Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

Not really. Purity/Harmony does look like a biological version of Supremacy, but the Supremacy/Harmony hybrid is a little different I'd argue. From what I've seen the hybrid affinities seem designed to echo the third affinity in someway. Harmony/Purity is a biological version of Supremacy, Purity/Supremacy uses robots and drone auxilliaries the same way Harmony uses alien units as troops. Supremacy/Harmony on the other hand isn't just a biological version of Supremacy. Instead it takes Purity's blind, fanataical rejection of the "other" and turns it into the blind, fanatical embrace of the other.

In my way of thinking, and the way i'm pretty sure Firaxis has done it, is to treat the combo affinities as a rejection of the affinity they are opposed to. Purity/Harmony then makes sense as a complete rejection of Supremacy, which means that they completely reject all things robotic and AI and embrace all things biological. This is borne out by their units which typically have weapons grafted onto them, and look a little too alien to be completely human.

An example of a purity/harmony affinity in fiction, i would say, is Leto Atreides II from Dune. Their society completely rejects computers and he's some sort of crazy hybrid of native alien lifeforms and humanity. Very purity/harmony.

edited 2nd Oct '15 6:52:56 AM by MrShine

See, my problem with that in Vanilla BE, I didn't take Supremacy as opposed to Biological Augmentation or necessarily tied to computers so much as just making Humans as powerful and adaptable as possible to their environment. Usually this resulted in straight up Robots as opposed to Nature Oriented Harmony and (Biologically-)Conservative Purity but I don't think Supremacy is opposed to Biology.

Meanwhile Purity seemed Biologically-Conservative in that they wanted to keep Humanity as "Pure" as possible by opposing change. Harmony wants to bring it in touch with the biology of the new planet. Harmony/Purity seems like it falls short on both, aiming for old school transhumanism focused more on life-span increase.

Instead it takes Purity's blind, fanataical rejection of the "other" and turns it into the blind, fanatical embrace of the other.

Isn't that like saying they combine Red and Blue to create Yellow? Which is essentially what I'm accusing them of.

Like, it seems like Purity/Harmony are mixed here to create a sort of Biological equivalent to what I took to be the goal of Supremecy: Embracing the other in a way that would benefit the goals of humanity without great thought for what Humanity is or what the Environment is.

edited 2nd Oct '15 2:53:44 PM by Fauxlosophe

The three base affinities in vanilla BE all wanted to transform humanity, but in different ways. Supremacy wanted to replace fallible human organs with machinery, and had the buildings to do so (organ printer, augmentery, optical surgery). Harmony wants to create a blend between humans and native life forms. Purity wanted to "perfect" humans, and have a somewhat disturbing obsession with genetic manipulation to achieve that (gene garden, "human conservation" tech, genetic mapping tech).

The examples you give seem mixed to me. The Gene Garden does explicitly mention re-crafting humanity in a way most of us would agree is "better" and in a way that suits the Harmony/Purity mix, but the example of the Human Conservation tech you sited seems to imply much the opposite; It represents a movement towards Bioconservatism explicitly reacting to genetic modications which depart from "Old World" Humanity (which, it seems could only be judged by the standards of what we humans were genetically prior to the great mistake). That would include non-Mechanical and even non-conspicuous ones

My problem is that the latter is the basis of a clear ideology in my eyes, while the former is not. As an Affinity, I always made sense of Purity as Bioconservatism and the part of me that is squeemish about needles and leery about the Transhumanism can sympathize with this view. It's wanting to scale back these changes and ensure that it is Humans adapting the planets to their needs and history rather than the other way around. We're not an invasive species who must adapt, rather the planet is just a glorified rock for us to remold into a second Earth.

The latter seems weaker as an ideology. I mean, one can argue that Humanity is going to keep evolving and P/H represents balancing that but that sort of overlooks Purity's squeemishness about artificial changes and seems to make it into something like a poor man's Harmony; in that they are willing to adapt to the planet but they want to keep on looking mostly like Humans.

This is probably a matter of YMMV and maybe the expansion will prove me wrong, but from what I've heard, I feel that it is awkwardly written. Though, admittedly, the game has made a few stylistic choices which I'm rather leery of, so this might be a part of a larger issue I have and not a specific problem in itself.

edited 3rd Oct '15 7:39:10 AM by Fauxlosophe

While we're discussing affinities, does anyone feel that some leaders tend to have a preferred affinity. I know they're all written so that it's plausible that they could go in any possible direction, but some of them seem to fit more naturally with some rather than others.

Take for example Humata. One of his quotes is about humanity having an obligation to not merely survive but to "live well" (and to that end he's going to set up a brewery). To me at least it seems that sort of slides most neatly into a Supremacy/Purity hybrid, using robots to ease the burden of labour of people while still staying attached to the human form (and it's attendant pleasures).

Meanwhile Daoming on the other hand, with her strong focus on STEM fields in her background plus her driven nature and rejection of sentiment would seem to have her naturally inclined towards either Supremacy or Supremacy/Harmony (in it's power at any cost form).

Élodie similarly with her strong emphasis on cultural ideals seems to fall naturally into a Purity affinity, and if she is going to go transhumanist to go Harmony/Purity with it's whole "becoming the ultimate human" and classical references.

Anyone have similar thoughts about the other leaders? Or different ideas about the ones I've mentioned?

I think Kozlov has a pretty strong Supremacy vibe to him, maybe Supremacy/Purity. A lot of his quotes show a real love of technological progress and engineering.

Barre and Kavitha both have a Harmony and/or Purity bent. Kavitha has her weird syncretic religion that can easily encompass revering the planet, while Barre also has a lot of quotes about remembering the past and embracing all life.

Fielding feels pretty neutral, but being ambitious and underhanded kind of loops back around to the Supremacy/Harmony idea of "power by any means".

Rejinaldo doesn't lean towards any philosophy in particular. Most of quotes are about soldiering and not much else.

edited 6th Oct '15 9:54:28 AM by Moopsball

Most of them seem like they pretty easily fit into any of the three, but Kozlov I have some troubles seeing as Harmony. Likewise, Samatar does not seem Supremacy inclined but I think overall they did a good job of making any of the affinities sound reasonable, at the cost of keeping the leaders rather bland.

edited 6th Oct '15 9:47:09 AM by MrShine

The patch accompanying Rising Tide is out. The tech web is now color-coded, alien nests will spawn on floatstone or firaxite, the virtue screen, quest updates, etc. have art, the victory screens have cinematics (barely), and it seems like neutral aliens are a lot more passive—to the point that my explorer destroyed a nest and was not attacked. Possibly other changes that I either forgot or didn't notice.

edited 8th Oct '15 6:14:20 PM by ABNDT

@Fauxlosophe: I don't see it as incoherent for Purity's ideology to include limited, "humanist" genetic engineering - simply far less radical than Harmony's. Purity isn't purely bioconservative unless you want it to be.

Ideologies don't have to be perfectly sensical, and even with the existence of Purity/Harmony, I figure it's okay for Purity to embrace a certain level of Bio-Augmentation, such as screening genetic diseases, doing away with the appendix, cloning (which is a Purity tech, remember!), and ensuring that humanity doesn't naturally suffer mutations on the new world. They just avoid going beyond the essentially-arbitrary limitations of "the human form."

Honestly, that's a problem with Purity/Harmony - it's eating a lot of the space that Purity used to have, while Purity/Supremacy and Supremacy/Harmony are carving out new niches.

edited 9th Oct '15 6:28:55 AM by Ramidel

One of the new artifacts introduced is "Isotopic Decay 3". Description: A once highly-anticipated video game. Hailed as the greatest creative work in the history of civilization, the game employed one tenth of the world's population at the peak of its development. Upon its global release the economies of Earth, the EISS and Lunar Base 1 saw drastic downturns as productivity fell to an all-time low.

In other words, half life 3 joke in Civ BE confirmed.

Hahaha! That would be hilarious if it weren't so... sad. *sniff*

My understanding is that Purity would use genetic modification in just a "clean & tweak" sort of way. Curing genetic diseases and defects and improving basic human characteristics, but only working with human genetics. Harmony and its affiliates goes for transgenic manipulation, taking genes from other organisms and splicing them into humanity. Purity/Harmony is therefore significantly more transhumanist than straight Purity because they are willing to use alien genes to create their ideal humanity.

Anyway, the game is out today. To be honest, I'm pretty glad I didn't pre-order because there have been a lot of reports of bugs and things in need of patching. I'll wait for the Steam winter sale or for the price to go under $20 before I buy.

edited 9th Oct '15 8:53:35 AM by Moopsball

Game is super-bugged, ultrasonic fences don't work anymore (they reworded it to "strongly discourage" aliens but they seem to ignore it), and the war score thing makes it almost impossible to sue for peace, but at least they reversed the internal trade route logic to make some kind of sense again.

edited 9th Oct '15 3:28:43 PM by Clarste

Purity prefers to use technology that improves the natural strengths of the Human body (so like powered armor), and Harmony wants to improve the basic human form. "Purmony" would probably want to do both.

The second way of looking at it is that they might be anti-supremacy. They dislike automation and want to resist reliance on it.

The third way would be that they want to compromise between "the things we bring to this world" and "the things this world brings to us".

Played it for a few hours, it's really fun and looks great but war score is indeed a bit wonky. I was wondering exactly what Brazil's bonus did, since it depends on war score, and happened to random them in my first game, so obviously I declared war and tested it out. The answer is that currently Brazil's bonus seems to not do anything, at least the war score section.

It appears that since only cities can be offered in peace deals, and a civ with only 1 city cannot offer their last city, the only option is eternal war until you put them out of their misery. Bit awkward, they should make it so they can offer a very steep amount of science and money or something in lieu of a city if they're down to their last one.

If you sacrifice your units to them without fighting back until the scores are even, I guess you could get a white peace.

@Ramidel: I still have not bought the game and may wait a while for it to come down in price or even for it to be bundled with a second expansion, so I can't speak from experience but I'll defend my previous position.

I don't think cloning is transhuman, necessarily. In the original, Purity's genetic adaptation seems to have been negative rather than positive; removing disease and etc. No matter how advanced purity got even the clones are going to be humans humans who could have possibly been a genetic product of Earth in the 22nd century, or even 21st probably.

Once you start taking from the DNA strands native to the planet so that it is easier for Humans to live there; you've hit on Harmony (Supremacy as well, especially if you're willing to use old Earth tech and anything else to make it better).

So where I like Purity/Supremecy for taking elements from both (Humans should maintain their genetic code; it makes us human vs. Humans should use tech to adapt) and make it so that they two do not contradict (Genetic Humans using external enhancement and robots) but both sides might have objections to (An economy dependent on fully sentient robot slaves might horrify Purity for a few different reasons, while Supremecy would not think they are going far enough if they did not just outright sympathize more with the more capable robots).

Purity/Harmony from what I have seen, doesn't avoid this central contradiction (Humans should keep their Genomes vs. Humans should adapt to the planet) and meet it with a sort of awkward compromise; Humans should adapt their genomes somewhat to help them adapt to the planet. It's an arbitrary cut off point that could go either way; if we're just using technology to make sure that we don't all die of alien flu when we get a cut in our suits, then it's still harmony. If we've pumped ourselves so full of alien genomes and shit that we're basically Gallifreyans (multiple hearts and redundant organs, long life etc, etc) who just happen to have Human skin and shape on the surface, then it's Harmony if it's not Supremacy.

I just don't think they've created a unique and plausible middle ground here like they have for the other two ideologies; ie. using tech to adopt to this particular planet and using tech externally while keeping humans 'pure'.

If I might be wrong; but I'd like to know how they avoid this issue.

edited 10th Oct '15 9:06:33 AM by Fauxlosophe

I'd imagine that Purity views 'Mastery' (Purity-Supremacy) as making humans weaker for their reliance on A.I.s. Supremacy would probably view the Purity-Supremacy hybrid as 'slavery'.

As for Purity-Harmony, they'd probably want to create a 'genetically improved' human. They're humans, but they aren't necessarily Homo Sapiens. Full-Purists would say "They Changed It, Now It Sucks!", and prefer the older version. Full-Harmonists want to abandon their biological humanity in favor of becoming something more like what would naturally exist on the planet.

They're Eugenicists, while Harmony wants to become something new entirely.

Another way of looking at them is Anti-Supremacy. They don't want humans to rely on automation whatsoever, so they alter humans to a point where they don't need them anymore.

edited 10th Oct '15 11:10:59 AM by Protagonist506

Wow. Using the lush marvel quest to leash krakens is just as OP as it sounds.

Having completed a play through. I have a couple of impressions. One being "Wow, when they said Humata had all the trade routes" they weren't kidding.

Also, Han Jae Moon is a back-stabbing asshole. First he allies with me and drags me into a war with Fielding where I have to take the brunt because she's much, much closer to me. But after she's defeated (completely conqured) he breaks the alliance and then declares war when I'm almost finished sending troops through a Emancipation Gate. Though that was probably because he went Purity and while I kept Supremacy/Purity for a while and then took it all the way into Supremacy.

Other observations. If you're going for a Supremacy victory, be warned the Empancipation Gate itself no longer shows how much troop power you have to send through until its finished. You have to go to the quest log and check the victories section. The hybrid units are definitely interesting, as are the expanded array of naval units. Do not, I repeat do ''NOT' cluster your aquatic cities together, at least if you're not in open water. Getting them out of a large bay to expand is a pain in the ass (didn't do it personally, but Fielding did and I was left with the mess after conquering her).

The new diplomacy system is awesome and a lot more transparent. Also the ability to trade routes to generate strategic resources (especially for Humata) is useful. On a cosmetic level I like the fact that I can see the affinity changes to your own leader as well as the others now as well. Speaking of affinity, with the revamp of how you earn it it's a lot harder to play as a "pure" affinity and not pick up any of the other two. One thing I do find puzzling though is that most of the "base" units have hybrid versions there are no hybrids for fighters, artillery or carriers.

But overall, a very nice addition to the base game.

"On a cosmetic level I like the fact that I can see the affinity changes to your own leader as well as the others now as well."

This is actually my favourite change to the game.

I won a game of Rising Tide as Al Falah. It's funny, but I couldn't figure out for the life of me what their UA actually does, despite looking awesome. +150% to what, exactly?

I found that it was remarkably easy to remain friends with most of the AI civs; the only wars I got into were a result of my allies being attacked. Of course, I was playing on Mercury difficulty just to get a feel for things; I'll step it up soon. By the time I won, I had maxed all three Affinities, the tech tree, and the policy tree; had 500+ health; and had all my major cities on agricultural production to make them super big.

Aquatic cities are pretty cool, but their means of acquiring new tiles is awkward. I used it a few times, but towards the late game I got tired of it and just bought all the tiles I wanted, especially since I had so much energy that I could barely spend it all.

Fun, fun. I may do another, but these games tend to consume one's life for hours at a time.

"Leash the Kraken!"