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This is a new entry into the Civ franchise, due out in October. There are a few screenshots and a video at the site below. Looks pretty cool, and appears to be a stylish makeover of another of Sid's earlier Civ-style classics, Alpha Centauri (which I loved dearly).

https://www.civilization.com/en/games/civilization-beyond-earth/ (https://www.civilization.com/en/games/civilization-beyond-earth/)

There is some more info, screenshots and a demo clip of the gameplay on display at Steam.

Wow, fragger!  You can do Steam!!!   ???

Screenies look great - very colorful and detailed

Quote from: PZ on August 26, 2014, 05:31:26 PM
Wow, fragger!  You can do Steam!!!   ???

:-D :-X

 :laugh:

"This demon's tempest will not hold us out if we really want in" - Beowulf :-()

Should be wonderful to explore alien worlds in this, with the known CIV interface, I do remember Alpha Centauri which was great.  ^-^

Agreed :)

This game apparently will have customizable units like Alpha Centauri did, and will feature a "tech web" instead of a tech tree, in which you begin at a central point and direct your techs outwards along diverging research lines. Looks quite innovative 8)

Sounds interesting indeed. This together with the video I saw on Steam, is quite something. Civ isn't my type of game but I'm definitely looking forward to your experiences :-X :)

Cheers mate :) The game should be released next week, so expect some blather from me soon :-()

 :-X

 :-D go on :)

Well, I'd like to go on, but...

Spoiler

FUCKING STEAM WON'T LET ME LOG ON TO INSTALL!!!

I've been trying to connect with them for the last half-hour but apparently they've gone bye-byes for the time being.

So much for trying out my new game...

I may have a rapid new net access, but it hasn't put an end to my hassles with Steam. The bastards are still managing to piss me off >:((

Quote from: fragger on October 23, 2014, 10:22:52 PM
...I may have a rapid new net access, but it hasn't put an end to my hassles with Steam. The bastards are still managing to piss me off >:((

Wow, fragger - seems like you never get a break from those Steam people!  ???

Tell me about it :-()

Blow me down - just after I let loose here, I went back to Steam for one more attempt to stick my foot in the door and they condescended to let me in ::) Installation now complete. My copy came with a DLC code for a pack of six new map styles (which I have downloaded) but I'll get to those by-and-by. First, I need to learn how to play the flipping game :-D

And there's gonna be some learning. I've had a wee bit of a play, and it promises to be quite engaging. HOWEVER - there's a pretty steep learning curve involved. For anyone who has never played any of the Civ games (and who never played Alpha Centauri), getting a head around this title could prove to be a tad daunting.

Alpha Centauri was Sid Meier's follow-up to Civilization II and while it retained the basic Civ gameplay it was quite different in a number of ways. The same obtains here - Beyond Earth displays the same kind of radical departure from Civ V whilst retaining the essential core gaming concept. There's a lot to take in even for a seasoned Civ veteran like my good self, but it'll be a case of learning by doing. There is an online manual and the ever-handy Civilopedia, but I haven't poked into those much yet.

First impressions:

Cool-looking graphics depicting a truly alien environment. This is a foreboding-looking world and humans are the newcomers - other things already live here. Whether we'll get on or not remains to be seen...

Interface seems fairly accessible and the game's atmosphere is a little reminiscent of Alpha Centauri's. Map is hexagon-based like Civ V. Units are interesting to look at and are neatly animated (what little I've seen of them so far). I've spotted a couple of "herds" of alien critters skittering about, dunno what they are yet or whether they mean good or nasty.

I think I could get happily lost in this game, once I start to gain a glimmering of the hang of it.

Very early days, but I'm enthusiastic :-X

I like spoiler tags. You'll never know what's going to hit you..  :laugh:

 :-D

You didn't hear the verbal equivalent, although my neighbours probably did. Since I can't stick a spoiler over my mouth and I w@&k in a pet goods place, maybe I should buy a muzzle :-()

hehe  ;D

Reminds me of a Garfield comic strip. Garfield takes a paper bag, sticks his face in, pulls his face out and seals the bag. He then puts it on the ground and walks away (although he made sure Odin, the dog, was watching the whole act). Odin walks over to the bag, opens it so the opening points towards his face and you see that something similar to a hurricane comes out of the bag blowing right into Odin's face.  ^-^ Maybe you should curse into a bag, too  :-()

AMD Released a Performance driver for CIV Beyond Earth  >:D
Also I did'nt notice first but the game is Mantle ready, so the newest and last gen AMD cards are getting benefits playing via Mantle.

Neat :-X

Art, I'll keep that in mind, if I can find a Kevlar bag :-() I'm generally pretty restrained when I post here (despite the last spoiler) but I have been known to colour the air a tad when properly motivated >:D

Just got home from w@&k a short time ago. Gonna have some dinner, then crack open a beer or two and play some more BE ^-^

 :-D

Alreet bazz.. let rip!  :-()

There are some quite notable changes from Civ V in BE, some of which will take time to get familiar with.

One big change is the "Tech Web". Instead of the traditional inter-branching tree structure where techs lead to other techs in an overall linear manner, techs in BE are researched from a central starting point with the branches radiating outwards. It means that you can focus on just one branch of the web and completely ignore others altogether if you want. This couldn't be done in earlier Civ games because sooner or later you would want to pursue a particular tech but would first have to discover two or more prerequisite techs from other branches before you could pursue the one you really want.

Here's the central part of the Web (not a very clear pic, but I had to shrink the original 1920x1080px image to post it efficiently. A bit clearer when clicked on):

[smg id=7281 align=center size=600]

The techs themselves, and what they will allow, are going to take some getting used to. A player will know what to expect in Civ V when techs like "Archery" and "Flight" are researched. Techs in BE such as "Swarm Robotics" and "Transcendental Maths" are not so self-suggestive of what they will yield (although it does tell you in a pop-up when you hover the pointer over the little icons associated with the tech, just as in Civ V).

Here's a bit of what the world looks like (once again, shrunken image):

[smg id=7282 align=center size=600]

Very alien compared to Civ V's lush and familiar world. There are different types of alien creatures running around which can be quite tough to fight off. There's one called a Siege Worm which is a particularly nasty piece of xenobiology. These things will burrow up from underground in a twisting/turning fashion and will lay waste to your farms, power generators and any other improvements you may have built. And they're TOUGH - most of your units (especially early on) will get creamed if they try to attack one. However, if a worm gets within two hexes of your city, the city itself can safely range-attack it. It'll take about seven good hits to bring it down though.

Most alien creatures seem to be relatively non-aggressive, unless your units stray too close to their nests. Then they will attack. But even then, after a while they will go back to being non-aggressive. It appears that there are techs and "Virtue" decisions you can attain (Virtues are what used to be called "Policies" in Civ V) that will enable you to get on better with aliens. It seems that it's even possible later in the game to have aliens units under your command (a la Alpha Centauri). Except for Siege Worms - they're always cranky and ready to have a go at anything.

There's tons of new stuff to learn about. An experienced Civ player should be able to pick it up relatively quickly, but if you haven't played any Civ games I'd recommend getting familiar with Civ V before attempting this title. Having said that, there are tutorials and a handy adviser/tip system that you can turn off later, once you get familiar with things.

I like the 3D look of the game board  :-X

the web idea is cool :-X

One thing I've noticed is that the game is surprisingly graphics-intensive. I had to turn off anti-aliasing and drop some of the graphics options down a bit to get it to run smoothly. Civ V is much, much smoother. As I uncover more of the map, naturally there is more for the program to display and I expect the speed will drop even more as I continue to explore. Like many strategy games, BE uses a "fog-of-war" system - the map details are invisible until you move units out into the world to reveal them. I've uncovered less than half the current map so far and there is a noticeable drop in the frame rate. It'll be interesting to see how it behaves when the entire map has been revealed and I have more units out and about.

The map is 3D, as is Civ V. It can't be rotated, but you can zoom the view in and out (five zoom levels) and smoothly autoscroll it. Your view is as though you're looking down on everything but at an angle. Imagine a relief-map on a table and you're standing at the end of the table. If there are mountains at the far end of the table and mountains at the near end of the table, you will see the two lots of mountains at different angles due to your perspective - the mountains at the far end of the table will be seen almost side-on whereas the mountains at the near end of the table will be almost directly below you. This is how the map in BE (and Civ) is presented. When you scroll up or down you can see this kind of perspective in action as the map appears to "unroll" beneath you. Similarly when you side-scroll, the 3D-ness of the terrain is evident. It's a pretty cool system.

nice :) let's hope that the frame rate won't drop too much.

Performance test with the Civ BE :
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8640/benchmarked-civilization-beyond-earth (http://www.anandtech.com/show/8640/benchmarked-civilization-beyond-earth)

Interesting :-X

Also interesting is that when I fire up BE there is a small bit of text at the bottom of the opening splash screen which tells me that my GPU doesn't have the latest driver installed. I did upgrade it a few months ago, but evidently there's a new one available. I haven't looked into that yet.

The map screenpic shown on the page that Stiku linked to is not a typical BE game situation. Just about every hex has a unit in it and it appears to be something that's been deliberately assembled that way pure and simply to put the GPUs to a stress test. You would never see a map so chaotically full of units like that, and there doesn't seem to be any cities or hex improvements such as Farms, Generators, etc. It appears to be nothing but units, which is not possible in an actual game. Most games of Civ would find you not needing any more than about thirty to forty units of varying types and I think it would be the same with BE - you would never have hundreds of units, nor would there be any need to have that many. The support costs for so many units would be prohibitive anyway because each unit you build requires money to maintain per turn, and there is a limit to how many units you can have which is determined by how many cities you have and how populous they are - at least that's how it works in Civ V. I haven't yet taken notice of how unit support works in BE, there's been too much other stuff to take in first.

Civ V can lag a little on a big map that's been completely revealed and when it's late in a game (i.e. a lot has been built), but the frame rate is still acceptable - at least it is on my rig. BE is simply a more graphically demanding game, but that's par for the course with newer games - witness AC5...

Seems that there is a never ending cycle of upgrades required for the latest games.  Funny thing is that on the consoles, the developers know the constraints within which they need to program, so they somehow make it w@&k.  There really is very little excuse for sloppy programming other than laziness.

I used to say that games push the PC industry, demanding better hardware and in return, better hardware caused "better" games. The console domination put a stop to that. Now it's perhaps indeed going back to the roots which I generally appreciate.

I remember the problems my systems had when playing C&C games, which can be compared to Civ, performance-related. Once you fill up the map with units, it will in the end loose frame rates quite a lot. Seems to me that indeed the set up Stiku is referring to is the best way to stress test your system. I always thought it would be the processor bottle-necking the crowded areas, since all behaviour and connections have to be calculated instead of their graphic appearance. But I might be completely wrong with that. It's just my logic telling me so.

I like the web upgrade system. It gives you a whole lot of liberty in the way you'd like to approach the gameplay. Looking forward to your discoveries and experiences. Keep it coming :) :-X

Cheers Binn :)

I started a new game, because my first go was just an initial paddle in the pool to test the waters - and besides, I didn't get off to a very good start. In fact I screwed the pooch somewhat due to my clumsy newbie fumblings ::)

There are a bunch of options you can choose between at the beginning of a new game which allow you to customize your faction before you make planetfall. This is pretty cool because you can tailor yourself according to what it may be that you want to achieve in the game. You can choose to play with one of eight "sponsors" (i.e. this determines your faction), each of which have their own inherent strengths and/or special abilities, much like the different cultures in Civ V. But in addition to this, you can also choose amongst various start options in the following categories:

Colonists
There are five types: Scientists, Refugees, Aristocrats, Engineers and Artists (you can choose only one type). The type of Colonists you choose will determine which of the basic resources will be boosted in the form of added bonuses in each of your cities per turn throughout the game (Science, Food, Energy, Health, Production and Culture, or various combinations thereof).

Spacecraft
Five types: Continental Surveyor, Retrograde Thrusters, Tectonic Scanner, Fusion Reactor and Lifeform Sensor. The different types of ship will determine under what conditions you will make planetfall, e.g be able to see coastlines (even under Fog Of War), larger area of land initially visible in which to choose a landing site, and so on.

Cargo
Five types: Hydroponics, Laboratory, Raw Materials, Weapons Arsenal and Machinery. Whichever one you choose will give you an initial Tech, Building, Unit or population boost to start with.

Planet
Lets you choose what type of world you would like to play on, such as Terran (a few large land masses and some small islands), Protean (one big contiguous land mass surrounded by ocean), Atlantean (lots of islands of varying sizes), or Random. The Exoplanets Map Pack DLC that came with my copy will allow you to choose between a further six different types of world.

There are also six difficulty levels and five map sizes to choose between.

A word about the basic (city) resources: They are the same and w@&k the same way as they did in Civ V, only now Energy is substituted for Gold (as it was in Alpha Centauri) and Health now stands in for Happiness. Energy as a form of currency makes sense when you consider that this is a society that is utterly dependent on electrical power for survival (the atmosphere is poisonous) and as a result energy will be the most coveted commodity there is in a relatively small community trying to survive in a hostile alien environment far removed from the Earth's banking systems, worth way more than mere money. Try eating, drinking and breathing coins... This was the principle in Alpha Centauri and has been speculated about in a number of science-fiction stories.

Social Policies are still attained through Cultural points accumulation, as in Civ, but they are now called Virtues. Works in a very similar way. There is Espionage (once you make the appropriate tech discoveries) and works in much the way it does in Civ Gods & Kings, but with a bunch of added twists. Too much to go into here right now.

There is no Religion as such, but instead you can focus your efforts more towards three sort of philosophical imperatives: Purity, Harmony and Supremacy. Various tech discoveries will allow you to "level up" in these areas, and getting to the max in any of them will then allow you to go for a victory in the corresponding area. This constitutes three of the ways you can win, and are a tad complicated to go into here (read: I don't entirely get it myself yet :-()). There are two other ways to win: the venerable Conquest Victory (occupy everyone else's Capital Cities) and a variant on the Science Victory called Contact (a direct homage to the novel by Carl Sagan) which consists of you establishing contact with the original race of sentient beings that once inhabited the planet but left, long ago. This was how you could win in the expanded game of Alpha Centauri if you chose to play as one of the two alien factions (not available in the vanilla game).

There's a swag more that's new, but I've waffled on enough for now.

Phew... OK, I'm off to play some more of it in a bit. It's not grabbing me with both hands like Civ V did, but it is definitely growing on me, like alien moss :-X I do miss the classy Art Deco elegance of the Civ V user interface - this one is a bit more utilitarian in form - but it's a good straightforward UI nonetheless.

Plenty to choose from, I like the Science Fiction in it. In my last post I forgot to mention the Siege worm. It reminds me of the worms in Dune 2 ^-^

Quote from: fragger on October 28, 2014, 10:55:42 PM
... It's not grabbing me with both hands like Civ V did, but it is definitely growing on me, like alien moss...

:laugh: :-X

 ^   :-D :-D :-D +1  :-X for yet another fraggerian expression.  :-()

 :-D Thanks Art :)

I've gotten a bit more into BE, and I have to say it's not rocking my world like Civ V did.

For one thing, I'm not greatly enthused with the user interface. Overall it's just not as pretty as Civ's - it's very utilitarian and plain-looking, and it's not always easy to find what you want - at least, at first. Civ's UI is very intuitive and straightforward as well as being elegant and attractive, with buttons and controls that just seem to somehow fall easily to hand. The minimap in BE is next to useless - it's a tad too small and it can be quite difficult to make out what's what. Plus it's kind of dim. It brightens up some when you hover the pointer over it, but it lacks the vibrant clarity of Civ V's minimap.

It's not a terribly pretty world to look at, although the colours and landforms seem to vary depending on what style of planet you pick. I know they're supposed to be alien worlds, but is there some kind of gaming principle which dictates that all alien planets have to be ugly/weird-looking? I believe it's possible to have a world that's both alien and attractive, like the one in Avatar. Everything looks kind of dark and foreboding. I don't mean hard to see - it's colourful yet there's an overall impression of moroseness. It's hard to describe, but it's not pretty. The alien wildlife is the usual cross between reptilian and insectoid in appearance - generic game aliens, in other words.

If you look at the map colours in this screenie from my second game compared to the one in my first game (pic shown earlier in the topic) you can see that this world is more bluey-purple in appearance. I don't think I like it very much. Note the not-very-informative minimap in the top right corner.

[smg id=7288 align=center width=600]

I'm finding the gameplay to be a bit repetitive and kind of dull. So far it's build, explore, discover techs, throw up a new base once in a while, rinse and repeat. It's looking like a case of if I want combat, I'm going to have to start it myself. So far no other players have shown any inclination to be belligerent or territorial. Maybe they're just too busy trying to eke out a living on this somewhat inhospitable planet, but at the point I'm at in my current game, if it was Civ I more than likely would have been attacked or at least threatened by someone by now. It doesn't always happen in Civ either - it depends on where you start in relation to the other Civs and who those other Civs are. That's another thing - you can choose between a grand total of eight factions to play as, compared to over a couple of dozen in Civ (more with the EXPs).

The whole game has a kind of lacklustre feel to it, despite some of the truly cool innovations. I find myself getting sick of playing a session of BE much sooner than I do with Civ V, which I can happily play all day (and have done on occasion).

Time will tell, it's still early days for me and maybe I'll warm to it some more as I go on. So far though, I like it but I don't love it.

That's too bad, fragger - sounds like Civ V is like FC2.  Subsequent games are just not as fun

Seems to be a trend ::)

I wonder if Sid Meier himself actually had any input into this game. Although it bears his name, it doesn't necessarily mean he was involved with the development. He largely seems to be content to be the pres of the company these days. It was the case with earlier Civ games that if he was directly involved, the games were terrific, if not, they weren't. Two Civ sequels (Civ: Call To Power and Civ: Dream Of Empire) were developed by other companies after a messy legal squabble over who actually owned the rights to the title after Sid and his team quit Activision to start their own company when Microprose acquired Activision and tried to pressure Sid and his team to develop Civ III, which at that time they weren't interested in doing. Microprose and Activision, despite being ostensibly in a parent/child business arrangement, immediately tried to simultaneously develop their own respective post-Sid Civilization III games and thus got into a tussle over which of them actually owned the copyright. The court battle went on for several years and cost both companies a fortune. The legal decision was ultimately made that both companies could release their respective Civ games (which by then were fully developed but couldn't be sold before the legal pronouncement was made), but neither could call their game Civ III. The resulting games were named Civilization: Call To Power from Activision and Civilization: Dream Of Empire from Microprose. They were released simultaneously, i.e. as soon as they could be hustled out the door - and tanked after just a couple of months, when Sid's company Firaxis released Alpha Centauri. Nice last laugh, Sid :-X I tried CTP and it was an absolute dog of a game which deserved to tank. DOE was just pond scum.

Whenever Meier has been directly involved, the games shine. There was the original Civilization (a Sid game - I never played it, but it was very popular); Civ II (a Sid game) - excellent; Civ/Call To Power (no Sid) - lousy; Civ/Dream Of Empire (no Sid) - even lousier; Alpha Centauri (Sid) - excellent; Civ III (Sid) - excellent; Civ IV (no Sid) - lousy; Civ V (Sid) - excellent.

BE seems to lack the Sid touch.

Damn. When you voiced your hope that the game might turn better later on, I immediately thought the game wouldn't do you that favour. If a game can't convince me from the start, I'm almost bound to toss it. In other words, a game should capture you right away and keep doing it until the end. Anything else is crap. No matter whether a game starts bad and ends good or the other way round, it's just crap or crappier. A bloody shame if you ask me. :(

I have to agree. I was so looking forward to this game and I guess I keep hoping something about it will jump out and dazzle me, but so far nothing really has.

It's not a bad game and I like it in some ways, but Civ V still rules for me in this genre. I'll play BE for an hour or so, but then I'll get tired of it, fire up Civ and play that for several hours instead. Civ just seems to have a lot more character, or something.

at least you've still got Civ V :)

And there's still the Brave New World EXP for Civ V which I haven't picked up yet :-X

 :)

I had another go at BE tonight determined to give it another chance but I'm just not feeling the love. It's simply not an engaging game. For one thing I don't like the presentation of it, there's a kind of unattractiveness to its design that leaves me completely underwhelmed. The user interface is uninspired and kind of bleak, and in some ways downright annoying. The game simply lacks character. It's funny how some games can have an indefinable quality about them that can keep drawing you back in time after time (Civ V has that effect on me), while some games make playing them feel like a chore. It's a shame because there was such potential with this, but the all-pervading ordinariness that permeates this game keeps it from making any kind of significant impression on me.

Civ V, on the other hand, I can play until the cows come home.

BE can go into the "whoops, I wasted my money" drawer.

Sorry to hear that. We should start a blacklist of games with bad sequels :-\\

Unfortunately that would be virtually every game that has been released.   8-X

 :-D

Sad but generally true. Once upon a time game sequels were better than their predecessors, but now they've gotten like the movies - cash in on something that worked before but don't waste too much time trying to greatly improve upon it. Just give the masses what you think they want and gather in the bucks...

You guys are right. Although there are exceptions. But they are hard to find :-\\

So true fragger - you already have the masses hooked so why waste money making a quality product.

Beyond Earth hit Steam holiday sales already; -40%. That says about all :-\\

It does. I haven't checked up on it, but I'd be surprised if it's doing well. If I know my fellow Civvers they'd be as disappointed with BE as I was. No doubt that's why it's on special already, like you hinted at, Binn. It's probably tanking somewhat.

If I had to describe BE's gameplay in one word, I'd say "dull". If I was allowed another word to describe its appearance, I'd say "cluttered". It's hard to tell sometimes what's what - it just looks kind of jumbled and messy. It's not an attractive game. Civ V on the other hand is so nice to look at and easy on the eyes, and everything can be seen clearly. It's also a vibrant and addictive game with lots of character and a lovely user interface.

The two games are like chalk and cheese, really.

When I went to Steam a few weeks back  to download XCOM I noticed that Civ: Beyond Earth was updating. At the time I thought I'd fire it up and see if the updates had addressed some of the game's issues and flaws, much like they did with Civ V in its early days, but then I started playing XCOM and any thoughts of giving BE another go went out of my head.

When Civ V first came out I found its gameplay somewhat unbalanced and thought that some aspects of it hadn't been thought through very well. It wasn't just me, apparently - several subsequent updates not only fixed its balance issues but improved the game out of sight and made it into the stand-out it has become, especially once the two major expansion packs, Gods and Kings and Brave New World, are added.

So last night I pulled BE out of the mothballs and had another go at it, and right away I felt a sense of deja-vu about it. Not just because I'd played it before - something else was chiming. After a short while it struck me - the eight factions in the game, and their leaders, are the same ones in Sid Meier's Starships. Not only that, but the three "Affinities" of Harmony, Supremacy and Purity in BE, which are kinds of overarching philosophies that you can level up to boost various aspects of your faction, are also present in Starships. (In BE, when any of these Affinities are leveled up enough, they then each allow one of three of the six Victory types in the game to be attempted. The other three Victory types don't require Affinities).

So I looked into it a bit more and it turns out that the two games are linked to each other, after a fashion. Victories and Achievements accomplished in one game unlock things in the other, and it works both ways. If you have both games installed, and you're playing BE, an additional item appears in the main menu, "Play In Starships", which when clicked will transfer various stats for your faction in your current game to your My 2K account (provided you're online and logged on there). if you then fire up Starships, a new menu item will appear there, "Load From Beyond Earth". A new game will then begin based on your BE stats, including your Faction and Affinity (based on whichever Affinity you were strongest in in BE), strength of your fleet, and various resource, population and startup bonuses. Achievements reached in one game will unlock bonus material in the other, like new maps, missions and abilities, and as mentioned above, that feature is a two-way street.

This is the first time I've heard of Achievement bonuses being transferred between two quite different games. Interesting idea 8)

The two games are set in the same universe, with Starships taking place about 500 years after the events in BE. The idea is that sometime after the game is over, the factions go on to ultimately develop faster-than-light capability, venture out into the universe and start colonizing other worlds, resulting in the Starships premise. So you can kick off a game of Starships based on stats from BE, but not the other way around, because: 1) SS is set in BE's future, and; 2) BE is a much more complex game than SS and has totally different gameplay so the process just won't w@&k in that direction. In terms of the two titles' differing gameplay, you can reduce complex to simple but not expand simple to complex.

Incidentally, the BE update has actually improved the game, but it still hasn't resulted in a total game-changer for me. Some things are definitely better and I'm actually enjoying the game a lot more, but I still find it a tad lackluster compared to Civ. It's taken a few steps in the right direction though.

Good to read that improvement rather than breakage is the result of the updates

interesting concept indeed, fragger :)

I played quite a bit of Beyond Earth today, and I actually got right into it. Most of the improvements have been made to the UI and it's now far more attractive and accessible. Gameplay elements have also been fine-tuned and finally it's becoming a fun game to play.

I read up a bit about it on a Wiki and some fansites before starting a new game and it's evident that it needs to be approached in a different way to Civ, despite the two titles having much the same gameplay concepts. Trying to throw up too many colonies too early (an approach known as "going wide" in Civ fanspeak) can serve to hamstring you later - Civ is a bit more forgiving in that respect. A more cautious and methodical approach is required, starting with just one or two colonies, building them up and advancing your tech before expanding (known as "going tall" in the parlance). Becoming familiar with the Tech Web is also very important, and this will only come with experience. Taking the time to conduct a close examination of the Tech Web and adopting a more restrained approach in the early game has resulted in me doing a lot better this time around. I'm now on the 450th turn of a 500-turn game and I'm tantalisingly close to a victory...

So maybe I didn't waste my dough on this game after all. I just had to wait for it to blossom :-()

 :-D

Good to hear, fragger  :-X

Have fun in the game(s)

Thanks :)

Heh, after I posted that I went back into the game and one of the other players stole victory from me two turns later :-()

As if in response to my posting, Steam did another update of BE last night and refined the Tech Web a little more, in the very place where I'd thought a small tweak would really help. So yet another small but positive refinement has been made :-X

 :)

Won my first game today, a "Contact" victory 8)
[smg id=8324 align=center width=600]

This is achieved by making contact with the long-vanished extraterrestrial race which left some of its relics behind on your newly adopted homeworld. The process involves discerning the nature of the alien signal apparatus based on those relics, solving the "Transcendental Equation" derived from the result, transmitting a signal based on the new knowledge and constructing an orbital Deep Space telescope to watch for a response, deciphering that response once received, building a Beacon as per the instructions they relay to you in said response, activating the Beacon (which costs an awful amount of energy), then waiting for the ETs to utilise the Beacon from their end to facilitate a meeting. As the name of the victory type suggests, it's all very Carl Sagan.

This is typical of the multiple-objective nature of four of the six Victory types. They're well thought out, and quite challenging to achieve.

The Contact victory seems to be the easiest of the victories to pull off, relatively speaking, and potentially the quickest (it "only" took me 412 turns). The most straightforward (but certainly not the easiest) way to win is to mong war and beat up your opponents, but if you want to finesse your way to glory by taking one of the more circuitous routes, be prepared to do a lot of building and planning on top of sleuthing your way through the labyrinthine paths of the Tech Web and researching your hard-suited butt off.

A year or so ago I didn't think I'd end up getting hooked into this game to the extent that I have now :-() The updates have certainly made a difference.

Nice  :-X

It's great when something is actually improved

 :-X :)

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But the biggest improvement to the Tech Web is that you can now scroll to see the techs around the periphery of the web, which are actually off the screen when the view is centered, as in the pics above. Previously, it didn't scroll - instead it had a crummy one-level zoom out, and when you zoomed out to see the whole thing the icons became very difficult to discern and the Tech labels disappeared altogether, displaying vague little symbols in their place which no doubt seemed meaningful to the devs but just looked like alien hieroglyphs to everyone else ???? Why they couldn't make this display scroll in the first place I don't know - deadline rush, probably. But the poor earlier design was one of the chief reasons why I gave up on the game. For such a vitally important part of the thing, it was next to useless.

I'm getting quite addicted. BE is still about 75% "Civ in space" in terms of the core gamplay, but the innovations and additional strategy layers have breathed some new life into the franchise. Having said that, the rich character of Civ still makes that title my overall fave. BE is now running a very close second though :-X

 :)

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 :-D

Logan's Run, man, I was impressed by that film back then. ^-^

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I kicked off a new game of Civ as well and I have to say, Civ is far and away my preference between the two titles. BE is fun and I still want to achieve a Conquest victory in it, but Civ is just a slicker and more polished product. It's more engrossing, the cultures are more diverse (and with the two EXPs there's over forty to choose from, as opposed to just eight in BE), the diplomacy is better, there are far more options and stacks of things to do and attempt. And it just plain looks nicer.

Also, BE gives you no post-game stats, which kind of sucks. You just win or lose and that's it - no comparisons as to how you fared against the other players, no rankings, no graphs, no nothings. The victories themselves have a slightly anti-climactic feel to them, which I think stems from the way they've been conceived.

If I were to give Civ a ten, I'd give BE about a seven.