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Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

tuluse

Arcane
Joined
Jul 20, 2008
Messages
11,400
Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
CivV popularity came from Steam and digital distribution. CivIV had this atrocious GaySpy, which resulted in near-nonfunctional multiplayer, plus it had to be bought on discs when it came up.
Oddly, my friends and I had way easier time with Civ4 multiplayer. You could just do direct IP, it worked with hamachi, we could play games where 2 people where in one house and other players were in another. Plus you could play modded games in multiplayer.

I do agree the first 100% digitally distributed Civ made Civ5 more popular.

But I didn't mean to point out the growth in popularity from 4 to 5 but the correlation of ownership. Basically everyone who owns Civ 3 owns both 4 and 5, almost none of them own BE.
 

cvv

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absolutely not. it manages to be much worse in every way possible.

This. Civ5 in the current state is very good actually. BE was boring, drab and uninspired at release and it seems for the addon they replaced the trace amounts of interesting stuff with more boredom and spreadsheetiness.

Civ5 and XCOM were salvaged by addons and mods. Seems this crap is beyond repair.
 

Morblot

Aberrant Member | Star Trek V Apologist
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut
Well, I played the 100 turns of the demo. It wasn't horribad, but it wasn't good either. The technologies and virtues seemed underwhelming, the little diplomacy I experienced was standard Civ V fare and for some reason it was really hard to see that damn miasma on the map. The music was pretty good though.

No way am I paying 39.99 € for the full version.
 

Monaldinio

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Sep 10, 2015
Messages
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attachment.php


New Version of Conflict on Chiron

http://www.moddb.com/mods/conflict-on-chiron
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
New Version of Conflict on Chiron

So, I got into this quite heavily and I've got some feedback.

First off, map settings:
Code:
Huge
Marathon
Raging Barbarians
No Tech Brokering
No Expansion or Fan Expansion Factions
Half of the victory conditions removed.

This is pretty much my classic SMAC setup when playing as the Gaians (Well, SMAC maps are larger, so I generally stick to normal sizes there), and while I know the more aggressive mindworms favor the Gaians, it feels as though things are completely broken in the mod.

So, the Gaians get a +1 Nutrient bonus for Xenofungus in both versions, but in SMAC this is damn near useless in the early game and only gradually ramps up to being powerful at the very end of the tech tree once you've unlocked the other Xenofungus resource bonuses due to the fact that Xenofungus overrides all innate tile production. But in CoC, not only does Xenofungus retain the resources production from the tile underneath, but you also benefit from the +2 resources from the Energy/Mineral/Nutrient Bonuses. On top of *that*, you can outright build Field Labs on top of strategic resources without removing the Xenofungus. My capitol had two tiles producing four food right out of the gate (Nutrient Bonus and Monolith; both in Xenofungus) and the running average for every other tile worked was also around two food. I had serious health issues in the early game so my capitol's size was limited a bit initially, but once I unlocked the various health boosting strategic resources and expanded aggressively (More on that later), it's been in a constant population boom: 17 people and I've still got a surplus of +7 with one pop working as a specialist.

What's more, however, is that I seem to be the only faction capable of fighting the natives. Lal got knocked out very quickly; I'm hestiant to say that it was in the first dozen or so turns, but it sure felt that way. Miriam lost her capitol in the early/mid game transition. And everyone else save for Santiago is stuck on three or four bases...While I'm now sitting on twenty and with plans for five more. But even in Santiago's case, she might have seven bases but one of them is a five pop base that still hasn't expanded its boarders. Earlier in the game colony count was a bit closer to parity, but the combination of my absurd Planet Attitude (+8 early on; now +9) that gave me +24% vs native life and the innate double movement Gaian units get in Xenofungus meant that no one could compete with my rate of expansion.

Back in the early/mid game transition (I had just produced a couple Isle of the Deeps; a tech I got by blowing a Transcend immediately after researching the prior tech), I saw University sending a massive fleet of Gun Boats my direction. We had open boarders at the time, but I thought for sure he was heading over to backstab me. Turns out that the other factions simply need more than a dozen ships in a fleet in order to stand a chance against native life, especially the Fungal Towers. I, however, only needed to produce a couple Isle of the Deeps, use their starting experience to give them the Empath Song ability (+25% vs native life, 100% chance to capture native life when they're defeated), and in conjunction with my absurd Planet Attitude I was on my way to having a fleet of 61 Isles that cost no upkeep once I got the technique down. At the very least, Empath Song shouldn't have a 100% chance to capture native life.

Which brings me to my second major balance gripe: Unity Pods are incredibly broken when it comes to providing technologies. As it stands, they will provide you with a full free tech...despite the fact that the cheapest tech I can research costs a bit over 11k tech points. This is an issue that's come up largely because of the map size (More pods) and aggressive native life (AI has difficulty getting them), but it's definitely something that needs to be addressed. My suggestion would be to scale their bonus based on the tech's tier, and to apply the bonus to the tech you're currently researching instead of a random tech. For the bonus, I'd suggest something like 50% T1, 33% T2, 25% T3, etc., with a minimum bonus of 10%. Of course, these bonuses would need to scale based on the speed of the game as well (10% is nothing on Quick), but they'd make a good starting point for Marathon. It's a dramatic nerf for sure, but it's absurdly broken at the moment and it's still significantly more useful than a Unity Foil in the middle of half a dozen Isles. Hilariously, the bonus credits I get as a result of Hypnotic Trance are what's keeping my economy afloat. Despite currently hemorrhaging 106 credits each turn and 50+ for most of the game, I'm still sitting on a stockpile of 10k+. Some of that came from selling tech, but I'm sure I'd still have a modest stockpile without that trading.

tldr: Gaians OP, Empath Song OP, Tech from Unity Pods OP.

Other thoughts:

Monoliths are buggy when it comes to native lifeforms as they give Morale 1 instead of Lifecycle 1.

Centauri Preserve wonder feels pretty useless right now. Sure, it gives an immediate +1 Planet Attitude, but it does nothing to actually keep it up. But maybe that's just because the jump from 8 to 9 PA feels less meaningful than the jump from -0.4 to 0.6 PA.

The University being able to avoid the No Tech Brokering setting seems really gamey. It's useless when the setting isn't used, and is horribly OP if used when the player is playing as University.

Other factions often seem really underpowered. Lal is the big one here.

Genejack Factories feel a bit overpowered. The +2 production bonus for Technicians means that they're producing as much as tiles with average productivity ("Productivity" being a combination of food and minerals) and makes them one of the best choices for your free specialists. Or, god forbid, you happen to play on settings like mine and get 7+ Technicians in a single city as a result of Supply Trawlers.

There needs to be more information available on the new victory conditions introduced. I'm reluctant to pick up my original game again due to not understanding the new victory conditions.

The AI needs to be flagged to defend Material Supplies it sends back to its towns. Despite my aggressive exploration, the only one I was able to grab was stolen from Hive's doorstep. Not sure if this is really possible, but it's worth looking into. This might've been some fluke, however.

Ridges seem a bit useless for Hybrid based economies. Your only non-PV hurting option is Windmills and Solar Collectors. Best idea I've come up with is to focus on putting potential Mines and Farms on ridges in order to maximize the amount of low lying terrain you have available for Xenofungus or Hybrid Forests. With weaker conditions, you're better off not even improving the ridge tile and just making the pop a specialist.

The -2 PV for Edens seems to be a bit excessive. Either scale the -PV growth back (0.5 -> 0.75...->1.25) or drop the initial -PV down to 0 (0 -> 0.5...->1.5). As it stands Edens have a -PV that's equivalent to a god damn *borehole*. Hell, combining the two might be best (0.25 -> 0.5...->1.0).

On a similar note, bump the -PV up for Mines (0.75 would likely be ideal, but 1.0 might also work depending on how Farms get balanced) and boreholes (Between 2.5 and 3.0).

Not sure how I feel about food being used for the production of Formers and native units.

----------
Pretty sure that about covers things. It might seem like I'm overly critical of the mod, but I've been enjoying the hell out of it this past weekend.
 
Joined
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Messages
1,853,653
Location
Belém do Pará, Império do Brasil
Need to grab this.

The native life is indeed quite powerful, especially on the sea.
One feedback I wanted to give a few years ago was exactly that. Ever try playing Pirates? Good luck! Its pretty much SMAX: Pirates vs Worms. Even Empaths and Trance become useless. And because the Flowering Counter keeps rising, they just get stronger. The seas are infested with native life, to the point even exploiting sea resources get ultra-annoying because your base keeps having IoDs move in their coasts.
 

Renegen

Arcane
Joined
Jun 5, 2011
Messages
4,062
Hey Ashery, nice to see you playing the same old games as before. One question for the latest version of best mod of Civ4, does it have the dumb Mass Effect factions in?
 

Monaldinio

Literate
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Messages
22
So, I got into this quite heavily and I've got some feedback.

First off, map settings:
Code:
Huge
Marathon
Raging Barbarians
No Tech Brokering
No Expansion or Fan Expansion Factions
Half of the victory conditions removed.

This is pretty much my classic SMAC setup when playing as the Gaians (Well, SMAC maps are larger, so I generally stick to normal sizes there), and while I know the more aggressive mindworms favor the Gaians, it feels as though things are completely broken in the mod.

So, the Gaians get a +1 Nutrient bonus for Xenofungus in both versions, but in SMAC this is damn near useless in the early game and only gradually ramps up to being powerful at the very end of the tech tree once you've unlocked the other Xenofungus resource bonuses due to the fact that Xenofungus overrides all innate tile production. But in CoC, not only does Xenofungus retain the resources production from the tile underneath, but you also benefit from the +2 resources from the Energy/Mineral/Nutrient Bonuses. On top of *that*, you can outright build Field Labs on top of strategic resources without removing the Xenofungus. My capitol had two tiles producing four food right out of the gate (Nutrient Bonus and Monolith; both in Xenofungus) and the running average for every other tile worked was also around two food. I had serious health issues in the early game so my capitol's size was limited a bit initially, but once I unlocked the various health boosting strategic resources and expanded aggressively (More on that later), it's been in a constant population boom: 17 people and I've still got a surplus of +7 with one pop working as a specialist.

What's more, however, is that I seem to be the only faction capable of fighting the natives. Lal got knocked out very quickly; I'm hestiant to say that it was in the first dozen or so turns, but it sure felt that way. Miriam lost her capitol in the early/mid game transition. And everyone else save for Santiago is stuck on three or four bases...While I'm now sitting on twenty and with plans for five more. But even in Santiago's case, she might have seven bases but one of them is a five pop base that still hasn't expanded its boarders. Earlier in the game colony count was a bit closer to parity, but the combination of my absurd Planet Attitude (+8 early on; now +9) that gave me +24% vs native life and the innate double movement Gaian units get in Xenofungus meant that no one could compete with my rate of expansion.

Back in the early/mid game transition (I had just produced a couple Isle of the Deeps; a tech I got by blowing a Transcend immediately after researching the prior tech), I saw University sending a massive fleet of Gun Boats my direction. We had open boarders at the time, but I thought for sure he was heading over to backstab me. Turns out that the other factions simply need more than a dozen ships in a fleet in order to stand a chance against native life, especially the Fungal Towers. I, however, only needed to produce a couple Isle of the Deeps, use their starting experience to give them the Empath Song ability (+25% vs native life, 100% chance to capture native life when they're defeated), and in conjunction with my absurd Planet Attitude I was on my way to having a fleet of 61 Isles that cost no upkeep once I got the technique down. At the very least, Empath Song shouldn't have a 100% chance to capture native life.

Which brings me to my second major balance gripe: Unity Pods are incredibly broken when it comes to providing technologies. As it stands, they will provide you with a full free tech...despite the fact that the cheapest tech I can research costs a bit over 11k tech points. This is an issue that's come up largely because of the map size (More pods) and aggressive native life (AI has difficulty getting them), but it's definitely something that needs to be addressed. My suggestion would be to scale their bonus based on the tech's tier, and to apply the bonus to the tech you're currently researching instead of a random tech. For the bonus, I'd suggest something like 50% T1, 33% T2, 25% T3, etc., with a minimum bonus of 10%. Of course, these bonuses would need to scale based on the speed of the game as well (10% is nothing on Quick), but they'd make a good starting point for Marathon. It's a dramatic nerf for sure, but it's absurdly broken at the moment and it's still significantly more useful than a Unity Foil in the middle of half a dozen Isles. Hilariously, the bonus credits I get as a result of Hypnotic Trance are what's keeping my economy afloat. Despite currently hemorrhaging 106 credits each turn and 50+ for most of the game, I'm still sitting on a stockpile of 10k+. Some of that came from selling tech, but I'm sure I'd still have a modest stockpile without that trading.

tldr: Gaians OP, Empath Song OP, Tech from Unity Pods OP.

Other thoughts:

Monoliths are buggy when it comes to native lifeforms as they give Morale 1 instead of Lifecycle 1.

Centauri Preserve wonder feels pretty useless right now. Sure, it gives an immediate +1 Planet Attitude, but it does nothing to actually keep it up. But maybe that's just because the jump from 8 to 9 PA feels less meaningful than the jump from -0.4 to 0.6 PA.

The University being able to avoid the No Tech Brokering setting seems really gamey. It's useless when the setting isn't used, and is horribly OP if used when the player is playing as University.

Other factions often seem really underpowered. Lal is the big one here.

Genejack Factories feel a bit overpowered. The +2 production bonus for Technicians means that they're producing as much as tiles with average productivity ("Productivity" being a combination of food and minerals) and makes them one of the best choices for your free specialists. Or, god forbid, you happen to play on settings like mine and get 7+ Technicians in a single city as a result of Supply Trawlers.

There needs to be more information available on the new victory conditions introduced. I'm reluctant to pick up my original game again due to not understanding the new victory conditions.

The AI needs to be flagged to defend Material Supplies it sends back to its towns. Despite my aggressive exploration, the only one I was able to grab was stolen from Hive's doorstep. Not sure if this is really possible, but it's worth looking into. This might've been some fluke, however.

Ridges seem a bit useless for Hybrid based economies. Your only non-PV hurting option is Windmills and Solar Collectors. Best idea I've come up with is to focus on putting potential Mines and Farms on ridges in order to maximize the amount of low lying terrain you have available for Xenofungus or Hybrid Forests. With weaker conditions, you're better off not even improving the ridge tile and just making the pop a specialist.

The -2 PV for Edens seems to be a bit excessive. Either scale the -PV growth back (0.5 -> 0.75...->1.25) or drop the initial -PV down to 0 (0 -> 0.5...->1.5). As it stands Edens have a -PV that's equivalent to a god damn *borehole*. Hell, combining the two might be best (0.25 -> 0.5...->1.0).

On a similar note, bump the -PV up for Mines (0.75 would likely be ideal, but 1.0 might also work depending on how Farms get balanced) and boreholes (Between 2.5 and 3.0).

Not sure how I feel about food being used for the production of Formers and native units.

----------
Pretty sure that about covers things. It might seem like I'm overly critical of the mod, but I've been enjoying the hell out of it this past weekend.


thank you very much for your detailed review!
you were not too critical .
Your Critic will find def. the Way into the mod! Thanks you!
 

exe

Augur
Joined
Sep 22, 2010
Messages
359
Technicians and Engineers both give +2 minerals, 2 buildings boost the technician up to +6 but there is no boost for engineers. Why not have the buildings give a bonus to both? No engineers are useless after you get a genejack factory.
 

Monaldinio

Literate
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Messages
22
On the l
Technicians and Engineers both give +2 minerals, 2 buildings boost the technician up to +6 but there is no boost for engineers. Why not have the buildings give a bonus to both? No engineers are useless after you get a genejack factory.

On the list!
I think it would be the best 1 builing boost the technican, the other (genejack) boost the engineers.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
Hey Ashery, nice to see you playing the same old games as before. One question for the latest version of best mod of Civ4, does it have the dumb Mass Effect factions in?

<3

Not sure if they're the ME factions or not (I've never played the series), but both the official expansion and fan expansion factions can be disabled on map setup. It might affect the balance and/or gameplay adversely as the new factions get introduced upon researching some important T3/T4 techs and likely chance the game dynamics, but I've played enough SM:AC that I just default to disabling them right off the bad.

Need to grab this.

The native life is indeed quite powerful, especially on the sea.
One feedback I wanted to give a few years ago was exactly that. Ever try playing Pirates? Good luck! Its pretty much SMAX: Pirates vs Worms. Even Empaths and Trance become useless. And because the Flowering Counter keeps rising, they just get stronger. The seas are infested with native life, to the point even exploiting sea resources get ultra-annoying because your base keeps having IoDs move in their coasts.

Guess that just cements my criticism that high PA setups are OP. I was poking around my game last night, and I realized that I had only trained a single Isle of the Deep the entire game; everything else was captured. Not having your issues with the Flowering Counter, though. In fact, my issue is the exact opposite as I've yet to really see the counter rise significantly despite the fact that I'm well into the mid game. Maybe it's the fact that I'm running on Marathon game length.

Also, the documentation on what techs speed up the research of others seems to be spotty. When you're prompted to research a new tech, it'll display "Sped up by <x>." for various techs, but when you go to the actual research menu (F6), there's nothing displayed. That makes things a bit difficult to plan one's research path around.
 

exe

Augur
Joined
Sep 22, 2010
Messages
359
On the l
On the list!
I think it would be the best 1 builing boost the technican, the other (genejack) boost the engineers.

There was also a tech that adds more yield to trenches, but doesn't actually change anything. Not sure if adding +2mineral +3energy (afaik) to all trenches isn't way to op. Food was actually always the biggest problem for coastal or seabases. Is it intentional that there isn't some kind of Lighthouse building that gives +1coastal food like in Civ4? Kelp only really sucks.
There is also a tech that adds Biology Labs to all your bases or give you cash if you already have build one, that also didn't work for me. Not sure if the tech that gives free hydroplants is broken too, I already had that wonder that gave free hydroplants everywhere.
 

Monaldinio

Literate
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Messages
22
"Not sure if the tech that gives free hydroplants is broken too, I already had that wonder that gave free hydroplants everywhere."

That works of course.

"There is also a tech that adds Biology Labs to all your bases or give you cash if you already have build one, that also didn't work for me."


Mhhhm, could you have a look and Tell me the Tech?
 

Monaldinio

Literate
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Messages
22
No
That would be 'Secrets of Alpha Centauri'.

Sorry, but it is not Secrets of Alpha Centauri'.

With Secrets of Alpha Centauri' you can:

- found a Commune

- build a xenoemphaty dome

- enables Transcendence

- enables Infest


In my opinion there is no tech wich that adds Biology Labs to all your bases or give you cash if you already have build one. But maby you will find it.
 

exe

Augur
Joined
Sep 22, 2010
Messages
359
I am using the 3.3 Beta with the german sounds that you linked first, not sure if the newer version already changed it. But it is Secrets of Alpha Centauri.
wks7gtg.jpg

The green symbol with the yellow border in the Secrets of Alpha Centauri Tech. There is also the free Hydroplant tech Ecological Engineering in the bottom left of the screen.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
Some more thoughts after starting a new game (Unity pods disabled this time):

With the way Planet Rating currently works, if you're a high PA faction and happen to get caught on a large highland plain, you're pretty much fucked. You'll likely be able to keep a modest positive PA if you tech properly, but your growth rate and overall effectiveness will be crippled. I ended up restarting my first new game as I spent a dozen turns trying to find a location with existing xenofungus, and the spot I found happened to be right up against Hive with nothing but highlands surrounding me. Not sure how to actually address this, however.

On the opposite end of that, the Unity Hydroponics Bay is by *far* the most powerful of the Unity wonders. The free Hydro Plant in each base alone would be enormously powerful as the +1 commerce on all river tiles can mean a sudden jump of 40%+ in your overall rate of research, but the ability to adopt the Hybrid civic early on just feels completely broken. The -1 health is a small price to pay for an additional production from damn near every worker. And that says nothing of the reduction of upkeep costs for each tile of xenofungus you have in range of your base. Hell, once you're into the mid-game, it's not all that far fetched to completely eliminated all city upkeep (Autarky removes costs based on distance, and under Hybrid, you need 10 xenofungus tiles to eliminate upkeep based on total number of cities).

Not sure how I feel about the flat values required for fungal bloom prevention and native unit maximum. On a random test run with Morgan to see how blooms worked, I was sitting on -5 PA for 80 turns and only ever experienced on bloom early on, and by the end of the 80 turns I still had all three of my culture derived bloom preventions ready to use. With the native lifeforms, a high PA (8 PA isn't hard for the Gaians) means you're looking at 3-4 free native units per city by the mid-game alone. Not sure how I can expect the other factions to put up much of a resistance to those numbers.

Oh, and something needs to be done about the early game AI on games with aggressive native life. It seems like most of my games (I did some test runs to try out techs and such) involve at least one faction dying off early on, but my current game has seen the deaths of both Believers and Spartans.
 

Monaldinio

Literate
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Messages
22
Hydroponics bay is realy a strong wonder!
Maybe i should cancel the ability to use the hybrid Civic after researching the tech.

I 've been thinking about your last post and I thought about what could BE changed.
I'll write tomorrow my thoughts.

Thanks for your Feedback!!!;)
 

Morblot

Aberrant Member | Star Trek V Apologist
Patron
Joined
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Messages
2,288
Location
Finland
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut
I love it how C:BE just had an expansion and this thread is now about a mod for a ten year old game :incline:
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
I love it how C:BE just had an expansion and this thread is now about a mod for a ten year old game :incline:

I mean, a quick search shows that there *are* a few significant TCs that've been developed for Civ 5, but my understanding has always been that Civ 4's more mod friendly. And in the case of TCs, being a decade old actually means that you'll be able to play stuff that's either complete or largely complete as major modding projects typically take many years to complete due to their hobbyist nature.

And Monaldinio, is there documentation somewhere detailing the changes between CoC and Planetfall? I was able to spot a few changes for CoC: Gaians got their +1 food from xenofungus back from SMAC, the entire orbital layer was added, Drone Corvee was added as a civic, Leviathans got nerfed significantly (And with my game experience so far, very necessarily; even a single point of damage makes a huge difference in survival and the Leviathans in PF had 30str; a whopping 20+ more than the next strongest unit), a bunch of fan factions got added, and a few other minor building details.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
what else other than the crappy faerun?

Hey, I've no idea how good they actually are since I don't have the base game to install'em. It's just that the simple fact that there are a few TCs out there means that it seems like it's at least theoretically possible to do something meaningful with it, which goes against the impression that I had of the game's modding capacity.

Of the two others that I can recall besides Faerun, one involved LotR and the other was called something like Earth 2140.
 

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