Is the Biomes DLC worth it?

[Deco Boladasso]

It seems its just 3 maps, not being able to transfer the new climate options to new custom maps. Are the maps on the DLC good?

[Silent_Shadow]

The base game has only 6 maps so you're getting 50% more maps.
There are also more and more maps on the workshop with different climates.

If you are a somewhat new player, I would not recommend the DLC because it doesn't really add any new mechanics or features to the game so much as just rebalancing the ones already present:
• The siberia climate makes winter last a lot longer.
• The desert climate greatly restricts the land usable for farming and sourcing water.
• The tropical climate has more frequent rain, which makes starts slower, but no winter.

Experienced players may enjoy these differences because they demand a different approach than normal, but they will have to decide if that is worth the price.

[Drogowit]

Originally posted by Deco Boladasso:

It seems its just 3 maps, not being able to transfer the new climate options to new custom maps. Are the maps on the DLC good?

I haven't played Asian map yet but from Desert I like that borders have no electricity so go figure and good luck out there.
And Siberia has fertile period between +/- 12 may and september, rest of the year is snow + hard geography. Fun but imo more painful than Desert.

I like that DLC simply coz of diff mechanics i.e. time of year, temperature averages, water and humidity, diff border entry point. Is a nice variation outside of all the workshop maps

[Whitek3t]

As the main game, the Biomes dlc would shine with the help of the modding community.

Right now, the 3 maps have map-specific place names on them too which is a nice touch. However, this is not implemented on modded maps which kinds of break the immersion.

The infamous no power connection on the Arab map has already been fixed, so I hope that some time soon the other quirks would also be fixed.

Only buy now to support the devs, their asking price is not yet worth it, but it's going to get there eventually.

[Erce]

The asia map is great. You can play with seasons off without the guilt of playing with seasons off, because it's just how the map is.

[Whitek3t]

Originally posted by Erce:

The asia map is great. You can play with seasons off without the guilt of playing with seasons off, because it's just how the map is.

If only they made the map style like the default Eastern Europe map and not the random map-style landscape, I would have played it.

[roxik0]

I treat it as thank you :) to devs :) for amount of hours I spended playing this game. However If I should put review only on DLC itself then i would say I'm little dissapointed :) (I think main proble is that it should be BIOME option in map generator too and there is no such stuff or I missed it). Besides that I looking foward for more DLC like support for steam locomotives

[Kiirozu]

Has the devs said anything about the DLC getting a future ability to generate maps with these new biomes?

[Deco Boladasso]

Its a shame that its this way up to now. As I'm Brazilian, I was interested into the tropical map, but its clearly set to be akin to a southern Asian country instead of a Latin American setting. The best I can do is to use rain via cheats, but then I do lose achievments and it would rain when I do want.

[Deco Boladasso]

Originally posted by Erce:

The asia map is great. You can play with seasons off without the guilt of playing with seasons off, because it's just how the map is.

I did play sometimes in a tropical climate map in Latin America, as you can replace vegetation and climate (it won't rain as much tho). Its way, way better than playing in a snow muddy terrain as in Eastern Europe. This made me think how much trouble did those guys had to just keep their economy running without freezing to death.
To me it was better because not only it hit closer to home, as I didn't like the whole thing about need to keep heating running. It was boring and sometimes hard to predict. Having a scenario in which I create a populated map to bring the revolution to a Latin American island and increase their living standards; or have the Soviets to colozine the Amazonian wilderness in an unpopulated map was very cool indeed.