Thanks for the feeback. :) Glad you like it overall!

@improvements: That's mostly because the Upgrade system I had planned didn't quite make it into this version. You were supposed to be able to upgrade and customize Affinities by finishing Questsrather than just getting them from techs, but the Affinity 7 Customization is all that made it in due to a lack of time - one of the cuts I made to be able to release the mod to get some people to play it before most of the players who are still there playing Beyond Earth leave for Civ VI. :p

I do still plan to add the quest-based system at a later date though.

And yeah, large cities seem to scale a bit -too- much for the AI, and the strength-difference between a huge Harmony-city and an average Supremacy-City is probably too extreme. Will play around with scaling them down a bit.

Ahh, gotcha. Yeah it felt a little weird having no use for farms or mines t.t;

I'm very much lookin' forward to civ6 but I know there's a lot of folks who keep coming back to BE every once in a while. I'll definitely be following your mod in the future!

Amazing work to be honest. I am a modder myself, but I cannot even begin to imagine how you created the Empire Management screen and created so many new mechanics from scratch. Your mod is the only reason I came back to Beyond Earth in the first place...

Just a few balance notes:
- when I played Elodie, I was the weakest player on the map, even around mid game, and I couldn't find a use fast enough for the many building modules I had accumulated. Meanwhile, the African Union and other civs were growing exponentially around me due to their earlier game bonuses. I was playing on Gemini, btw. I'm wondering if Elodie is too weak (just like she was in the original game, worst leader ever...)
- the espionage mission that grants you 3 workers, each with 10 charges, seems to be very overpowered to the point that I would never even consider building workers myself. I'm curious why these workers get so many charges, when they are already free, and you already get 3 of them at once. Making them have the normal 4 charges would seem more balanced to me.

At any rate, I really enjoyed getting my ass kicked by the AI, complete with Carrier-backed airstrikes and coastal invasions. I hadn't really lost before when I played the original game :) Keep up the good work.

I mentioned in an earlier post how I impressed I am by this mod - what a creative and thorough revisioning of the game! Outstanding. I have a general question about the bonuses or advantages that the AI civs get. I'm only in the midst of my second game with the mod, and it seems to me that other civs are able to gain improvements to their military units at a *much* faster rate than I can even hope to attain. Are they getting some incredible bonus to tech and / or affiliation acquisition? I've been playing as ARC, maxing out its special traits, and focusing on science and culture as much as possible (with a diversity of city specializations); playing even at lower difficulty levels, the AI leaves me in the dust on its military advancement, even in this second game where I'm paying more attention to techs that boost affiliation (purity, in my case). (Or maybe I'm that bad a player?) :)

AIs get Science bonuses as they do in the base game, but outside of that no, there are no Affinity-bonuses before Affinity Level 5. They do however pick up the free Affinity levels very early, which gets the Affinity Per Turn rolling, at which point they do get some extra points per turn to equalize the fact that they can't complete Affinity quests, but the system ramps up slowly.

Main affinity source during the midgame are Affinity-per-Turn bonuses from Buildings, so pick up those that give progress towards your main Affinity asap. Just focusing on technologies won't do the job.

I have an issue with the starting loadouts and bonuses.

The bonuses that add 3 random old earth artifacts (may be a leftover from your awesome loadouts mod) doesn't work in CODEX.

Nor does the Free Worker or Explorer selections.

Not sure about the rest, have not tried them yet.

I had fun with the mod, but I cannot recommend. In base game, I had no difficulty doing normal difficulty and getting to the top of the score board (the other difficulties entailed too much AI cheating for the game to be fun). Here, the AI cheats rather blatantly (even on easy) and begins to field armies that I couldn't field at that point without severely restricting my expansion or ability to set up even basic infrastructure. The tech tree, while simplified in layout, is just as complicated as base game in the grand scheme of things, is vague at times, and doesn't include necessary information that was included in base game. Spies get way out of hand, to the point where you can't get your guys out to do operations without setting yourself up for a take over, as the AI seems to coordinate their efforts against you. This hampers you as your agents are too inexperienced to effectively fight everyone off. And because there is no "spy" filter in this mod's tech tree, I am uncertain how to combat the agents.

I'm trying to get a research oriented strategy going, but can't seem to find Academies anymore. The mod seems to emphasize research buildings (again, playing into the lack of production vs the AI). Cities are taking too long to grow, and overall I feel that the colony management has been over complicated compared to base game. Buildings seem to be in excess now, and they excessive in the base game.

I can understand if you can't touch the AI itself. I like to fight the AI on equal ground initially and scale up from there (like Halo Wars' Automatic difficulty or Gal Civ II's "Challenging" difficulty), but Firaxis games have never had good AI. This is a fun mod, but IMO there are too many detractors for me to recommend. Maybe I'll swing by after a few patches.

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

The tech tree, while simplified in layout, is just as complicated as base game in the grand scheme of things, is vague at times, and doesn't include necessary information that was included in base game.

Could you explain what exactly you mean by this? What information do you think is missing?

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

Spies get way out of hand, to the point where you can't get your guys out to do operations without setting yourself up for a take over, as the AI seems to coordinate their efforts against you. This hampers you as your agents are too inexperienced to effectively fight everyone off. And because there is no "spy" filter in this mod's tech tree, I am uncertain how to combat the agents.

That's odd. It's balanced in a way that is meant to make players use about half of their Agents defensively (Agents level up when they kill opposing Agents), and that seemed to work out fine in my games. I'll keep a closer eye on it in the next few games, but it's also worth noting that having a bit of intrigue in one city is not the end of the world (it can be re-added really quickly by using the Infiltrate Government Operation), and that defensive Agents are supposed to be moved around when Intrigue has been lowered.

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

I'm trying to get a research oriented strategy going, but can't seem to find Academies anymore. The mod seems to emphasize research buildings (again, playing into the lack of production vs the AI). Cities are taking too long to grow, and overall I feel that the colony management has been over complicated compared to base game. Buildings seem to be in excess now, and they excessive in the base game.

Improvements are unlocked by Affinity. The general concept of the mod is that you don't just focus on one thing, but instead have to find a balance between all yields. Growth and Production will help you get your cities going whilch helps you get your virtues/technologies/Diplo Traits going, which then feed back into your city development, etc.

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

I can understand if you can't touch the AI itself. I like to fight the AI on equal ground initially and scale up from there (like Halo Wars' Automatic difficulty or Gal Civ II's "Challenging" difficulty), but Firaxis games have never had good AI.

That's actually partly how it works currently. This mod has removed a lot of starting bonuses from AIs below Gemini. That includes free technologies, and free starting units.

Instead, it gets free Workers, Settlers and Playerperks throughout the game to allow them to keep up/get ahead. Workers are given out periodically on any difficulty and mainly serve to solve the fact that the AI is incapable of improving plots that actually matter, the turns between Settlers scales with Difficulty, it's 200 turns on the lowest and second-lowest difficulties, then 150 on Vostok, 90 on Gemini, etc.

Both Playerperks are given out during the early and late midgame only and their role is to somewhat equalize the impact that players get from the Empire Manager + Quests.

There is nothing that allows AIs to get ahead very early on if you're playing below Soyuz, and AIs that have large armies have probably just ignored their Empire Development (which the player can also do by just spamming units and Thorium Reactors).

Scores are meaningless both, in this mod and the base game.

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

The tech tree, while simplified in layout, is just as complicated as base game in the grand scheme of things, is vague at times, and doesn't include necessary information that was included in base game.

Could you explain what exactly you mean by this? What information do you think is missing?

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

Spies get way out of hand, to the point where you can't get your guys out to do operations without setting yourself up for a take over, as the AI seems to coordinate their efforts against you. This hampers you as your agents are too inexperienced to effectively fight everyone off. And because there is no "spy" filter in this mod's tech tree, I am uncertain how to combat the agents.

That's odd. It's balanced in a way that is meant to make players use about half of their Agents defensively (Agents level up when they kill opposing Agents), and that seemed to work out fine in my games. I'll keep a closer eye on it in the next few games, but it's also worth noting that having a bit of intrigue in one city is not the end of the world (it can be re-added really quickly by using the Infiltrate Government Operation), and that defensive Agents are supposed to be moved around when Intrigue has been lowered.

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

I'm trying to get a research oriented strategy going, but can't seem to find Academies anymore. The mod seems to emphasize research buildings (again, playing into the lack of production vs the AI). Cities are taking too long to grow, and overall I feel that the colony management has been over complicated compared to base game. Buildings seem to be in excess now, and they excessive in the base game.

Improvements are unlocked by Affinity. The general concept of the mod is that you don't just focus on one thing, but instead have to find a balance between all yields. Growth and Production will help you get your cities going whilch helps you get your virtues/technologies/Diplo Traits going, which then feed back into your city development, etc.

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

I can understand if you can't touch the AI itself. I like to fight the AI on equal ground initially and scale up from there (like Halo Wars' Automatic difficulty or Gal Civ II's "Challenging" difficulty), but Firaxis games have never had good AI.

That's actually partly how it works currently. This mod has removed a lot of starting bonuses from AIs below Gemini. That includes free technologies, and free starting units.

Instead, it gets free Workers, Settlers and Playerperks throughout the game to allow them to keep up/get ahead. Workers are given out periodically on any difficulty and mainly serve to solve the fact that the AI is incapable of improving plots that actually matter, the turns between Settlers scales with Difficulty, it's 200 turns on the lowest and second-lowest difficulties, then 150 on Vostok, 90 on Gemini, etc.

Both Playerperks are given out during the early and late midgame only and their role is to somewhat equalize the impact that players get from the Empire Manager + Quests.

There is nothing that allows AIs to get ahead very early on if you're playing below Soyuz, and AIs that have large armies have probably just ignored their Empire Development (which the player can also do by just spamming units and Thorium Reactors).

Scores are meaningless both, in this mod and the base game.

Don't know how to Format quotes into interject my own comments. Bear with me.

Tech Tree: Because everything's been shuffled around and crammed together in smaller boxes, it makes the tech tree even harder to interpret and read, which is a big problem considering everyone had issues with the tech web in base game. To answer your question, there's no info on how to get manufactories or academies, which is frustrating.

Spies were addressed.

Improvements and empire management: Ah, that's what I was afaid of. Devoting so much time to producing buildings is killing my ability to produce military units early game, which is a big problem due to the amount of units the AI throws at me. Taking the focus away from improvements hampers the mod, and the way the mod works over complicates the game IMO.

Difficulty: I'm playing on Sputnik (used to play on Gemini in base game) and the progression is relatively level until mid game, when the AI starts to get 8 in every affinity and I've only got five in a single one. Because of the aforementioned Tech Web issue, I can't find manufactories to help me out, which really kills my ability to compete mid to late game. My experience with this mod on gemini difficulty really contradicts your statement about no early game AI advantages, as they were kicking my ass around turn 120, with higher affinities, more cities, more research, and larger armies.

Overall, I like the concept of the Mod, but the execution leaves me wanting the base game's production, economy and research systems. There's no need to change the whole mod on my sole objection. I just find the mod more aggravating than fun.

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

Tech Tree: Because everything's been shuffled around and crammed together in smaller boxes, it makes the tech tree even harder to interpret and read, which is a big problem considering everyone had issues with the tech web in base game. To answer your question, there's no info on how to get manufactories or academies, which is frustrating.

Out of interest: Did you try using the tech filters? They're meant to help with that.

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

Overall, I like the concept of the Mod, but the execution leaves me wanting the base game's production, economy and research systems. There's no need to change the whole mod on my sole objection. I just find the mod more aggravating than fun.

Yes, I'll obviously not change the mod based on feedback of one person, but I still find it very helpful to know what people who couldn't warm up with the mod at all found the most annoying, and whether it's objective design problems, or just an individual having preferences that don't match the goals of the mod - in this case it seems to be a bit of both, so I'll see what I can do to make things more intuitive.

So thanks for your feedback. :)

First of. Great mod!
Secondly. Spend 15 min writing this reply before jumping over to your Mod Guide to check it wasn't me the had misunderstood something.

Had an itch for some slow gaming and returned to Beyond Earth to find this jewel of a mod.
I have only played one game and it has grinded to a halt in the late game since I am only earning 5.000 science each turn compared to the 20.000 the computer appears to be chucking out (read: I tech slowly because I am a bad player).

Now for the actual feedback.
-- The new affinity system will require some getting used to but other then that it is a great addition. I am currently 8 affinity points after all AI's but that is to be expected since I was only picking tech that gave me the Affinity I wanted but didn't really build any affinity generating buildings or tile upgrades. That came later.

-- The worker thing was a surprise and I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand it is an awesome system that makes it worth stealing them from your opponents. On the other hand. I am constantly in need of more workers! With how bad I am at defending my workers from aliens I feel I cripple myself more then usually because that one worker I CAN keep alive suddenly disappears after 4-10 uses. (Though, saw the wonder that gives them INF charges. Sadly the computer got that) :-(

-- I really want to comment on the espionage thing but the only experience I have with it is stealing energy (cash) and workers. The intrigue is combated by the AI rather efficiently in my game so I have only reached level 2 in any city. (Again I might just suck at this xD)

-- At my late stage of the game all my cities are surrounded by Nodes and the computer has Biowells or Factories anywhere with no strategic resource. Might want to look into that. I had designated a city as my main production city since it was placed in a very hilly area. But neither my Nanoscape or my Node gave any increased production. I either had a mine with +1 production or Node with 1 food, 4 energy, 3 Science and 1 Culture. The choice is kind of a no brainer.
-- -- As an after note to this I read your Mod Guide and it did state Supremacy would drown in energy. Furthermore I have concluded my strategy (or lack there off) wasn't suited for Supremacy. (Though I like their units the most q.q)

-- I really like how all wonders require a strategically resource. Suddenly it becomes a land grab exercise when I wanted to wonderhord. A surprise, but not an unwelcome challenge.

-- The moon base is also a nice addition. The computer dose not appear to utilise it though. I am not sure since the victory condition only states it is at the "Build 3 moon modules". However, since it is able to build 80% of all wonders before I even get the tech for them I am not sure how much of the new Moon Base resources it has in stock.
-- -- As a side note: Does the Moon base interfere with the planet quest in any way? I am suppose to explore 6 alien cities but I can't for the life of me locate the 6th. Have full map vision (with com. satellites and spy satellites) but the 6th city is no where in sight.

-- Combat wise I haven't felt anything different. Might be I cant remember the beat downs I used to get when I fell behind. But other then my tier 2 Missile Vehicle only doing 6 damage to a tier 3 unit with 90 HP or my tier 3 fliers getting absolutely mauled by any tier 4 units with air retaliation capabilities. I still feel like crawling up in a corner and send my AI Affinity allies at the bad AI. (Which is how I am currently winning. 3v1 since it keeps declaring war on me and get the two other AI on its plate at the same time.

-- The empire management is a god send! I have been missing it since Civ I and II. Though I have reached a point where my energy production is so high (see every free tile is producing 4 energy because of Nodes) that I have every thing set to MAX except taxes. This gives me roughly 3.000 culture each round. (Again see the tile improvements)
-- -- After reading the Mod Guide this was explained as a Supremacy thing. Though the culture generations is probably from the huge bonus the Empire Manager gives me.

I could probably comment on some more additions, but overall I really like this mod and will probably keep playing with it.

What are your future plans for additions or adjustments? I understand the tile improvement system wasn't incorporated completely like you had wanted?
I am thinking about perhaps giving aliens and miasma more of a presence mid to late game or perhaps add/modify units? Personally I am hoping the Explorer would be able to receive affinity upgrades (Have a mod that does that but I will not play nice with Codex).

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

Tech Tree: Because everything's been shuffled around and crammed together in smaller boxes, it makes the tech tree even harder to interpret and read, which is a big problem considering everyone had issues with the tech web in base game. To answer your question, there's no info on how to get manufactories or academies, which is frustrating.

Out of interest: Did you try using the tech filters? They're meant to help with that.

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

Overall, I like the concept of the Mod, but the execution leaves me wanting the base game's production, economy and research systems. There's no need to change the whole mod on my sole objection. I just find the mod more aggravating than fun.

Yes, I'll obviously not change the mod based on feedback of one person, but I still find it very helpful to know what people who couldn't warm up with the mod at all found the most annoying, and whether it's objective design problems, or just an individual having preferences that don't match the goals of the mod - in this case it seems to be a bit of both, so I'll see what I can do to make things more intuitive.

So thanks for your feedback. :)

Yeah I do use the filters. It's still cluttered IMO. Good luck with the mod.

Originally posted by RadarCDN:

Originally posted by Ryika:

Could you explain what exactly you mean by this? What information do you think is missing?


That's odd. It's balanced in a way that is meant to make players use about half of their Agents defensively (Agents level up when they kill opposing Agents), and that seemed to work out fine in my games. I'll keep a closer eye on it in the next few games, but it's also worth noting that having a bit of intrigue in one city is not the end of the world (it can be re-added really quickly by using the Infiltrate Government Operation), and that defensive Agents are supposed to be moved around when Intrigue has been lowered.


Improvements are unlocked by Affinity. The general concept of the mod is that you don't just focus on one thing, but instead have to find a balance between all yields. Growth and Production will help you get your cities going whilch helps you get your virtues/technologies/Diplo Traits going, which then feed back into your city development, etc.


That's actually partly how it works currently. This mod has removed a lot of starting bonuses from AIs below Gemini. That includes free technologies, and free starting units.

Instead, it gets free Workers, Settlers and Playerperks throughout the game to allow them to keep up/get ahead. Workers are given out periodically on any difficulty and mainly serve to solve the fact that the AI is incapable of improving plots that actually matter, the turns between Settlers scales with Difficulty, it's 200 turns on the lowest and second-lowest difficulties, then 150 on Vostok, 90 on Gemini, etc.

Both Playerperks are given out during the early and late midgame only and their role is to somewhat equalize the impact that players get from the Empire Manager + Quests.

There is nothing that allows AIs to get ahead very early on if you're playing below Soyuz, and AIs that have large armies have probably just ignored their Empire Development (which the player can also do by just spamming units and Thorium Reactors).

Scores are meaningless both, in this mod and the base game.

Don't know how to Format quotes into interject my own comments. Bear with me.

Tech Tree: Because everything's been shuffled around and crammed together in smaller boxes, it makes the tech tree even harder to interpret and read, which is a big problem considering everyone had issues with the tech web in base game. To answer your question, there's no info on how to get manufactories or academies, which is frustrating.

Spies were addressed.

Improvements and empire management: Ah, that's what I was afaid of. Devoting so much time to producing buildings is killing my ability to produce military units early game, which is a big problem due to the amount of units the AI throws at me. Taking the focus away from improvements hampers the mod, and the way the mod works over complicates the game IMO.

Difficulty: I'm playing on Sputnik (used to play on Gemini in base game) and the progression is relatively level until mid game, when the AI starts to get 8 in every affinity and I've only got five in a single one. Because of the aforementioned Tech Web issue, I can't find manufactories to help me out, which really kills my ability to compete mid to late game. My experience with this mod on gemini difficulty really contradicts your statement about no early game AI advantages, as they were kicking my ass around turn 120, with higher affinities, more cities, more research, and larger armies.

Overall, I like the concept of the Mod, but the execution leaves me wanting the base game's production, economy and research systems. There's no need to change the whole mod on my sole objection. I just find the mod more aggravating than fun.

I actually find the new tech tree quite easy to use. I'm loving it. There's a very clear and obvious progression you should make. Only thing I could say negatively about it is I wish there were more options in the beginning or more wonders to pursue. Very early games are tending to play out the same for me.

I also like how advanced improvements work quite a bit. I think the connection with affinity should've been in the base game. The trouble you're having may be that you're just not used to the new strategies this mod forces you to do. No more academies and manufactories means no more obvious easy ways for production and science (which I approve strongly of). If just means you have to find out the other ways to get them. With this mod you just need to spend time figuring out the new way to play.

As for the military problem, I've been encountering it too. I'm finding getting an early production city setup (I mean the industry specialization) and just spewing out units with it for a bit can be effective. An industry specialized city, even without many strong industry improvements, can be amazingly productive. Also, it sounds like you may like going purity. It gives you the manufactories, and with supremacy 5 manufactories get even more productive. You can also give domes 2 science at purity 7. Those two combinations there are quite powerful.

So far I've beaten the game once on the level below soyuz and it looks like I'm going to beat it a second time. I like the difficulty. Its good but not too hard. Of course, an early war can screw you up, but the same can be said of Civ 5 BNW. The difficulty feels like me to be comparable to Civ 5 with this mod. To be honest, base Beyond Earth was a boring cakewalk. I welcome the new difficulty. I can see though how someone would see this as too difficult when comparing it to the base game, since you really don't have to play efficiently to win in it. I welcome the new difficulty and need to plan a good strategy though :)

Overall I feel things have been very well done in this. Keep up the good work Ryika! This mod is the only reason I came back to this game, and now I can't stop playing it!

Quick question: Are you sure that gene garden is providing the appropriate yields? I just created two of them (using v 3 of the mod), and there was no change in the purity per turn.
UPDATE: I think i figured out why. Although I've been aiming to make purity my dominant affinity, somehow it seems that harmony is (although all three affinities are currently at the same level, 4).

Buildings should always grant yields, even if they're not your dominant affinity.

Note that Affinity per Turn is only calculated once at the beginning of the turn, but there may be an actual problem given that there's another report of a similar problem, but I can't recreate them myself, so it may occur under some rare circumstances only. I'll have a closer look at it later when I'm at home, but if the problem occurs again for you, it would be nice if you could look at the logs and see if you get any errors (as described in category 2 of this guide: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=569681601)

Specifically errors from Ryika_BuildingFunctions.lua would likely be the cause.