Also, in case anyone missed it, pre-load is available, and here is a map showing local game unlock times.
It's Civ 5 in space with mods. If that's what you want you'll be really happy with it, if you wanted Civ 6 or Alpha Centauri 2, you'll hate it.
Started playing at 9am with the wife. Just finished around midnight. Good game. also I won, but not gloating ( shell kill me). Im going to bed.
I agree. It's not a perfect game but.. damn! It does have that "one more turn" factor in it and that's all that counts in my books. If a game keeps you hooked, it keeps you hooked because it's good. There are obviously always little mistakes and things that are not perfect etc. but that's just life. Great game! Love the atmosphere.
After further testing, this game is your typical Sid Meier or Civ game. It lacks endgame. There's clearly a point that you can recognize in the game after which you simply cannot fail. A point up until which the game is really great fun and enjoyable but past that point there is no challenge whatsoever and you're left with just completing the routines until it finally ends. When this point can be reached in 4-6 hours of play it is a real problem imho. Also, the new tech tree/ civ advancement thing doesn't seem to work. I don't see why anyone playing this game for long enough couldn't just pick everything - there's hardly any feeling of unique personal countries or leaders. Even between technologies to research the advantages tend to be so small and pointless that it easily devolves to random picks. Another game that has a lot of promise but falls short on one too many aspects. Great quality with the production and all, just the overall design comes short. Great for making good first impressions, not really a game I'll be playing a month from now, I'm afraid - and afraid indeed, I would really like to like this game a lot more.
I think your endgame difficulty will only come if you play the highest AI level, or better, against people. The AI in any strategy game will never be able to preassure you the way people will in multiplayer. Its disappointing, but I've seen that problem in several of the turn based 4x games I've played. As much love as it gets, Alpha Centauri had the same problem. It ceased being a challenge after you could mass produce hover tanks. My only serious gripe at the moment is that war only seems to be a viable tactic in the mid-late game, after artillery becomes available. Before that, cities can tank 4-5 infantry units at once without any problem, and military units take 6-10 turns each to make. Playing agressiveley doesn't seem possible until maybe 100-150 turns into a game. On a related note, on the normal difficulty, I've never had an AI player declare war on me. Not once. I'm hoping that changes at higher levels. I love the agressive and numerous aliens though. If you piss them off, it really feels like the planet is fighting back sometimes. Seige worms are a bitch, and can wreck a city's economy very quickley. That was a great touch. I'm looking foward to mods for this one. There is already a game balance mod being worked on that looks promising, so we'll see how that goes.
I certainly really like the game so far, but I do agree that it has problems. It is going to take many, many hours to really get a feel for the tech web, as there is currently too much choice to feel like any of it is meaningful. Now, I, for one, am really looking forward to the inevitable expansion(s), as Firaxis always manages to make massive improvements with those. Even DLC for more sponsors would be nice (seriously, why are Central and Northern Europe completely excluded? Where are the British Isles?).
Well, it's not so much that I want to play Britain as I find their exclusion unusual. But, like I said, inevitable expansion(s)/DLC.
You could argue that the initial design's features are axed to expansions during pre-production monetization meets. Everyone does that though, "possible future expansion" is the dump where feature creep goes to die. It's a matter of taste however how many 'core' features can be axed to expansions before it starts to smell bad. Then again there's always the consideration "we'll fund this much now and for each X profit we'll fund an expansion". In a way that's fine too. If a game is 'too big' during launch people may feel lost in it. Having expansions allows for more replayability, it's even nicer to start a new campaign when the game's beefed up with a new feature. Agreed. It's really difficult to make a really difficult AI that didn't feel like impossible to beat. As for 100-150 turns before being able to conquer, that is actually similar to early human history. During early history of mesopotamia the order of the day was city states and coalition warfare. Most everyone was a city state and no one had the strength to take out another city on their own. The only way they could take out a city back then was to combine multiple, not just two but many city states' armies. In a way I can see how early colonists with mostly light weaponry would easily be arriving at WW1 style scenario until the civilizations develop enough industrial base to support heavy tank armies and large numbers of heavy artillery - those are pretty massive investments even for big civs and can take a nice chunk out of the GDP. Compare a rifle that can cost 1.000 to the barrel of a tank that can alone cost more than 100.000 or missiles that can cost several hundred thousand a piece. But for gameplay perspective it can be very frustrating and encourage a colonist-race, though that has been limited with the health system so it's a little more tricky than just spamming new colonists and riflemen (soldier). I merely see that as 'epoch' based gameplay where each phase of the game has a different goal and overall strategies, first it's a race about getting the best cities and possible more of them than others and then after consolidation room runs out and you need to be more aggressive.
my only worry is all the negative reviews it has been getting. i understand some people have unrealistic expectations, but there must be something to it. sounds like the game is a little "under-cooked", but maybe it is worth the lower price tag. any thoughts on that?
It is definitely a decent game, but falls way short of Civ 5. The tech web, while cool, gives the game a somewhat undirected feel, and I personally hate all of the victory conditions (well, domination is fine) as they are annoyingly specific, where Civ 5 allowed you to win by doing what you already wanted to be doing.
I've been playing it for about 3 hours today and here are my impressions as someone who doesn't have much experience with the Civ franchise: The new sci-fi setting helps with immersion: as funny as it sounds for Ghandi to declare war on Abraham Lincoln, I could never really get into the previous Civ games because of the sometimes goofy juxtaposition of historically unrelated civilizations. I get that this is part of the charm, but for me there was too much of a disconnect that prevented me from getting enthusiastic about the game. This sort of builds off the previous point, but units follow a better "theme". No more mechs vs. cavemen. The game feels better focused to be me with units that are roughly contemporary of eachother. I REALLY enjoy the starting customization you can do with any faction. I like the survival aspects: so far I seem to be just trying to fight off the local flora and fauna. I know my competition is eyeing my lands, but I can't worry about that as a giant sand wurm comes barreling through my farmlands. I hear some people complaining that the game has been dumbed down, but as someone who never played the franchise to any great extent, I don't even notice. The game is plenty fun for me as is. I will be buying it before the sale ends.
