Interview with Civilization Beyond Earth's Lead Designers

[Lorizael]

Gamespot has an interview up. Some interesting tidbits.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/beyond-earth-takes-civilization-to-the-stars/1100-6418906/

Before you land on a new planet and start shaping humanity’s destiny, you must first equip your expedition. Referred to as "the seeding," this is an expanded version of your civilization selection in previous games. In Beyond Earth, not only do you choose which faction (read: civilization) to play, but also which spacecraft to take, what cargo to carry, who to bring, and the type of planet you want to inhabit. Each selection you make will greatly impact the start of your game: you could carry high-quality cargo that grants additional funds up-front, for instance, or hard-working, production-oriented colonists who build structures faster.

The orbital layer is the realm of satellites. These can grant your faction an economic, espionage, or military benefit depending on the type of satellite launched. Satellites also project coverage across the orbital layer, and this coverage doesn't overlap with other satellites. Securing coverage works on a first-come, first-serve basis, so you’ll need to move fast. However, once you have a satellite in the air it is by no means permanent. Its orbit will degrade over time, and it will eventually crash on the planet below, sometimes leaving behind recoverable salvage. Satellites can also be pulled out of orbit (read: crashed) manually or shot down by other players.

You strengthen your affinity by doing quests or finding objects from expedition sites or by researching certain technologies--affinity works on a global level from the very first turn to the very last. Everything you do in the game feeds into the affinity system, and that system in turn feeds back into the very makeup of your civilization.

[Lorizael]

From wired. http://www.wired.com/2014/04/civilization-beyond-earth/

The developers gave the example of something they call the siege worm, huge roving monsters plucked out of Dune. At the beginning of the game, they are completely indifferent to your species. You’re just another bug to them, but the catch is that their indifference can cause them to trample your cities or farms. If a siege worm is coming, you face a tough choice: Deal with the potential damage and stay on its good side, or attack it and risk the wrath of all wormkind.

It’s important to note that these alien species don’t much care about your national boundaries, either. To them, a human is a human. So if a neighboring faction is slaying siege worms, you’re going to catch the worms’ ire as well. Worse, the more you interact with these species the more they adapt their strategy and strength. All of this adds an additional wrinkle of complexity to interstate diplomacy. If your strategy depends on playing nice with the locals, you’ll need to find some way to make your neighbors exercise restraint.

[N35t0r]

This can be either amazingly awesome or a bucketload of crap. Here's hoping

[Lorizael]

Found an interview on a German site.

http://www.pcgames.de/Civilization-Beyond-Earth-PC-258505/Specials/Civilization-Beyond-Earth-Es-ist-kein-Alpha-Centauri-2-Interview-mit-den-Lead-Designern-1116519/

Based on the rough translation from Google, I think I extracted one new piece of information. It looks like the tech web isn't going to unlock new units, only customizations of the unit types you start the game with. So I'm guessing there are going to be some broad unit classes and then you'll adapt from there. And of course, the type of customizations you gain access to will be dependent on your affinity choices.

[Lorizael]

I read this interview on IGN earlier but somehow missed the most important part.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/12/firaxis-revisits-alpha-centauri-territory-with-civilization-beyond-earth

Because of the non-linear choices you and your competitors will make based on your needs and overall strategy, and the intentional lack of technology trading, no faction will be able to unlock all the technologies in a single playthrough, and by the end of a game each faction should look and function very differently.

No tech trading... I wonder if there will be tech stealing. Kind of neat thought, though. If every faction takes a different path through the tech web, you might end up with very different military units fighting against each other. And you might end up conquering cities that have improvements for which you don't and never will have the tech. Wonder what happens then.

[self biased]

I read this interview on IGN earlier but somehow missed the most important part.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/12/firaxis-revisits-alpha-centauri-territory-with-civilization-beyond-earth

Because of the non-linear choices you and your competitors will make based on your needs and overall strategy, and the intentional lack of technology trading, no faction will be able to unlock all the technologies in a single playthrough, and by the end of a game each faction should look and function very differently.

No tech trading... I wonder if there will be tech stealing. Kind of neat thought, though. If every faction takes a different path through the tech web, you might end up with very different military units fighting against each other. And you might end up conquering cities that have improvements for which you don't and never will have the tech. Wonder what happens then.

unless it's a sort of MOO type thing where you research a tech and you get a random application of it.

[Lorizael]

So here's a podcast where some dude interviews Will Miller during PAX East. It's a little noisy with the convention in the background, but there's some interesting stuff in there.

http://ippodcast.libsyn.com/pax-east-2014-civilization-beyond-earth-interview

Three things of note:

The Great Mistake apparently happened 200 years before the game begins, and the factions sending out ships now are the survivors of whatever it is that happened. So it's not as if you're escaping a planet that's about to blow; instead you're gathering enough resources to get off the hunk of rock that used to be Earth. (I may be embellishing a bit.)

During the seeding, along with the other choices you get to make, you also choose the type of spacecraft you're sending. This determines what information about the planet you start with. For example, you could get an outline of the continents or knowledge of where alien life is.

And finally, when asked about social policies a la Civ 5, Miller said that there is a virtue system which is "perpendicular" to the tech tree. It's like social policies but "meatier." He seemed hesitant to say more, so I'm guessing that's something they're still working on.