Real First Impressions

[tgb]

After applying the fix suggested by Kamikazi84, I was able to start the game normally. Setting up a first game was easy, and for the most part informative. I just wish there were tooltips explaining the victory conditions. Military is pretty obvious (I guess), but how do you achieve Economic, Diplomatic, or Research victories? I have no idea.

I started with the research faction, and the map was generated pretty quickly. The first thing I noticed is that unless you zoom all the way in, it can be tough to see units against the background. In fact, on my very first turn I got a message that my Seeker had been damaged, but I had no idea how or why.

The game plays the way I expected from the previews, as an Alpha Centauri clone with a little bit of Civ V and MOO II thrown in for good measure. If anything, it seems to follow the SMAC model a little too slavishly. As a 30 year veteran of 4X games, I was able to find my way around pretty quickly with 2 exceptions:

The Economy tab needs tooltips desperately. Until I examined one of my cities, I had no idea what all those icons and numbers were supposed to represent.

Research is a little confusing, in that even though I selected the ability to only see 2 tiers in the research tree at a time, I was able to see 4. Also, I was able to research 2nd tier techs after only researching 1 out of 3 prerequisites. Since the tree is labeled "Colonial Age", I assume it opens up some more at some point. If these 4 tiers are the entire tech tree for the game, that's a big problem.

My initial reaction as a consumer in the market for a new game is "Why should I get this when I still have SMAC on my hard drive?", and I couldn't come up with an answer. That's probably a little unfair after only devoting half an hour to it, but I do plan to give it some serious time and see if my opinion changes.

[jdmillard]

Research is a little confusing, in that even though I selected the ability to only see 2 tiers in the research tree at a time, I was able to see 4. Also, I was able to research 2nd tier techs after only researching 1 out of 3 prerequisites. Since the tree is labeled "Colonial Age", I assume it opens up some more at some point. If these 4 tiers are the entire tech tree for the game, that's a big problem.

It is designed specifically to allow you to "cherry-pick" techs. You only need one of the prerequisites (this was done on purpose). There are a handful of techs that are useful but unnecessary and you can forego them depending on your strategy. Also, you can spot a technology that you really need for your given situation and chart a path to it in order to get it sooner. Then you can return later to get the techs that you skipped because you'll need them for other prerequisites. I've played plenty of games where I got certain techs, but ignored them the next game and vice versa.

The tree gets shuffled each game too, but based on tech level. (For example: You wont find a game where you can get a nuke in the first tech column.) I think this is fun because it changes up the "cherry-picking" strategies each time. Some players aren't fond of this. I think there should be a conventional tree with "tech tree shuffling" as an option.

Yes, the tree opens up a lot more.

[dalves]

I find it interesting that he thought all technologies are necessary prerequisites; do the tooltips teach otherwise?