How to Save BE/Why AC works and BE does not

BE could have been wonderful. Sid Meir triumphantly throwing off the shackles of history and returning to space and philosophy. Instead it showed how they learned all the wrong lessons from the success and overall adoration of Alpha Centauri, how they do not understand science fiction, and how much of the greatness of Alpha Centauri came not from Sid Meir but from Brian Reynolds.

In an interview talking about starships Sid Meir said something along the lines of – its science fiction the story doesn’t matter. Like many people I only stopped slamming my head against the wall recently. Even the most tolerant interpretation of this comment is ridiculous. The friendliest interpretation to Sid is that he was trying to say “its science fiction there are no limits to the story you can write”. This conflates science fiction and fantasy. Even the softest science fiction (see star wars) tries to have some logical scientific explanation for its oddities. Yes, writing science fiction is freeing because you can ask “what if” but the best science fiction stories are defined by the limitations they impose on themselves.

The other interpretation “its science fiction the story doesn’t matter just write anything” (which given BE and starships I think may be what he believes) is so ridiculous that it doesn’t even need rebutting.

I have 313 hours in BE – and I cannot name any of the BE leaders and none of them are distinct characters. AC is completely different.

Let’s look at two of the AC factions as examples. Miriam is a complete stereotypical religious fundamentalist. She has all and the only answers and everyone else needs to serve her. That bible thumping grandpa you likely have if you live in the US – turn him up to 11. Instantly interesting and instantly memorable. Especially when BE was published as the US was arguably in the thrall of the Christian Right at the time. Still leaves empty spaces for the player to fill (does she really believe what she spouts or is she just using it for power, what level of Christian charity does she practice) but you have tools to work with.

Similarly Morgan is an extreme American Libertarian Capitalist. Instantly you have a character sketch but details are left for you to fill in. Does he believe in giving to charity on a personal just not governmental level, or is he the worst kind of Gilded Age Robber Baron who would buy the children of poor people as sex slaves? You could find both and every version in between in the stories written on the internet using AC games or characters. I have yet to see a good BE story.

All of the above focuses on story and character, but this is because to me this is where BE fails to capture the spirit of AC the most. It is also what made AC such a revelation and still the best Civ version. A strategy game with RPG level story and characters that actually promoted thought. But BE could also learn from AC’s mechanics. The best part of BE’s gameplay mechanics though, started with story.

As in all Civilization games, government is a major issue. You can be communist, democratic, capitalist, or green. Harkening back to Civ 2 (and somewhat like civ VI) though, rather than just consisting of various bonuses each form comes with its own negatives. Want to be green? Sure the planet will like you more and aliens will attack less, but your growth and industry will be limited. Oh wait you are playing as Morgan – will then you can’t choose green.

Think about that – the faction you choose limits the gameplay choices you can make in game. Playing Didere , who can never be capitalist, vs playing Morgan is almost like playing a completely different game. In the same token, playing Miriam who for the first 100 turns or so generates no science (that’s right zero science) vs. playing Zarakov whose almost entire mission is to amass science is like playing two different games.

Choosing one affinity in BE vs another not only changes nothing narratively it also changes nothing mechanically. They tried with the various bonuses each faction gets but it just didn’t work. Even on the highest difficulty as a harmony player, not only did I not have to make fungus near where I want to invade and then invade with my fungus loving troops it wasn’t really possible to do so. The techs that gave the ability to use satellites gave no affinity or at least not harmony affinity. As well, especially on the higher levels, pursuing techs that do not give affinity is a way to die since ALL of your unit advances are tied to affinity. The wonderful tech web quickly becomes linear again as most paths quickly become nonviable.

Let’s talk more about the affinities. Really, they each only feel like coats of paint. My leader avatar changing as my affinity increases sounded cool but it wasn’t taken nearly far enough. If I go technocracy I am supposedly becoming a computer but never does my leader avatar become really more computer like – just a human in a yellow robe. As I move up, I should be replacing my limbs with computer parts and eventually become a cyborg and then completely bodiless. Represent me as ones and zeros or the 2001 obelisk. I should certainly no longer be human. The same is true for harmony. I should gradually become more alien eventually becoming a bug with a human face and then a full on alien bug. Think the human sandworm in the later Dune novels. ONLY the purity affinity should have stayed recognizably human.

The affinities also should have had drawbacks as well as bonuses. ESPECIALLY when the hybrid affinities become mixed in. Some hybrid affinities make sense. Purity technocracy can be interpreted as incorporating computer parts into human bodies. But even here you go too far down technocracy purity no longer works. Human bodies are limiting, true freedom is in being pure conscious ghost in the shell code. This is how a high technocracy society would function. To continue using the hybrid units your affinities would need somewhat to stay in balance. Get two out of balance and your society is making the choice not to use the other affinities.

The last thing I will discuss is the lack of wonder movies. One of the best story hooks in AC was the quotes for the technologies, given they either came from philosophy greats of humanities’ past or faction leaders. Each quote from a faction leader fitting with the faction leader’s basic character and using that faction leaders voice actor. Even better than this though were the wonder movies. Each movie told a tiny story that fit not only with the faction leader but also helped flesh out the world. Watch the self aware colony video or the mind twister video and tell me these don’t add immeasurably to the sense of the games world.

If I wanted a completely abstracted mathematical strategy game I would play chess, go, or Sudoku. What firaxis increasingly seems to think of as window dressing is really an important part of the game experience.

Lal, Yang, Miriam, Morgan, Santiago, Zakharov, Dierdre; the core faction leaders in Alpha Centauri and names I can rattle off with very little prompting even though it has been years since I have played the game. If you have every played Alpha Centauri, or even heard of it, you can probably do the same and ,more importantly, have some idea of who each of these people are.

The tech tree and the affinity system both are less than thrilling I agree. I think the thing that really let me down is the, I don't know what to call it, quest system? The slow trickle of non game winning objectives that added the tiniest bit of flavor text into the game. I wish that was expanded or cut entirely.

Beyond earth just feels like it has so many directions it could've really added depth and style, but it feels shallow everywhere you look.

My biggest problem, and the reason I quit playing Beyond Earth, is that all three affinity victories (as well as Contact to a lesser extent) are all just variations on a science victory. Research three late-game techs and build a big thing. They also actively work against the idea of hybrid affinities since each victory condition is gated by your affinity level.

But to your other point, I can totally name the leaders in BE, they have: space America, space France, space China, space Russia, space India, space Australia, space Brazil, and space Africa. That is perhaps their biggest issue narratively. I don't think they did enough to make their leaders seem futuristic. It's like the character outlines for the civs were supposed to be some kind of scathing political commentary, but they were afraid to go all the way with it.

As you might be able to tell from my avatar, I'm quite the SMAC fan.

There are many incredible things about that game, but you've nailed the biggest thing: the faction and faction leaders. Not only are they far better than anything in BE, it's far better than any other Civilization game. Take any leader from Civ VI, for instance: off the top of your head, what characterizes Gilgamesh (or any other leader) in Civ VI? How does he play? What is he like in diplomacy? What does he respond well to? I bet you can't think of it.

Compare that to SMAC: you know that Sister Miriam is a fanatic who will declare war often and early (her research penalty making her much stronger in the early game and weaker in the mid/late game), and you better stay out of her way or ally with her. You know that Brother Lal is relatively peaceful but shrewd, preferring to get his ends through the planetary council. Meanwhile, Chairman Yang is protectionist and will turtle up and amass a huge army, and Zakharov will try and bribe you with science, as that's pretty much all he's got. Watch out for Lady Deirdre: she seems like a peaceful nature-lover, but if you threaten her (or Planet), she'll fuck you up with Mind Worms and Locusts of Chiron. The way they play feel like aspects of their personality in a really remarkable way. They feel like actual characters.

The leaders in Civ VI have some of these features as well, but they're not nearly as well defined by them, and you get the impression that all the leaders are basically the same AI but with slightly different things that makes them happy or unhappy. The diplomacy system contributes a lot to this: in SMAC it was all conversation trees where each leader had custom dialog, in Civ VI you're basically balancing a checkbook. In addition to this, some of their behaviors are totally nonsensical: they can get mad at you for not being expansionist enough (huh?) or for having a too small army (shouldn't you be happy about that?). It's just not the same thing at all.

I think it was a really smart call by Firaxis to limit the number of factions to 7, but have those factions be really well defined and thought through. When you have like 30 different leaders to choose from, they're all going to blend together.

@freedom4556: Heh - glad this got so many responses so quickly and that people seem to agree. Now we just need to send this to Firaxis. Does anyone know what Brian Williams is doing now? I agree with you freedom that the leaders are unremarkable - and unlike in AC they are not in any way political commentaries.

I'll just leave this here: https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/

Alpha Centauri is a damn good game, and most of that comes from the writing. I don't know what nerve stapling is, but it sure as hell sounds like the atrocity the AI labels it as.

Two words: World Building. Not just favor text, but factions that feel like real groups of people with tangible reasons to follow their belief structures. Not just "Hey this is Space France or Space China". I still go to the wiki from time to time just to read the backstories and tidbits from the research projects. It's masterfully done, and probably won't be repeated...

Also some killer graphic design that was simple yet modern and extremely effective.

@freedom4556 said:

Yeah, the simplicity of the space factions really killed anything interesting about the Beyond Earth setting. I know it's supposed to be nearish future, but the factions are such straightforward analogues of present day countries, or (at worst) lazy amalgamations of entire continents. Apparently even decades into the future as global warming is wreaking havoc on the world and there's a bunch of political and social upheaval, all that happens is a few countries amalgamate into weird country corporations that have exactly the same attitudes as the nations they're based on from the present day early 21st century Earth.

And then aside from that there was just nothing very engaging in the mechanics of Beyond Earth, when all the victory conditions are just variations of science victory. The affinities are a fine idea in concept, but the execution in Beyond Earth has them make no meaningful difference and you still play the game very similarly regardless of which one you choose. The satellites were a fun little idea, but they're not wildly impressive or anything. I guess myself and several people in this thread had bigger expectations for the game seeing as Firaxis hypothetically has the big publisher money to throw around, but I guess we always should've known this project was done by a B-team or C-team while the rest of Firaxis was off making XCOM 2 and Civ VI. They probably never had the budget or time to take bold innovative risks with Beyond Earth, so they just made a safe, standalone sci-fi expansion to Civ V with some halfbaked mechanics. Beyond Earth just comes off feeling like a sci-fi mod to Civ V that doesn't do anything well enough mechanically to be worth playing; if someone doesn't have the money to buy Civ VI, they should just play Civ V instead of Beyond Earth.

Also, I increasingly feel conflicted about how much Civ coasts on the grandiosity of human progress and history and historical leaders, game after game, and the actual civs often play really similarly within each game and just have minor buff differences. It's just kinda...easy, while games like Alpha Centauri, Endless Legend, etc. are out there, busting their ass to write interesting factions that both take original writing to seem properly fleshed out and also have major mechanical differences so that playing each faction offers a different experience and they have significant strengths and weaknesses compared to one another. It turns out Civ can coast on that formula when they keep making the same game set on Earth with real Earth nations/civs, but the formula falls flat when they use the same template in a game about colonizing new planets in space - people expect a little more originality once you remove the setting from historical/present day Earth.

Fuck the Lord's Believers by the way. I finally get the University of Planet off the ground and they go all "Onward Christian Soldiers!" and start burning all my shit!

I think you've hit the nail on the head with your OP. BE tried (and failed in my opinion) to have the factions be more than the Space America, Space China, etc. as mentioned above. AC had factions that represented idealogies. While they had nationalities represented by the faction leaders, it wasn't the main point of differentiation.

It's hard to quantify how much impact AC had on me, not just as a gamer, but as a person. I was 15 or so the first time I played it. So much good reading and thinking was spurred by the tech quotes, wonder movies, and the AC universe in general. BE just felt lifeless in comparison.

I'm not sure that this was a glitch or intentional, but the fact you can turn the seemly hippie Gaians into a lethal fighting force is brilliant.

You might have plenty of guns, but I have a spawn of telepathic mind worms that will burrow into your brain and wreck you.

@zaldar: Ehh, I'm pretty sure Beyond Earth is a dead game to Firaxis at this point. Their Starships tie-in bombed on Steam as well (and rightfully so).

After sinking some stupid amount of time into Civ V, I put in a lot of effort into one game of BE just a day or two ago for the first time and I'm wildly underwhelmed. There are a lot of interesting ideas on paper - the tech tree, upgradeable units/rulers, etc. - but it's all so poorly designed that it genuinely bums me out. The worst offender is the abysmal terrain, which makes it impossible for me to make out my troops as opposed to another player's. Part of that's my terribly eyesight, sure, but that terrain is straight-up the most bland alien landscape I've seen in a game in a long while.

It's not a game that takes very many risks, either, and that's kind of disappointing since the whole thing could be really nuts. That's kind of my complaint about a lot of things with a sci-fi setting, though. "Here, we've invented this really cool future tech, but you're still basically sending off marines and submarines." There's just no imagination to it.