Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

Yeah there was certainly some theoretical basis for a lot of the technologies - the 5th ranked armour is Silk Steel for example, going from Spider Silk Steel which is something people have been trying to develop for centuries (it's well known that spider silk has a higher tensile strength than steel, but producing it artificially on an industrial scale is currently beyond us. IIRC the technology in question assumes a means of actually doing that, thus making the technology militarily viable).

Really looking forward to this game...and now wanting to play SMAC again.

Dammit, now I really want to play Alpha Centauri again. I also stumbled on my copy of the graphic novel during the move, I forgot I had that.

Oh...and fuck mindworms, since I remember how horrible those things are.

Play Lady Deidre Skye and you get to control those. And why wouldn't you? They're brilliant.

Or just amp up your Planet rating through society choices - which is what I do with University (which I always pick, because SCIENCE!)

I do exactly the same thing! Though we should probably discuss SMAC in its own thread rather than this one...

We can probably generally talk about it, at least for a bit - since this game is shaping up to be the second coming of it.

When I played the game, the only times I won it were as Lady Deirdre Skye, with Ascent to Transcendence and all the subsequent stages done. I had also crushed most of the bases of the other factions if not completely eradicating them. In fact, in my last play, I had destroyed both alien factions, all the original ones and was nearly eradicating the Pirates before the end year came.

Playing Skye in Alpha Centauri makes as much sense to me as playing a Nord in Skyrim or an Imperial in Oblivion does - it's pretty much the faction that the game itself is telling you is the smart choice if you want to win it.

So I assume you are going to be playing largely with Harmony affinity factions? Me. I wanna play Purity real bad. They had me at "We're going to build a fortress and we're going to make it fly."

Both Harmony and Supremacy sound appealing. Honestly it seems like a bit of a stretch to separate them anyway.

Purity sounds right up my avenue. Terraforming, ho!

I have no particular intention of playing a harmony faction, just as I have no intention of ever allowing the "Ascent to Transcendence" to occur in SMAC. And given my aggressive terraforming policies, I fail to see why a single sane person on Planet would want to upload themselves to the Planetmind. Then again, with my aggressive terraforming, I'm also not sure where they're finding enough remaining Planetary neural net to upload their brains to.

Besides, replacing the native xenofungus with highly invasive Earth plantlife does wonders to reduce your eco-damage.

I'm sure I missed An Aesop somewhere.

Anyway, I intend to go Supremacy (Machinae Supremacy, bitch) or maybe Purity.

edited 22nd Apr '14 1:27:20 PM by Balmung

I'm going supremacy all the way. Mechanical transhumanism FTW.

That said, I can't say I like the idea of the affinity based victories that much; despite the assertions by the devs that supremacy != militaristic and harmony != peaceful/science and so on, supremacy's victory condition seems to require you to have a significant military based on its description.

Similarly, purity appears to need a massive industrial capacity and large population for their victory conditions, and harmony appears to be a technological victory, since it presumably involves building one or more wonders at the end of their tech-web.

Eh, I'm pretty freaked out by transhumanism so I can see your viewpoint

Eh, so long as I can toggle victory conditions, I'm fine.

Why would you do that? That prevents you preventing your rival faction's victory!

I haven't reviewed the various paths enough to choose, but I will say that in SMAC, I almost uniformly went for the Ascent to Transcendence with Deirdre Skye. She was the only faction leader that I could unashamedly like; the others were all pricks in some way or other.

Admittedly, Deirdre's mindworm-hugging hippie-chick thing was probably considered very annoying by the other faction leaders, but she was the only leader who made a concerted effort to understand Planet instead of trying to bend it to their will.

Frankly, some form of Singularity has to be in our species' future or we're doomed to die out, whether it be in a hundred years or a hundred thousand years. By the time we reach that point, transhumanism may seem like the best alternative even if you fear it inherently.

edited 22nd Apr '14 2:11:23 PM by Fighteer

Yep. Fleshy inefficient meat sacks are the past. And I am seriously not joking about that. (which you probably know if you ever read my posts on the Human Revolution thread elsewhere in the vidya games conversations here)

I dunno, I used to like playing as the Gaians a lot more than I do now. Her type of environmentalism is less agreeable to me when the entirety of the local environment is trying to kill you and when you try to live in harmony with it, it still tries to kill you.

Why should we need a Singularity to not die out? What is it saving us from? And why should it be with some troublesome Planetmind? Besides, at that point, I already have the tools to do technological transhumanism.

If you couldn't figure it out, the Cybernetic Consciousness is more or less my favorite faction.

Getting off this planet. If we don't do that at some point then we will have failed as a species. If we don't set foot on a planet under an alien sky then we should have stayed in the caves. The Singularity will make our escape off of this rock easier.

Not if it's one that fundamentally ties you to that specific rock, like uploading yourself to the Planetmind would.

Also, in both games, we've already gotten off this stupid rock.

edited 22nd Apr '14 2:56:31 PM by Balmung

All species fail. If not now, the heat death of the universe is gonna get us eventually. We should go to the stars as soon as possible because we can and because the attempt will teach us much about not only what we find but about ourselves.

Trying to construct a dogmatic "must" argument for it weakens the case. The purity of the human form, the glory of machine-like precision, whatever, doesn't matter. Leaving the cradle isn't something we need to do, it's merely something we should. Unless, I dunno, every species that isn't us is also a total failure, which will be a hard argument to sustain.

edited 22nd Apr '14 3:44:35 PM by Night

Well, from the looks of it they ain't going to be making Harmony a military pushover. I was reading the Gamespot article and they specifically mention that researching down the Harmony tech tree will make their military units faster, heal quicker, and their human infantry takes on a Predator-esque appearance. So we have:

Harmony: Transhuman Predator expies supporting mind-worm expies with expy Xenomorph cavalry.

Purity: Something that sounds a lot like the Enclave from Fallout or the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40k with expy S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers.

Supremacy: Something that sounds like an unholy fusion of the Borg and the Terminators with liberal doses of Ghost in the Shell.

I have a good feeling about all three affinities.

Still going to play Purity first though.

Mind control the mindworms, then let go of your control with them outside a player's capital - no penalties since those worms are now "neutral".

I see transhumanism as one of those things like Dyson spheres, but on a lesser scale: By the time we achieve the technology needed to make it work without a hitch, we won't even need it to survive.

Transhumanism is a continuum. Wearing glasses or having a pacemaker can be considered transhumanism. Taking medication too. We're correcting the flaws of nature.