N'Al on 11/8/2011 at 14:16

---

Aintn't got no Alien Crossfire tho... :mad:

demagogue on 11/8/2011 at 15:02

---

The mechanics are superficially like Civ but it's not Civilization. You're on a hostile planet that makes plain habitability & exploration a challenge; the tech progression is more hands-on; and each faction comes with an ideology. And it's just entertaining to watch your dystopian empire grow into all manner of chilling directions in a way Civ never got into.

Thirith on 11/8/2011 at 15:41

---

For me, there are two main differences to Civ: 1) The fictional framework and narrative, which gives the game its own distinct flavour, and 2) the factions and faction leaders - in Civ I never got as much of a sense of personality from the different nations as I did from the AC factions. It's there in the art, the writing, the AI, and strangely enough Firaxis never managed it again (if they even tried).

Koki on 11/8/2011 at 17:23

---

Alien Crossfire is really not a big deal. At all. Actually I'd go as far as saying the game is better without it.

Yakoob on 25/8/2011 at 20:34

---

So I broke down and bought AC from GoG. Yea yea I know no expansion pack but meh.


Playing it is... well, it's Civ with EVERYTHING renamed to more ambiguous and generic scifi terms. But once I figured out money is now econ, entertainers are now doctors (wtf) and corruption is now inefficiency, things started flowing MUCH more easily.

I am enjoying the additional gameplay features, tho finding it a bit hard with so many different options and combinations for pretty much... everything. Its not so much its hard, as its just a lot to keep track of. Take terraforming, remembering which of the ambiguously named options mean what, which ones are area-of-effect which are just one square, how high is given terrain and if it has fungus, and, oh wait, if I get the right upgrades I actually get benefit from fungus so I should start planting it instead of removing. And with the right combination of structures I can turn a forest into more productive than other structures and shit did I add that extra fungus-removing speedup ability to this former or no, and I can make them even faster if... yea you get my point?

Another small beef of mine is that it seems 90% of the structures are rather generic "boost econ/lab/psych by x%" so they feel pretty interchangable. Also the tech tree is impossible to navigate and make sense with only being able to see prev/current/next nodes at a time. I really just need to find a picutre of the whole tree online somewhere and I'll be golden. And lastly, it seems to suffer from the same problem as Civ where in later stages of the game, if your colony becomes too big it's more of a hassle and pain in the ass to manage than fun. And yea I am using the automation and governors, but it doesnt solve the problem that the fun portions (city management) are now unfun, so instead of fixing that, it just makes it go away, leaving you little to do then skip turns watching your automati formers plant another mine...


On the upside, the humongous complexity of terraforming/buildings/unit pieces means I can actually develop a strategy and a playstyle for the game. In civ it was just "spam cities, build troops, kill shit" pretty much every game. Here I feel like, one time I can focus my research on worms and bio-weapons, another time I can try to make an eco-friendly tree village (with a few structures that boost production of forests), yet another I can build an entire-sea colony and screw the mainland completely, etc. etc.

And I am loving the backstory and context. Its nice to see each factions have personalities, and I am, dare I say, honestly enthralled in the main story. I am loving how they tied the RTS gameplay with in-person story (like, the more worm-tech I develop, the more the worms seem to be communicating with me in person. cool :D ). Im genuinely curious to see how these things unfold!