WMG / Civilization: Beyond Earth

The Great Mistake was caused by Gandhi.

While they are leaving it deliberately ambiguous, the developers of the game have claimed that the Great Mistake could have been a nuclear exchange in Asia. Now, who in the Civilization series is nuke-happy enough to launch them at another nuclear power, and lives in Asia? Gandhi, the true Big Bad of the Civilization series. As corollary to this, the reason that the Supremacy victory involves invading Earth is not because Science Is Bad, but because Gandhi rules over it as a cruel dictator.

• If this theory is true, then the Emancipation Victory involves sending an army of fracking robot cyborgs to defeat evil dictator Gandhi. You sir, are Made of Win.
• And that means the Promised Land Victory makes you the herald of Nuke-crazy Gandhi, who proceeds to conquer the planet, probably using said nukes. Yay?
• Alternatively, it could have been caused by the Always Chaotic Evil Barbarians.

The American Reclamation Corporation is a front organization for EXALT.

EXALT is seemingly very heavily decentralized, so destroying their headquarters would just slow them down, not stop them completely. Since XCOM appears in Civ 5, and the science victory is essentially the beginning of Beyond Earth, you can draw connections. As for evidence that they're a front? Look at the ARC symbol◊ and compare it to the EXALT◊ symbol. The Doylist explanation is that both symbols are designed to evoke Illuminati conspiracy theories, but a Watsonian explanation would be that they are simply two different sides of the same organization.

• Alternatively, EXALT is the American Reclamation Corporation's black ops unit that the company can disavow if things go south.
  • Since EXALT existed in XCOM's time period, presumably far before the Great Mistake, EXALT must predate the ARC for a long time, so they can't be a front for them.
• Alternatively alternatively, ARC actually had its roots in XCOM. If you look at this trailer, the people manning ARC's mission control is wearing similar clothing to the XCOM operatives in The Bureau.
  • That might because both were going for the classic NASA, Gene Kranz, look.

Canada falls under the purview of the American Reclamation Corporation.

The vaguely defined structures of each faction, and the implications of those not fully revealed, seem to divide the world into various multinational chunks: People's African Union covers Africa, Pan-Asian Cooperative gets China and its neighbours, Kavithan Protectorite covering India and probably the Middle East, Slavic Federation presumably gets Russia and Eastern Europe, Franco-Iberia getting Western Europe, Brazilia getting all of South America, and Polystralia being Australia and various Oceania nations. That leaves the American Reclamation Corporation with... well, America, but likely also its neighbours of Mexico and Canada.

With specific regards to Canada's status, here are a number of guesses as to how the link exists:

• Canada was militarily conquered by the US or ARC during or after the Great Mistake.
• Canada willingly joined with the United States for stability's sake after the Great Mistake.
• Canada's government collapsed during the Great Mistake and its remnants were absorbed by the US or ARC in the aftermath.
• Canada or Canada-based Mega Corps were bought out by the American Reclamation Corporation.
• The ARC covers all portions of the Americas not part of Brazilia, and Canada falls under that.

• ARC is a corporation without national borders strictly speaking; it was founded in the United States but has no necessarily territorial jurisdiction. So, it's likely a multinational effort, centered in the US but drawing on many different nations, particularly those of NAFTA which would include Canada and Mexico. There's no need for buying out/conquering/assimilating Canada or a Canadian Mega Corps because there's no reason that ARC would be nationalized any more than Walmart. It's possible that a lot of Brits, Irish, Polystraylians and other unrepresentation nations might have citizens who applied for work with ARC and ultimately became a part of their seeding.

• There is of course another explanation for any given nation not showing up...

A "United Commonwealth" or similar faction will become future DLC.

As an alternate to the above, Canada will be part of some Neo British Empire that covers all UK territories that are not aligned with other factions.

• The Polystralia faction makes several references to a "Commonwealth", so the idea of a separate DLC seems jossed, though it does open up the idea that maybe Polystralia IS this faction - that instead of having Britain as its head, Australia is the leading country.
• Considering how independant Australia is in this, it's unlikely Canada would return to their equally estranged colonial roots. It's more likely that they'll get their own faction in coming DLC/Expansions, if not simply being considered a part of ARC. It is possible that Britain may have suffered from rising waterlevels or some other disaster that causes them to merge into Canada, though it's just as likely they'll get their own faction as well or merge into the Northern Europeans.
  • Confirmed. The North Sea Alliance in Rising Tide consists of Britain and the Scandinavian countries.

The Great Mistake was related to the events of XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

• Following the invasion, the massive boost in technological progress combined with the massively shifted geopolitical climate lead to new chaos. Wars break out across the globe, utilizing the dwindling Meld reserves to create genetically modified soldiers and MEC troopers to be deployed in wars for food and land.

The aliens of the "Contact" victory left because they got the "Transcendence" victory.

• By that, I mean the aliens got to the "learn that the planet is alive with its own consciousness" level of the Transcendence victory and were freaked out by the concept, opting to abandon the planet instead of letting their minds merge with the planetary consciousness.

The aliens of the "Contact" victory left because they were followers of Supremacy.

• Having fully emancipated themselves from their former ecosystem, they decided to leave it be and become space nomads.

The Great Mistake was caused by the 2014 World Cup.

• Brazil's defeat in the the 2014 World Cup at German hands causes them to turn into the militaristic society they are in Beyond Earth and they proceed with the total destruction of all things German in a massive war that engulfs the whole world. This is also why Germany is not a playable faction in this game.
  • Funny, but Jossed. INTEGR, one of the new factions in Rising Tide, confirms that Germany in some form still exists in the future.

The planetary entry process renders all faction leaders (and very initial colonists) into The Ageless.

• This is why Kavitha is not the only immortal, ageless leader. Which leads into the next WMG...

Kavitha has been to the colony planet before.

Either by alien abduction, the Great Mistake, a combination of the two, or something else entirely, Kavitha became the prophet she is today (and The Ageless) by visiting the new planet approximately two hundred years before The Seeding began.

• Considering a recent preview mentioned a quest being triggered after your explorer finds a human skeleton in alien ruins that is thousands of years old, this might not be so far fetched anymore.
  • Jossed, the human skeleton is actually from a colonist of yours that was sent back in time after entering the ruins, who encounters the Precursors at the height of their civilization.

The reason the Supremacy victory is called Emancipation is because Earth isn't nice to native cyborgs.

• Initially, their goal is same as the Purity's faction, reestablishing contact with Earth to help bring their planet under their dominion...and then they discover that the native Earth governments have an absolutely horrifying view of cybernetic and artificial life, and their goal switches to "stop this crime against us and our cousins by any means necessary, ergo remaining free ourselves."

The full name for the ARC is the American Nation Reclamation Corporation.

• It just rolls off the tongue really well.

What happens after the Contact Victory.

• Upon being contacted and befriended by one of the factions, the aliens agree to use their knowledge and ressources to assist in a diplomatic solution to the ongoing conflicts. Followers of Purity travel back to Earth as it fully recovers from the Great Mistake. Followers of Supremacy achieve their emancipation from ecosystems and begin a nomadic life in outer space. Followers of Harmony learn about the planetary consciousness and merge with it. Everyone keeps each other's phone numbers and has a good time.

Kavitha Thakur is a Personified Nation.

• More specifically, she's India's daughter, born shortly before the Great Mistake and ultimately replaces him as the anthropomorphic embodiment of the country, if not the entire Indian Sub-Continent. But in order to ensure her safety as a baby, she was placed in the care of one Raj Thakur, who "adopted" her as his own child. It would definitely explain why she seemed the youngest of all the faction leaders and simultaneously the oldest. And after 200 years, she's long come to recognize her peculiar identity but nonetheless downplays it, preferring to be a political/religious leader who cares for her "people."
  • Alternatively, she might have been born at the moment of the cataclysm (and therefore the embodiment of how they intend to move forward), which is well-known to give you superpowers. (There is fictional precedent.)

High-Tech Hexagons are the future of fashion.

• The majority of leaders have hexagon clothing patterns either by default or through affinity improvement, so it seems reasonable.

The Indian woman in the opening cinematic is reunited with her father if the Protectorate achieves a Promised Land victory.

• Since that would both be heartwarming and very much in character for Kavitha and her protectorate. At that stage survival is pretty much assured by LEV tanks so reuniting her colonists with their families that stayed behind on Earth is feasible and would raise morale through the roof.
  • Not so sure about that, given that it's implied that it would take centuries to reach that point. If that woman's still alive by that point, she would more likely meet a descendant of her family left behind on Earth.
    • Given that the game's timespan is multiple centuries, the woman is most likely dead... Unless she was in a Supremacy Protectorate, in which case she could be rendered immortal through technology, and she would be able to reunited with her father's descendants if the Protectorate achieves an Emancipation victory and returns to Earth.

If there is going to be DLC or Expansion Packs, the new factions will serve as Foils to the current factions.

And their backstories will involve being formed shortly after The Seeding sent the first factions into space, and their formation was the result of the Earth sliding from overpopulated and underresourced imploding on itself, and the new factions forming from the ashes of the old Earth blocs.The list of examples:

• The New Patriots: After the ARC had subjected the American people to economic domination and political tyranny, a bunch of would-be "New Founding Fathers" went revolution on their ass, taking equal cues from the anti-corporate "Occupy Wall Street" protests, and the anti-government "Tea Partier" movements. The end result was an America made of rugged blue collar workers who were hard-working and industrious, but also scorned most technological advancements as just being tools for "The Man". But ultimately, even they realized that they couldn't sustain the Fallen States of America they were left with, and scraped together just enough resources to send their own space colony after The Seeding ships. They will be a bit more stereotypical in America portrayals (probably taking the Americans Are Cowboys tropes to Space Cowboy levels), but mostly serve as the opposite of the ARC - the Patriots are space pioneers who live more simply and honestly than the stuck-up, money-grubbing ARC executive, and also don't fall to the same Chronic Backstabbing Disorder the ARC uses either. Don't think they're pushovers, though: where the ARC prides itself by having cutting-edge black ops teams that operate in secrecy, the Patriots are able to pack more punch behind their firearms, even if it's technologically behind everybody else. In terms of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Expys, it's the Free Drones, who pride industrialism and the common man over the technological and economic elite.
  • Alternatively, these may be Canadians, just replacing the Cowboy tropes with Lumberjacks.
• The Free African Coalition: As mentioned by Samatar Barre's story, the People's African Union had to make economic deals with the rest of the world in order to establish its infrastructure, even though Africa's history has been filled with other countries exploiting it for its natural resources. In this case, after Samatar left Earth during The Seeding, his brother, Walaalkaa, decided to take matters into his own hands, and militarized the PAU into a militarist resistance against the corporations and countries taking away Africa's resources. He was successful at driving the neo-imperialists out of Africa, but it was ultimately a Pyrrhic Victory, as the war left Africa devastated, and even lower on natural resources than ever before. Just barely scrapping enough resources together to form another colony ship, Walaalkaa and the FAC left Earth on the same trail as his brother, hoping to claim more resources on the new planet: and instead of playing goody two-shoed diplomat like his brother Samatar and the PAU, Walaalkaa and the FAC would fight tooth and nail for every resource possible. Essentially, a more militaristic version of the People's African Union, trading food and fast-growing cities for production, and fast-growing armies.
• The Rajan Inquisition: After Kavitha Thakur and her chosen followers left Earth to colonize another planet, the rest of Kavithan Protectorate awaited the eventual return of their Messiah. However, as the world continued to deteriorate and crumble around them, without so much as a sign of Kavitha's blessing in return, some members of the Kavithan Protectorate questioned if Kavitha really was looking after her flock, or simply abandoned them to die on Earth. After a upheaval within the Protectorate, a new branch of the faith sprung up, led by a man claiming to be a reincarnation of Raj Thakur, Kavitha's father. This new faith, called The Rajan Inquisition, claimed that blindly following Kavitha has lead to sloth and placidness among the people, and that the true path was not of spiritual contemplation, but militaristic domination. Compared to The Kavithan Protectorate, The Rajan Inquisition is led by The Fundamentalist, and is more likely to burn the 'heretics' than try to convert them.
• The Pacific-Asian Alliance: Although South Korea and Japan were forced into Teeth-Clenched Teamwork with the Pan-Asian Cooperative, the deterioration of the PAC after The Seeding allowed South Korea and Japan to break off from the Cooperative, and establish its own alliance against it. Becoming a Technocracy instead of an industrial powerhouse, the PAA focused on Quality over Quantity, effectively establishing space-age weaponry and defenses on Earth before leaving the planet. However, even though South Korea and Japan are mostly fortified and sheltered from the otherwise collapsing world, even the most isolationist of its members knew it couldn't sustain itself for much longer, and established its own space ship to try claiming a stake in whatever planet The Seeding had selected.
• La Federación Hispana: After Rejinaldo de Alencar took the Brasilian expedition on The Seeding, the Spanish-based countries in South America eventually ganged up on Portuguese-based Brazil. Although pining an exact ideology on La Federación would be difficult, they are definitely militarists of a sort after their long and sordid history of brutal dictatorships, sham democracies, and violent revolutionaries: the question is how exactly would they be different from an already militarist Alencar?
• Anarchist Britain (Placeholder name): After the high-and-mighty cultural values of Franco-Iberia failed to bear fruit within what was left of the EU, a loose coalition of The Mean Brits, Violent Glaswegians, Fighting Irish, and Wild Welsh staged a little "Anarchy in the UK", and chased out the Franco-Iberians from the British Isles. They then embodied the idea of Anarchy Is Chaos, turning the major cities of England into Wretched Hives where there are More Criminals Than Targets - the only reason they've built a space ship is because their leader has proven to be a particularly ambitious crime lord who thinks of not just settling for ruling the English criminal underworld when a whole planet of targets is ripe for the plucking. In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri terms, it's The Nautilus Pirates, although closer to London Gangsters, Football Hooligans and British Rock Stars than Ruthless Modern Pirates (Heck, I can even imagine "London Calling" being the unofficial national anthem for these guys...).
  • Is there even implications that Franco-Iberia tried to occupy other EU nations? Let alone the UK? If a British faction is released and designed as a foil to FI, I'd go more for a sort of Pan-Germanic Nordic Union: Pragmatic and Stringent Industrialists based off the Utilitarians and the characters of Charles Dickens, moving Northern European Nations to settle space and begin the Industrial project a new and more organized. Culture be damned, we need industrialists, engineers and planners in order to wring out exactly as much as we can from the new planet, no more and no less, to bring about a new golden age. As to the Irish, Welsh and Scots, I'd love a Celtic Confederacy but I'll leave that to the Modders and assume that Canon has them joining up with ARC or FI.
    • I admit that I'm stretching the lore just a bit here, but the backstory claimed that Franco-Iberia was formed after the rest of the European Union fell - I took this to mean that they would expand their power across what was left of Europe, and would've naturally tried to gain a foothold in the British Isles while they were doing that - at least, whatever wasn't put below sea level by The Great Mistake. I also think that the Pan-Asian Cooperative already corners the "industrialist" market, so an "Industrialist Pan-Germanic Nordic Union" sounds just a little bit redundant. Plus, I wanted the foils to be the absolute opposite of the preexisting faction's ideology, as well as be "darker" for being formed when the world begins sliding into outright chaos following The Great Mistake: Franco-Iberia is full of Upper Class Twits that are Doing It for the Art? Naturally, their rivals would be Lower Class Louts that Rape, Pillage, and Burn! Plus, I couldn't think of a better faction to form an Army of Thieves and Whores a-la the Nautilus Pirates of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, so here they are! ^note actually, now that I think about it, perhaps they can even be Ruthless Modern Pirates like the Nautilus Pirates, with the excuse being they had to develop naval warfare and water-borne settlements to avoid being submerged with the rest of Britain...
  • Alternatively, The Danubian Federation: After Franco-Iberian cultural pretentions fail to bear fruit and as turmoil engulfs Europe, a populist figure with ties to the Habsburg monarchs of yore is crowned Emperor in Austria and Hungary, which form the basis of a new union that encompasses those parts of Central and Eastern Europe not under the Slavic Federation. But whereas Franco-Iberia tries to uphold the crème de la crème of Europe, the Danubians take it to its logical conclusion: a near total emphasis on cultural preservation, purity and a zealous streak in preserving the Old World's order, both good and ill. Paradoxically, this nigh xenophobic and fervent emphasis serves as a glue that binds the myriad ethnic, religious and national groups making up the realm, which would make them in a sense reminiscent to the Lord's Believers in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. And as the world continues to spiral out of control, the Emperor decides to send the best and brightest of the Danube off-world in the hopes of ensuring the continuity, and purity, of the "true" heirs to European civilization.
• The New Commonwealth of Australia: Where Hutama tried to subvert the "prison colony model" of Australia's foundation, the New Commonwealth wants to play it absolutely straight - only this time, the wardens are the "native" Australians, and the prisoners are the members of the other Pacific Islands. After Polystralia had its members turn on themselves as the waters continued to rise, Australia managed to come out on top, literally driving those resisting its rule into the sea. This has lead to a disproportionate ruling system not seen on Earth since South Africa in the Apartheid years, with the Australians controlling the other Islanders with an iron fist, and sending them forth to do the grunt work while living in luxurious isolation. The leader of the New Commonwealth wishes to take the new planet as another "colonization project" meant to bring resources straight back to the Commonwealth of Australia back on Earth, and isn't afraid of supplementing his labor pools with gangpressed colonists of the other factions.
• The New Soviet Socialist Republics: After the Slavic Federation sent its expedition for The Seeding, the nations of the federation began to fracture under the resource and population pressure. This led to The Federation effectively becoming a Police State, implementing brutal military crackdowns to glue the Slavic nations together with the blood of dissidents. Where Vadim Kozlov subverts the "Stalin in space" portrayal, the leader of the NSSR plays it straight, and HARD. Although still a technological powerhouse like the Slavic Federation, the advancements aren't going to space stations and fancy orbital lasers, but boots-on-the-ground armies with heavy firearms, giant-ass tanks, and good old-fashioned nuclear warheads.
  • More likely, New Imperial Russia. Kozlov's faction is enlightened, progressive and Star Trek-y. Its foil should be a reactionary, neo-feudal ultra-Putinist mess.
• With Rising Tide, the four new factions are Al Falah (a Middle Eastern Coalition), the North Sea Alliance (Britain plus the Scandinavian countries), INTEGR (Germany) and Chungsu (a shadowy organisation based in Korea).

The Aliens are not native to the planet.

• They are concentrated on nests that only spawn on xenomass, and thrive in miasma, suggesting they are more suited to a different atmosphere. I surmise that another planet in the galactic region had evolved to the point of a single, conscious entity, with no ecosystem but a united biomass. Some calamity then destroyed the planet, or perhaps the entity engineered its destruction in order to colonize space. A planetary fragment bearing some xenomass crashed into the planet, and the mass has since been taking over the planet from within, with bits of its essence bubbling up as xenomass pools or miasma, spawning various creatures in a deliberate effort to conquer the native ecosystem.
  • This Troper's theory is that the Progenitors created the Hive Mind of the planet using genetic engineering. Because AI Is A Crap Shoot, their designer lifeforms overran the planet, forcing them to leave.

Harmony is an evolution of the G-mods and supremacy evolved from MEC troopers.

Harmony is about genetic modification, like the G-mods. Supremacy is about cybernetic augmentation, like the MEC troopers. Perhaps the doctors wrote books about there transhuman beliefs, inspiring Harmony and Supremacy.

Transcendence isn't the actual end in itself, and Harmony hasn't forgotten Earth.

• While Purity's priority was to subjugate Planet and to bring the settlers from Earth there, and Supremacy's priority could be summed up as "ascend into a cybernetic society" (which is almost definitely accomplished by the time of the Emancipation), Harmony's priority is more long-term: bringing Earth's humans over, as what Purity wants, would likely be a death sentence for either Planet and/or the humans (since the two environments are largely incompatible). Harmony intends to first adapt themselves to suit Planet and completely understand Planet. Once that is done, they will research and build a gate to Earth and then do a Harmony-flavoured version of either the Emancipation or Promised Land victories (either to evolve the remaining Earth humans to be in tune with their environment, to rejuvenate Earth into becoming a living ecosystem again or to bring Earth humans to Planet and help them adapt through gene modification). The timescale used is thus different for each faction: Supremacy has already achieved their goal and is now spreading their enlightment, Purity is working towards achieving their goal and Harmony is working towards the first step to achieving their goal.

The Great Mistake was the Utopia Project, the Diplomatic Victory, or Domination Victory from Civ V

Basically, it goes like this:

• 1. *Civ you don't like* (probably Gandhi) completes the Utopia Project, which causes everybody to forget their "native" culture and go for the False Utopia Schtick of your opponent hook line and sinker.
• 2. Using the massive support he's gained, *Leader you don't like* takes over the UN, and reorganizes it into a one-world state.
• 3. The Sponsors are a few groups that are stuck in a Forever War with this False Utopia. This causes them to realize that they'll run out of resources long before they actually win this war, causing them to seek the seeding project.
• As a result:
  • Harmonists want to prevent another global war from ever happening by turning humans into a hive mind with little reason to go to war with each other ever again.
  • Supremacists wants to send reinforcements back to Earth so that they can liberate from the evils of the One World Order.
  • Puritans want to undo the effects of the Utopia Project and try to restore their Civ's native culture from old Earth. They also want to bring war refugees to Planet.

Supremacist society is System Shock or Deus Ex, Harmony is like Bioshock, and Purity is like Bioshock Infinite

Technology-wise, they're rather similar: Do we splice our DNA? Do we Build AI and augmentations? Or maybe build lots of floaty things and have what amounts to a conservative society?

• You might as well say they're the major factions of Command & Conquer: Purity is basically GDI with more red on their outfits, Supremacy echoes many of Nod's everything's-better-with-cyborgs traits (and disdain for the old ways), and Harmony is either the Forgotten or the Scrin depending on how much you (dis)like them.

Nobody In-Universe Remembers what the Great Mistake was Anymore

• This is the reason why every mention of it is so vague.

Kavitha Thakur really is over 200 years old thanks to the Resurrection Device

The Civilopedia entry for the Resurrection Device claims that the capability to make one existed on Earth, but was not made due to resource constraints and ethical problems. If you follow the idea that Kavitha is a Glorious Leader type who wants to maintain her cult of personality, then becoming immortal is one way she can do that. The device is used to keep people at a prime age, which shows why Kavitha looks young. Finally, the existence of the device is kept secret from the public, which not only explains how Kavitha may be able to use it without anyone knowing, but it links in to her backstory, in which she claims to keep a strong spiritual connection. This is her cover for the resurrection device.

Rejinaldo is of Chilean descent.

According to the devs Brasilia is the result of a merging of Brazil and its other Latin American neighbours, Chileans have a unique syntax for naming children, they have a first and middle name, and two last names, one taken from each parent, giving them a total of four names. Rejinaldo has four names, excluding his title, and his first name is not a typical Brazilian spelling of his name while it is used in Chile. Thus, based on his name we can conclude that Rejinaldo comes from Chilean ancestry.

The Indian girl in the opening will be the leader of a Rising Tide faction

Chekhov's Gunman has to shoot someone, after all, and while she could just be a sample colonist brought along by luck, I get the feeling we'll see more of her. Possibly a division in the Indian ranks?

• Besides the fact that the intro shows a Kavithan symbol on the truck driving her to the Seeding launch, she wrote a letter to her daughter before landing on the planet. The intro shows the Indian girl existing cryosleep just as they reached the planet. At the very least, she fails to meet the criteria of "having her own child before making planetfall" - or at least one old enough to read that letter.
  • The leader of Al Falah has remarkable similarities to the girl seen in the Rising Tide trailer,so there is a possibility of this being confirmed.
  • It was stated in one of the livestreams that the Wandering Accent Indian Lady is the older version of the girl in the cinematic.

Hybrid Affinities will be ideologies in their own right

• Given how thematic the conflict between the various Affinities is—both in- and out of universe—it's likely that any hybrids between them won't be the moderate compromises they seem to be on the surface, but unique visions for humanity all their own...just not precisely following one path. Possible Hybrid Affinities:
• Sustainability (Purity/Harmony): Just as as ardently pro-normal-human as "vanilla" Purity, but tempered by the memory of what happened to Earth's environment and a sense of what will happen if the same happens on the new world. Will have a focus on low-impact expansion, on the cheap (less expensive food production? Fewer resources needed to maintain happiness/population?), and various ways to dissuade the alien wildlife from aggression, without controlling them outright. Units and cities would be eventually gain a sleek, smooth and streamlined look; unmistakably machines/constructed buildings, but with visible solar panels and other eco-friendly aesthetics. Their military would be a mix of Zerg Rush and Magikarp Power, being initially weaker those of other colonies but easy to crank out in large numbers on the cheap...but gaining impressive buffs and upgrades with the right techs.
  • Unique technologies could include a massive super-greenhouse/lab complex dedicated to integrating Earthbourne plants and animals into the planet's ecosystem, but while still minimizing the risk of invasive species problems. Utilizing the alien flora and fauna as food supplies (with a little crossbreeding and genetic manipulation) also works.
  • A "repellent sprayer" vehicle also fits. It'll lay down a chemical barrier the aliens stay the hell away from, but does Scratch Damage at worst....though with some careful positioning and a little luck, you could indirectly herd a few aliens towards a rival city. Not quite controlling the beats, but still going beyond Purity's "shoot 'em all!" approach.
• Adaptability (Supremacy/Harmony): A philosophy that adheres to the idea that the human form is obsolete, but the biology of the new worlds can be exploited up the wazoo.
  • Heavily cyberneticized and gene-modded soldiers and aliens. Weapons are double-barrelled hybrids of the Harmony acid squirt gun and Supremacy laser gun for a 1-2 Punch.
  • A Miasmic Concentrator device to harvest miasma. More of a modular enhancement than a structure; allows attack/defense boni on units and production boni on structures as long as they're on miasma-afflicted tiles.
• Neo-Modernity (Purity/Supremacy): A system of thought that promotes technological and social advancement while preserving a sense of continuity with their ancestors from Earth.
• All of the above are jossed. The preview stream presented the affinities thusly: Purity/Supremacy is remote-controlled robots, Supremacy/Harmony is "power by any means", and Harmony/Purity is trying to make humanity god-like.

The UNS Unity will serve as mankind's last Seeding mission.

In essence, the events of SMAC are merely postponed. At some point, perhaps a few generations or so after the first Seeding missions are launched, conditions on Earth once more deteriorate amidst mounting chaos that increasingly puts the Great Mistake to shame. The United Nations decides to take matters into its own hands. Thus with much more limited resources and time, it launches one final Seeding mission Just Before the End. Bound for the nearest star to Earth: Alpha Centauri.

• The timeline doesn't work at all, though. The Unity was launched in 2060 and makes Planetfall at 2100 AD, while the Seeding expeditions are launched around 2200 - 2300 AD and make landfall in the early 2600's. The more likely scenario is that the Unity was launched Just Before the End, in the last years before the Great Mistake. In the Alpha Centauri timeline, none of the subsequent Seeding launches achieved the Promised Land or Emancipation victories, hence why Earth is a bombed-out ruin after a million years after Transcendence.
  • This raises a new question: Why were no seeding missions sent to the planet Alpha Centauri takes place on? AC stretches on for centuries, long after seeding missions were launched and started landing. It also adds a bit of Fridge Horror to the Contact victory; You're probably either contacting the Manifold Caretakers or Manifold Usurpers (or both)

• UNS Unity could be the first colony ship some time after the Great Mistake. The sense of desperation at the time would made the colonists more fanatical in their chosen ideology and the dark age after the Great Mistake would have made them think that they're humanity's last and only hope.

Vadim Kozlov is gay.

The Middle Eastern faction is led by a woman and the American faction is led by a Mexican. I see a pattern here.

• What pattern? Just looks like Insane Troll Logic from those out of the loop.
  • Nations being led by members of groups that were, in the past (and thus our present) marginalized in their respective societies. This can also include the African Union, as it is led by a Somalian, as opposed to say, Nigerian or South African.
    • Most likely Jossed, since Kozlov is Happily Married (and has taken both his wife and his kids on the mission). Unless his family is The Beard, and Kozlov is an Armored Closet Gay, it's more likely that he's as straight as the rocket he flew in on.

What happens when a civ conquers a city from another Affinity

They don't assimilate them immediately-which would be logistically very difficult. Instead, they shut down the factories that make the augs or powered armor or whatnot, and then retool them to make whatever tech they do like. They might also do buy-back programs.In the case of Purity invading Supremacy, they also might have some means of putting a cyborg's augments into a "safe mode" that makes them no stronger than a human.Over time, as only the invader's technology is being supported and sold, the people voluntarily switch to using that technology.

The Great Mistake was orchestrated by Chungsu, but has long become The Atoner

The ensuing turmoil following it gave Chungsu the sort of leverage to not only reunite Korea (with the South as their springboard) but also carve out its own sphere of influence in East Asia outside the PAC. By the time Han Jae Moon comes into the picture however, the organization had since felt remorse for its actions and has been atoning through actually being benevolent.

As a corollary, Chungsu was responsible for dismantling the Kim dynasty.

Which means that bit about "using espionage to topple dictatorships" isn't just a front; they've done it before, and on a high-profile target to boot. It also means any resemblance between Chungsu and North Korea nowadays is due to He Who Fights Monsters.

Beyond Earth is actually a prequel to Civilization V.

Civilization V has a rather eerie opening narration for each leader, where the narrator appears to address himself to that leader, praising their historical accomplishments, mentioning things like the year of their death and how they were remembered, offering them a new chance "to stand the test of time". The narrator is in fact a Progenitor who, in true Sufficiently Advanced Alien fashion, has just raised that leader from the dead, turned them into The Ageless and brought them to an Earth-like planet so they can experience the full scope of human history. The narrator later recognizes the leader as an equal if they can dominate the cultural, diplomatic or military scene of the planet, or if they can reach the stars with their own spaceship.

The Great Mistake had something to do with The Stars Becoming Right.

There are a number of H. P. Lovecraft references in the game. The survivors are those who were mentally stable enough to resist the eldritch insanity.