Skeptical for a Strange Reason

I love the civilization series and as much as I think this is could be a cool game, I'm kind of worried. I firmly believe Civ V is the best in the series and hit an awesome sweet spot of depth and difficulty. It was such a good game I'm not sure this sequel could live up to it. My biggest worry is that this game will return the bloated feeling of having too many mechanics that Civ IV had. What do you guys think about it? I know its still really early to tell but I can't help but think about it.

Too early to speculate because we don't know much about the game yet, but shit, I'm just excited for Civ in Space, dude!

im skeptical for one reason: i dont care about space. but yea we nothing about the game so no need to judge yet.

So long as it is SMAC 2 in everything but name, I'm hyped for it.

I'm skeptical, but hopeful, cause Civilization Colonization wasn't exactly great.

sid meiers masters of orion 3

It seems like a strange thing to be worried about indeed. Why would Firaxis go back to Civ IV when Civ V was so successful? It will definitely be more in the vein of V rather than IV. My only worry is that it will feel too much like Civ. Alpha Centauri wasn't wildly different compared to Civ, but different enough. But Firaxis knows what they're doing, so I'm not putting too much stock in that concern.

I want to make space stations though.

I just hope it really differentiates itself from Civ V, I keep thinking they'll just add some tilt shift and a light blue tint and call it a day.

You know, thinking about it, I think that there in some ways Alpha Centauri is really radically different from the Civ games. I mean, you're right that the core economic part of the game is the same, but there are three things that I think are really different to Civ (although I'm not a Civ expert so please correct me if I'm wrong!):

1: The native life forms. It's not so dissimilar from barbarians in Civ, or Native Americans in Colonisation, but it's interesting having them tied to geographical features (fungal bloom). Is there a similar system in civ that does this? like, do barbarian camps appear more often in forests or anything?

2: Customisation of units. I used to love this feature, although when I go back to it it always seems a little bit under-developed. I remember when I first realised that I could put colony pods on any chassis, and make a really fast moving colonisation unit, I was pretty impressed. I don't know whether it ever serves a practical function - maybe it could help to tailor slightly cheaper units that are only slightly ahead of your enemies tech level or something to add a bit of economic strategy to the military aspect. Whatever it's awesome anyway.

3: The biggest one though, is definitely the fact that there is a sort of proto-XCOMish narrative to the game. not basing it even loosely on real history allows a weird sort of through-line to bleed in through the periphery. In some ways I think it helps that there is a tight focus to what the game is doing, each game sort of ends up being a snapshot of a possible future for human development, as it is shaped by an alien environment. Honestly I wonder if that sort of thing will be possible under the Civilization brand, but I hope it is!

1. Barbarian camps tend to spawn near water and in remote areas. I don't think it's a hard rule, but that often seems to be the case.

2. The customization is one of the core parts of what makes AC different from other Civ games. It also mean't a lot more micromanagement. I expect Beyond Earth to have this, but hopefully streamlined a bit and to the point where it really matters.

3. Well, AC was set so far into the future, all the technology was theoretical for the most part. But even if the setting allowed for some really out-there technology, like planet busters, all that stuff was late game. Since the premise is colonization of a new planet with initial low resources and little knowledge of the planet, it still works mostly like a Civ game. Except with a lot of cool technology that opens up for very different strategies compared to Civ.

Seems it's going to be pretty different from Civ, so not sure your anxiety really applies anyways.

Personally I'm just bummed you only play as humans.

I can understand you being a little hesitant, but Firaxis has done so many things right that I'm willing to give them a huge amount of leeway to do basically whatever they want.

@darkstalker: I really hope Beyond Earth is going to be nothing like MoO3

That is... not a very high bar to overcome. Master of Orion 3 is the Star Wars Holiday Special of 4X games.

I hope it's more like Civ IV.

Maaaaaaan, maaaaaaaan , maaaaaaaaaaan, sick burn on that game.

I need more information before I speculate on whether or not I'll enjoy it. Firaxis has never did me dirty before, so I'm going in positive.

I hope they work in a terraforming system. That helped distinguish Alpha Centauri the most from just Civilization.

Seeing as one of the win conditions is something like "recreate the planet in the image of Earth" I imagine terraforming will play a big role.

Being the huge firaxis fan I am I have nothing but high hopes going in.

With that said while I like the Civ V engine, IV is still my favorite mechnically. If they can just bring some of those mechanics back that would be awesome (although some may not work in the sci fi area, since one of my favorite mechanics was religon/corporations).

let me just put this out there:

other than the stacks of doom, civ 4 was an overall better game than civ 5

@azrailx: That's like saying other than being poison, hemlock is better than broccoli.

@veektarius: broccoli is nasty ewwwww!

No but really in Civ 4 I can play past 100 turns and multiplayer actually works and is enjoyable!

And no i shouldn't have to buy two expansions to make a game fun.

<3

@azrailx: So Civilization IV + expansions is better than Civilization V because you don't want to buy its expansions? This is one of those few instances where you can say, don't blame the game, blame the player.

I also, for some reason, feel hesitant about what Civilization: Beyond Earth will end up being. I don't even know why I feel this way, it's just this foreboding feeling I've had recently.

Hopefully, they will release some footage that will sell me on the game.

I'm skeptical because it builds upon Civ V, which I didn't like.

@azrailx, I like you.

After accidentally playing another 3 hours of Civ V and being reminded that Civ V isn't my favorite 4X game, I really hope they fix that game's problems in beyond earth. They could start by making the AI less terrible.