I've been biding my time until "Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth" is released (tonight at midnight!!!!). In the mean time, I started a new XCom campaign, dabbled some more with MoO and Alpha Centauri, and played a couple of games of "Talisman". Talking about "Talisman", the newest DLC for it, "The Dungeon", just came out today (just in time for me to not be able to play it due to Civ BE). They've been pretty consistent in converting the board game expansions to digital. This is (I think) the third DLC, after "The Reaper", and "Frostmarch". "The Dungeon", in addition to adding new cards and characters to play, also adds an additional game board to explore. I vaguely remember "the Dungeon" from the 1st or 2nd edition board game version, but I know a lot of things have changed since then. I'm just mentioning it in case there are any other board gamers out there who might like "Talisman".
I picked up the base game of Talisman but have yet to install and play it. I've been waiting for Beyond Earth as well, but of course I will be out of town all weekend. Balancing testing Clockwork Empires and losing time with Beyond Earth... I'm scared.
In case you are considering picking up "the Dungeon" (or any of the other DLCs), this has a decent description of how the expansions/dlc work (it's for the board game, but the same applies to the computer version): I bought the Gold edition, which means that I'm automatically receiving all the dlc and bonus characters as they are released. One cool thing about the Digital edition is that they added a bunch of different 'house rules' that you can select when setting up a game. The standard rules can make the end game occasionally drag on and on, especially if whoever is winning keeps rolling low numbers. House rules (as well as some alternate endings from the DLCs) can address that problem.
BTW, I've spent the last 2 or so hours in my first "Civ: BE" game, and so far, despite having too many choices and so not knowing what to do exactly, I'm having a great time with it. I'm playing the Pan-Asians, and pursuing a Harmony strategy. Damned Brazilians (technically allies) built a city much too close to me, and it's really cramping my expansion. I hate to say it, but I have to save my game now for the night, due to an early morning appointment. The game is more like Civ 5 than Alpha Centauri, at least on the surface. But it seems to be a lot more complex than Civ 5. I can't wait to read some strategy guides on it (because I feel so clueless).
Civ Beyond Earth is a game I would enjoy playing, however it is not a game I would pay 50$ for. It is a game I will pay 10$ for in a year when it goes on sale after the 20+ DLC packets for hats or whatever are released.
Civ: Beyond Earth (I guess I'll abbreviate it C:BE) looks interesting, but it also looks quite a lot like a skin on top of Civ V - is the gameplay significantly different?
It's superficially similar, which seems to be causing a lot of the same reaction that you are having. Remember that this is a Civilization game, after all, and not Alpha Centauri II, as much as many people wish it was (Unfortunately EA, and not Firaxis, still owns that game ). A good way to think about it is that it's kind of like Civ 6 on an alien planet. I don't know why people are surprised by that as that's how it was sold. Firaxis kept saying that it's NOT a sequel to Alpha Centauri. It's a sequel to Civ 5. The differences include, but are not limited to: 1. a much more complex tech web instead of a tech tree, along with sub techs (you'll understand if you see a picture of it). 2. Civilizations (unlike in Civ 5) are not totally determined in their advantages and disadvantages by the faction you choose, but are, instead, based on a combination of starting choices, behavior (affinity), quest choices, and so on. 3. Your affinity determines (in part) how your units advance, what you actually can build (some improvements and units require a specific level of a specific affinity), what other advantages you can get (for example, at Harmony level 2, which I just achieved, my workers are immune to Miasma, which otherwise would damage them). 4. Aliens replace barbarians, but they aren't necessarily the same kind of menace that they are in Civ 5. In many cases, they can be far worse (like the dread siege worm, which I can't even make a dent in with my current units). That said, their behavior isn't universally aggressive. I managed to chase away a siege worm (after he destroyed a developed hex, along with the worker there, simply by firing on it with my ranger units -- the damage they did was a pittance, but they did decide to run away from them). Also, aliens get more aggressive to EVERYONE if ANY faction is aggressive with them. So my tactic of Harmony can get screwed up a bit, simply because Brasilia, or another faction has decided to go all genocidal on them. Anyway, I've only played for about 2 hours, so I've barely made a dent in the game.
I have been again playing the crap out of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. (Yes, there are games called "Crawl" and even "Dungeon Crawl" that have nothing to do with this one, disregard the name thieves. This is based on the original with that name from 1995.) I made and played a Demonspawn and tried to find an altar to Jiyva, but could not find one, despite going all the way to the Slime Pits and searching. (Jiyva is the god of Slime. And grants the ability to remove bad mutations, and randomly gifts you with good ones and others specific to it. And yes, Jiyva is spelled multiple ways and is genderless.) Despite not finding the god I wanted to find, I did gain some pretty good mutations as a Demonspawn. However, not finding the god I wanted makes much of the game unrewarding to me. So I will start anew and see if I can find Jiyva as an Octopode or Tengu. (Since Octopodes swim, and Tengu fly. And Gargoyles have too bad evasion to be real contenders despite the other benefits they have.) Noteworthy for people thinking of trying the same is that you need to specialize a character build to complement the deity you pick. Jivya being the god of Slime, means that you should really only consider picking it if you either have very few equipment slots anyway, or already have basically the best equipment you can get. The reason for this is that it will spawn slimes all over the place and they will eat any and all non-artifact equipment. (They also do not eat stones or large rocks. And that is good if you intend to train Earth magic at some point.) But if I play an Octopode, I may have to try Fedhas Madash instead of Jiyva since I can spam the rain ability and train up Invocations to flood the majority of the map. This will not directly kill monsters, but I can either use any spell that causes confusion to make them walk off the tile they are on into the deep water and drown, or any ranged attack or magic to kill them and then decompose them to regain the piety lost using rain. For those of you who think I am totally off my rocker, please feel free to ignore me or read up on the Wiki for the game, or even better, download a copy since it is freeware and play for yourself. But bookmark the Wiki if you do, it is a brutal game and will basically require you to occasionally read up on what things are what. (And how things have changed if you played a previous version. Item destruction via elemental damage for example is gone entirely.) http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Crawl_Wiki (The current version as of this moment is 15.2) I should note that like many complex games, even if you absolutely hate spoilers, you will still need the Wiki occasionally. And do not think of it as cheating to read up when things are confusing. Your character is likely to die often enough that you should never feel shame for trying to avoid that without actually cheating. Here are a few more specific Wiki links to things I am speaking of here. http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Tengu http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Octopode http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Jiyva http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Fedhas_Madash *Edit* I should also point out that despite spawning multitudes of slimes, Jiyva makes all slimes friendly to you, just as Fedhas Madash makes all plants friendly. You can safely join Fedhas Madash at any time, so long as you have not already picked and joined a god. But Jiyva is tricky to say the least. Basically it is an end game only god. You will effectively suicide by lack of items if you join early.
OK, for the record, Civ BE is addictive. I decided I was only going to put in a few turns this evening, and then go downstairs to watch a show I had recorded. Well, those few turns became lots of turns, and I turned to glance at my clock and noticed it's now after 4:30 AM. So I guess that's my review lol. It's not a perfect game, certainly it needs some tweaking here and there, they need to add more factions for larger maps, they have to document the differences between trade convoys vs. Trade vessels better, maybe should give the factions more personality, and so on. But I haven't noticed any bugs, and It is still highly addictive.
One of the things you have to realize about Crawl when you're first starting is that it's purposefully designed to scare away dumb people. However, there is an extensive in-game help system where every keystroke has a large description, and a massive wiki with any information you could possibly want. There's a wealth of helpful documentation if you're willing to take the time to read it. If you're just starting, Kobold Berserker is a good choice. He has a lot of abilities that simplify the game down, as well as being powerful enough to get your first win.
I am one of the few I know that ever managed a 15 rune win in DCSS. Bear in mind that it took a dedication unrivaled by anything other than my first Nethack Ascension, but it was probably no less than three hundred deaths before I got it done. That was long before Jiyva existed, and predated several of the levels that are currently in the game. In that run I did not need a source of rCorr and rAcid to stand a chance of getting the Slime Rune. (Or I may be remembering incorrectly and it was some other branch specific loadout I needed for another area.) Ko'Zerkers are good, and their choice of deity is so apparent that it makes it painfully easy. Trog loves them.
I did complete my first Beyond Earth game last night (and started a new one). I lost, but I was sorta close to a Transcendence victory myself. I THINK what happened was that I hit the turn limit (after 400 turns, the game ends, regardless). I had been doing well, captured the French-Iberian(?) capital (and gotten several other cities as rewards for agreeing to Peace), had a couple of loyal allies (probably those who were also pursuing Harmony), and was on my way to Transcendance (I was on a turn countdown to victory, but there were things I could do to reduce the number of turns, and I was doing them where ever practical). I think I would have won in about 6 or 7 turns by the point that the game ended. Anyway -- still addictive, but the game needs some tweaks and changes. Quests are too predictable, some are not choices at all, since a choice would require that one of the options was not always clearly superior to the other in virtually every conceivable situation. There's already some mods out there that address some of the issues. When you lose the game, there's not enough description of what you did to lose. If someone hadn't told me that the particular paragraph I got at the end meant 'you ran out of turns', I would not have guessed that. I'd love for them to add in some kind of replay at the end of the game, like there was in Alpha Centauri, maybe a little movie, a score, some graphs comparing each faction, etc. Anyway, back to my game now .
I've been told that you can override the turn limit and change it to up to 999. /edit I just checked and it's in the advanced setup options -- check the box for turn limit, and enter any number you want (up to 3 digits). I haven't tested what happens if you enter 0 (I'm hoping that that will remove the turn limit). Note that I have started a game with a turn limit set to 0, and the game hasn't ended, so I'm hoping that 0 in fact means no turn limit. But I'll ask around -- maybe someone knows for sure.
I got an answer -- assuming it's right, setting the turn limit to 0 should eliminate the turn limit entirely. IT's not an official answer, but it's the answer I got in the steam forums.
Thanks for answering that. I really hate when grand strategy games give me a turn limit and I will often go to extreme lengths to circumvent them.
BTW, I did win that game with a purity victory (before 400 turns, so no evidence of time limit one way or another). The end game was kind of tedious, and I got no achievements because achievements, apparently, don't work if you use any mods.. Now to increase the difficulty level for next time and remove the mods I was primarily using balance mods that did things that Firaxis ought to have done in the first place (decrease the impact of trade, tweak virtues, etc.). They definitely have to tweak 'favors' in the game, as trading for favors seems kind of worthless (other than for diplomatic reasons). One thing that really put me over the top was that the African coalition (?) declared war on me, probably mostly because I was too agressive with the native wildlife, partly because of my non-harmony leanings. After I wiped out his invasion force and rush-built my own, he sued for peace, giving me a major city in return with very little effort on my part. The game really does reward expansion a lot more than Civ 5 does (though you have to keep an eye on your city health, it's not as damning as bad morale is in Civ 5).
Haha, speaking of cities for peace, some excerpts from a Civ5 game I had a while back: *Morocco happily trades their Marble for my Spices, but claims that their Salt for my Sugar + Horses + Iron is "not even close to a fair deal" and "there's no way to make this work" without even asking for GPT or anything. They must love their French Fries over there... *Morocco again (closest neighbor) randomly declares war. After maybe 10 turns of them zerging Pikemen through a mountain chokepoint into my meatgrinder of cities and camel archers...they offer peace in exchange for one of MY cities. Maybe 20 turns after that, they offer one of THEIR cities for peace. I actually replaced their city offer with their precious Salt, and they were finally happy to trade. Yay! *During the war, Morocco proposed an Embargo on me, but peace was declared before the vote (and they really liked my peace offer). Both of us voted Nay on the embargo. They then complained that I "helped shut down their proposal." SO DID YOU!!!