Cooking & Civ Beyond Earth

[Carl]

Yesterday, I published Cooking & Gourmet Cooking all in one page, since they are so similar and tied together. I didn't put that out as I didn't want to steal attention from justproud2b's new banner for the Guide I have to thank Nutella and Bri, both of whom shared information on Cooking, but different stuff. It would not be so complete without the info they put out. Well, maybe.. but it sure would have been a lot harder to put it together. I combined both of their information and the guide looks pretty solid. Let me know if I missed something!

While I love Sims and will continue working on the Guide, I've taken up Civilization Beyond Earth and I'm totally hooked. Given the success of my Civ 5 Strategy Guide, I want to put out 5 key articles for the game so that they will be available to visitors this winter. I'm not doing all at once, but it will slow my pacing of new pages for a little bit. I'll likely go back and forth, releasing one for this game, then one for that. I am definitely not going to make such a big site as I did for Civ 5, but plan to stick with the main game mechanics. Then I'll refocus on Sims. I'm feeling a lot more like myself lately and look forward to this Winter, when we will have a lot of new Forum members. I hope to have at least 50 separate guides for The Sims 4 up by December 1, and 5 for BE. Thanks for reading!

[Ciosa]

How is it compared to Alpha Centauri?

[Carl]

It's a decent successor. Without comparing it to anything, it's a good game. I love the unit progression as you develop an affinity through researching techs that push you that way. You can unlock any number of unique units that can be deployed for combat. It's just too bad the AI is so horrible at war. The gameplay mechanics are wonderful, and I like the tech web since you can focus your Civilization in one area and mix up strategies nicely. Wonders do not feel very wonderful and are not as powerful as AC's I could pretty much ignore those completely.. Its main downfall is that if you prefer the game hard, the AI is worse than in Civ 5 and likely AC (I wasn't very good at strategy back then). Some players are reporting beating the highest difficulty and should not be able to. Needs a patch, but I'm enjoying it. Really, really want to see this game get an Expansion and a few patches based off the community's complaints and suggestions for improvement. Firaxis listens pretty well. They sure did with Civ 5.

[Ciosa]

One of the things that always bums me out in a game is when the strategy of the built in AI is a little lacking.  I remember a few of the Civ games feeling a little ridiculously underpowered - and then some of the later ones being ridiculously overpowered.  (They would always gather like... every tech/treasure node within a handful of turns, beeling towards them through the fog of war.) The different Supremacy/Purity/Harmony models was really interesting, and I really liked that it sounded like the quest system added a degree of story flavor the Civ series sometimes lacked for me.  (I love my narrative.)  I loved the SimCity series, and I'd still love to see another expansion of some kind to it, but there were so many disappointingly broken mechanics I find it very frustrating to play at times.