just kidding of course!

I stopped playing the beta once I completed a game after the last update.  We need some more content at this point to really balance/suggest properly.

According to a fair number of people, Civilization 5: Beyond Dearth is stalled in beta. Lol.

1. UI is atrocious. Queuing is so bothersome and that I don't use it - you have to click three times on different menus to put something on queue...only from city queue - no hotkeys, Ctrl or Alt modifiers from main map. In other words - you will waste more time on clicking than if you manually issue orders.
2. Diplomacy somehow managed to become even worse than in CivV, which is achievement on its own. With reduced unity types AI knows only ONE tactic - swarm of suicidal berserking human/tank waves.
3. Absolutely primitive execution of advertized features. Ie. Alien agressiveness is linked only to alien nest destruction it seems. You can shoot dozens upon dozens of aliens standing outside 2 tile radius from their nest without any fear of counterattack - Ai cannot into attack.
4. Absolute lack of any automation. If you have 10 cities then you have to manually isue each and every production order.
5. Leaders lack any personality - they are just animated talking heads.
6. Once again you are spammed with approvals, denouncations and gazillion other meaningless and useless notification via leader animation screen "we like that you like X", "We do not like that you like Y" etc every turn.
7. Trade routes - Firaxis showed phenomenal ability to make their own idea as terrible a possible - if with CivV you had to deal with 5 or so TR now you have 3 per city, you have to manually reassign EACH an EVERY of them.
Game miraculously managed to fall even below my lowest expectations. Beyond Eartyh serves only one purpose - to show how much Alpha Centauri surpasses it in every aspect except for graphics.

 

It is getting quite a few tepid reviews.

Yep. It appears to be what I feared. A re-skinned Civilization 5 with a pasted on sci-fi theme.

I say they should bin it, leave sci-fi to Stardock and move on to Civ VI!

Beyond Dearth is worse, IMHO. They already had a base to build from.  They really have no excuse for delivering stale, warmed over dreck.

EWOM was brand new and as we all remember had a very difficult launch. They had a brand new engine and all the problems which came with that.

Yep. Civilization 5 was and is horrendous. I don't blame Jon Shafer that much for it as, as you said, I think quite a bit of it was out of his control. I think the lion's share of the blame should go to greedy 2K Games who have been nothing but bad news for Civ fans.

Firaxis has delivered two clunkers in a row. Four, if you include the two Civilization 5 expansions. People's good will is wearing thin. Even the corrupt gaming media only gave Civilization 5: Beyond Dearth an 82 on metacritic, tied with Endless Legends. User reviews have given it a 6.5 and that score has been bloated by quite a few brain dead perfect 10 scores for that rubbish.

Civ VI is their last chance. I suggest they suck up to Stardock and get that 64 bit Nitrous engine licensed, for starters. They need to take their time and do it right. The only problem is greedy 2K Games will want another cash cow and I have a feeling Civilization 5: Beyond Dearth is not going to sell as well as they expected. So they'll likely release another half baked game to mollify their shareholders. Then the franchise will be done like dinner. (a half baked dinner, that is.)

Game is a mess. My biggest annoyance is that I can't easily find out what the world resources are for, or how to exploit them. What do I do with resilin, or biomass, or titanium? Civ5 tech tree was streamlined - you unlocked a resource, then immediately after you got buildings for it. BE tech tree is a jungle - I unlock a resource in one part of the tree, and find buildings for it in another direction. I guess in a year or two, after people have studied this jungle tech tree, it will make sense on some level. But for the beginner (and we are all beginners in this game) it's just poorly designed.

Seriously though. Does anyone know how I can use resilin? 

A better project would be to just re issue Alpha Centauri with graphics updated to current standards.  I'll bet Sid wishes he could take his name off the box....

Just make cIV with a 64 bit engine and updated graphics and I'll be content for a decade.

Sid has been rubber stamping the games for years. He's laughing all the way to the bank.

I tried entering resilin into the tech tree search box but it didn't show me anything. Then, after googling the resource I found out I needed to build a paddock from a wiki. That phrase, too, showed up nothing at all in the in-game search box. 

I think Mr. Chick was being too kind (as was Thormodr for that matter).

There is a demo for anyone who wants to find out just how bad the game is, or isn't, first.

Heavenfall, this should help: http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civbe_overview.html (much of the info was gathered before release and it may not be completely up to date, but should still be useful).  The quick answer though is it is just a bonus resource (higher tile yield) and you can build a paddock on it from the start.

Tom Chick is spot on. I commend him for telling people that the Emperor truly has no clothes on.

I played the demo over the weekend.  It really didn't impress me at all.