Civilization - Beyond Earth (Alpha Centauri Sequel)

civ5 was pretty with a lot of content, but the AI sucked major balls...for a game that is focused entirely on single player, and from a studio claiming to be AAA, its unacceptable and the sole reason I will not pay a dime for this game until I am satisfied with tons of reviews that the game is challenging and doesnt fall short once you're done watching the artifice of the first 40 turns with virgin eyes.

I really enjoy Civ 5. I must be doing it wrong.

Morons in the thread just don't understand that there are skill difficulties to the game that require you to rethink the way you play after each setting. If you think the highest difficulty setting is still too easy you can stop playing games altogether.

krozman_sl said:

Morons in the thread just don't understand that there are skill difficulties to the game that require you to rethink the way you play after each setting. If you think the highest difficulty setting is still too easy you can stop playing games altogether.

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At Diety, the game is absurdly hard due to the 4 tech + settler headstart the AI has in the first 100 turns. But if you manage to overtake them during the medieval era, the game becomes just as easy as on Prince. Once you have even the slightest tech lead, you can decimate the AI armies with a handful of units and it doesn't matter if they have 20 or 50 units due to 1UPT

Game has flaws. It's not SimCity, but its definitely not Civ 2.

hm civ6 looks like turn based starcraft2. the pc gamer article makes it seem somewhat interesting

I actually returned to civ4 since it preferred it so much more than civ5. Do wish it had hex tiles though

Quineloe_sl said:

At Diety, the game is absurdly hard due to the 4 tech + settler headstart the AI has in the first 100 turns. But if you manage to overtake them during the medieval era, the game becomes just as easy as on Prince. Once you have even the slightest tech lead, you can decimate the AI armies with a handful of units and it doesn't matter if they have 20 or 50 units due to 1UPT

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this.

the only way the game appears hard is because the difficulty levels affect mostly one thing: the headstart the ai gets. once you reach or surpass it, it is so dumb that you almost automaticaly win unless you are a mouthbreating moron.

Compare this to game like Eu4 where there are dozens more civilizations fighting for power, but its difficult from A to Z and the ai is smart (eventho it has its faults as well, they arent major like in civ5).

Sebudai_sl said:

I really enjoy Civ 5. I must be doing it wrong.

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It's ok, they had to make a super easy game for the masses at some point. When you feel like an actual challenge (and well made game) try Civ4, or even better its mod FFH2.

I enjoyed Civ 4 (and FFH2) as well. They're both fun to me.

faille_sl said:

I actually returned to civ4 since it preferred it so much more than civ5. Do wish it had hex tiles though

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Me too.

Some things about 5 I really do like. Some things about 5 are very much steps backwards from 4. Civ5 is like Civ3, yo.

But it is very pretty and if you play it on a Standard map at a standard speed it's even pretty fun. But all the balances get grossly distorted if you start to try to go smaller or bigger.

I prefer 3 and 4 myself. Not making any claims 5 was perfect. (Japan minicampaign from 3 is still my favorite)

But EVERY version of Civ has had AI faults that were easily exploited and Civ5 while less brutal overall can't be cheapened into a joke by roping off areas with minimal units etc.

Civ games have never been about superb AI.

And everything this new version is claiming shows interest in fixing complaints in the thread so far. VariableAI including terrain and faction choices influencing them plus no UN type stuff and widely varying goals in the three 'religions' looks to push a lot of aggression plus the alien life will no doubt push some as well. (likely required to a degree by the quests mention)

Hell look at how many complaints were dealt with well in Enemy Within just months ago by the same people. We're talking about people with a good track record not EA.

fucking finally

Final Frontier Plus

Theres 4 big mods for Civ4 that do more than reskin the game, they change the basic gameplay itself. Final Frontier Plus is space opera science fictiony. Fall From Heaven 2 (and Fall Further, the modmod for it) is high fantasy. Rhyse of Civilization makes the game more like an interactive pseudo-sims "push the button and watch it go" experience than an actual game, but it is strangely neat despite/because of it. And there's Planetfall, which is based on Alpha Centauri and does about the best job of porting that game into the new engine that you're ever going to get. It's not quite Alpha Centauri, it's not quite Civ4, but it does what its intended to do extremely well.

The Civ games all hold up, even Colonization and AC are still very playable today. I'm curious to see this, but hopefully it's not just a cash in.

Civ5 never really bothered me. I played it, liked it. But prefer to play previous iterations more. That's the great thing about this series. They never really get outdated unless graphics are really important to you.

I liked Civ 5 as well; but I agree, the AI felt out of whack. I think it was less about "dumbing" down, and more about the fact that because of 1UPT; the old way of increasing difficulty (Production advantages) had hardly no impact late game, because the AI couldn't make stacks of doom. Having to rely more on actual map strategy really highlighted how weak the Civ AI is. And the "combat" AI has always been weak--Civs have always derived most of their difficulty from empire management, not combat strategy. But really, combat AI is a problem in all grand strategy games though. Even ones with "good" AI, like CK2 and all, have major faults. Computer opponents have just been left in the dust by humans as games have grown more complex.

Honestly, the most exciting thing in games, for me, won't be something like the VR head sets--but rather a big leap in AI technology. I think I read somewhere that MS is working on algorithms that can sort and study saved games on the "cloud" in order to better adopt human strategies from similar move sets. Shit like that will be a MASSIVE leap forward in strategy games; if your computer can look at the situation, go and access a few hundred saves from people in similar situations and use their reactions to make better moves. Which is essentially how, as far as I know, a chess simulator can be so good (By simply memorizing all possible moves)--obviously this would be on a far more complex/larger scale. (I'm not holding my breath, though but If it could be done, it would be awesome.)

Going to love the day the computer is even "almost" as good as a human, so the games can be surprising and deeply complex; but I can still pause and save the game because I'm not wasting an actual person's time.

Well civ5 is def a civ game but its about par with civ3 and im playing it that much (or less) i should say, didnt even bother with BNW expansion since they wont fix the (higher difficult cheating) AI like they promised pre-release.

Im looking forward to this AC sequel since i cant find the disc on it for the life of mine. But will def hold out a few month for reviews and bug fixing or gold edition.
Also thx for naming the civ4 mods, never bothered to mod that one, will def check them out.