I just finished my first game as well! Played as the Asians, only on the Mercury difficulty (second to easiest) but I was able to get a Contact victory on my first try, with a strong emphasis on research and economy. About half and half Purity and Supremacy with all my virtues in Knowledge. I pretty much just rushed to get the techs I needed to decode the beacon and launch the satellite, and the Asian wonder building bonus helped a bit. I also invested in some espionage, which was pretty helpful actually...for example, I stole a useful genetics tech to boost my health right as it was dipping to critical levels.
Only went to war twice...early on the Slavs decided they didn't like sharing a border, and tried to march in. I didn't have much military at that point, but I had enough cash stockpiled to immediately purchase an army. I was able to repel them easily and they gave up once I started to retaliate. Soon after that I figured out that I should be trading, and then everybody loved me for a while as our economies grew interdependent. At the very end of the game, after I had constructed the beacon, the Slavs and the Franco-Iberians declared war...possibly because I was approaching a victory (I assume the AI can figure that out) and also because our idealogies had seriously diverged. (The Harmonious Slavs got mad at me for blowing away miasma! I thought that was pretty clever for the AI.) Well, that war went much more poorly, considering it was on two fronts, and I had invested basically zero effort in my military, so everyone else had like laser hovertanks and I'm using sticks and rocks. But my city defense was pretty good, the beacon was in a defensible spot, and I was able to hang on and still keep my economy rolling enough to win. The difficulty wasn't that bad but I'll reserve judgment until I try the harder settings. I'd definitely like to experiment with a more warmongering approach.
Overall I enjoyed it! I played all afternoon, and I'll probably play some more soon, so it certainly has the Civ "one more turn..." appeal in full force. I did notice it is still a bit rough around the edges, there were certainly some glitches and weird behavior, but nothing game breaking. I agree that managing the trade routes is a huge pain in the ass, especially considering how lucrative it is; there should definitely be a trade menu or something. Diplomacy and the AI in general seemed OK...I never got anyone to enter a pact of cooperation with me for some reason, but other than that they behaved reasonably. I was able to trade for the petroleum I needed at a reasonable price.
Personally I believe this game "feels" very similar to Civ V mechanically. All the essential Civ V elements are there, most saliently the hex grid, city defense, and unit Pauli exclusion principle. I'm not complaining about that, mind you, I thought the Civ V mechanics were excellent and I'm glad to see them replicated in space. I definitely think it falls more on the side of Civ V than Alpha Centauri in the spectrum (except with the setting). I agree that I love the degree of customization, that feels very Alpha Centauri (although I do miss the unit design! Helicopter colony pods with a cloaking device!). The tech web is SWEET, although I'm not sure it's extensive enough for the timeframe...Alpha Centauri's tech got into some really crazy stuff like black hole tech and time travel. I like the Purity/Supremacy/Harmony system. The virtue system is fine, it feels just like the thing from Civ V. I appreciate that you can customize the loadout of your drop pod at the beginning of the game. The aliens were pretty cool, but largely irrelevant. The Jarvis-type tutorial bot was helpful at first, but I don't need to hear that my spy is idle for the 5000th time. The music was superb!
Where the game disappointed me was in the flavor. Alpha Centauri is one of my favorite games of all time. It really changed the way I think about the future of humanity; I think it stands as a legitimate work of science fiction as well as being a fun and excellent game. Each of the 7 leaders had serious personality, which was shown through the awesome quotations and videos that really painted a picture of the unforgiving world which they inhabited. The Civ: BE leaders had little to no personality at all. I dealt with the Russian guy the most in this playthrough because we were neighbors and enemies. His most defining personality trait was that he spoke Russian...sort of like Russia from Civ V. The Australian guy is like "What's mine is yours...for a price." Ha ha ha very funny Mr. Australian guy. Except he says this as he's begging me for resources, so it's actually incongruous and weird. The only one I remember at all having any sort of personality was the CEO, but she was totally cheesy and obnoxious. Adam Smith quotes?? Who the hell quotes Adam Smith in 2800? I'll put it on my debit sheet?? Why are you using ridiculous 20th century anachronisms. It's silly.
Meanwhile in Alpha Centauri, the corporate archetype, CEO Nwabudike Morgan, is a complete badass. Sure he's African, with an awesome African accent, but that's not his principal trait. He's suave, greedy, and indulgent, but the way he talks you can believe that it's a good thing, that mankind's dream and destiny is unbounded wealth! And then Yang convinces you that your suffering is meaningless, or that your duty as a citizen is to eat the recycled corpses of your dead comrades. You think, man Miriam raises a good point, what OF the immortal soul when a ship passes through Bulk matter transmitter? Maybe I'm just being nostalgic here, I was relatively young when I played the game and that was the first time I was exposed to a lot of those science fiction themes. But they really resonated with me.
Maybe they did develop the Civ: BE characters in the quotes. But then why did they only use that one voice actress? Was it a budget thing? It was OK when it was Leonard Nimoy, but it all sounds boring and the same to me, and that's most of the reason I can't sympathize with the leaders. And the quotes didn't seem really interesting by the looks of it, mostly pithy and humorous. "Robots don't need breaks, they make great workers -- you should learn a lesson from them hurr hurr hurr." That's the problem--the whole thing has got that Civ V cartoony sheen on it. I liked the dark grittiness of Alpha Centauri. I liked my drone riots and consequent nerve stapling. I liked how when you researched Mind/Machine Interface the quotation says something about how he feels his thoughts cross over to the machine, but then the unsettling thing is that the machine's thoughts, cold and alien, cross BACK into his mind, and that's pretty freaky. "We must dissent" still gives me chills. And MAN, each one of the Secret Projects ("Wonders") had a short video that went with it. Those videos were SO AWESOME. That was the main incentive to build the Secret Projects, to watch these cool videos. Most of the Wonders in Civ: BE had some generic technobabble name that I don't care about because I don't really know what it is. I know videos haven't been a thing for a while in Civ games. But why not??? That was like the best part!!! I'm serious, watch these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBBA4EA8EABF39223Anyway, enough yammering, It's seriously a fun game. 4/5 stars, great fun and solid mechanics but loses points for not living up to my unreasonable expectations.
