I agree with your reasoning for why BE wasn't as popular because that's exactly how I felt. I had a hard time connecting with the leaders and their motivations. I couldn't picture them in a historical context like I could with the Civ leaders. But I did enjoy BE very much. I loved the colors and the artwork and the techs.
I think a big part of why BE didn't have the replayability was the AI - you can usually predict how a game will go at higher difficulties in that everyone will declare war on you all the time, which means a lot less variability game to game. A lot of the promise of sci-fi is endless possibility, and that ends up undercut by that. I think it has my favourite mechanics of any of the civ games, but that 'no wildly different feeling stuff' is a major theming problem. If it had stellaris style 'become robots' or 'genetic engineering matters' or 'become aliens' variation mechanics to provide variance and switch up where you get affinities it would be perfect, but all those 'changes' feel weirdly superficial. If it had been recieved better and had another round of dev time for another expansion, I'd rate it as 'the best civ game' rather than 'the one I like but probably isn't the best'.
My experience with this game is that every year or so, I'll re-download it from steam to give it another try. Every time I play through one game and uninstall it. The biggest problem with CivBE is that most of the victory conditions are easily rushable and very boring. Harmony victory condition is basically a 25 turn end turn button mash, and you can get to the techs needed pretty quickly on most maps by turn 100. The contact one is easy enough to rush by like turn 50. There's cool mechanics, like the artifacts and expeditions, the evolving units, the modular starting packages, and you can see how it was almost a good game. That's the key word, almost.
There's a very good reason the original SMAC developers put so much effort into the factions and tech tree voice acting etc, it was brilliantly done and crucial for a Sci-fi setting; sadly that lesson was completely overlooked by the people who made BE; the factions in BE are completely forgettable, uninteresting, and very difficult to connect with in any meaningful way. Also, compare the Wonder 'movies' from the 2 games as another example.
Yep, the bland and uninteresting factions/leaders is perhaps the biggest flaw in BE. Not different enough and ZERO personality. Compare that to SMAC, and every faction/leader has a unique personality that exhibits itself in the lore, quotes, techs, wonders etc. Not just that, each AI faction plays a unique game in line with that factions personality. Also, the wonders in this game really, really suck. Super expensive and little benefit.
I think CivBE lacks in replayability because it feels like there are specific "good/right" ways to play each victory, at least on higher or max difficulty. Which makes it feel very samey, (You always pick the same unit upgrades, and such, and the starter civ building mechanic is SUPER cool, but there are clearly 'better' options that you pretty much end up always taking..) Mainline Civ has a lot more "depth" for lack of a better word, in the different playstyles.
It's less about difficulty, at the end of the day I know I know I can win against the AI if I start with all sources of Titanium revealed at the start, or alien nests revealed, but It's hard to ever do that, Retrograde is pretty much always the best, or all coastlines if you feel like switching things up. Once you have ~100 hours you're only doing different things for the sake of being different, but you'll end up playing the same anyway, like I never build auto sleds because I think they're a bad unit. So I'll never have an "Auto sled" game, the same way in any other civ game, you might have a swordsman rush, or a special unit rush when you get to the right tech, with the right civ.
@@clockworkangel6780 no you get way stronger units with affinity, you can steamroll ai if you just have more affinity points, tech number doesn’t matter as it’s not linear, resources and production won’t matter if your little soldier dudes are 4 affinity levels ahead
Yeah, that's like, the point.. you never have to play the game differently, you never have to play an out of the box strategy, or build the "inferior" units because they have a specific ability that would save you in the situation you're in, or consider running different units to counter enemy ones. Why would I build auto sleds when I can pump out soldiers for a fraction of the cost, when they do more for less? The only time you do anything different is when you're being different for the sake of it, like doing a once city challenge or something.
IMHO, the only issue with this game is how ugly it is. Fields, grass, animals, blue ocean, fish, they look pretty to us (not starting an argument about statics.) This game is gloomy!
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 91 | คู่เอก "คมอาวุธ vs อเล็กเซย์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/V0RkEfYFsgM/mqdefault.jpg)
I agree with your reasoning for why BE wasn't as popular because that's exactly how I felt. I had a hard time connecting with the leaders and their motivations. I couldn't picture them in a historical context like I could with the Civ leaders. But I did enjoy BE very much. I loved the colors and the artwork and the techs.
No, if you understand how affinity upgrades work, you break the game so fast the AI can't even fight back.
Aliens attack you when you stand within 2 tiles from the nest. Just move your units away from the nests asap and they'll pacify
I think a big part of why BE didn't have the replayability was the AI - you can usually predict how a game will go at higher difficulties in that everyone will declare war on you all the time, which means a lot less variability game to game. A lot of the promise of sci-fi is endless possibility, and that ends up undercut by that. I think it has my favourite mechanics of any of the civ games, but that 'no wildly different feeling stuff' is a major theming problem.
If it had stellaris style 'become robots' or 'genetic engineering matters' or 'become aliens' variation mechanics to provide variance and switch up where you get affinities it would be perfect, but all those 'changes' feel weirdly superficial. If it had been recieved better and had another round of dev time for another expansion, I'd rate it as 'the best civ game' rather than 'the one I like but probably isn't the best'.
My experience with this game is that every year or so, I'll re-download it from steam to give it another try. Every time I play through one game and uninstall it. The biggest problem with CivBE is that most of the victory conditions are easily rushable and very boring. Harmony victory condition is basically a 25 turn end turn button mash, and you can get to the techs needed pretty quickly on most maps by turn 100. The contact one is easy enough to rush by like turn 50. There's cool mechanics, like the artifacts and expeditions, the evolving units, the modular starting packages, and you can see how it was almost a good game. That's the key word, almost.
There's a very good reason the original SMAC developers put so much effort into the factions and tech tree voice acting etc, it was brilliantly done and crucial for a Sci-fi setting; sadly that lesson was completely overlooked by the people who made BE; the factions in BE are completely forgettable, uninteresting, and very difficult to connect with in any meaningful way. Also, compare the Wonder 'movies' from the 2 games as another example.
Yep, the bland and uninteresting factions/leaders is perhaps the biggest flaw in BE. Not different enough and ZERO personality.
Compare that to SMAC, and every faction/leader has a unique personality that exhibits itself in the lore, quotes, techs, wonders etc. Not just that, each AI faction plays a unique game in line with that factions personality.
Also, the wonders in this game really, really suck. Super expensive and little benefit.
I think CivBE lacks in replayability because it feels like there are specific "good/right" ways to play each victory, at least on higher or max difficulty. Which makes it feel very samey, (You always pick the same unit upgrades, and such, and the starter civ building mechanic is SUPER cool, but there are clearly 'better' options that you pretty much end up always taking..) Mainline Civ has a lot more "depth" for lack of a better word, in the different playstyles.
no, if you understand what affinities are, AI get rolled over so fast
It's less about difficulty, at the end of the day I know I know I can win against the AI if I start with all sources of Titanium revealed at the start, or alien nests revealed, but It's hard to ever do that, Retrograde is pretty much always the best, or all coastlines if you feel like switching things up. Once you have ~100 hours you're only doing different things for the sake of being different, but you'll end up playing the same anyway, like I never build auto sleds because I think they're a bad unit. So I'll never have an "Auto sled" game, the same way in any other civ game, you might have a swordsman rush, or a special unit rush when you get to the right tech, with the right civ.
@@clockworkangel6780 no you get way stronger units with affinity, you can steamroll ai if you just have more affinity points, tech number doesn’t matter as it’s not linear, resources and production won’t matter if your little soldier dudes are 4 affinity levels ahead
Yeah, that's like, the point.. you never have to play the game differently, you never have to play an out of the box strategy, or build the "inferior" units because they have a specific ability that would save you in the situation you're in, or consider running different units to counter enemy ones. Why would I build auto sleds when I can pump out soldiers for a fraction of the cost, when they do more for less? The only time you do anything different is when you're being different for the sake of it, like doing a once city challenge or something.
@@clockworkangel6780 players should not be held responsible to find the fun themselves
episode 2! lets see if you are friendly with the natives
IMHO, the only issue with this game is how ugly it is.
Fields, grass, animals, blue ocean, fish, they look pretty to us (not starting an argument about statics.)
This game is gloomy!
i really love Civ 4 Colonization with We The People mod
1:00:20 no, those vague-assed trait descriptions are bullshit. "Ask an elf" bullshit
Yes, my wife and I play it on and off together.
I had a ton of fun with it, making a capitalist empire. I only did a couple of runs, but was one of my longest one in any civilization.
REAL 11:55