The complaints about Civ:BE aren't that it's too similar to Civ V, they're about it being poorly designed.  It's actually a step backwards from Civ V.

Value for money. In my opinion, Civilization 5: Beyond Dearth is poor value for money as it doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from Civilization 5. It's essentially Civilization 5 with a pasted on Sci-Fi theme and a couple of novel ideas thrown in.

As well as this, as mentioned, it is poorly designed and is actually worse than Civilization 5. (Which was a piss poor iteration of the franchise to begin with.)

It's Civ5 without the DLC which made it good. The "planet is alive" feeling you got in Alpha Centauri is completely gone. Graphics are surprisingly ok. It just doesn't have any feel to it, it's just a bunch of buttons I press to see the next thing go +1 and then it ends.

I have not played it yet but I wonder if Firaxis fell into the same trap as (I suspect) SD did back in 2010. I am talking about the "we are releasing to brick and mortar stores and oh, crap, we do not have all of our features in on time but need to release to honor contractual obligations." It feels that way to me looking in from the outside. Man, if I had a game company I would only want to release on digital platforms so I had full control of release "when it is ready." If this is true, it means there is hope that the released product is only XY% complete towards their vision and we will see the full vision upon some post-release patches. I am awaiting a Steam sale.

Why buy what you already have?

As someone how loves star wars I say if episode7 ,8,9 suck I'm done. I will not like something because the logos the same and definitely if its a musical. I buy games because I like/want to do something with a certain feature, not because of of the lore or story.

BE smells and looks like BO and a clone of civ5.

;- )

charon2112 sez:

Oh Thormodr, I know you love Civ V deep down.  

My copy is buried deep down in the ground where it belongs.

The stark difference between Homeworld and Homeworld 2, removing Support Frigates/Repair Corvettes and making Frigates extremely weak, was enough to tell me what can happen when the sequel is vastly different from the original.

If that's your "good recipe for a sequel", then Civ IV and Civ III were poor sequels, because they completely changed the game franchise from their earlier versions.  There were a lot of vocal Civ IV haters when it released who completely refused to purchase the game because of these same reasons, just check out the CivFanatics archives (if they still exist) and you'll see what I mean. 

Meanwhile, I'll enjoy discovering my shiny new toy while you haters play in your old familiar sandbox being crabby and not letting anyone else in.  Have fun!!!

Yes, it's another book.  I seem to be incapable of being brief.  For whatever reason, quotes are refusing to work for me so I'll have to make due without.

Timmaigh:  I'm not saying you can't make any additions.  However, many people aren't asking for just some new novelties, they are asking for things that completely change the way the game plays.  My examples of Warlords and Battle Chess were extremes, but I was trying to make a point.  There's a limit to what you could add to a Battle Chess remake before it wouldn't really feel like Battle Chess and at that point why bear that Battle Chess name other than to get people to buy it thinking it would be like the original?

I would argue you might have found Starcraft 2 to be boring because Starcraft 1 was a boring game.  I realized I've opened the flood gates with that statement but hear me out.

Starcraft was huge hit because it was an exceptionally well done game from a production standpoint.  Excellent voice acting, excellent story, solid graphics, solid engine.  It's no question one of the most polished RTS's ever.  But lets be honest, what did it offer from a new/novelty perspective?  You can't argue they drew heavily from their work with Warcraft II.  Keep in mind Starcraft came out after both C&C Red Alert (Unique Factions) and Total Annihilation (Terrain Height affects).  Again, they produced an exceptionally well refined package but there wasn't a lot of "ALL NEW" to it.  However, I know people who still insist on breaking it out at LAN Parties to this day.  Blizzard has never been about reinventing the wheel, they're about the best traditional wheel than can.  And they are VERY good at it.

A year after Brood War, we have Star Trek Armada and Warlords Battlecry.  Both of those games have far more new novelties (Functional 3D maps and persistent customizable heroes respectively at the top of the list) than Starcraft but obviously neither achieve the success of Starcraft.  Why?  Because they were poorly made games and that's is coming from somebody who loves them.  Both games were riddled with bugs and boring campaigns.  Their sequels suffered the same downfall.  I could give you a book on things that could have been better about both of those game but I'd still rather play them than Starcraft.

By the sound of it, you've played Supreme Commander, correct?  What would happen if they integrated Relic's CoH/DoW terrain/tactics features into it.  You've taken a game that's all about massive hoards of units and tried to meld it with a game that's all about micromanagement.  There's a reason you control hundreds (or thousands) of units in one game and a dozen or two in the other.  Don't get me wrong I love both games.  But those are simply mutually exclusive goals.  If you do it you just end up with a game the masses find overly complicated.  That's the feedback I most commonly heard from people I introduced to Warlords Battlecry.  "It's too complicated, there's too many damage types, it's too much to remember in an RTS".  Unfortunately people that thrive on that sort of thing (like me) are the minority.

DARCA:  Your posts conflict each other.    You ask "why buy what you already have" then say you love Star Wars.  I am not bashing Star Wars here, but think about it.  Ignore the books and look just at the movies.  "Star Wars" sets the stage, we've got a small group of "good guys" battling the evil empire.  Empire and Return chronicles the continuing fight.  Ok we find out one of the bad guys is the good guys dad and the brother and sister kissed.  Episodes I-III show us how we got to where "Star Wars" started.  The teams never change, it doesn't turn out that Palpatine was actually an Ewok, or Luke was actually a woman.  We very much paid 6 times for the same thing.  We are both ready to pay 3 more times for what we assume is going to be basically the same thing.  You said it yourself, if Episode VII was a musical you wouldn't buy it.  Why not, after all, it's "ALL NEW"?  Because you wanted more Star Wars.

Let's look at it from another industry.  GM has been making the Corvette for 61, almost 62 years now.  In 1953 it was a 2 door sports car.  In 1973 it was a 2 door sports car.  In 2013 it's a 2 door sports car.  For that matter for 54 of those year it was strictly a naturally aspirated V8 powered sports car.  Look at threads/media from when the new body style was announced.  What's one of the first questions you see?  "Where's the quad tail lights".  For 53 years Corvettes had quad tail lights.  When something works, you keep doing it.  I would love people reactions if they announced a Corvette without a V8.

The point of my original post wasn't saying you shouldn't make improvements.  My point was SOME people are upset because they didn't reinvent the wheel.

When Civ V came out, the biggest complaint was it wasn't exactly like Civ IV...

Now Civ BE comes out, and the biggest complaint is it is too much like Civ V...

Complainers are the most vocal crowd, but being loud does not make you right nor representative of the majority...no matter what you do, there will be someone upset and that doesn't make your product a failure...

Call me crazy,  but I think the changes made in Civ:BE are great.  While I wouldn't want to see them in a "traditional" Civ game, they do make the gameplay less linear.  There are also more unknowns on how your opponents are doing.  It becomes less of a race to build the wonders, because your opponents could be going on a completely different tech track.

As other have said, people ALWAYS complain when the new civ comes out.  It gets old.  It must be such a bummer to have so much negativity. 

This has no relation to my comment...I did not support nor criticize any game of the civilization franchise, I merely pointed out that the existence of complainers does not make a game bad nor does it inherently point to the flaws of a game...

But since you brought up the difficulty (or lack thereof) of Civ V, why not continue that discussion...it is quite convenient you leave out the difficulty level you played on, and since it was your first game, one must wonder just what version of the game were you playing?  For all I know you were playing on settler with the launch version of the game...

Regardless, we still can answer the question: is the Civ V AI flawed?  Sure it is, just like the AI of every game...

Galactic Civilizations 2 -- AI totally inept at defending against culture...poor logic with many of the new buildings introduced in Twilight of the Arnor...few AIs would even bother putting defenses on their ships till late game...some of the AIs wouldn't even expand beyond a few planets regardless of map size (Drengin worst violator of this)...AI easy to dupe in trading research...had no concept of transporting population from core to frontier worlds, etc. etc. etc....and this game is considered to have one of the best AIs of any strategy game...

Sins of a Solar Empire -- AI totally inept at fighting starbases and largely incapable of handling titans...AI expansion is terrible, even on highest difficulty you can out expand the AI with ease...AI use of abilities is mediocre at best, and appears to have no strategy in selecting capital ships...AI logic for determining whether to stay and fight or run is awful, and it will routinely suicide large quantities of ships for absolutely no reason...AI becomes utterly broken after so many minutes of play time, not making use of diplomacy and not researching any additional technologies...AI fleets can be held at bay indefinitely with kiting scout ships and trade ships etc. etc. etc...and this is considered to be the best 4x space genre game at the time....

Rome 2 Total War -- AI struggles to assault any structure, letting units stand indefinitely and do nothing or letting go of siege equipment and never using it again...AI armies will suicide into enemy territory and leave themselves open to ambush...AI struggles to build anything beyond low tier units unless you do it a favor and totally wipe its army late game (and let it live)...AI is pathetically passive, letting you expand at will and not giving a care in the world...AI often starves itself to death and doesn't know how to solve the problem, crippling it until it is eliminated and absorbed by someone else...and this here is the flagship title of a AAA studio...

Europa Universalis 4 -- AI is totally inept at executing amphibious assaults....AI fails to recognize growing threats and lets nations eat the whole world without doing anything to stop them...AI is a terrible ally in wars, often suiciding armies for no reason or refusing to reinforce key battles one province away for no reason....AI can be tricked time and time again to attack in unfavorable terrain...AI is terrible at using its navy, often losing whole naval arsenals despite having overwhelming numerical superiority...AI is poor at developing its economy, preventing it from fielding decent armies late game...and this here is the flagship title of a highly successful studio...

The only strategy game that has good AI is chess...anything more complicated than that, and the AI will always be problematic...even the "good" AIs bank on cheating in order to compete...in GC2, AIs can see whole map without the need to scout...in SoaSE, AIs get technologies instantly before they even have the labs and can upgrade capital ships to ridiculously high levels...in EU4, the AI gets extra diplomats, never has to worry about colonies being attacked, and knows the move orders of all your units....this ignores the cliché economic bonuses AIs get by raising the difficulty...

The Civ V AI isn't any more problematic than the AIs of other highly acclaimed strategy games from prestigious studios...that it sucks points to a limitation in gaming technology, not a flaw with the game...Civ IV had AI issues of its own, they just weren't primarily with the combat system which tends to get more attention than other aspects of the game...

Fear of criticism is not the problem....using the existence of criticism as evidence that a game is flawed is the problem because there will always be criticism...one should be wary of criticism that Beyond Earth is just like Civ V when there was also criticism of Civ V for NOT being like Civ IV...I'm not saying the criticism is wrong, but it certainly isn't right just because it exists in large quantities....a lot of the criticism for Beyond Earth and GC3 are philosophical differences and NOT actually issues with the game...you don't criticize chess because it isn't colorful enough just as you wouldn't criticize Candy Land for not having deeper strategic thinking....