SMAC's Spirit: CivBE or Pandora:FC?

[Aeson]

Was searching something about CivBE and ran into Pandora:First Contact. Both have been described as SMAC's spiritual successor ... anyone played this? Is it worth buying? I was thinking of picking it up while waiting for CivBE. From the little I've seen of both games so far, Pandora seems a bit more like SMAC than CivBE claims it will be.

[onodera]

PFC is very bland.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

AC2 has a private forum for three people who were in the Pandora beta. Zero posts, aside from some pictures sisko put up. Make of that what you will.

[Ellestar]

Pandora has flat pop growth model. That alone makes it 3X instead of 4X. Population grows with a fixed speed, it doesn't matter how many cities or whatever else you have. There is also some ridiculous emigration mechanics that transfers pop between cities and ruins happiness model in a process (overpopulated cities become unhappy but don't transfer pop fast enough, happiness penalties are so big that other happiness bonuses/penalties doesn't matter much). It feels so gamey that i stopped playing almost immediately.
Besides, with that system, if you capture enemy civ it becomes enormous bonus, you just doubled your population.

I don't know, i definitely prefer a builder style in 4X, and i like a war when it's efficient. In Pandora, builder style is ruined by pop growth model, and war is the only efficient thing to do because of it. Economy feels like EU instead of Civ/SMAC, base population is more important than anything else so war is the only real way for relative growth. But 4X is a bad war simulator so it's kinda pointless, if i want just to wage wars i can pick a better game for that.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

AC2 has a private forum for three people who were in the Pandora beta. Zero posts, aside from some pictures sisko put up. Make of that what you will.

Interestingly, I made the folder public since I posted that, and asked my people to fill it up - and they're not flooding the world, but there IS activity. Another beta tester showed up today. Broadening our focus very slightly is looking promising.

[Aeson]

Pandora has flat pop growth model. That alone makes it 3X instead of 4X. Population grows with a fixed speed, it doesn't matter how many cities or whatever else you have.

Sounds brutal ... glad I didn't buy it!

[Dark Orion]

Pandora: First Contact was a quirky homage to SMAC. For me it was good enough to buy but it will likely become eclipsed by Civ:BE in a few months. Some of the features in P:FC (operations and a more variable tech tree) will be making an appearance in Civ:BE according to some interviews at E3, so I would not be so quick as to dismiss P:FC out of hand. The problem most people seem to have with P:FC is that it was designed to play with the Civ formula in a way that has left a bad taste in some Civ purists mouths in my opinion.