I've been on Civfanatics for years and my take is that a lot--maybe a large majority--of the hardcore players won't touch Civ 5.  Firaxis reduced a chess-like game to a checkers-like game, which makes it a waste of time for fans who want a strategy fix.  I haven't played G&K but the problems were in the core design of the game, so it's unlikely to be fixable without starting from scratch.

Anyway, back on topic, why is everyone so glum?  Galactic Civilizations 1 & 2 got great reviews.  Assuming that the quality is the same, shouldn't EFE get similar treatment? 

Now 65-70. 

Most of us that have played the game and supported StarDock have seen how far this game has come since WoM and are basing our assumptions of "nothing less than a 4 star game" on the amount of improvement between FE and WoM and not of the game itself. I can easily imagine reviewers looking at FE and saying things like, "No siege battles, no multiplayer, tactical combat not fleshed out, balancing still needs a little work, seems like the game components aren't gelled together yet... after some updates and expansions this could be a great game. StarDock has come a long way from WoM but is still running down the home stretch before the finish line. I give it 3.5/5 stars."

Reviewers today I think put too much emphasis on how easy the game is to get into. Niche games with steep learning curves? Dominions 3 - 82, Distant Worlds - 78. SotS Prime never got above a 79 even with the expansions (Prime -68, BoB - 79, MoC - 75). All of those games I consider to be strategy classics worthy of space on anybody's HDD... yet only Dom3 cleared the 80 Metacritic bar by a measley two points. FE should get around an 85, but I will not be surprised to see it hovering around 75-79.

My guess is, if the early-game is easy and manageable, (or its easy to learn how to play), then it will have a rather high rating due to its unique identity among games, and there are actually a lot of cool ideas in the game.

If the early-game is too hard or difficult to learn, then it will go waaay down from what the game "should" have earned... Right now I am mostly concerned about the early game for Elemental's release.

After release, I will be concerned somewhat equally about the whole game, mostly because I want more!

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

79

SOASE: Rebellion is currently 82.  FE is already better than SOASE.  If they just released the beta as-is, no new content, no campaign, 85-87.

The campaign and the extra content that they're holding back from release makes it impossible to predict.

If the campaign is entertaining and the new content is quality stuff, 90-95.

If the campaign is buggy and the new content underwhelming, 75-79.

75 metascore, because enemy player AI is no match for a human player still. (I wish the world difficulty was set to insane by default, that way reviewers probably wouldn't find out )

60 userscore, because metacritic is full of zero-score-review trolls.

For me, it's a solid 85 with potential to grow even higher.

I think I speak for many here when I say, what are you talking about?

You must be one hell of a player.  I have a 5/1 loss/win ratio on ridiculous in .992

The one win was so scummy that it does not really count (Altar, started sheltered by Markin and Tarth, abused maps and henchmen, and still barely made it)

I expect to bring this to 1/1, but no higher.  I do not think insane is even possible without finding a combo that's abusive enough to require nerfing.

Another stardock game.

Lot of ambition.

Lack of polish.

Just like Demigod this will never feel finished.

average reviewscore will probably be around 7.0

What is nice about the prediction thread is that we will get to remember who predicted what.

The reviewers will play the game at the default difficulty tho, not ridiculous. Even if they are made aware that the AI is better at higher difficulties, they will probably not go over challenging, since that's where the AI is playing at it's best while still not 'cheating'. And on challenging, your win/loss ratio would be way better than 1/5, i bet.

As far as I know and from what the ingame tooltips state Challenging is the highest difficulty using all the AI code and the higher ones just add mass cheating to the AI's features.

Which is a better way to do it than most games.

I really think the AI is pretty good, hope it gets better, but I only think this when I compare to other games, and when I notice how difficult it is to manage heroes - just right in this game.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

75%, maybe 80%. There's good things in FE, but quite a few mechanics work at odds with each other. And some design decisions are downright questionable.

Most of these could be modded away, but it would kill the AI.