in Beyond Earth the icons are too boring for my liking. What I liked in older games of Civilization were the icons for buildings and units, usually pretty colorful and distinct from each other. Most elements of the interface are dark blue. Now, you may be wondering why the title has Where the Future is Blue. I’m fine with the color blue, but this game has taken a weird liking towards it. They should have stuck with a simple to read, larger map, or had the ability to enlarge the map with a certain button. Even that is darkened from its original color and makes things hard to distinguish on the map. The most prominent (barely) feature on the map is territory. Not to mention the fact that landscape on the map is barely a different color from water or undiscovered tiles. It is waaay to small to be of much use, hidden in the top right corner. The most basic would be a good, readable map. The user interface on this is sufficient enough but still has some basic features I would have liked to see.
One example would be when someone asks you for a cooperative agreement (friendship agreement), your response choices are the exact same as Civilization V: Lastly, and this part makes me cry, some lines the AI use when asking the player to declare war with them, or asking or demand other things, are exactly the same as if they were doing it in Civilization V. This would be a huge improvement over Civilization V’s chaotic war system (I occasionally had it where every single civilization would be at war with nearly every single other civilization). If someone has multiple allies (much like a faction or coalition) there could be massive wars with 4 on each side. With alliances (I believe), if either of the allies declares war, the other is called into it.
It also had the problem that there was no way to have huge coalitions declare war against another civilization (or civilizations) because defense pacts only extended to if someone declares war on you. Defense pacts had always seemed so stupid in Civilization V because so few computers would ever do it with anyone but the player. I am not very familiar with favors–not one civilization has tried to gain or use a favor with me–but I assume they work like real life favors, as in when someone does something for you, you feel compelled (in the game programmed compulsion) to return the favor. There are only two added diplomatic trade/deals I’ve noticed that weren’t present in past Civilization games: Alliances (proper alliances, not crappy defense pacts) and favors. What I could also criticize with the diplomacy screen is its lack of proper improvements from Civilization V’s screen. They should have some variants with what people say. The voices can tend to piss you off as well the voice acting is not bad, but it is not superb either, and it gets redundant after the 100th time of “What is ours, is yours… for a price…”. The characters are animated like Civilization V, but some animations appear clunky instead of smoothly as real like PEOPLE would be like. The part that irks me the most is the diplomacy screen.
I will now give you some reasons as to why it is not worth the 50 bucks I spent on it and should be lowered to 20, or 30 at most. But this one is just too similar to its predecessor to leave alone. In my honest opinion, THAT is what this feels like! This has been mentioned time and time again before and after the launch that this looks like a reskinning of Civilization V! And it plays like it too! Of course, you could make the argument that each civilization game is much like the prior except with improvements in the graphics and a couple added gameplay elements between each. Indeed, I even messaged a friend asking if they had seen the preview for ‘the new Civ 5 DLC’. When I first saw a mini preview of this many months ago, before any information other than the name was given, I thought it was a DLC for Civilization V. Please click the photos for a full, detailed screen of them. “What is ours, is yours… for a price…” -Hutama of Polystralia 2600 AD
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