Quick Look: Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

sweet

The Navarro World Order is too sweet for life.

Looking forward to this.

@alex how does one sign up for this nWo you speak of? I am pretty good at signing up for causes.

Once again a quicklook discourages me from buying a game. Thanks Giantbomb for keeping me informed!

Time to kiss my wife and daughter goodbye as I will be in front of my PC for days building cities and pissing off the local populous. Luckily I don't have to fight Caesar anymore...that dick.

space ghandi?

I'm gonna miss those douchebags Suleiman and Alexander, but I'm looking forward to playing this with my friends later tonight.

Every time @alex clicks that 'move mode' button, I die a little inside. I wonder how many hours all those extra seconds moving the mouse over there all the time has added up to in all the time he's played this and Civ 5.

Just one more turn...

Looks closer to a normal Civ game, or just Civ 5, than it is to Alpha Centauri.

That's slightly unfortunate.

@viking_funeral: Well... Civ is in the title.

Played a few hours of this and liking it so far. It's very similar to Civ 5 so far, but they've kept some of the stuff from AC that I liked. Curious to see what other people think of it.

I don't know, I would rather play Civ5 than this. Seems like mostly the same game as well. Just a different theme.

So far I'm liking it. On one hand you could probably argue it's just a Civ V mod, but it's different enough to keep my interest.

i liked civ 5 and i really like sci fi. wont rush out to buy it but might pick it up when it inevitably goes on sale with the release of the first expansion.

I wonder how it happened that both this and Endless Legend added quests to a 4X game.

Really wish there was an OS X version of this game.

The devs left out the details of the great mistake from the game on purpose, so we can fill in the blanks ourselves.

But they did a talk at FirraxiCon showing the details of that event:

I've got to agree. Unfortunate indeed.

@gyrfal: Not sure. There were quests in Civ V with resource acquiring, bullying for city states, etc... but this seems more hands on than that.

This is actually the perfect game for me. I liked Civ V's gameplay, but the pseudo-historical incongruities really irritated my OCD.

Ive never really got the love for Civ games. I think I developed an expectation of what the games should be, somewhere down the line since they started that kinda breaks enjoyment for me. I dont feel like I am creating a real civilization. It feels like Im playing Risk with tech trees.

I find Civ games to be rather odd in that they have a very deep tech tree, but I completely do not care about any of it. There isnt a lot of personal meaning/personality to any of it. I feel like I am mechanically picking the next item in the list.. It doesnt help that the AI interaction has always been rather painfully shallow. As amusing as it is to have Gandhi come and threaten me every 5 mins, it gets old real fucking quick.

It just adds to the plethora of immersion breaking mechanics/aesthetics that make the games feel very soulless and mechanical to me. Again I seemed to have developed a unrealistic expectation that I should be crafting a real civilization, in a deep world. Not tech tree Risk.

This game is gonna kill me.

I'm so glad Vinny and Alex are gathering speed. It helps with my appreciation of GB quite a lot.

I want to get one of these games, and I have always liked Outer Space. See if this works...

Been waiting on the release to look into this as if it's close to awesome as civ5 was, I knew I'd like it. Answered enough questions I had for this game to know to get it, thanks Alex & Vinny :)

N-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-navarro World Order.

This is probably going to have to wait until Monday for me to watch it. Though I doubt I'll play the game prior to that either. I'm definitely really looking forward to playing a new-style game using a broadly Civ V model. But having already picked it up will never stop me from watching a QL, especially an Alex/Vinny show.

Needs more mechs.

@john1912: Have you checked out Dragon Commander? The strategy (that can also be played in RTS battles if you want to) part of it was kind of unappealing (to me), but it had a lot of charm when it came to the political aspect. You essentially have advisers of different races who will sometimes ask for laws that suit their race but obviously the skeleton adviser's suggestions aren't always great from, say, the elves' point of view. It's not really a great game, but dealing with the advisers/laws sort of scratched an itch for me.

Also: what do people think of Endless Legend (or E.Space for that matter, I guess) in comparison to the Civ games? I'm not really a fan of the genre, so I'm curious.

Man. Ever since I opened the Mars scenario in Civ II, I'd been waiting for this.

In regards to the likeness to Civ V - I bet they tried freshening the mechanics, found that they didn't require fixing, and concluded that they weren't broken to begin with. The additional features seem to make the game interesting enough. The relationship with aliens as a tech variable is totally brilliant.

@fitzgerald: You're in luck, although it'll be coming out later this year.

http://blog.gameagent.com/faqs-sid-meiers-civilization-beyond-earth-mac-linux/

i like space and i like civ 5 so this is really a no brainer. seems like they nailed the space stuff

So far I like it, but I doubt it will have the staying power of Civ V.

Veteran Civ 5 players who are on the fence about this game should read this post by Quill18.

http://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/2k73h6/i_only_complain_about_games_i_like_so_here_are_my/

For me there's too much missing/broken/unbalanced mechanics. It seems better than vanilla Civ 5 but still pretty far off from where they eventually took that game with Brave New World.

I understand this is comparing a game with 2 expansions and 3 years worth of patches but the simple truth is that it just feels too limited nonetheless, especially since i'm still not tired of Civ 5 after 800h.

Some omissions are downright unacceptable too. No demographics and global politics menu? WTH. This is some very basic info you absolutely need to make informed decisions. The only reason why so far this isn't completely game breaking is because the game is far easier than Civ 5 even on the highest difficulty.

Zero interest in the aesthetic, unfortunately. Hugely enjoyed Civ V (especially playing hot seat local multiplayer with a friend), but I don't think I'll be moving forward with the series given the design philosophy and mythology of this instalment.

The more detailed these games become the uglier they look to me. Everything looks like a patchwork quilt made by a person with no taste or idea of aesthetics. I get the development team is trying to show what each hex can do or what's there graphically...but it is off putting to look at the screen.

I never put a huge amount of time into Civ 5 until BNW came out so that's probably my route here too. Everything I've read points to the game missing or at least not surfacing crucial data (though even Civ 5 has the InfoAddict mod as a mod, and not an official part of it). They also jacked up the price in Aus one night for unclear reasons.

But @alex, and this was mentioned on the Unfinished I know, but why are you clicking Move Unit before you move a unit? That's the default option whenever a unit is highlighted, you don't need to select the option off the bar every time.

I'm having a pretty good time with it. Still some bugs, and maybe some mechanics aren't all that deep, or a bit confusing.

Perhaps they should have just called this Civ 5: In Space? Feels disappointing. Steam says I've put 288 hours into Civ 5, so maybe I've just had my fill of Civ for now. I hope they change things up for 6.

I'll still buy it when it goes on sale, like all the other games on Steam that I have even a passing interest in. Because I'm an idiot.

I'm having a great time with this game. Alot of people seem a little disappointed and there are some valid arguments of it but its still pretty good.

I'm working on a full review of this as I really love Civ games, but my first impressions are that there is a solid core game here with some really cool mechanics. Unfortunately, parts of it seem like it was rushed out too early and are a bit broken.

On the upside, most of the issues are addressable with a patch, there's not many glaring design flaws so much as implementation flaws. Right now, Civ V is a better package all around though.

I've played a few hours of it and it doesn't seem to be much o a strategy game. Core mechanics seem to drive themselves down into meaningless clicker. Pretty much the same situation as in Civ 5, compared to Civ 4. Well, that is not surprising as it is a rushed large mod to that game.

They nailed the atmosphere though, at least for as long as I've played it does seem like a strange (maybe not hostile or oppressive) world to live in.

I'd say it needs massive revamp on all core mechanics on resources (combat is OK, though why the hell jets are so cheap but than get damage from attacking non-anti-air units is beyond me) and new UI... but that's pretty much as large of a mod as Civ 5 to Civ BE.