Hey gang, I posted some thoughts about Beyond Earth and why some of its hidden mechanic weren't so bad. I thought it would be worth reposting for ES2 development. it might have given endless legend a run for its money if they didn't fumble the initial delivery.



I owe you a better explanation of beyond earth. The game is good because they patched it until they got the smart initial design choice to work. The games strengths are the simple unit upgrades, the balance between players during the end game, and the diplomatic grounding. The game starts with simple tactical design choices and unit upgrades.

Beyond Earth and CIV 5 are empire management games and the tactical units and battles fit into strategic setting. Tactical unit development and over development take bandwidth from the strategy side of the game. Over tactical development makes it hard to game balance. Have you seen the MOO2 video clip of the cloaked battleship destroying 99 other battleships? When you have set small tactical upgrades, it is easier to balanced out through the entire game specially at the end when you have multiple combinations. I love endless space and endless legend, but the game breaks at the end b/c tactical military units run away with detail. It moves attention from imperial grand strategy to tactical grinding. The tight tactical game ties back into a tight end game. The tanks and artillery can hover over water and ship can get improved mobility. It makes the world much smaller and the end game wars much more epic. It leads into the end game balance.

Beyond Earth’s game holds together shocking well from where it came from. The initial game fell apart at turn 100. It was the great bug hunt until turn 105 and you upgrade your unit to the 1st specialized level and then it became the great bug slaughter. Beyond earth probably has the best end game because the tactical unit power level, and more importantly, the end game turn counter. The AI players seem to react to the other AI players getting close to winning specially if they are not the same affinity. The AIs seen programmed to react to the end game counter. I saw the Austrian bug player slaughter two other purity AIs turns before they won. My faction and other faction were way behind on deity level, but every faction had a chance to win or block a win. A player could block a win by throwing five elite units at the enemies capital or mind stem/portal win mechanic. A faction destroying the publicly shown winning mechanic could set a factions back by 30 turns. If the AI or player takes the capital, it knocks them down even worse. Even the tech tree has been developed to keep the end game tight. The player can cherry pick techs linked to military unit upgrades, so even though your behind three or four tech smart player choices can catch you back up. The diplomatic also seemed grounded.

The diplomatic system provides reasonable structure. I saw a purity faction allied with a bug faction through until the end game. The structure seems designed around the brave new world system of communists, freedom, and fascist. In a future world, it gives context for grouping up and forming alliances. It is not strong in the beginning of the game, but plays a larger and larger part as the world develops. It ties in world with political alliances. The initial design choices had all the parts to for a good structure.

Beyond earth unpolished release hides a number of very good design choices. The game has a tactical structure nested with its strategic design. After multiple patching, the end game holds together surprising well with tactical unit choices and tech tree. The affinity design places the structure end game alliances and adds form to a future world. With future DLC, Beyond Earth may end up like CIV5 evolving into a master piece and eventually showing its hidden smart design choices. Also, would the DLC add a comeback mechanic other than a total war backstab?

Completely in agreement, I think Beyond Earth gets WAAAAAY too much hate, it's a pretty cool little game. Every Civilization game seems to be that way for people. It's the "Worst Civ Game Ever" until a few expansions then suddenly it's better than anything that came before.



Something I will add to your list too was the tech web they had. I know some hated, but I loved that tech web. It was open ended in the sense that so long as you met the pre-requisites for it, you could conceivably advance straight from middle out, but thanks to certain techs requiring and/or providing specialization, they could usher you in a direction you might not have wanted to go, which made for interesting gameplay. Do I rush this Wonder and abandon my next unit unlock? In a time of peace, sure, it's a no-brainer. But doing so might set you back far enough that you can't unlock the next Wonder before someone else unlocks it. Or, it might mean getting caught off guard by an aggressive neighbour with tougher units. It was a great system.

Romeo wrote:
Completely in agreement, I think Beyond Earth gets WAAAAAY too much hate, it's a pretty cool little game. Every Civilization game seems to be that way for people. It's the "Worst Civ Game Ever" until a few expansions then suddenly it's better than anything that came before.



Something I will add to your list too was the tech web they had. I know some hated, but I loved that tech web. It was open ended in the sense that so long as you met the pre-requisites for it, you could conceivably advance straight from middle out, but thanks to certain techs requiring and/or providing specialization, they could usher you in a direction you might not have wanted to go, which made for interesting gameplay. Do I rush this Wonder and abandon my next unit unlock? In a time of peace, sure, it's a no-brainer. But doing so might set you back far enough that you can't unlock the next Wonder before someone else unlocks it. Or, it might mean getting caught off guard by an aggressive neighbour with tougher units. It was a great system.

There were a few things I liked about BE but it didn't warrant the full game price they charged for it. I also have a huge problem with people thinking it's ok to release a shit game because "in a few expansions it will be great". It's idiocy like this which enable game studios to release half baked crap and get away with it. I haven't bought any expansions for BE. If the base game is bad, and I believe it is in the case of BE, I'm certainly not going to give even more money to the devs just to have a decent game. It's mind boggeling to me how people could do that...throw even more money at a mediocre game just to get a decent one. No wonder many game studios today choose to release crap products, the consumers buy it anyway and then the expansions as well. Please note that this isn't pointed at you Romeo but rather at the general phenomena of shit releases.

Panzerkanzler wrote:
There were a few things I liked about BE but it didn't warrant the full game price they charged for it. I also have a huge problem with people thinking it's ok to release a shit game because "in a few expansions it will be great". It's idiocy like this which enable game studios to release half baked crap and get away with it. I haven't bought any expansions for BE. If the base game is bad, and I believe it is in the case of BE, I'm certainly not going to give even more money to the devs just to have a decent game. It's mind boggeling to me how people could do that...throw even more money at a mediocre game just to get a decent one. No wonder many game studios today choose to release crap products, the consumers buy it anyway and then the expansions as well. Please note that this isn't pointed at you Romeo but rather at the general phenomena of shit releases.

Haha, have you ever played a real "shit game" ? Because BE at release wasnt possibly even near of that category. "A to-be-poslished game" would fit better ^^

It was quite a good surprise, even if CiV 5 remained superior (it still is)



So indeed I agree with the OP, BE has some really interresting design choices that could be used as an inspiration, especially the end game counter, as you mentionned.

Don't know why it got so much hate, I preferred it over the Civ V ever since it came out.

I´ve bought civ 3 a short time ago again and I don´t know why i have ever liked it. The Fight system is horribly noninteractive and nontransparent. I don´t know the most time why a unit had win or loose.

Panzerkanzler wrote:
There were a few things I liked about BE but it didn't warrant the full game price they charged for it. I also have a huge problem with people thinking it's ok to release a shit game because "in a few expansions it will be great". It's idiocy like this which enable game studios to release half baked crap and get away with it. I haven't bought any expansions for BE. If the base game is bad, and I believe it is in the case of BE, I'm certainly not going to give even more money to the devs just to have a decent game. It's mind boggeling to me how people could do that...throw even more money at a mediocre game just to get a decent one. No wonder many game studios today choose to release crap products, the consumers buy it anyway and then the expansions as well. Please note that this isn't pointed at you Romeo but rather at the general phenomena of shit releases.

Oh, I agree with the hate for incomplete releases, it was one of the reasons I've finally given up on Bethesda after more than a decade. However, I didn't feel Beyond Earth fit that bill at all. Was it capable of competing with all that Civilization V had after three expansions, years of development and thousands of mods? No, but literally no game in existence ever has.



Personally, I loved Beyond Earth. The mechanics it introduced to me were incredibly interesting. Was it perfect? No. I would've liked to have seen even more interaction with the aliens, and more long-term effects of the initial selections (Balance be damned). But those are nitpicks, not unforgivable travesties.

Stripe7 wrote:
Don't know why it got so much hate, I preferred it over the Civ V ever since it came out.

Me too. Mechanically, after years, Civilization was good, but it wasn't all that interesting. Beyond Earth was interesting right out of the gates.