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Fridge Logic

  • Alpha-Centauri is based on the premise that Humanity could juuuust barely reach the nearest star and their united effort to do so broke up at the last minute along ideological boundaries. Beyond Earth on the other hand gives you a variety of sponsors and planets from the loading screen which have different names and belong to different systems. If there's no pretense of Pan-Human co-operation and a bunch of likely Hospitable planets available, why do all of Earth's divided nations go to one instead of fanning out to increase their odds of survival?
    • It's implied that the Seeding did target multiple planets, with various nations and blocs sending more than one ship out there. A few quests also involve dealing with off-world humans from another colony world.
    • There are similar projects across other planets too, but any individual game only focuses on one of the planets.
  • Do all the planets actually just represent one hospitable planet? It seems strange that all these resources would be so prevalent in the galaxy regardless of environment but completely absent from Earth. Is it possible that the Progenitors went on some sort of Terraforming mission so that every hospitable planet looks like their old home with only a few exceptions?
    • Schrödinger's Canon. Of all the available, potentially habitable planets humans set out for, the one you land on each game is a variant of the one with miasma, bugs, floatstone, firaxite, and xenomass. It could have been cool to have many different kinds of habitable planets with different kinds of resources and alien lifeforms available, but that probably would have been beyond the scope of a single game, or even expansions.

Fridge Brilliance

  • As described on the WMG page of Alpha Centauri, the "canon" ending of that game is most likely an alliance between Gaia's Stepdaughters, the Peacekeepers and the University of Planet initiating the Transcendence ending. Following from this, it makes sense that, Civilization: Beyond Earth being a Spiritual Successor to that game, those three factions map well to the three affinities of it. Harmony maps to Gaia's Stepdaughters, Purity maps to the Peacekeepers (with some of the Luddism and "Promised Land" mentality of the Lord's Believers), and Supremacy maps to the University of Planet.
  • Kavitha Thakur is hailed as a prophet and a spiritual leader, but background material gives no specifics on what her teachings actually are. It makes sense to leave it ambiguous because of the affinity system - leaving it blank allows the player to freely fill in the blanks for whatever victory condition they're aiming towards, rather than tailoring their Kavithan playthroughs to match an established doctrine.
    • The same goes for all the other faction leaders. If you read their speeches/writings explaining their worldview and motivation for taking part of the expedition from the game's official page, they are all generic enough so that they can pick any one of the three affinities without contradicting their characterization. Look at the speech from Kozlov, for example: He made references to the past glory of the Slavic people and how they must not forget their past (Purity), lamented how humanity has tortured and plundered the Earth, wasting its last resources (Harmony), and boasted about all the technological achievements that enabled the golden age in the past (Supremacy).
  • There's actually an in-game reason why factions can no longer trade technologies. With past Civilization games, the technology has been about making leaps and bounds. The progression to the peak of human technology is no longer what is important; it's about the where, not the what. While it makes sense that a Purity would never trade a Purity tech to a Harmony faction, it also makes sense that two Supremacy factions would not trade Supremacy techs. Not because they feel they don't need the tech, but because they're setting out their own course. You can have two of the same affinity go to war with one another. So in-universe, it's the factions blazing a particular course.
  • The Seeding colonization programme can be described as what the Unity project in Alpha Centauri would look like had there been more time and resources allocated. Or alternatively, the Unity project shows what would have happened if the Seeding programme was attempted during the Great Mistake instead of after humanity having recovered from it. As a result, in Alpha Centauri, you had no option to choose your colonists or your cargo load outs due to limited time and resources. Also, as a result of having lived through a much harsher period of human history as well as not having multiple sponsor nations (and one corporation) launching their own ships compared to the one nominally UN-mandated ship, the faction leaders from Alpha Centauri would have developed much more radical and extreme ideological views when compared to those from Civilization: Beyond Earth.
  • The disdain Harmony and Supremacy have for Purity has an added weight in relation to their new world: namely, that Purity (in their eyes) still hasn't come to terms with the fact that they're not home anymore. That in a sense, their souls are weighed down by (Earth's) gravity, further emphasized by the Promised Land victory's focus on bringing as many reinforcements from Earth into their new home, supposedly free from mankind's cradle.
    • Another reason why Harmony and Supremacy might favor transhumanism and forgetting Earth is that, well... Earth failed. A person who just came from the ruined Earth may very well be seriously questioning whether or not humanity and Earth are even things worth saving, almost as a sort of Identity Crisis. Under Harmony and Supremacy, they slowly slide down this path until they feel more native to this planet than any other — and for justifiable reasons.
      • As part of the above, this would explain why the Exodus Gate requires such a high Purity affinity ranking. It requires the descendants of Earth to face the hard questions of human nature, yet ultimately choose to value their humanity — enough to conclude that the humans who caused the Great Mistake are their long-lost kin, and despite all of their ancestors' failings, they're still absolutely worth saving!
  • The affinity grid in Rising Tide provides three hybrid affinities that, when you think about it, are diametric opposites to each of the standard affinities. Supremacy, which technologically optimizes humanity, is opposite Harmony/Purity, which biologically optimizes humanity. Harmony, where biological components take the place of technology, is opposite Supremacy/Purity, where robots take the place of organic soldiers. As for Purity, the raw and unadulterated human form as we know it? Opposite Harmony/Supremacy, whose alien-like tech/bio mishmash is the affinity that least resembles familiar humanity.
  • Han Jae Moon's affinity advancement would look rather dull compared to the others in the expansion, which looks nothing more than changing the colors and adding accessories to his traditional Western styled suit. Until you remember that being in charge of what's basically a secretive spy organization, he can't show off any alterations lest his potential enemies know what they need to counteract. Instead of making the advancements blatantly obvious, he makes it as subtle as a color change of his clothing to both fool potential enemies that he's weaker than them and make it easy to distract them from his hidden advantages.
    • Adding to this, the best spies are the ones who draw the least attention to themselves. On a planet inhabited by cyborgs, human-alien hybrids, and normal humans in advanced suits of combat armor, anyone who has genetic or cybernetic augmentations would never survive during an infiltration of a colony with a different ideology. It does, however, make sense to assume that every colony has citizens either unwilling or unable to get the various "improvements" that define the colony's ideology, meaning that normal, unaltered humans have the easiest time infiltrating other colonies. On top of that, the other leaders all wear elaborate outfits while Han Jae Moon wears a simple suit and has a generic appearance that appropriately fits his position as the head of a secret organization, possibly allowing him to vanish into a crowd in any colony or city on the planet.
  • Why does the Purity affinity take on Roman visual motifs? Well, that's because with their values of recalling humanity's past but trying to improve on it, they've already basically doing the Renaissance again, so the Roman visual motifs are a natural extension of that.

Fridge Horror

  • Just as there are good and bad ways of viewing the philosophies of each affinity, each of them also contains elements of serious horror. Even though Beyond Earth might seem less pessimistic in general than its predecessor, the fear of loss remains a theme. For Harmony and Supremacy, it's not wanting to lose the environment or technology respectively, but Purity is more shocking. In the centuries-long dark age following the Great Mistake, think about how much human culture - Earth culture - that was lost. The real Earth's dark ages were short and costly enough, so add a few more centuries to the mix and the Purity philosophy takes on a sad, desperate vibe of regret. In the eyes of Purity, adopting the philosophies of the other two affinities (and discarding humanity) would be yet another Great Mistake. Hiding behind their guns becomes less isolationist and more quiet (or not so quiet) desperation.
    • Also, there is the element that the various countries (and one corporation) of Earth put all their efforts towards the colonisation programme, hoping to secure a new future for humanity. And what do the Harmony and Supremacy do? From Purity's perspective, the bastards abandon their legacy and their implicit promise in order to turn themselves into aliens and cyborgs - to the point where Harmony is literally no longer human, and Supremacy actually invades Earth. Purity followers would be horrified to see the other colonies betray their heritage to this degree. Kind of puts the dickishness of kicking colonies with other affinities off their land to settle Earthlings into perspective — Purity isn't genociding the other planet colonies, they're protecting Earth!
      • It's stated outright as you leave that Earth is a dying world. For all their other failings, Purity goes back and rescues everyone who is still left. Supremacy invades, but at least ensures that the surviving Humans are augmented to a stage where their survival is guaranteed. Harmony is the worst of all, shedding the last of their humanity and forgetting about those who they've left behind, abandoning them to the dying Earth with only faint memories of the seed — and the last hope — that they launched into space.
      • In keeping with Schrödinger's Canon... none of the affinity victories contradict each other. Imagine remaining on the dying Earth, waiting only for a third of your successful colonies to invade, with armed cyborgs fighting each other over the right to claim Earth and automatise you. You're forced to rely on a different third - with an eerily respectful tone and a worrying ignorance of Earth's actual history - to evacuate you. Whatever happened to all the other colonies? No one knows. They've made no contact.
  • A piece of Fridge Horror to do with the reveal trailer - we see bits and pieces of the various nations' space programmes, preparing their Seeding missions. We get to see a little from the ARC, from Franco-Iberia, from Brasilia..... and from Egypt. There is no Egyptian/Arabian faction playable in the game. It is also canon that there have been previous Seeding missions which failed, which is why Abandoned Settlements are among the expedition sites you can find (and why they can even contain population which then settles in your nearest city). From a Doylist perspective, this probably means that an Arabian faction was planned but eventually changed/discarded, or might show up in future DLC. However, from a Watsonian perspective, we're most likely looking at one of the failed Seeding missions. The trailer is showing us a doomed expedition.
    • The letter from Barre to his brother implies that, despite being centered around sub-Saharan Africa, the PAU controls Egypt, so it's likely that the Seeding mission launched in Egypt was the PAU colony. That said, the point that the unrepresented areas of the world are represented - as failed expeditions - still stands.
      • It's likely that if an expansion is brought out the Middle East, Northern Europe and a few other regions will get some more explicit representation. For now, it's possible to imagine that they launched a seeding mission to an entirely different planet or that they've bought into KP and ARC respectively.
      • The Rising Tide expansion pack confirms that the Middle Eastern countries did send out their own Seeding mission, albeit in the form of a Generation Ship. The result being Al-Falah.
      • The pack also confirms The North Sea Alliance representing the British isles, and INTEGR for Germany.
      • With as many factions as there are, not all of them will show up in every game. Odds are the factions you don't choose to play as and the AI doesn't choose to play against you were in those abandoned settlements. Or they went to an entirely different planet, and fared not well at all (as the Augments).
  • Imagine a Purity invasion from the perspective of a Harmony or Supremacy civ's citizen. While civilizations being conquered by those with different Affinities has always been implied to be bad, it would be especially bad in the event of a Purity invasion - Purity citizens in Supremacy or Harmony civs might be looked down upon for not augmenting themselves, but a Harmony or Supremacy citizen in a Purity civ has to live with the fact that their rulers are completely devoted to the philosophy that they should not exist.
    • Adding to the horror is the threat of forceful augmentation or, if Purity is the invader, forceful de-augmentation. At best, it might be a simple procedure like a mental transfer into a cloned body, but at worst, you might have your enhancements forcibly added/removed with you kicking and screaming all the way through - and if you're on the "removed" end of the spectrum, end up a physical or even mental cripple with no replacements provided for your removed augmentations. That's not even getting into the psychological damage of lost aspirations, perceived violations of the soul or (in the case of a Purity invasion) the sudden removal of your immortal lifespan and the forced return of mortality.
      • Possible partial nightmare retardant: there actually is a quest (Solid State Citizen) where you encounter a group of cyborgs. The Purity option is to build them a home and restore their humanity, on the basis that "augmentations should be a choice, not something mandated by survival". It's probable that the worst thing that happens to you if you get conquered (if you survive the bombs falling, that is) is having to wait in line to be de-auged.
      • However, no matter how peaceful the de-augmentation process is, you're still being forcibly Brought Down to Normal. Someone who's lifespan just decreased from "indefinite barring accidents" to "a hundred years, tops" will probably have some existential issues, or even see it as nothing more than a roundabout way to kill them while pretending to have the moral high ground. After all, isn't murder sometimes defined as "significantly reducing someone's lifespan against their will?"
  • In the Contact victory, the victorious faction constructs a Contact Beacon to make First Contact with the aliens known as the progenitors that once inhabited the planet. The story then simply ends there, with the narrator stating that no matter what happens, humanity will be ready for what faces them, yet there is no elaboration on how the first contact with the progenitors goes down. We get no confirmation on whether or not the progenitors are Benevolent Precursors or Scary Dogmatic Aliens or even Eldritch Abominations. And looking back at the Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, there was also a Contact victory condition that requires you to build Contact Beacons... which results in the Progenitor Victory, in which one of the alien factions calls in a fleet of reinforcements so powerful that it is well beyond the combined abilities of all the human colonies on Planet to combat, resulting in the total extermination of the human colonists.
    • Given how the sequel Sid Meier's Starships shows the result of the Progenitor victory leading to starship warfare, the reality is the so called progenitors are in fact humans who have become so inhuman like that they would be mistaken for aliens, so the progenitors are possibly humans who somehow have uncovered temporal manipulation tech in hopes of avoiding the mistakes of their ancestors. Only to ultimately fail and vanish without a trace
  • The worst horror about the Purity affinity might very well be its final goal: To recreate Earth. The Earth which *ahem*, eventually destroyed itself. Even the most well-meaning Purist may be dooming the world to repeating its greatest mistake.

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