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I like the basic game. Particularly looking forward to the expansion.

In case someone else would like to know more. Really cool.

Hm, might have to give this one a try at last!

Skipped parts of it after the presentation was over, but here's a summary of what I got out of it.

- Four new leaders
- Diplomacy overhaul
- Each planetary biome will play differently
- Two new biomes will be introduced. One of them is Primordial, and represents a very young world
- The Aquatic content has been massively overhauled. New naval units are being introduced, along with new aquatic aliens. You'll be able to build aquatic cities, and can in fact play the game from start to finish without doing anything on land.
- New artifacts can be found that will provide boosts
- The three philosophies will be joined by hybrid philosophies that will allow you faction to develop in new ways. Some of the things that these hybrids can do will require more than one of the upper-tier resources (i.e. floatstone, firaxite, etc...)


I didn't see any mention of whether corresponding new content would be added to Starships, but I doubt that's high on anyone's wish list.

Thanks for the summary, Eumerin. Some good things in there, but I would have liked improvements to diplomacy in a free patch.

I want.

So, it looks like this expansion is out now! Anyone get a chance to try it? So far it seems like the reception is generally positive, but it's only been out for a day or so, I think.

Some nice features. Aquatic cities are nice novelty, hybrid affinities/technology system allows an easier grab of a specific building or unit, traits are also decent customization perk and you spend your capital on buying buildings or units. More satellites (something for Slavic Federation), few new buildings and so on. They also changed the annoying spawn of stations and slowed down the progress of a colony before it becomes a city. It makes positive changes to gameplay.

There's still enough room for improvement. I'm rather annoyed they haven't changed the bland tech web screen, virtues feel to gamey rather something that would reflect ideological focus. More winning conditions would also be nice.

Have there been any major improvements to diplomacy?

I didn't manage to play for any larger length. However now you don't get spammed with threats, if your affinities are different. It would seemed that if you're doing what the AI personality is doing, there's a good chance you'll get nicely along. I typically don't play warmonger (looking at Brasilia) so I don't know what sort of dynamic would you get in that situation. You have plenty of options for political agreements (benefits that you can establish with other leaders) and choosing 3 political traits for your leader is also neat (bonus to virtues, military, science, food, economy, espionage and so on).

It would be nice to get more dialogues, African Union's "no village has been ruined by trade" gets tedious after a while. Elodie's greeting to Elena is humorous.

Ive played a full game with the North Sea Alliance, one of the new sponsors with bonus combat strength for aquatic cities and an ocean start. First of all they have really polished the game, the ocean looks great now. Moving the aquatic cities to gain tiles instead of just regular expanding borders is a nice touch (had a city floating around half the game just claiming territory). The navy really gains in importance, aquatic cities will not be able to defend themselves very well as navies are very fast and well upgraded subs and battleships have range 3 fire, leading to the Civ 5 battleship attrition/destroyer rush. So far very nice, but a real threat for coastal cities with the new melee ship. Workers being able to improve the ocean means only ice, mountains and canyons limit improvement, so its not strange to see a city surrounded on all sides by improvements. Also, aquatic farms aren't limited to warmer areas, you can build them right up to the ice. Choosing political traits is quite handy, but its hard to beat certain ones like bonus production.

A few disappointing things, hybrid affinities and the new diplomacy. Hybrid affinities are certainly nice, but it is sometimes unclear how it evolves. the new unit variety it gives is very cool, but for some reason units like aircraft carriers, subs and jets don't have the hybrid unit style option, giving your army a bit of a mismatched feeling. I really dislike the lack of choice in the new diplomacy version. Want to negotiate a peace treaty? Nope you cant, there is only one button which is accept these terms (as far as I have found). This usually means that if you beat the AI its forced to give you a number of cities, which it wouldn't want to do, so no peace. I beat one AI that was close to me in a few turns, destroying its armies and taking half its empire. But does it want peace? No, because the war is going so heavily in my favour the AI would be forced to give me his two best remaining cities (excluding capital). Overall this lack of interaction bothers me greatly, especially once I start playing multiplayer. Not being able to trade energy or science or even a choice in open borders is very annoying, although teaming up with the AI is significantly easier.

Took a peek at it, but haven't played it yet.

Four new factions. As mentioned above, one is North Sea based, incorporating British and Scandinavian elements. They get a bonus to aquatic cities defense. One is based on the survivors of a ravaged Middle East, and all of their buildings provide 50% more output. The third is based on a secret Korean government organization. They literally earn research every time they perform a successful covert operation. And the last is the political opposition to Franco-Iberia. Their schtick is based around the new diplomacy mechanics.

Also, the special abilities for many of the existing factions have been changed. Pan-Asia, for instance, now gets the first wonder in each city for free.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
the new unit variety it gives is very cool, but for some reason units like aircraft carriers, subs and jets don't have the hybrid unit style option, giving your army a bit of a mismatched feeling.

The fact cities haven't been given more variation annoys me to no end. Would be nice to have them in distinctive hybrid outlook.

Ocean play is much more viable now, I'm happy to say. Dragons are still around, but they're not automatically aggressive (though you should still be very cautious around them). And there's a new low-end aquatic alien called a "Ripper" that provides something for your navy to fight against (unlike in Vanilla, where the weakest aquatic alien was the very aggressive Dragon, which easily wiped out your early naval units). Another change is that Ultrasonic Fences will *not* automatically stop alien life forms from moving to within two hexes of your cities. Very large or very aggressive aliens can now move closer.

Got a chance to try it out a bit myself now, definitely some interesting new events. Much bigger than the old ones.

And the fact that there's artwork for a lot of messages is nice.

The general idea of the new diplomacy system is interesting, but...


I've had situations when I initiate diplomacy with a guy that I'm cooperating with, the other guy says "That's not good enough," and there's no way to sweeten the pot now. You can't throw in extra stuff to induce them to accept.

Trade has also been overhauled as part of the diplomacy revamp. Set up a trade convoy with a foreign city, and you'll automatically get strategic resources if the city has a bunch.

No dealing with the obnoxious favor mechanic, no more computer players getting angry at you when you refuse to trade them all of your firaxite (which they won't be able to use for another fifty turns anyway) for useless favors, but also no more tweaking of diplomatic deals.

In short, it's a good and creative start. But it still needs work.

Would you say it has added much depth to the game?

I found BE pretty shallow, after a couple of playthroughs found myself going back to Civ 4.

It's added more depth, I think. Whether it's enough, I'm not sure yet. There's more of everything, at least.

I do like that the different biomes actually seems to have more than an aesthetic affect now.

A pretty damning review of the expansion on Rock, Paper, Shotgun
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10/08/beyond-earth-rising-tide-review/

The reviewer comments that the new diplomacy system is fundamentally flawed, which eclipses some of the better additions.

However, there have been some update reviews following some patches, where it sounds like they have improved that element.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/sid-meiers-civilization-beyond-earth-rising-tide/

As it stands think I'm going to wait for a price reduction of this, rather than playing practically a full game RRP for what is just an expansion.

So awesome. So many more features.


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The ONLY problem I have with diplomacy is the peace treaty feature. feth that

The problems with diplomacy don't only extend to peace treaties, unfortunately. If an NPC player doesn't like the offer that you're trying to make during regular negotiations, there's currently no way to sweeten the pot. It's "take it or leave it".

Yeah, diplomacy is a mess. A bigger mess than I thought it was at first.

Still enjoying the much more varied worlds, though.

Put it on my steam wishlist. Will pick it up once is goes on a relevant sale. I don’t know what it is, but Civ:BE doesn’t draw me in like Civ:V. This might help, but I’m not paying full for something that only might help.