New From Sid Meier - Beyond Earth

Malacheye · Post by **Malacheye** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 4:00 pm

Its down to $20 now on the steam summer sale...getting tempting...

Freezer-TPF- · Post by **Freezer-TPF-** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 5:27 pm

Malacheye wrote:Its down to $20 now on the steam summer sale...getting tempting...

Have the patches/DLC turned it into a good/interesting game yet?

Malacheye · Post by **Malacheye** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 6:04 pm

IDK...was hoping for some more recent feedback before pulling the trigger on this one. Any decent youtube lets play videos are over two months old

Grifman · Post by **Grifman** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 6:27 pm

Freezer-TPF- wrote:
Malacheye wrote:Its down to $20 now on the steam summer sale...getting tempting...
Have the patches/DLC turned it into a good/interesting game yet?

The big patch and DLC aren't out yet, so no one knows. You'll have to wait until the Winter Sale.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 7:44 am

Anyone take the plunge and by the Rising Tide Expansion?

I bought it, but have not played it yet, I was out of town over the weekend.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 9:05 am

RMC wrote:Anyone take the plunge and by the Rising Tide Expansion?

Everything I've been seeing about it says "avoid".

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 9:20 am

ColdSteel wrote:
RMC wrote:Anyone take the plunge and by the Rising Tide Expansion?
Everything I've been seeing about it says "avoid".

Wow, I can't believe that they messed this up that bad. <sigh> I had a friend email me and tell me it was a mess.

His main point was that the ocean based factions are doomed from the start. He says that the Krakens will start attacking you, and now that the Fence technology no longer keeps them at bay, he had something like 3 Hugh strength aliens attacking his cities by turn 50 when he had only a few low level guys to try to fight them off. He says that the AI's he was playing with died almost as quickly, as they had not expanded like he had, so they only had a few cities to lose, or just the one to lose in the case of 1 AI.

So looks like I wasted my money, at least I got it on sale, but man that stings. All they had to do was expand on a good formula that had already worked, but looks like the screwed it up.

Stuie · Post by **Stuie** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 9:35 am

RMC wrote:
ColdSteel wrote:
RMC wrote:Anyone take the plunge and by the Rising Tide Expansion?
Everything I've been seeing about it says "avoid".
Wow, I can't believe that they messed this up that bad. <sigh> I had a friend email me and tell me it was a mess.

His main point was that the ocean based factions are doomed from the start. He says that the Krakens will start attacking you, and now that the Fence technology no longer keeps them at bay, he had something like 3 Hugh strength aliens attacking his cities by turn 50 when he had only a few low level guys to try to fight them off. He says that the AI's he was playing with died almost as quickly, as they had not expanded like he had, so they only had a few cities to lose, or just the one to lose in the case of 1 AI.

So looks like I wasted my money, at least I got it on sale, but man that stings. All they had to do was expand on a good formula that had already worked, but looks like the screwed it up.

I'm still on my first game, only 170 turns in, but this hasn't been my experience at all. The aliens presented a challenge, yes, but both land and sea factions seem to be thriving. I'm playing on Gemini - not sure if difficulty might play into it.

Personally, I'm enjoying the game and find it much more immersive than the base game. There are lots of interesting choices to make, such as the new artifacts research bonuses and customizable personality traits. The new diplomacy system is nicely done, although the "war score" enforced peace-terms can be problematic. Haven't gotten to the hybrid affinities yet (or the late game in general for that matter) so I'm not sure how that will play out. I still get lost in the tech web, but hopefully that changes with more play-time.

I don't know that I'd recommend this considering the price; really the base game was a waste of time and this expansion makes it playable for me. But I would wait for a sale if it's a choice between a) buying this and living off ramen noodles or b) eating decent food.

Newcastle · Post by **Newcastle** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 9:57 am

Bought, playing and enjoying it. Buy if you want is my thoughts.

I've not experienced the angry aliens at all per RMC. But I've not messed with them either. I've seen a few krakens come through but none have messed with me. Have 3 land cities, 1 ocean one. 1 came through my ocean territory multiple times, but they've done nothing. I've also gone to great pains to not attack them either.

I think they added multiple nice touches
-added colors to the tech web to make things a lot more easier to spot; i still find it unwieldly but much better than last time (this should have been in base game)
-ocean based cities adds a neat little dimension to things.
-you can have hybrid affinities which i think is neat
-diplomacy actually matters now; you can make agreements that give you some pretty solid bonuses

Its much more interesting now with that xpac than it is with the base game. Too early to say its must buy; but its far from a steaming pile of a mess.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 10:32 am

Well that is good to hear. Yeah, my friend is a little touchy about the aliens, he loves to whoop on them for some reason. So I am guessing he set them off and expected the fence to keep them out of his cities.

I will hopefully try a game tonight. Glad to see that others are enjoying the addition.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 10:41 am

Hm. I'm about 3/4 of the way through a game and I'm enjoying it a lot so far. No comment yet on the AI, or any bug or balance issues, but on the whole I like the mechanics and the game play.

So far in my game the aliens have been honestly rather pathetic. I had a couple of nests between me and the Germans, but after killing off the aliens a few times I took out the nests and haven't been threatened by aliens significantly since. There's a water faction not too far to my east and they're doing fine as near as I can tell. Certainly not decimated by aliens. I mostly stayed on land initially, but once I started producing a navy I was able to clear out krakens and water based nests without much problem and start up a few of my own water cities.

To be fair the alien strength can vary a little bit based on what type of planet you are on... I got the impression they should be balanced, but the individual alien strength is higher on some world types which might make for different early gameplay. This is on the middle difficulty... Vostok I think.

I know the base game was changed around a bit before the expansion, so I don't know for sure which changes were from the expansion and which were from patches, but I'm loving a lot of the new mechanics.. being able to add and adjust your faction bonus, the whole diplomacy system, the emails from other faction leaders letting you know why their respect is going up and down, alien artifacts, etc.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:06 am

Add my voice to those recommending it. I never got past the first hundred or so turns of the vanilla game without dozing off, so I had to relearn all the systems, but RT take a mediocre game and makes it very good. It still isn't Alpha Centauri 2 (I know, it was never supposed to be), but it's a lot more engaging now.

If you think $30 is a little steep for an expansion (and I do), I got my copy at cdkeys.com for $18. I know the site looks a little sketchy, but I've bought three games from them in the last few months that required three different download services (Steam, GOG, & Uplay) and got working keys almost immediately.

Lorini · Post by **Lorini** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:07 am

It's awesome, much better than the original. A small patch went up today but I can't find out what it did. When I do, I'll post.

Torfish · Post by **Torfish** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 1:47 pm

Just a quick reply. I played the expansion this weekend for about 3-4 hours. I've been pleasantly surprised and I can firmly say that I like it! A lot. There are many new features and the depth is even deeper than the base game. It's going to take awhile to get a handle on the new things. I like it.

I need to play a few games before giving it a full thumbs up, but so far this is a very good expansion that has filled the void from the base game. I'm having fun. The base game was... boring.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 1:50 pm

I had completely forgotten that this game even existed. I should see if it's on my Steam wishlist so that I don't forget about it when the price drops to bargain bin levels.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 2:33 pm

I've had it a year and am just now starting to play it. Two hours into it and so far so good. Still a little confusing but that will go away with more playtime.

Lorini · Post by **Lorini** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 3:35 pm

dbt1949 wrote:I've had it a year and am just now starting to play it. Two hours into it and so far so good. Still a little confusing but that will go away with more playtime.

You've had the base game for a year right? The expansion which is what I think the others were speaking of just came out on Friday. The game is much much better with the expansion. There might still be a GMG code out there to get the expansion for $20, but of course then you can't get a refund.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 5:38 pm

Lorini wrote:The game is much much better with the expansion.

Care to elaborate? I got bored quickly by this game -- what does the expansion do to alleviate this problem?

Lorini · Post by **Lorini** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 7:53 pm

Jeff V wrote:
Lorini wrote:The game is much much better with the expansion.
Care to elaborate? I got bored quickly by this game -- what does the expansion do to alleviate this problem?

Frankly I doubt it would for you. I appreciate the effort they've put into the whole experience, much closer to the SMAC experience. There's a demo you may want to try.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 9:35 am

Jeff V wrote:
Lorini wrote:The game is much much better with the expansion.
Care to elaborate? I got bored quickly by this game -- what does the expansion do to alleviate this problem?

It added unit variety by allowing faster and more upgrades based on the different paths (which you can now do hybrid - so supremacy and purity for example). The diplomacy system was also completely overhauled into a point-based "bonus power" trading system that is far more nuanced than the boring original (although I have yet to make up my mind on how it works). There are more alien varieties, particularly for the sea. Of course, the biggest addition was in maritime affairs and colonies - more stuff augments the sea and the sea is now territory to exploit.

Still, I agree with Lorini. I think we know the expectations you have for 4X games and I doubt this one will exceed them.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 1:24 pm

Thanks. I'll likely wait until it's dirt cheap then give it a shot. Closer to SMAC is a good thing; SMAC was the only game I ever beta tested and continued to play after production.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 2:00 pm

Jeff V wrote:Thanks. I'll likely wait until it's dirt cheap then give it a shot. Closer to SMAC is a good thing; SMAC was the only game I ever beta tested and continued to play after production.

Regrettably, other than the sea colonies, I am still not feeling the "SMAC vibe." One of the things that made SMAC great was the modular and customizable troops. This expansion just does not do that.

Lorini · Post by **Lorini** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 4:26 pm

From a narrative point of view it's excellent though. They really filled out the characters and how they relate to you. That's the comparison I was making, I feel like I'm in a sci fi world, particularly since I now only use the Lush biome, looks awesome. Mechanically you can't design your own stuff as you mentioned, plus they've put their foot down on free swinging diplomatic agreements. Probably for the best, as that was always a source of player exploitation and now it's less so.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 11:18 am

Just finished my first game and enjoyed it quite a lot. There are definitely some rough edges that need smoothing out, and some elements I'm not a big fan of, but on the whole it's a nice update to the base game.

On one of the middle difficulties the AI were good, but not great. They kept up with me well for a while, and all had respectable empires, but after I puppeted one of the larger factions no one could rival me and I walked away with an emancipation victory. I also expected the AI to gang up on me and attack me to keep me from winning... enough so that I left lots of troops on my borders instead of sending them all to mass up at the emancipation gate, but no one even twitched as I was closing in on the win. Probably just that I had a much, much stronger army than anyone else and they were unwilling to go to war.

I'm also a bit mixed on the new diplomacy system. I do like the addition of diplomatic points, and the agreement system is interesting, but I'm not really a fan of the simplified relations system. With the way you automatically get pulled into wars your allies start, and with the way you can't adjust peace treaties, it generally means wars are long and open ended with the losing faction unwilling to end a bad war because of all the additional territory they would lose if they accept the winning side's default peace treaty. It was also really common for me to finally get a peace deal with my main enemy, only to be drawn into war again a turn later when one of my allies declared war.

baelthazar wrote:One of the things that made SMAC great was the modular and customizable troops. This expansion just does not do that.

I don't know, there are many things to criticize Beyond Earth for when comparing it to SMAC, but this one rings a little hollow to me. Sure, there's no unit designer like in SMAC, but there is such a massive array of different units for each of the paths you can go down, each with multiple upgrades, and now with additional hybrid units, that I never felt I was lacking for unique units to build, or missing a unit to fit a particular role.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 12:55 pm

I guess the units just felt a little "blah" to me and you are stuck with "army mans" for quite some time due to the tech ramp up. With SMAC my army men could get new armor, new weapons, and new specials to set them apart. It just felt more personal, more varied, and less generic than Beyond Earth.

Lorini · Post by **Lorini** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 1:22 pm

I don't know, there are plenty of 4x space games where you can make and upgrade your own units. I expect more out of a Civ game than an emphasis on mechanics. Just expressing a different opinion while respecting yours, baelthezar. I'm waiting for the first significant bug patch to get back to it, noting that they fixed the alliance bug the other day. I don't think we'll see a balance patch until late November/December but that should help as well.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 1:26 pm

baelthazar wrote:I guess the units just felt a little "blah" to me and you are stuck with "army mans" for quite some time due to the tech ramp up. With SMAC my army men could get new armor, new weapons, and new specials to set them apart. It just felt more personal, more varied, and less generic than Beyond Earth.

hehe Strangely that's kind of my complaint for SMACs custom units... it's pretty much the same handful of units with slightly different colored skins. One of the things I like about BE is the vast array of different units... robots, aliens, tanks, hover tanks, walkers, powered armor, medics, etc. I can definitely see the appeal of making custom units, but outside of MOO style space 4x games I've always felt it was a bit out of place for some reason.

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 2:32 pm

Fallen Enchantress had individual unit designing, and I really liked it. But from what the Stardock folks said about their post-mortem on the design, they had concluded that it was not a successful feature, so apparently I was in the minority. As a result it's gone from Sorcerer King.

I don't know if Island Dog ever posts outside of non-Stardock game threads, but it would be interesting to hear more from someone from Stardock on this.

Jaymon · Post by **Jaymon** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 4:24 pm

I played several BE games to completion, and I am part way through my first game which includes Rising Tide.

I saw an earlier comment about getting wiped out early by the giant monsters. I found that to be a real big problem in the vanila beyond earth, I rarely got to set up trade with outposts, because the giant worms would destroy them.
That didn't happen to me in Rising Tide yet.
But, I believe, there is an aggression factor from the aliens, and its controlled by the player. If you start killing aliens right out the gate, the giant worms appear faster, and are on the map before you are ready for them. Ignoring the aliens, even accepting the loss of a few scouts, will leave the aliens in a more passive stance, and the giant worms will appear later in the game.
I don't know if thats based on fact, or its just me extrapolating, but that has been my experience.

I like the inclusion of hybrid units in RT, it makes having multiple affinities more useful.
The Quest Decision mechanic remains, and I really like that part. Allowing you some amount of customization over your buildings.
I haven't decided yet if I like the aquatic cities or not. On one hand, its nice to see some different mechanics, but on the other hand, did it really need to be a different mechanic.
For those who haven't played it, Rising Tide includes Aquatic cities, cities which are founded in the water. These cities don't expand territory in the traditional manner. Each city automatically claims the 6 spaces around the core. In order to expand the city territory, the city must produce a "move city", which allows the city base to move a space, claiming the spaces around the newly positioned city core, while retaining control over the previous spaces.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 4:42 pm

Jaymon wrote:I saw an earlier comment about getting wiped out early by the giant monsters. I found that to be a real big problem in the vanila beyond earth, I rarely got to set up trade with outposts, because the giant worms would destroy them.

That's a good point. In my game, I knew from previous games of BE that it's better to leave the aliens alone until you're ready to deal with them, but for someone who's only played Civ, the gut reaction is to treat the aliens like barbarians and destroy them as fast as possible, and that might yield different results.

Lorini · Post by **Lorini** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 5:30 pm

Particularly since the vanilla balance patch, bad idea to treat the alien life like Civ barbarians they are not at all the same.

Newcastle · Post by **Newcastle** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 7:25 pm

Jaymon wrote: For those who haven't played it, Rising Tide includes Aquatic cities, cities which are founded in the water. These cities don't expand territory in the traditional manner. Each city automatically claims the 6 spaces around the core. In order to expand the city territory, the city must produce a "move city", which allows the city base to move a space, claiming the spaces around the newly positioned city core, while retaining control over the previous spaces.

You can also buy tiles around the city as well to expand. One strategy I've figured out is after you move an aquatic city, its wake or "trail" from its previous position will be your territory; so you can move it say 9 hexes to the west, and every single tile to the west and one up and down up to spot 9 will be your territory.

I've used it to gradually expand my borders on its way to claiming some juicy resources. I think I might lose this game; honestly not playing to win, just messing aorund and understanding it better.

I think I am also gonna forego huge maps in the future, so tired of the black trails and lag when the screen shifts from one end of the world to another.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Mon Oct 26, 2015 8:28 am

I have about 60 hours in this game now and I'm finding it rather blah.
I find the graphics rather blah too. The units are okay but the planetary graphics don't do it for me. They're too dark and what makes it worse is the black unknown territory.
Of course I still don't understand everything, like trading my resources for "favors". They can keep their damn favors.
I don't know, I just think this is a pale shadow of Alpha Centauri.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Jul 16, 2016 10:22 pm

So I picked this up for my son for his next birthday.

It's currently CAN$12 at Humble Bundle. It's also free to play this weekend.

I don't know anything about it other than reviews were mixed, but my son is really interested, so here we go.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 12:53 pm

dbt1949 wrote:I have about 60 hours in this game now and I'm finding it rather blah.
...
I don't know, I just think this is a pale shadow of Alpha Centauri.

I only have about 3 hours in, and that's my impression as well. I'm not sure I have it in me to put 60+ hours into the game and come to your same conclusion.

I like the story/quest element but overall it's not grabbing me. I think part of the problems (once again) is the factions. I love the factions for Alpha Centauri. These just aren't working for me. Even with all the rovers and alien beasts, it doesn't feel like the game tilts towards Sci-Fi enough in the various factions. They just feel like someone took the map of Earth and randomly combined geographically close countries and renamed them as a new group.

EDIT: And of course I played another 4+ hours today and I'm nearing the end game for my faction. 360+ turns in and one of my peaceful neighbors just randomly decides to declare war on me. We've been trading and cooperating the entire game and out of no where he declares war on me. As near as I can tell, it's only happening because my Harmony affinity just hit 10 and the Transcendence victory (which is still quite a ways a way) is now much closer. In other words, total nonsense. And because I made it for 360+ turns without fighting a single battle of course all my resources are tied up in research and culture, not in defending against the goddamn hovertanks that the African nation uses to mow me down. Absolutely ridiculous.

From the Wiki page:

the People's African Union is focused entirely on peace, with a predicted AI which focuses on Harmony. Due to their affinity choice, they are largely focused on development of peaceful technologies, eschewing the more aggressive Supremacy units.

Oh yeah, totally focused on peace. They rolled through my cities with infantry, tanks and missile platforms like it was their job. I guess I was just given the equivalent of being nuked by Gandhi in other Civ games.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Thu May 28, 2020 5:15 pm

So, this received lukewarm reviews at launch. Has it improved with time?

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Thu May 28, 2020 5:42 pm

I may be the only one but I like it. The research tree is a little confusing as you have no idea what this new stuff is.
You can follow one of three paths (or any combination thereof)and your units are modified in actions and looks depending on what you choose.
I find the colors on the map to be rather subdued for normal view but there are other modes to see everything clearly.
And of course it plays like a civ game. Lots of mods if you're interested.
And yes, I still play it from time to time.

Sudy · Post by **Sudy** » Thu May 28, 2020 5:46 pm

I've never gone back to it after buying it foolishly at the end of a Steam free weekend years ago probably mentioned in this thread. I liked the music.

During the GMG sale a month ago I bought the expansion in case I ever wanted to try it again. I'm an idiot.

It has really good music though.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Thu May 28, 2020 5:49 pm

Sudy wrote: ↑Thu May 28, 2020 5:46 pm During the GMG sale a month ago I bought the expansion in case I ever wanted to try it again. I'm an idiot.

I'm desperately trying to resist the Humble Bundle sale on Cities: Skylines DLC. I don't play the game anymore, even after loading it up recently to see if I still had any interest, but I keep thinking that maybe I ought to buy that DLC bundle just in case. I'm approaching the idiot event horizon