I think you want to settle then move your city around a bit to pick up the land you want then start building stuff. Either that or just buy it all with energy if you can afford it. If you move a city onto an improved tile it destroys the improvement so you don't want to be moving stuff after you've improved a bunch of the land.
The best use I found was, have one city that is just slowly sailing in an area to grab the land you want, while you improve the tiles it won't smash when it moves, then plant a real city there. Have the first city continue down the line to the next area.
It doesn't really feel any better/more useful than just planting a normal city and letting its culture take tiles.
I honestly would've been fine if they just gave ocean cities normal tile growth.
In their attempt to make them stand out more from land cities, they just made them a tedious pain in the ass.
I actually dread putting cities in the water now just because I know I'll have to either move them around, which is slow as hell and feels like a waste of production, or spend hard-earned/stolen energy buying up tiles.
Since I installed RT I've not seen a single geotherm tile with more than 1 of the resource available. Is that just a change or is that a bug? Also ocean tiles are way better on average than land stuff. I plopped a city down in a region that had, within the 3-tile sphere of influence:
2 petroleum (4, 2) 2 algae, shells, a titanium (5), a geotherm and 2 biomass (9, 3). The city is basically Ranx now.
Heh, just make the rest of your civilization based on energy gain, then make a aquatic city to just slowly creep up to an enemy nation so you can buy a unit at it every turn.
Also, something I forgot to try last time I played. Can you use the city movement to capture enemy cultured tiles?
In my first game of Rising Tide I thought I saw an AI do that, but I think they just encroached really close to my territory before I cultured the tiles.
Since I installed RT I've not seen a single geotherm tile with more than 1 of the resource available. Is that just a change or is that a bug? Also ocean tiles are way better on average than land stuff. I plopped a city down in a region that had, within the 3-tile sphere of influence:
2 petroleum (4, 2) 2 algae, shells, a titanium (5), a geotherm and 2 biomass (9, 3). The city is basically Ranx now.
Yeah, I had that as well. It's a bug/feature. Once it was harnessed, it gave 4 or 5 of the resource. That made me look at the other oceanic geothermal sites (since I only had them in the ocean, due to a very small archipelago map). All of them just said Geothermal before I harnessed them.
These are the stories of Dwarf Fortress. Legends have been forged there, and meticulousy gathered in one mighty hub: http://dfstories.com/start-here/
Heh, just make the rest of your civilization based on energy gain, then make a aquatic city to just slowly creep up to an enemy nation so you can buy a unit at it every turn.
Also, something I forgot to try last time I played. Can you use the city movement to capture enemy cultured tiles?
Yes. Yes you can. The city will take any tiles it touches when it moves, free or otherwise
Since I installed RT I've not seen a single geotherm tile with more than 1 of the resource available. Is that just a change or is that a bug? Also ocean tiles are way better on average than land stuff. I plopped a city down in a region that had, within the 3-tile sphere of influence:
2 petroleum (4, 2) 2 algae, shells, a titanium (5), a geotherm and 2 biomass (9, 3). The city is basically Ranx now.
Yeah, I had that as well. It's a bug/feature. Once it was harnessed, it gave 4 or 5 of the resource. That made me look at the other oceanic geothermal sites (since I only had them in the ocean, due to a very small archipelago map). All of them just said Geothermal before I harnessed them.
That....bleh! It's a really important strategic resource for Purity. The difference between a site having 1 of it and 5 of it is the difference between 0 Boreholes and 2 Boreholes!
I had a combination of artifacts last night that let me build a wonder that costs 100 production and reduces the cost of techs by 30%. That seems... broken.
So is RT worth $30? Or should I just wait for the end-of-the-year price drop?
I'm in two minds. It's certainly an improvement from the base. I'd probably say wait for the sale though.
It is indeed bonuses to the conversion build projects. It can actually add up pretty significantly, I've been using it early game as a quick run up the cultural perks trees before before I start settling other cities.
So is RT worth $30? Or should I just wait for the end-of-the-year price drop?
I'm in two minds. It's certainly an improvement from the base. I'd probably say wait for the sale though.
It is indeed bonuses to the conversion build projects. It can actually add up pretty significantly, I've been using it early game as a quick run up the cultural perks trees before before I start settling other cities.
Really? I thought it was an energy bonus of some kind. Alright; rant mode on:
My first playthrough was as Al Falah, because I wanted to try it out. Turns out I never actually used the Al Falah bonus, as I never had a turn of conversion projects. But I had so much more energy than usual. I thought it came from the faction bonus. Must be from the ocean bonuses then. I won a Gemini (the just "hard" mode, believe that's Gemini) game purity victory handily, with a fairly bad starting location, no plan, no focus, just build whatever and don't build many cities. I spread my affinity to all the hybrid directions, and only midgame focused general science. Took the "leash alien" approach early, so water dominance was assured in the early/mid game. Then 2-3 ranged cruisers ate all oposition on land and sea. But i had sooo much energy/diplomatic currency all through the game.
I'm a bit torn. I like the diverse units/aliens. I don't like the new diplomacy, but very much like the traits system. It fleshes out the AI players with a bit of characterization. The new trading system seems to make trading with other factions less predictable, and somehow also less interactive. I just feel it's a net loss in the management aspect somehow. I liked facing other leaders to bicker over how I could get access to petroleum. That just felt right. The system just needed some more tweaking of the AI's wighting of your propositions.
Also the trading system makes Polystralia feel fairly Op. But why would you send your trading units to foreign cities before your own routes and station partners are maxed anyway? That's still a winning strategy. Why would I trade 1 petroleum and 1 firaxite a little science and a little energy, when overall I genereally recieve the same in return? And the route might change while I'm not looking due to war and developement of resources. Sure some routes might be optimized to net you crucial resources, but it's not nearly as interactive as before due to the nature of the trading system. Overall the game just feels so much easier. I feel I must now play on the hardest settings to be actually challenged. And I don't like that. I'm far from a tactical genius. I like not planning my start, just going for whatever victory seems most likely after the early game.
Doing a massive map on a far harder settings now, and boy do the trade routes stack up as Huatama. Case in point: Due to now having 2 currencies you can buy units with, and access to fairly strong hybrid units, I casually fended of a surprise backstab from neighbouring Khavita in early mid-game, who was most feared by all other faction. All her units piled across the border to my capital. There they were beaten by the instantly raised army, in my 3 close cities. At the same time that turned my Polystralia from having one non-explorer military unit into the reigning militant faction in 2-3 turns, with the corresponding fear setting from 1/9 to 9/9 across most factions. That's just a bit weird to me. I guess it would make sense if your underdog nation suddenly beat off the dominant faction, but come on now. That should not be happening in a better balanced game.
TLDR: I'd get RT for the diversity of map/units alone, but I'm not giving it a full recommendation. Still miss Alpha Centauri.
These are the stories of Dwarf Fortress. Legends have been forged there, and meticulousy gathered in one mighty hub: http://dfstories.com/start-here/
The core.factions of smac all landed from the remains of the Unity mothership.
Onboard the Unity, they all had an important function, head security/science officer/mission leader.
Over the 4 to 40year voyage (somewhere in between because this was everything bit in name sequel of Civ2) their ideological differences took hold. A mutiny broke out, I *think* started by Yang or Santiago, the rest were opportunists. The Captain of the Unity and his bridge crew were killed (save Svensgaard, the navigator and Pirate leader) when the Unity burned up in atmo.
Landfall.
More or less. The one exception was N. Morgan (of the eponymous faction), who had no rank aboard the Unity but was a primary financial backer, and literally bought himself a seat in secret.
I honestly forgot who start the mutiny, but Captain Garland does get assassinated right before the Unity's arrival.
The core.factions of smac all landed from the remains of the Unity mothership.
Onboard the Unity, they all had an important function, head security/science officer/mission leader.
Over the 4 to 40year voyage (somewhere in between because this was everything bit in name sequel of Civ2) their ideological differences took hold. A mutiny broke out, I *think* started by Yang or Santiago, the rest were opportunists. The Captain of the Unity and his bridge crew were killed (save Svensgaard, the navigator and Pirate leader) when the Unity burned up in atmo.
Landfall.
More or less. The one exception was N. Morgan (of the eponymous faction), who had no rank aboard the Unity but was a primary financial backer, and literally bought himself a seat in secret.
I honestly forgot who start the mutiny, but Captain Garland does get assassinated right before the Unity's arrival.
If I remember the official fiction right, it's the Spartans who start the mutiny, being a group that already existed on Earth and somehow infiltrated the Unity. They kick things off by kidnapping Yang, rightly believing him to be the most dangerous person on board.
But after that, they don't figure into the story too much, aside from holding Deirdre hostage for a bit, while the rest of the crew disintegrates into factional strife as well.
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
Managed to pick up RT for $18 so I gave it a go
Was slowly taking over the world, doing extremely well, I was Allied with every nation on the planet except 1 and had convinced all my allies to go to war with this guy.
As I'm slowly moving over 1 attack sub his direction I accidentally click on a tile with monster (note I was doing a don't kill any monsters playthrough).
And of cousre I accidentally killed a monster with my high level sub in 1 hit. then all the sea monsters were like OH NO and slowly over the next couple turns they all started attacking my sub and boats so I kept having to kill the monsters that attacked me.
Eventually EVERY SINGLE NATION, and I'm allied super strong with all of them, declared war on me on the exact same turn because they didn't like that I was attacking monsters.
Basically the game fucked over 4 hours of my time because of 1 missclick. I was fucking pissed.
Eventually EVERY SINGLE NATION, and I'm allied super strong with all of them, declared war on me on the exact same turn because they didn't like that I was attacking monsters.
I have to say, this i really don't like. Because half of the game is trying to be super "AI plays like players, and we simulate player behavior" like how it won't surrender when its going to lose too much and instead fights to the death or how it will declare war to stop you from winning.
But then they love you/hate you based on your affinity, which at least from base, has no interactions. At least in Civ 5 ideology exerts happiness pressure and so you can wreck another nation like that (causing it to lose its ideology)
Eventually EVERY SINGLE NATION, and I'm allied super strong with all of them, declared war on me on the exact same turn because they didn't like that I was attacking monsters.
I have to say, this i really don't like. Because half of the game is trying to be super "AI plays like players, and we simulate player behavior" like how it won't surrender when its going to lose too much and instead fights to the death or how it will declare war to stop you from winning.
But then they love you/hate you based on your affinity, which at least from base, has no interactions. At least in Civ 5 ideology exerts happiness pressure and so you can wreck another nation like that (causing it to lose its ideology)
Ehhh. In the top half of difficulties, it's basically impossible to get AI civs to be significantly unhappy, because they get such monster happiness bonuses.
Not saying you're wrong, re. your main point, but I actually found that to be an annoying part of Civ V personally.
So I suck at Civ games but I do love them, I was unimpressed as hell with Beyond Earth due to me comparing it to Alpha Centari and Civ 5. I liked the tech web (was cool) but I hate the "wonders". How does this DLC/expansion add to a game that I for the most part, was bored with after a week.
So I suck at Civ games but I do love them, I was unimpressed as hell with Beyond Earth due to me comparing it to Alpha Centari and Civ 5. I liked the tech web (was cool) but I hate the "wonders". How does this DLC/expansion add to a game that I for the most part, was bored with after a week.
The game is more alive, but the diplomacy is really horrible now. Besides the AI newfound love of simultaneously going from "My best ally!" to mass gang-up in a single turn for no reason, the actual mechanics boil down to a constant nagging from the AI to accept bonuses paired with a refusal to accept any of your offers and a desire to constantly cancel agreements one turn then ask to restart them six turns later. It gets extremely annoying.
In Civ terms, it's at least a few major patches and an expansion away from being good. Diplomacy is screwed now, and that could use another major revamp, but I hope any future expansion focuses on deepening the interaction with the planet. The aliens need to be more than reskinned barbarians.
I actually find the AI pretty consistent in diplomacy now an ally usually remains so throughout the game, on soyus difficulty.
I don't like the idea of any diplomacy being limited by a currency however...it's a trend I really hate to see in strategy games.
I had someone move from "cooperating" to declaring war in the space of 2 turns. I have no issues with treating diplo capital as a resource you have to generate, as that's realistically what happens - you invest in diplomats and influencers to drive statecraft. Abstracting it to a resource is fine. It would be better if you had separate stacks for each civ that requires people stationed in their cities, but c'est la vie.
The core.factions of smac all landed from the remains of the Unity mothership.
Onboard the Unity, they all had an important function, head security/science officer/mission leader.
Over the 4 to 40year voyage (somewhere in between because this was everything bit in name sequel of Civ2) their ideological differences took hold. A mutiny broke out, I *think* started by Yang or Santiago, the rest were opportunists. The Captain of the Unity and his bridge crew were killed (save Svensgaard, the navigator and Pirate leader) when the Unity burned up in atmo.
Landfall.
More or less. The one exception was N. Morgan (of the eponymous faction), who had no rank aboard the Unity but was a primary financial backer, and literally bought himself a seat in secret.
I honestly forgot who start the mutiny, but Captain Garland does get assassinated right before the Unity's arrival.
If I remember the official fiction right, it's the Spartans who start the mutiny, being a group that already existed on Earth and somehow infiltrated the Unity. They kick things off by kidnapping Yang, rightly believing him to be the most dangerous person on board.
But after that, they don't figure into the story too much, aside from holding Deirdre hostage for a bit, while the rest of the crew disintegrates into factional strife as well.
That sounds about right. Yang was controversial on Earth, but he wasn't permanently confined to some sort of moving life-support system before the mission. Someone, presumably the Spartans, did that too him.
Santiago was the security chief (or maybe just a ranking security official) aboard the Unity, and I suppose no one knew she was part of the crazy right-wing paramilitary secret society when they gave her the job. Of course, they also didn't know that the life support would break or Morgan had literally sneaked on-board either.
The core.factions of smac all landed from the remains of the Unity mothership.
Onboard the Unity, they all had an important function, head security/science officer/mission leader.
Over the 4 to 40year voyage (somewhere in between because this was everything bit in name sequel of Civ2) their ideological differences took hold. A mutiny broke out, I *think* started by Yang or Santiago, the rest were opportunists. The Captain of the Unity and his bridge crew were killed (save Svensgaard, the navigator and Pirate leader) when the Unity burned up in atmo.
Landfall.
More or less. The one exception was N. Morgan (of the eponymous faction), who had no rank aboard the Unity but was a primary financial backer, and literally bought himself a seat in secret.
I honestly forgot who start the mutiny, but Captain Garland does get assassinated right before the Unity's arrival.
If I remember the official fiction right, it's the Spartans who start the mutiny, being a group that already existed on Earth and somehow infiltrated the Unity. They kick things off by kidnapping Yang, rightly believing him to be the most dangerous person on board.
But after that, they don't figure into the story too much, aside from holding Deirdre hostage for a bit, while the rest of the crew disintegrates into factional strife as well.
That sounds about right. Yang was controversial on Earth, but he wasn't permanently confined to some sort of moving life-support system before the mission. Someone, presumably the Spartans, did that too him.
Santiago was the security chief (or maybe just a ranking security official) aboard the Unity, and I suppose no one knew she was part of the crazy right-wing paramilitary secret society when they gave her the job. Of course, they also didn't know that the life support would break or Morgan had literally sneaked on-board either.
I remember Santiago having snuck some other survivalists onboard, so there were at least two groups of stow-aways.
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ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
What was the population on board the Unity in total?
mastertheheroProfessional Video Editor & Book AuthorRegistered Userregular
Just finished a game with Hutama on an artic map with a few other AI.
Man, what a great game. Not sure what difficulty I left it on but I guess it must have been easy because I managed to accomplish victory without having to declare war on anyone. The diplomacy system for the most part seemed to be working for me. I was getting people asking for favors and as my "street cred" built up I used it to level up my traits and buy sh** with favors which was awesome.
Did an energy focused start at the beginning so that I was always in the green when it came to cash and focused all my R&D on making sure that cashflow stays positive.
Built the signal (probably the easiest victory) got the cool storyboard animation and felt satisfied with the result. I also got to build the really cool hybrid/supremacy units which was awesome.
But that's not why I'm writing this post.
The truth is, I find it a shame that Beyond Earth is getting such a bad rap. Though I definitely love me some Civilization (especially with all its expansions) I feel that narrative wise, Beyond Earth has an enormously rich world. You've basically been told, "Our world is f-ed up. You go to stars and start humanity from scratch."
If anyone has read the quest decisions in each game, some of those have some deep, sociological implications that go way beyond +5 energy or free maintenance. I don't know about anyone else who's played the game but when I get asked, "Should we reduce people's hunger," or "Shall we use the Internet to secretly turn people into spies?" or "Should we increase turbine output at the cost of making low wealth citizens sick?"
I pause and actively think on these decisions. I try to ignore what buff it'll give me (unless I desperately need it) and ask myself, "If I was creating the perfect world. What choices would lead to that?"
I never did that in Civ 5. In Civ 5 I generally tried to follow a theme. If I'm playing as America, then I'm going to go with the Liberty tree and try to pick policies that would best reflect my country. Not so with Beyond Earth, I feel as though I'm responsible for the betterment of humanity and try to make decisions that would lead to a Star Trek utopia.
*Sigh* Truthfully I just want to write a novel about this game. One of the main characters would be the Indian girl that gets sent off the space by her father and her goal while on this new planet is to find a way to build the exodus gate so that she could be reunited with him. But I'd also turn a covert agent into a main character so that we can visit other Civs and environments and see how they try to survive on this harsh alien world. Fielding would obviously be a villain because she's a bitch! Screw her!
Yeah, I definitely need to see if 2K would let me write it.
@masterthehero I find that Rising Tides rounded out the game well. I also agree that the texts included in the decisions are nice - hopefully those (together with BE's ability to modify building perks) get included in any future plans for Civ 6.
The main issues I continue to have with BE are the limited voice acting (compared to SMAC, where quotes come from more actors and generally tell the story of each faction) and lack of engagement in the victories (the latter was also a problem in Civ V as well).
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I wish I could give Rising Tide a chance, but with all the good games coming out, I have no incentive to give these guys my money after the disappointment of BE. I might as well just wait for the next expansion and buy them both at a discount.
I really feel like after the last patch things are pretty good and the game is pretty fun. Too bad the game wasn't released like that, I think it would have a lot more adherants rather than people buying it, saying meh, and going back to civ5, endless legend, or whatever.
I figured out playing this game on Quick instead of Standard makes it much more palatable. Wars still take egregious amounts of time to complete, though. Slogging through 100 turns of war takes at least 5 times longer than just building an emancipation gate and it's really annoying.
Posts
Move settler, grab good land, build? Is that right? Cause right now I never want to stop sailing them around painting the map.
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
It doesn't really feel any better/more useful than just planting a normal city and letting its culture take tiles.
In their attempt to make them stand out more from land cities, they just made them a tedious pain in the ass.
I actually dread putting cities in the water now just because I know I'll have to either move them around, which is slow as hell and feels like a waste of production, or spend hard-earned/stolen energy buying up tiles.
2 petroleum (4, 2) 2 algae, shells, a titanium (5), a geotherm and 2 biomass (9, 3). The city is basically Ranx now.
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
Also, something I forgot to try last time I played. Can you use the city movement to capture enemy cultured tiles?
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
Yeah, I had that as well. It's a bug/feature. Once it was harnessed, it gave 4 or 5 of the resource. That made me look at the other oceanic geothermal sites (since I only had them in the ocean, due to a very small archipelago map). All of them just said Geothermal before I harnessed them.
Yes. Yes you can. The city will take any tiles it touches when it moves, free or otherwise
That....bleh! It's a really important strategic resource for Purity. The difference between a site having 1 of it and 5 of it is the difference between 0 Boreholes and 2 Boreholes!
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
Archipelago + Continental Surveyor + Patrol Boats is the cheatiest 'legit' thing i have seen in a civ game. Wow.
I see your patrol boats, and raise you gunboats upgrade to the vindicator path.
Its not tile improvements. I assumed it was the bonuses from buildings, but I couldn't find anywhere where those were added in.
Edit: Nope, its the projects that convert production into something else (science energy etc).
I'm in two minds. It's certainly an improvement from the base. I'd probably say wait for the sale though.
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
It is indeed bonuses to the conversion build projects. It can actually add up pretty significantly, I've been using it early game as a quick run up the cultural perks trees before before I start settling other cities.
FFRK: 9rRG
Really? I thought it was an energy bonus of some kind. Alright; rant mode on:
My first playthrough was as Al Falah, because I wanted to try it out. Turns out I never actually used the Al Falah bonus, as I never had a turn of conversion projects. But I had so much more energy than usual. I thought it came from the faction bonus. Must be from the ocean bonuses then. I won a Gemini (the just "hard" mode, believe that's Gemini) game purity victory handily, with a fairly bad starting location, no plan, no focus, just build whatever and don't build many cities. I spread my affinity to all the hybrid directions, and only midgame focused general science. Took the "leash alien" approach early, so water dominance was assured in the early/mid game. Then 2-3 ranged cruisers ate all oposition on land and sea. But i had sooo much energy/diplomatic currency all through the game.
I'm a bit torn. I like the diverse units/aliens. I don't like the new diplomacy, but very much like the traits system. It fleshes out the AI players with a bit of characterization. The new trading system seems to make trading with other factions less predictable, and somehow also less interactive. I just feel it's a net loss in the management aspect somehow. I liked facing other leaders to bicker over how I could get access to petroleum. That just felt right. The system just needed some more tweaking of the AI's wighting of your propositions.
Also the trading system makes Polystralia feel fairly Op. But why would you send your trading units to foreign cities before your own routes and station partners are maxed anyway? That's still a winning strategy. Why would I trade 1 petroleum and 1 firaxite a little science and a little energy, when overall I genereally recieve the same in return? And the route might change while I'm not looking due to war and developement of resources. Sure some routes might be optimized to net you crucial resources, but it's not nearly as interactive as before due to the nature of the trading system. Overall the game just feels so much easier. I feel I must now play on the hardest settings to be actually challenged. And I don't like that. I'm far from a tactical genius. I like not planning my start, just going for whatever victory seems most likely after the early game.
Doing a massive map on a far harder settings now, and boy do the trade routes stack up as Huatama. Case in point: Due to now having 2 currencies you can buy units with, and access to fairly strong hybrid units, I casually fended of a surprise backstab from neighbouring Khavita in early mid-game, who was most feared by all other faction. All her units piled across the border to my capital. There they were beaten by the instantly raised army, in my 3 close cities. At the same time that turned my Polystralia from having one non-explorer military unit into the reigning militant faction in 2-3 turns, with the corresponding fear setting from 1/9 to 9/9 across most factions. That's just a bit weird to me. I guess it would make sense if your underdog nation suddenly beat off the dominant faction, but come on now. That should not be happening in a better balanced game.
TLDR: I'd get RT for the diversity of map/units alone, but I'm not giving it a full recommendation. Still miss Alpha Centauri.
More or less. The one exception was N. Morgan (of the eponymous faction), who had no rank aboard the Unity but was a primary financial backer, and literally bought himself a seat in secret.
I honestly forgot who start the mutiny, but Captain Garland does get assassinated right before the Unity's arrival.
If I remember the official fiction right, it's the Spartans who start the mutiny, being a group that already existed on Earth and somehow infiltrated the Unity. They kick things off by kidnapping Yang, rightly believing him to be the most dangerous person on board.
But after that, they don't figure into the story too much, aside from holding Deirdre hostage for a bit, while the rest of the crew disintegrates into factional strife as well.
Was slowly taking over the world, doing extremely well, I was Allied with every nation on the planet except 1 and had convinced all my allies to go to war with this guy.
As I'm slowly moving over 1 attack sub his direction I accidentally click on a tile with monster (note I was doing a don't kill any monsters playthrough).
And of cousre I accidentally killed a monster with my high level sub in 1 hit. then all the sea monsters were like OH NO and slowly over the next couple turns they all started attacking my sub and boats so I kept having to kill the monsters that attacked me.
Eventually EVERY SINGLE NATION, and I'm allied super strong with all of them, declared war on me on the exact same turn because they didn't like that I was attacking monsters.
Basically the game fucked over 4 hours of my time because of 1 missclick. I was fucking pissed.
I have to say, this i really don't like. Because half of the game is trying to be super "AI plays like players, and we simulate player behavior" like how it won't surrender when its going to lose too much and instead fights to the death or how it will declare war to stop you from winning.
But then they love you/hate you based on your affinity, which at least from base, has no interactions. At least in Civ 5 ideology exerts happiness pressure and so you can wreck another nation like that (causing it to lose its ideology)
Ehhh. In the top half of difficulties, it's basically impossible to get AI civs to be significantly unhappy, because they get such monster happiness bonuses.
Not saying you're wrong, re. your main point, but I actually found that to be an annoying part of Civ V personally.
it's such bullshit
The game is more alive, but the diplomacy is really horrible now. Besides the AI newfound love of simultaneously going from "My best ally!" to mass gang-up in a single turn for no reason, the actual mechanics boil down to a constant nagging from the AI to accept bonuses paired with a refusal to accept any of your offers and a desire to constantly cancel agreements one turn then ask to restart them six turns later. It gets extremely annoying.
In Civ terms, it's at least a few major patches and an expansion away from being good. Diplomacy is screwed now, and that could use another major revamp, but I hope any future expansion focuses on deepening the interaction with the planet. The aliens need to be more than reskinned barbarians.
I don't like the idea of any diplomacy being limited by a currency however...it's a trend I really hate to see in strategy games.
I had someone move from "cooperating" to declaring war in the space of 2 turns. I have no issues with treating diplo capital as a resource you have to generate, as that's realistically what happens - you invest in diplomats and influencers to drive statecraft. Abstracting it to a resource is fine. It would be better if you had separate stacks for each civ that requires people stationed in their cities, but c'est la vie.
That sounds about right. Yang was controversial on Earth, but he wasn't permanently confined to some sort of moving life-support system before the mission. Someone, presumably the Spartans, did that too him.
Santiago was the security chief (or maybe just a ranking security official) aboard the Unity, and I suppose no one knew she was part of the crazy right-wing paramilitary secret society when they gave her the job. Of course, they also didn't know that the life support would break or Morgan had literally sneaked on-board either.
I remember Santiago having snuck some other survivalists onboard, so there were at least two groups of stow-aways.
99% were in cryo for the long trip
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Man, what a great game. Not sure what difficulty I left it on but I guess it must have been easy because I managed to accomplish victory without having to declare war on anyone. The diplomacy system for the most part seemed to be working for me. I was getting people asking for favors and as my "street cred" built up I used it to level up my traits and buy sh** with favors which was awesome.
Did an energy focused start at the beginning so that I was always in the green when it came to cash and focused all my R&D on making sure that cashflow stays positive.
Built the signal (probably the easiest victory) got the cool storyboard animation and felt satisfied with the result. I also got to build the really cool hybrid/supremacy units which was awesome.
But that's not why I'm writing this post.
The truth is, I find it a shame that Beyond Earth is getting such a bad rap. Though I definitely love me some Civilization (especially with all its expansions) I feel that narrative wise, Beyond Earth has an enormously rich world. You've basically been told, "Our world is f-ed up. You go to stars and start humanity from scratch."
If anyone has read the quest decisions in each game, some of those have some deep, sociological implications that go way beyond +5 energy or free maintenance. I don't know about anyone else who's played the game but when I get asked, "Should we reduce people's hunger," or "Shall we use the Internet to secretly turn people into spies?" or "Should we increase turbine output at the cost of making low wealth citizens sick?"
I pause and actively think on these decisions. I try to ignore what buff it'll give me (unless I desperately need it) and ask myself, "If I was creating the perfect world. What choices would lead to that?"
I never did that in Civ 5. In Civ 5 I generally tried to follow a theme. If I'm playing as America, then I'm going to go with the Liberty tree and try to pick policies that would best reflect my country. Not so with Beyond Earth, I feel as though I'm responsible for the betterment of humanity and try to make decisions that would lead to a Star Trek utopia.
*Sigh* Truthfully I just want to write a novel about this game. One of the main characters would be the Indian girl that gets sent off the space by her father and her goal while on this new planet is to find a way to build the exodus gate so that she could be reunited with him. But I'd also turn a covert agent into a main character so that we can visit other Civs and environments and see how they try to survive on this harsh alien world. Fielding would obviously be a villain because she's a bitch! Screw her!
Yeah, I definitely need to see if 2K would let me write it.
The main issues I continue to have with BE are the limited voice acting (compared to SMAC, where quotes come from more actors and generally tell the story of each faction) and lack of engagement in the victories (the latter was also a problem in Civ V as well).