same shit anyways. Possibly by accident, because the tech web doesn't really make logical sense to anyone.
Here's my suggestion for how it could be redone: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/31170717#Comment_31170717
1: poor organization. At a glance everything looked the same. Was it a building, tech, wonder? Maybe. It looks like they are fixing that.
2: the distinct lack of that narrator guy quoting things whenever you research a tech.
Beyond that my only concerns were balance issues about where certain techs were placed in the Web, some were never worth getting and some were auto-included in everything. But that wasn't a fundamental issue with the tech Web like the lack of great quotes.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I'm in the opposite boat. As soon as I realized how Endless Legend''s city and citizen management worked, I fell in love with it and never picked up Civil again. I loved placing citizens on resource outcomes rather than tiles. It felt so natural and right.
Everything feels so awkward and weird! There's no way to speed up movement! A dozen turns will go by with nothing happening! I can only build two units, and they both suck!
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Its been a while since I played either so I would ask the Endless Legend thread. Furthermore, the answer to the last part would greatly depend on the class because no two classes have equivalent units. Every race plays very, very very differently.
This is more a function of BE being CIV IN SPAAAACCEEE!!!! while Endless Legend is...well Civ in Endless and uses a lot of the systems and ideas they use elsewhere. Civ experience can seriously wrong foot you in it. I still think I'd rate EL over BE, maybe not the main lane civs with their expansions though.
I have alien crossfire from GOG now, and should probably play more of that.
I run a game of basic SMAC, once a year. It's still really good.
If the game had been a polished product instead of being the equivalent of a total conversion mod, nobody would've cared about how close to SMAC it was or wasn't. I always feel like mentioning in discussions of BE that, yup, the visual glitches in the unit upgrade screen are still present, even after all of the really heavy-handed balance patches.
Rising Tide makes me a bit sour, not because I'd have otherwise expected the aquatic content to be packed into the base game (and let's face it - the AI will not know how to interact with the aquatic content, and mostly people are just going to be playing on Pangea anyway as a result), but because the UI & diplomacy updates aren't being patched into the vanilla game. It's just bullshit. If Triumph Studios can support AoW 3's base game even while they add paid DLC expansions, there's no reason Firaxis can't do the same.
If that's really the case, it's kind of a dick move since Patch 2.0 is supposed to be showcasing what's been fixed/improved upon.
There's still more than enough content left in the expansion to make people want to buy it provided the rest is sorted out.
Otherwise, what exactly will Patch 2.0 be about?
Planet Cult were jerks. Still really good.
I really don't care about BE's factions one way or another.
Well, maybe Hutama. That ass. But I had to look up his name to write this down, which is very telling.
Anyway, I won't bite on Rising Tide until it's for like 8$ on Steam. Fool me once...
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
I hope this explains everything.
Shame, shame on . . . ? Fool me ya ain't gonna fool me again.
I only got into playing AC a couple of years ago so I didn't really have the same nostalgia goggles as most people, and it is still an amazing game and experience. Certainly not without its flaws of course, but for its time it was a masterpiece.
Edit: They never had to describe what Nerve-Stapling is, just the name of it is horrific enough. The imagination goes places.
Which just doesn't happen with most of BE's stuff. A Daedalus Ladder? It really doesn't tell me anything.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Sadly, it's nit the best example of that kind of story telling or what people were expecting.
First the story is almost completely stolen from AC, now the expansion adds Ocean gameplay shit like water cities, just like, you know, SID MEIER'S ALPHA CENTAURY's expansion did.
So a Daedalus ladder is probably something that lets you rise above the restraints that confine you. Admittedly from the name alone, I assumed it was an orbital elevator for readily escaping the grasp of gravity. However from the tech description, it dramatically improves the human lifespan and reduces our dependance on food. We rise above the limitations of our humanity. The use of the name Daedalus Ladder for such a tech seems much more fitting than my initial guess.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
What's the actual tech description for it? The wiki doesn't have it.
http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Daedalus_Ladder_(CivBE)
TLDR; Its a combination of things all designed to make humanity generally "better" and the wonder itself is some kind of facility where all of the above procedures are performed. It also transfers between generations, meaning that future generations will already be born with perfect memories, infinite lifespans e.t.c. Although I'm not sure how cybernetic upgrades are supposed to be inherited. I really feel like whoever wrote the tech descriptions was super passionate about his or her job, and its just a shame that all of their work creating this sci-fi back story is completely separated from the rest of the game.