Who was most right?

there's no answer to that question and you know it
but any one of them would lead to human extinction if they were the uncontested leader, so I guess you could say "none of them"

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>>49882991
What dis?

>>49882991
>Which one of these annoying cardboard caricatures was the least awful?

None of them, OP.

>>49883065
Lal wouldn't.

>>49883112
I'm tempted to agree with that, but I think it'd end up pretty much how earth does in SMAC in the long term

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>>49882991

Only cucks and fedoras disagree with Miriam

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>>49883197
>yangdrones and zakharovdrones trying to tell people that their mind control tech is friendly and harmless

>>49883197
Miriam just wants to care for her flock and make sure humans develop their ethics and morals at the same pace as their technology

I really wish Morgan wasn't just a straw man parody of corporatism and instead was just a free-trade libertarian. I think he could of been a real interesting character instead of just comedy relief.

>>>/v/

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>>49883263
he is pretty good comedy relief though

>>49883099
House was the best option for New Vegas and anyone that disagrees is a complete idiot. He planned the whole thing out from the very beginning and New Vegas was thriving compared to its neighbors. After House it's:

NCR = Legion > Brotherhood > Yes Man

>>49884520
Nigga I have ten in every relevant stat. I could probably outsmart House when he was walking and talking. That's why I go Yes Man at least.

>>49884520
>NCR = Legion
Nah, man.

>>49884649
The Legion merchant seriously disagrees.

>>49882991
F R E E D R O NE S
R
E
E

D
R
O
N
E
S

>>49884620
If you're so smart then how come you didn't think of a way out of getting shot in the head? This is the major reason why Yes Man is the worst option. Brain damage can allow you to keep your mental capacity, but the mood swings and the dementia are almost unavoidable, two traits that are terrible for leadership rolls.

>>49882991
Each ideology is too one-dimensional and wouldn't be able to exist by itself, except maybe Yang's happy Orwell-land.

>>49885483
Don't worry, my brain is kept well enough away in a jar in the Sink. No risk of dementia there.

>>49883099
>Not choosing No Gods, No Masters
It's almost like you like being stepped all over and used.

>>49883246
This.

It may have slowed down the rate at which they got new toys but hers, Freed Drones and Peacekeepers seemed to be the only factions that gave a shit about their people as people.

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>>49883099
>Legion

My patrician

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>>49883099
cropped the eyesore off

>>49882991
The whole point of the game is they were all wrong.

>>49882991
The one you hate the most.

>>49883246
>humans develop their ethics and morals
Said the most aggressive faction of them all.

>>49882991
What shit vidya meme is this, /tg/?

>>49885854
>choosing an unfinished faction

I literally can't see how you can side with them when they are presented so one-sided. If only obsidian where allowed to finish their civilian side

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>>49887425

>Bawww why won't these guys tolerate my deviance? M-muh moral relativism!

>>49882991
>Controlling alien worms and making them fight for you.
>Using those worms to capture more worms.
>Battling wild worms to make your worms stronger.
>Evolving all your worms into demon boils.

It's like the Gaians were the only motherfuckers who ever played Pokemon.

>>49883065
The only leader that wouldn't lead humanity to extinction would be Yang because he'll just forcibly manipulate humanity to a collective form that will survive anything. Than again is it really survival if you are reduced to a monstrous facsimile of a human being?

>>49887439
You're a shit vidya meme, and probably younger than this game.

>>49887520
>Religious zealot
>Psychologist

Miriam gave me mixed but strong feelings from the very beginning.

>>49890403
I never saw Miriam as a psychologist, I thought she was more a sociologist.

Yang is the psychologist.

>>49890709
http://alphacentauri2.info/official/Profile%20Sister%20Miriam%20Godwinson.htm
>PhD in Psychology from Yale

She knows exactly what she's saying, is all I'm saying.

Not that psychology is magic or anything (like most people seem to think, and all the movies make it seem), but it's a fair shot better than sociology.

>>49882991
Morgan is obviously the one to the right, dude.

>>49882991
Santiago. Now and forever.

>>49890869
>he picks the fascist and the faction that in canon wise was the first to get raped by mindworms.

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>>49883197
God wills it.

>>49890895
I thought they were wiped using singularity warheads or something.

>Why vote spartans?
They saw the problems of the initial colony and its plans. They sought to save humanity from decay once again. They realise how dangerous this new planet is and why survival is important.

>>49890403
Correct me if i'm wrong, but wasn't the role of Chaplain-psychiatrist ripped right out of Destination Void?

>>49890858
underrated

>>49891071
Deidre curbstomps the Spartans in canon.

>"As we approached we were confronted by the ruined splendor of Sparta Command. The true immensity of the place became instantly apparent as our Quantum Tank crunched over the rubble and parked next to a shattered bunker, but the extent of the destruction took weeks to assess. The shielded datacore had sustained several massive breaches and smoke still billowed from the numerous cannon ports. There were few signs of human life"

>Lady Deirdre Skye
>"Our Secret War"

>"As the writhing, teeming mass of Mind Worms swarmed over the outer perimeter, we saw the defenders
recoil in horror. "Stay calm! Use your flame guns!" shouted the commander, but to no avail. It is well known
that the Mind Worm Boil uses psychic terror to paralyze its prey, and then carefully implants ravenous larvae in
the brains of its still-conscious victims. Even with the best weapons, only the most disciplined troops can
resist this horrific attack."

>Lady Deirdre Skye
>"Our Secret War"

Moral of the story don't fuck with alien fungi worshipping space hippies.

.

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I want to join Aki-Zeta's collective, if you know what I mean.

>>49891144
No clue.

>>49891419
Best faction, hands down. When everyone around you is Big Brother, nobody is.

What happened to Yang in the story?

>>49891926
His quotes disappear halfway through, but there's no hint as to what happened.

My headcanon was that he was defeated in war, perhaps against a coalition of the other factions after he uses a planet buster on Miriam, confirming all her Luddite paranoia.

>>49891926
Domai splits Yang's skull open.

>>49882991
The right one

>>49883263
Postmodern capitalism IS the Earth's comic relief. A hundred years from now some wastelander or bioborg is going to be looking at old records of the clown craze or the kardashians and just go semi-speechless.

>>49885804
>Care about people as people
Resentful untermensch detected.

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>>49882991
>Why is Deirdre not topless?

>>49890403
>Miriam
>zealot

I dunno if you noticed, but Miriam is a woman holding a position of spiritual authority, which suggests that whatever heretical branch of Christianity she's running is not at all zealous, it's a bunch of wishy-washy moderates already halfway to compromise with Lal. (Lal, the other reactionary of the group, looking to reestablish what they had on Earth again but do it right this time. Funny pair, those two.)

>>49887439
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

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>>49887439

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I liked the pirates.

>>49893590
as a faction, they were cool, as a concept, they were retarded, though I guess that's fitting of SMAC

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>>49894455
There were a couple of okay factions in SMAC. I thought the Cyborgs were okay. I also liked the Free Drones quite a bit. The other factions though didn't really feel like they were bringing anything with them that the original factions hadn't done better.

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What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony, is no more than information before the senses, data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: you have received the information, now act on it. Take control of the input, and you shall become master of the output.

-Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang,
"Essays on Mind and Matter."

I don't know if he was right, but he had some outrageously good quotes.

>>49891453
>When everyone around you is Big Brother, nobody is.

Holy shit, that's brilliant.

>>49895258

All the leaders were really goddam well-written.

With Yang, the scary thing is that he's not wrong, he just has a completely different value system than you or I. It's easy to imagine him having loyal followers.

>>49895444
That's it. In a way, it's like seven (or fourteen) different dystopias all competing with each other. Yang is, I guess, the closest thing to a 'villain' - but he's not, of course. He's some kind of neo-Confucian ubermensch...

Fucking hell this game was so awesome.

>>49891232
>>in canon
And considering that Spartans get bonuses to morale, nowhere else.

>>49882991
miriam's society would have been the closest to what we have right now and arguably the least horrific

she was a psychologist after all

>>49891419
>>49891453
>wanting to be a stinky, autistic cyborg

>>49895601
So how about Civ:BE?

>>49895444
Yang's value system is everything and everyone has no intrinsic value beyond their most fundamental physical components and only people who comprehend and actualize this physicalist truth through sheer willpower and discipline (read: him) is allowed the liberty to assign purpose and function (read: do whatever they fucking want).

Yang has alot of quotes regarding enlightening humanity to his monstrous and alien standards, but the game intentional left out rather or not he actually wants to co-exist with other individuals that who have attained the same or even greater mastery of what he preaches, consigning their fate as nothing but human drones with no sense of self worth, no ambition and complete lack of ability to comprehend an existence outside of completing their jobs assigned to them from birth.

And because of how open ended and well thought out the tech tree is, Yang could be interpreted in either light or completely differently altogether. This is where the game really shines.

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>>49895798
Pic kind of sums it up. Little guy down there looking up at the greatness that was and...not being that.

I mean it's okay. Sometimes you want to just turn your brain off and take other people's cities. For me though the big step back is into nations and culture groups instead of ideologies. The ideologies in SMAC really made you think, see things differently. In a way they were all right, and each one was defined by its limitations, its flaws, agenda, and so on. Ideologies, rather than nations (or space races, like Master of Orion) is just awesome. It's a salute to your intelligence as a player. It's cool.

In BE it doesn't get too far beyond sort of bland personality stuff. The affinities are interesting, but they have this weird effect of just sort of compounding how relative all of the various sponsors feel. I've seen people say, for example, that Brazil is more of a Purity faction, the PAC more Supremacy...I don't know. Because everything is more or less interchangeable, none of the factions really stand out.

And then there are the quotes. Oh man. It's bad enough that they don't have anything to compare to the SMAC wonder videos (which are from Baraka, and that's *another* thing)...but the quotes and the writing is just banal.

BE really should just be it's own thing. It's dumbed-down Civ 5 in space. That, by itself, is not a bad thing. The designers don't need to be shit on for eternity for making it. SMAC is just in a league by itself.

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>>49885804
>It may have slowed down the rate at which they got new toys

>He didn't go Elite Christian Hacker style Miriam and just pirate everyone else's tech

>>49895926
I read somewhere that SMAC was made by people who grew up reading SF and turned that into a game, whereas BE was made by people who grew up playing SF games and turned that into a game. As a game, it's intuitive, pretty, all that. There's just a difference in substance going on. It lacks a kind of depth that is hard to describe.

Even the goofiest faction in SMAC - say, the Cult - made you wonder. You had a sense of what they were up to, what they were going to do, what the world would be like if they won. In BE pretty much all of the other factions are just another bunch of guys standing in your way.

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>>49895258
I always thought he was just a head sitting on the floor.

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If were using this thread to talk about faction ideals.

Clear Sky were the true good guys

>>49896109
Clearly this is why he cares not for your suffering.

In fact, the whole quote is only improved if this is the case. Only a head sitting on the floor could espouse a philosophy so based. What else *would* he believe in?

>>49895794
>49895794
>not wanting to upload your mind in the cybernetic mainframe and live forever.

>>49896196
Yang doesn't care about anyone's suffering because from his perspective there is no distinction between the input and output, both exist on the same physical strata thus both are ultimately one and the same.

There is no cause and no effect only motions to a unified and singular act.

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>>49896357
I was just being facetious, given the comment about the picture looking like a head on the floor. Not really trying to make an insightful point about Yang's philosophy...he's in his own Taoist/Legalist place. But I do think you're right, that he has this nondual philosophy.

And that it is boss as hell. Few other games give you the impression of what it's like to play as the bad guy. Usually you have to overthrow the bad guys, but here you get to be on the other side...I love that. Games where you can play an interesting 'villain' are rare. Syndicate kind of provided this feeling too, in a way. But the game was mainly an action game, and didn't really go into the politics.

It would have been neat if XCOM had gone in this direction...I guess it wouldn't have been XCOM then, since XCOM is all about the world coming together. But imagine if you had to cobble together an XCOM force out of diverse ideological factions...anyways. That's a tangent.

So I like playing as Yang, and his quotes are some of the most thought-provoking in a very thought-provoking game, but I don't think I would want to live in the Hive.

Sorry, this post turned out to be long and rambly.

>>49895926
>It's dumbed-down Civ 5 in space. That, by itself, is not a bad thing.

Uh, yeah it is?

Civ 5 was already a babbyfied version of earlier civ games.

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>>49896768
I can see your point. They certainly charged a lot for what might have otherwise been an exceptional mod. If your argument is that the Civ games are on a downward complexity spiral I won't argue with you there either. Even Paradox games are getting heat for making notoriously complex games like Hearts of Iron simpler, probably for that mass market dollar.

FWIW, I'm not a hardcore strategy game player. My threshold for strategy games is not high. I'm sort of halfheartedly trying to learn Darkest Hour, and mainly getting wrecked.

All I can say is that I thought Civ 5 in space had the potential to be pretty cool. I still do. Transhumanism is, like, my favourite genre/theme and I was mostly okay with Civ 5. It was an average strategy game that in BE was being given an SF makeover. I still fire it up once in a while, but I just get bored after the early game.

Anyways, that's enough about me. What's your ideal game? Or are you here to praise the glorious SMAC and the awesomeness of Chairman Yang?

>>49882991
Depends on who wins.

>>49892347
This is a Christian board you degenerate hippie.

>>49895258
He's basically just all propaganda though, nothing he says has any meaning as far as practice goes, other than that he's the boss and nobody else's pain matters.

>>49897291

True, but at a certain point don't you find yourself saying, 'You know, part of me know this is propaganda, but at the same time it's fucking wicked propaganda, and if I could propagandize I would probably say the same thing. Sign me up, buttercup.' He is the boss, and that is the meaning, and that really is all there is to it. Not everybody can pull off that look.

I think this is what makes Yang so awesome. He's the villain that is just way more interesting than the good guys, like the Joker in Batman. You want to see him beaten, but you have the feeling that he can probably only beat himself.

I haven't read the novels, though. Didn't somebody say that Domai just bashes his skull in or something? Kind of a disappointing end, if you ask me. I kind of feel that a more appropriate ending would be having Yang devoured by the very mind worms that he bred to take over Planet, something more like that, and throwing himself into the recycling tanks with his last ounce of strength: becoming one with all the people, at last.

You know what? I'm going with that. I'm making that my head-canon. Until I hear a better idea.

That would also be a fun thought experiment, by the way - what is the most perfect way you could imagine these characters dying/retiring/etc?

>>49897267
Apparently considering how much everyone in this thread wants to suck Miriam's cunt.

>>49897365
Morgan being killed and cannibalized by starving peons. Yang being torn apart by genejacks. Diedre being eaten by mindworms. Zakharov dying in an explosion. Miriam being burned at the stake. Santiago being killed in a "friendly" fire accident. Lal being murdered by his waifu's clone.

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>>49883263
>Implying libertarians aren't real life's comedic relief.

>>49896570
The great strength of the game is that not only is Yang's ideology monstrous and alien, he encourages a very monstrously aggressive playstyle. Playing Yang feels like you are some legalist ubermensch juggernaut that doesn't give two shits about anything, because you know you are better than every other faction and prove is written in stone.

The best Yang strategies is to carpet bomb cities on every single square inch of land and body of water until the entire Planet is a living testament of a united and enlightened humanity. How could Planet retaliate against you when there is not a single spic of space left for its fungal growths and mindworm nests to spread?

How can the other factions ever hope to compete against you, for every city and citizen they possess you have ten to fifteen more? Santiago and Mirriam boosts of the martial prowess and zealotry of their soldiers, Zakhorv boasts the technological power and might of his warmachines, you have rushed command nexus 15 turns before everybody else because getting to it is only two techs away for you and your basic 1/1/1 trooper sitting on one of your many cities puts there best military unit to fucking shame.

Playing Yang feels immoral and game breaking. Only Domai is cheesier but the expansion factions are kindof imbalanced.

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Is the GURPS thingy worth playing? Is it good?

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>>49882991
Wish more had played this game.
Why is it so difficult to get others to play it?

>tfw Beyond Earth was shit

>>49885804
>using barbaric human wave tactics coupled with primitive technology to achieve ultimate victory
Free drones still end up being drones at the end of the day.

>>49891144
Many Sci-fi novels have been influential in it's development.

>>49891144
Ship's chaplains basically focus on mental wellness in the current day anyway.

>>49901578
Because it is old and thus not attractive to the modern gamer.

>>49901578
I knew a person who couldn't get into it since 4x games were too "complicated" for him, considering Civ series is entry level game.

On the other hand, this>>49902874

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The more I think about this, the more I feel like where BE went wrong was in having the action take place on another planet rather than a post-apocalyptic or post-nuclear earth.

In Alpha Centauri you have two things going on in the setting: first, the disintegration of the Unity, and second, the colonization and contact with Planet. This is what makes it so rich. It's an SF story, but it's also a kind of post-apoc story. You have these seven different factions, all of which are 'nihilistic' in some sense. Even the Peacekeepers, who are basically trying to continue the old Earth system in a place where things have more or less moved on.

The factions in BE are all more or less optimistic about themselves. Everybody just naturally feels like they have a right to win. While domination wins are common, it's clear that the developers were trying to tie the affinities to the victory conditions. But because any faction can join any affinity, the victory conditions themselves feel kind of lifeless - if Brazil wins with the Mind Flower or if KP wins with it it doesn't really matter. The point I guess is that you have this impression that the world has ended, but not that this is any kind of victory for any particular faction. There's either an Emancipation win or a Contact win or...you get the idea. And they're all pretty bleak.

For me, the part that I think they really did get right in BE was the pioneering aspect, the terraforming. That's why I think reclaiming the earth from a post-apoc state might have felt more rewarding than trying to accomplish a 'win' condition that allows seems to feel hollow, because all the action takes place in this abstract setting that you don't feel any real attachment to, fought over by factions that are all basically clones of each other in different outfits.

Just wanted to share that idea. After Earth, rather than Beyond Earth. Not like it matters now, since the game is dead, but...anyways.

I deeply regret having passed up the chance to get SMAC back when I was 12 or 13. The fact that /tg/ has been talking about it so much for so many years and still hasn't run out of things to say is by itself a sufficient indicator of its high quality.

>>49884520
This guy knows what's up.
I don't mine being his morally ambiguous minion at all.

>>49905433
It's not without flaws, and the AI is unable to cope with the amount of options. The main points which keep discussion of it alive is the rich setting and the devisive factions (all different but pretty much all in part evil).

>>49892321
The word is "letzte mensch" you illiterate cuckbird shit-for-brains.

>>49903860
There is that but there is also the truly baffling and relatively minor decisions that were made.

Lack of 1 city challenge mode. What was one of the most often requested mods in Civ5? 1 city challenge for both player and AI. What do they do in CivBE? Get rid of 1CT altogether, fucking genius.

Having the same Indian sounding lady read the flavour quotes for all quotes regardless of who they were attributed to. Even more confusing considering that they already hired voice actors for the faction leaders.

Also no map editor.

Also no make your own faction editor.

Also no "turn this boat around we going to fix Earth" scenario.

Also, and this may seem a bit petty, the faction leaders are meant to change as you go deeper and deeper down one afinity or another. When I go FULL HYBRID HARMONY + SUPREMACY I want my dude to look like some sort of fucked up and awe inspiring abomination that has shed their humanity. I want something more than a bit of stuff on their forehead, contact lenses and a new pretty dress. Seriously my dude was xeno-spliced abomination flesh wrapped around a terminator, I want him to be all sorts of fucked up.

Also the wonders. AC gave us a short little video and a quote, usually from a faction leader. This gave us a wire frame and that Indian lady again. Also in Civ5 you could see the wonders built into the city or part of the surrounding landscape. This gave us just some random plastic looking crap dropped haphazardly in a hexagon around the city.

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>>49907382
>Also no "turn this boat around we going to fix Earth" scenario.
Notice how they never say what the "great mistake" was?
Notice how in the prologue technology regressed, and all the shit only LOOKED sci-fi esque?
Notice how there was only one caucasian faction leader in the game?

I'll let you guess what happened, and then I'll tell you what my theory is.

>>49905433
You can get it plus the expansion on GOG. Even comes with all the patches needed to make it run on modern PCs.

Worth playing if you like the Civ series. Holds up better than most old PC games.

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If you were him you'd do the exact same thing.

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>>49884807

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>>49907382
It's all true. Even a sort of bare-bones faction editor as in Master of Orion would be nice. SMAC also gave you the option for social engineering - environmentalist police state eudaimonics, anyone? So good.

The voice acting was definitely sub-par.

Your comment about the faction leaders changing made me literally laugh out loud, thanks for that. You're right, it's a totally missed opportunity. Most of the time the cities too wind up just kind of looking like a sort of mashup of all three influences, which is too bad, because this was actually a neet aesthetic, and could have been done better: slowly watching all of a continent turn into a cyberpunk nightmare of Supremacy or an alien phantasmagoria with Harmony would have been dope. And Making Space Rome Great Again, Purity, is basically what I'm looking for when I play. This is why I can't be so hard on BE - it's not that it's bad, it's just that it still does give me some of the things that I like: outsized imperialist space fantasies in bright primary colours. I am not a sophisticated person like that.

And the wonders. This is one of the most disappointing aspects, I agree. Especially because some of them have the potential to be cool as fuck. The Daedalus Ladder, Abyssal Mirror, Machine-Assisted Free Will? These things have my attention. If there had been a video to go with them it would have been awesome (and, I think, if they had also affected the game in a more meaningful way than they usually do, which is after all the hype to give you +2 food or something relatively small.)

We might as well discuss the other thing, which is the One Other DLC that was almost certainly a possibility. I've heard it described as Falling Skies, and would have given orbital cities, stuff like that. And you know? I probably would have bought it. I don't know if it would have saved the game, but...anyways.

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>>49908277

>>49907627
Something something race war now?

>>49882991
>implying the ayyy lmaos isn't the obvious choice

>>49908343
I should say, for the record, that Machine-Assisted Free Will was actually OP as fuck.

>>49908343
I wasn't trying to say it was a bad game as such. Just a disappointing one.

I would also have bought additional DLC.

>>49908343
>I don't know if it would have saved the game, but...anyways.

I would have bought it, at least. I'm too casual for SMAC and dearly wanted Beyond Earth to be something similar but with more up-to-date, user friendly mechanics. And it is, sort of, but it just feels so halfassed. You're right about the Victories and Wonders being lame. Rising Tide helped a lot, but didn't quite fix everything. One more good expansion pack might just have pushed the game to where it needed to be.

Sadly with Civ6 it's obvious that's never going to happen. There's a complete overhaul mod - Codex - which I'm trying at the moment, that adds more depth. Balance feels completely fucked though.

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>>49908526
Yep, I know. We're commiserating.

Orbital cities, yo. They could have been a thing.

>>49908219
Indoctrinate people to worship you as a Neo-confucianist Übermensch? Take them to bumfuck nowhere, strip them of all individuality and self worth and eugenically breed them like rabbits and lab rats? Command your eugenically bred human ant drones to colonize every square inch of land and body of water on earth?

>>49907627
>Notice how they never say what the "great mistake" was?

Rising Tide actually does drop some hints regarding what happened, they're just buried deep within the in-game Civilopedia. A terrorist group hit China with a nuclear device, which caused China to go apeshit and glass almost the entire Middle East. That was when Al Falah scraped together what was left into a rocket ship and GTFO'ed earth. After that, everything spiraled into global nuclear war. Massive ecological catastrophies did take place as well, both before, during, and after.

Also, before you get on your "hurr durr all the ebil white people died", there's a British/Nordic union faction in the expansion as well.

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>>49908595
Eh, there's no need to say you're too casual for SMAC. You would be depriving yourself of an experience that, as evidenced by this thread, is still crazy after all these years. Few games, if any, have given me as genuine sense of wonder as SMAC did, where you literally stand there afterwards and go, sweet cuppin' cakes science fiction is the jam. And I didn't play it until long after it was released.

We've just all become spoiled by better GUI and these games becoming steadily more popular over time, which is what leads, paradoxically, to the erosion of complexity as designers chase the increasingly lucrative mainstream market.

>>49908779
That is why indies are thegoto strategies nowadays.
They have no hope ofgoing mainstream, and can be as complicated as they want.

>>49908779
Designers are ditching the mainstream for the smartphone casual gaming market anon, triple A games takes hundreds of developers and designers with multi-million dollar budgets, a smartphone game costs absolutely nothing and takes one guy or a couple of dudes in their basements and a month or two to churn out.

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>>49908822
Yeah. Also wargames. Companies like Matrix and Slitherine (which are actually two halves of the same company, for reasons I can't understand) are still cranking out these incredibly niche war-games written by I can only assume are people who belong to the historical anachronism society and Civil War re-enactment groups (not that those are bad things, of course).

They're kind of a mixed bag. For one thing, there's no nostalgia in the world of GUI. Some of them have in-game interfaces that look like Windows 3.1 but simulate the daily effects of trench foot on troop morale. They're also super-niche: an entire game just about, I don't know, Hannibal crossing the Alps or Bull Run or something. And holy shit are they expensive. Get used to seeing $59.99 price tags for games that would have been featured on the cover page of PC Gamer in 1989.

Steam, it most definitely is not. But it's a whole other thing. Dedicated wargamers are definitely a community of their own.

Pic not really related, just cool as fuck.

What would be a fitting SMAC equivalent to the Purity-Supremacy-Harmony thing? Something to customize your factions that would feel possible for all of them.

>>49908838
Facts.

The upside is that all you need is one dude with vision. SMAC seems to have had two - Brian Reynolds and Sid Meier. Meier laid the groundwork, and Reynolds did awesome things with it.

Richard Garriott is one of my heroes for this reason. He wrote Ultima 4 because people were freaking out over Dungeons and Dragons and saying that it made their children worship the devil and kill each other. So RG wrote a game all about becoming the incarnation of morality. Kind of incredible.

>>49908920
I think it's more about expanding the possibilities of P/H/S to match the complexity of SMAC. People just gravitate towards the ideologies of the SMAC leaders because they're richer and more differentiated from each other than the affinities of BE. Would a Deirdre who could go Supremacy really be Deirdre? It sounds weird, but I think the problem is that affinities work against the characters as having individual senses of identity.

Maybe what you could do is have something like a more friendly blue-skies version of Deirdre, and then a fanatical eco-terrorist Deidre...something like that. A sort of a spectrum.

>>49909144
So something tied into the social engineering picks, maybe? Those choices could be fluffed out more.

>>49909144
Well, as it is, Deirdre would obviously go Harmony, Miriam Purity, Zakharov almost inevitably Supremacy.

You'd need a new set of three ideals to strive toward that each leader could embrace and make their own.

>>49909169
Yes, and I think this was the idea, or an idea, the designers had that they didn't really build on: quest decisions. The idea must have been that your affinity choices were affected by the quest decisions that you made.

Once again, the issue here was that no matter what sponsor you played, every quest decision was the same. In a perfect world, you would have the decisions actually reflect the different backgrounds of the Sponsors - some available only to Al-Falah, some only to PAC, etc. Here again, the affinities have a tendency to negate the experience of actually playing the different sponsors.

The social engineering picks would definitely play a role, though. Social engineering was super fun in SMAC.

>>49909179
There's a post about this on the Civfanatics forums, I'll see if I can dig it up. Just someone making arguments about which sponsor would suit each affinity. In the meantime, I think my own thought would be do to something like a 'light' and 'dark' side for each character, but...that's a whole other thing.

Again, to use SMAC as a model, it's not like Yang gets Yang-ier as the game goes on and you build stuff. He's already cool enough from the get-go that you just like playing as him (or Zak, or whoever). Affinities would almost seem to be introducing RPGish aspects as character development (besides already linking affinities to the tech tree, which compounds this). And all this changes the way in which we see the characters.

This is a cool discussion, BTW.

>>49885854
Why do fangirls obsess over Vulpes? It's really weird.

>>49909179
This was the read. It's cool, and it makes sense, but when you look at it you can't help but feel that you would prefer to just play as an always-Supremacist PAC with more interesting quest decisions than a PAC that could be Harmony, but in which nothing changes really except the costume.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-canon-affinity-for-each-sponsor.573241/

Or this: give us seven different affinities, and the freedom to choose - via quest decisions, buildings, techs, etc. - how I *interpret* those affinities. Am I *extreme* Purity? Or only mildly purity?

That way, you can make the sponsors however you like. In this system, you could either keep the sponsors relatively bland, as in BE, or super-interesting, as in SMAC. But the affinities themselves are the main thing, I think.

>>49883263
A few of Morgan's quotes definitely suggest a sort of very materialist world view, more like an extreme present-minded utilitarian - like his whole quote on "by what right do peoples of the future deny me the resources of today?"
I think the very hard materialist streak in Morgan's thought could have been developed more.

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>>49909464
This way, if you want those ultra-heavy Purity shock troopers or whatever, you will actually have to earn it by building X number of propaganda centres in your cities, or whatever. The downside of this is that building propaganda centres reduces your science output, since people are afraid to innovate...you get the idea. If you want those Xeno-hybrid telepaths, you will have to support some insane neo-Druidic cult that occasionally asks you to exterminate science stations for no reason, other than because it offends the alien gods they worship.

If you want your world to look like pic related, you will probably have to take more of a balanced approach.

>>49908920
Horizontal axis measuring ideological morality, left being extremely morally conscious and right being lack all morals.

Vertical axis measuring ideological identity, one extreme ends with absolute centralized authority and governance and the other extreme ends with absolute anarchy and decentralization,

It's interesting also to consider that there's a great deal of overlap between the affinities - Purity, Harmony, Supremacy - and the *virtues* of the culture tree - Might, Prosperity, Knowledge, and Industry.

In a way, all of those could become affinities, rather than making one tied to victory conditions, and the other a stand-in for 'culture,' which is what we're talking about here. It's not like it's so hard to imagine victory conditions tied to concepts that the designers called 'virtues', when those are obviously not so different from affinities at all.

Prosperity: complete terraforming project X.
Might: Build a super-army, fight something with it.
Knowledge: Research and build tech x.
Industry: Construct megaproject x.

To be honest, I'm not actually sure you need so many different victory conditions, or that affinities need to be tied up with them. It's more just that there's already plenty going on under the hood in BE already that can just be re-purposed.

I have to go out for a bit, but I hope this thing doesn't 404 in the meantime. This has been super-fun, all. My thanks for a really great discussion. Hope it continues!

>>49909464
Well, the problem is that the SMAC leaders are interesting because they're extreme representations of ideologies, done in a smart way. You'd need to avoid overlap with the affinities themselves.

>>49909282
>something like a 'light' and 'dark' side for each character
I don't think good and evil have their place in SMAC, which is all about the ambiguity of ideologies. But I think you could have something like:
>Exaltation - Focus on the most reassuring and inspiring aspects of your ideology, creating an attractive "utopia" that get culture bonuses at the expense of maintenance, along with balanced troops and guerilla tactics (=freedom fighter types).
>Dominion - Focus on the most aggressive and tyrannical aspects of your ideology, for maintenance and military bonuses. Classic Zerg rush type military with lots of expendable troops.
>Fusion - Focus on the most radical aspects of your ideology, eschewing classical conceptions of humanity in favor of adapting your society to one that has to live with a sentient planet. The latter is less pissed at you and you can unlock exotic abilities in both combat and secret projects, but you need a robust research/production to get it off the ground and it can backfires more easily. You also get a headstart on Transcendance.

So for example, Exaltation Yang would be all about the Ubermensch Philosopher-Kings, Dominion Yang is the classic "fuck you, my bases go everywhere" version, and Fusion Yang is unleashing Instrumentality light on his cities.

Free Drones. Disregard science, acquire eudaimonia.

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>>49909781
Yeah, I should have been more specific. You're right, 'light' and 'dark' is far too simplistic. And even something like 'friendly and nice' or 'totalitarian and evil' - you actually have to account for the fact that 'friendly and nice' isn't the same thing for faction A as for faction B.

So if you can come up with a three-way split for each faction, then, that's definitely an idea. Hearts of Iron 2 seems to do fairly well with sliders, so I was channeling some of that.

But I think (?) we're basically agreeing. Even in Hearts of Iron 2, it is theoretically possible to play as Nazi Germany and push all of their policy sliders in the opposite direction without triggering a revolution - not entirely sure. So you could be an open-borders, Dove policy, democratic Germany, along with the benefits that entails...and presumably the very different version of history that you would be committing to.

Anyways, I think you're on to something with the different slants on each sponsor. So would that mean that you would tie each sponsor to an affinity? I think that would work for me in terms of making the sponsors stand out. That way also you could make the quest decisions reflect the sponsors themselves, too.

Another thing to think about would be then the need to uncouple affinity boosts from the tech tree. Maybe something like - researching tech x allows for a quest decision that then in turn can produce an affinity jump? Something like that?

God, I played this game for the first time in 1998. It still sticks with me to this day. I think what sticks with me thw most is thateach and every leader (from SidMAC not SidMAX, I try not to think of any aside from aki-zeta and Domain of existing) doesn't just have an arguement, they have a compelling philosophical arguement. I honestly believe it's what got me into philosophy in the first place, hell, I've actually used this game to tutor people in philosophy before. Even yang, for being a total and complete monster is an inspiring leader.

>not fighting for the Spartans

Everything about them was fucking cool. It was so obvious that the writers intended for you to be put off by their "icky sicky militarism" but in a setting with African Donald Trump and Space Mao its nice to see some like Santiago cut through the blatant bullshit pseudo-philosophical bullshit

Same with Miriam who was no doubt written to inspire feeling of resentment amongst the then emerging Angry White Male Atheist(TM) of the 90's who watched a lot of edgy comedians like George Carlin and are the ancestor to the modern Fedorus Cuckus that inhabit the YouTube comment sections of today. I actually found her to be a genuinely endearing addition to the game despite everyone else who played it hating her on the principle of her being religious. A lot of her story feels really dated in 2016 though I believe the rest has aged quite impeccably.

As for who was the most "right" I'd say the UN guy was even if he was kind of an elitist bigot.

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>>49910328
The Spartans definitely do not get enough love. Even if they got conquered because they didn't play the political game somehow you knew that Santiago would go down with a knife in her teeth and jamming the gates of the command centre with enemy corpses.

>>49910328
>everyone else who played it hating her on the principle of her being religious
Your post is pretty disingenuous but this takes the cake. Most players hate Miriam because she's the most aggressive AI.

>>49910482
Like prior to 2012 I distinctly remember people gleefully reminiscing about wiping Miriam off the fucking map because her theme was religious on the YouTube comments section of cutscenes from SMAC. You could easily find them still I wager.

>>49910328
The problem with the Spartans is that they feel a little underdeveloped. Most of their quotes are just Santiago paraphrasing "war, war never changes". The idea of a militarist society is definitely an ideological possibility but they end up a bit flat in comparison to all the other radically out there stuff - none of their stuff really touches on the organization of society towards military ends. Although perhaps my memory is fuzzy and I give Santiago less credit than she's due.

>>49910646
The main problem is that they're focused on 1)survival and 2)conflict, which are already the bread and butter of a civilization game. So they feel generic.

You could probably have built upon some "muh freedom" theme, but that doesn't really translate well to a civ game where things are pretty abstract and don't focus much on the individual.

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>>49910482
>Most players hate Miriam because she's the most aggressive AI.

It is the nature of the weak to resent the strong.

>>49911323
>AI
>strong

>>49911383

>Dismantling your own fallacious reasoning as to why anyone would hate Miriam for being "aggressive"

Please, if anything, fedora cucks just use it as evidence against her character as being a religious zealot.

>>49911407
Anon, a weak but aggressive AI is incredibly hatable.
have you even played the game?

>>49911438
>>49911407
"Give me tech or I war!"
"I serious, give tech or war!"
"I mad now, tech or war"

fuck that nagging bitch so hard, holy shit.
I have never given you tech, I will never give you tech, stop asking for tech.

>>49911438

Why would anyone hate an ineffectual aggressive AI?

You're literally obliterating your own points. The only basis to hate an aggressive AI on is if it blows you the fuck out.

Nobody who was any good at the game *cared* about Spartans or Believers zerg rushing you. They just stomped them and moved on with the game.

>>49911474
see
>>49911455
I don't think you played the game.

>>49911493

I think you're a dumb cuck who is desperately trying to pretend that fedoras have a rational basis for hating a particular character.

>>49911553
>cuck
Oh, it's just another board immigrant. And here I thought you were being legitimate.
Nobody's so obtuse as to act like nagging isn't annoying.

>>49911493
>>49911553
You two.

Why are you getting hurt over 4chan comments?

>>49910553
The burden of proof is on the one making the assertion :^)

>>49911553
>rational basis for hating a particular character

Keep in mind that the point of this game is to join a group representing an exteme version of (then) contemporary ideologies, and then establish superiority for your chosen faction. If you're looking at someone opposing your fictional ideology and not thinking "this one's gotta go", you're playing the game wrong.

>>49911704
Isn't the whole point of the humanist U.N. guys that "we can all live in peace" though?

>>49911750
Don't fall for their lies, anon.

>>49911750
Who the fuck plays lal?

>>49911750
Yeah, and that's why nobody plays them.

>>49882991
Zakharov/Yang 2016

>>49911750
This post killed the thread.

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>>49883273

>>49912013
Everyone just sort of unanimously shits on lal.

>>49884520
I couldn't agree more. NCR and Legion should just all die in a fire, and if I ran the show with Yes Man the first thing I'd order him to do is find someone as competent as House to run the whole thing.

Which Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri faction was your favorite /tg/ and why?

>>49913395
Zakharov and Yang, equally

>Zakharov
>the power of Science! and man's will to master nature

>Yang
>the power of Civilization! and man's will to master man

>>49892433
>whatever heretical branch of Christianity she's running is not at all zealous, i

She's a form of American Baptist which means they are in fact very batshit

>>49894775
Free Drones were the only ones that made any sense, the rest were needless faff that could have been part of other factions.

>>49913395

Zakharov, because SCIENCE!

Also, I was never a fan of Miriam for philosophical reasons, and it was 9 kinds of fun to hear her go "Give me your science, or I will unleash my 1-2-1 Infantry on you!" and respond with fungal payloads and gravships while everyone else was still struggling to get plasma shards.

>>49913395
>>49913453
Oh, and I forgot the most important part.

>"That species shall be exterminated, I tell you, EXTERMINATED."

>>49913620
Kind of funny Zhakarov of all people had the most human reaction to the mind worms

>>49913580
It's wierd, Miriam (even though I always played Diedre because of early game MINDWORMS) was my favorite faction leader because she was the only one to ask if we should be doing this, not if we can do this.

It honestly makes me wonder if something personal happened to him.

>>49913641
>>49914210
Should be referencing this.

>>49913395
Gaians, because MINDWORMS

>>49913395
Corporate, university, and yang.
I was themost cartoonish of supervillains in all those factions.
It was great.

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>>49910328
You also got the feeling from the Spartans that they had more of a code of honour than anyone else (not exactly a news flash, I suppose). Morgan and Yang could backstab you because reasons. Miriam? There's no sympathy for heretics and unbelievers. Zak only cares about scientific progress, and has little regard for humanity. Deirdre or Lal might have to think about it, but Lal is a pragmatist who will probably believe he's acting in the interests of the Greater Good regardless, and Deirdre is going to do what she feels she has to for Planet.

The only faction that you get the feeling would rather die than break their word would be the Spartans. They wouldn't *betray* you. They might act irrationally, even heartlessly, but not deceitfully, even in a world which is all ideology and realpolitik. No doubt something like this would contribute to their downfall, but there's something very appealing about that. It's probably not an ideology well-suited to the Game of Thrones-style atmosphere of intrigue, but as Lt. Daniels says: 'Bend too far, and you're already broken.'

Halfway between Carl von Clausewitz and pic related. It's a good look.

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where can I get this game.

I feel like I should play it, if only to see if it's as intellectually stimulating as everyone claims.

It's not on Steam and I don't feel like getting GOG.

>mfw everyone is praising how brilliant the philosophy in a video game is

>>49914334
Honestly, it's not that deep, but it's believable. You don't get a proper political/philosophical treatise from the faction leaders, but you do get the sense that they well and truly do believe in what they espouse, are some pretty serious believers, and have given a lot of thought to their beliefs.

>>49914194

We are potentially the last bastion of the human race, we can worry about the moral ramifications of Tachyon weaponry after we've figured out whether they work or not (and how good they kill those pesky mindworms...)

>>49914558
It's okay, Yang will be here long after you both are gone. He doesn't need research or moral hang ups. He has bodies.

>>49914194
This why I liked her.

>>49895766

The underlying issue with Miriam's society is that it's basically every branch of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and the dozen other minor Abrahamic faiths jam-packed into a bubble for survival because not even the UN wants them anymore. Without someone like her to meditate between all of them, such a society is volatile and liable to disintegrate over minor schisms.

>>49914334
Intellectually stimulating, very yes. It's fun to think about potential, radically different factions and how they would interact. Also the tech is really cool. Brilliant philosophy... ehhh.

>>49914334
Outside of GOG, you'd probably have to pirate it, or see if you can track down somone's CD copy on ebay or something. If you do get it, I advise staying away from Alien Crossfire for your first couple of games.

>>49883099
>Hardly anyone cares about BoS in NV
>BoS gets huge fucking following in 4
what happened?

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>>49914902
Because those games take place in different parts of the country. The BoS used to be substantially more powerful in the west, but I assume they lost most of their holdings thanks to the rise of the NCR and Caesar's Legion. Thanks to the events of Fallout 3, however, they maintain a substantial presence in the east based out of the capital wasteland.

>>49911750
Meh I enjoy playing the peacekeepers since they're flexible.
Also, U.N humanist principles only apply to peacekeeper citizens anon.

>>49914969
I wasn't referring to in-game power level, I was referring to how there wasn't as many people that liked BoS as a faction in the older games, yet after Fallout 4 came around there's been a lot more people that ride BoS's dick (despite them being the worst faction throughout all the games).

>>49913395

Gaians, for so many reasons.

The least of which is that researching The Locusts of Chiron is my 'I win' button.

>>49910328
>I actually found her to be a genuinely endearing addition to the game despite everyone else who played it hating her on the principle of her being religious.

I don't hate her for being religious, I hate her for being such a retardedly aggressive triggered cunt. She will declare war on you on the drop of a fucking hat and even when you are allied or have a peace treaty with her, she'll still send her probe teams to steal all your fucking tech.

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>>49913395
Zakharov of course. SCIENCE! all the way. Morgan is fun when you ecoboom to just buy your way to victory.

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>>49915379
>She will declare war on you on the drop of a fucking hat and even when you are allied or have a peace treaty with her, she'll still send her probe teams to steal all your fucking tech.

Suffer not the heretic to live.

>>49913620
Its kind of implied that Zakharov holds some kind of animosity towards Deirdre even when they were still on Earth, because apparently he didn't want Deirdre to be appointed as the chief botanist/xenobiologist of Unity if you read Deirdrre's profile descriptions.

That mindworm attack on lab 3 is probably just Deirdre trolling him for days.

>>49914623
The only thing worse than starting on the same continent a Yang is not starting on the same continent as Yang.

You either have an uphill struggle all the way through the start of the game or you just know he's waiting on the other continent to become unstoppable.

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>>49915184
Something must have happened in between those two games that would make more people like a brutal techno-cult.

>>49897781
Ron Paul was the last hope for your country. You derided him. Then you derided the tea party, now you uneasilly deride Trump, who'll lose but come to an hair's lenght from the oval office.
Next, in 8 years, you'll elect an emperor, you'll put the laurels on his head as victor of Civil War II, and America will be dead forever.

>>49915810

>This is what Ronbergs actually believe

lol

>>49916170
This will come to pass. You know it.
It happened and you did nothing. Now It's done.

>>49916205

>[posts DoomPaul.jpeg for 500th time]

Honestly I hope it happens soon, friendo. Keep on stocking that ammunition!

>>49895878

Yang's value system is that you cannot torture a man who is incapable of pain. His plan for happiness is to rewrite your DNA until you no longer produce any fear/stress chemicals and then work you to death in a salt mine.

>>49913395

Free Drones. Because good commies are so rare in fiction.

Lal. Because he's a delusional bastard that tries to do the right thing while everything goes to hell.

>>49909144

Deirdre is both friendly blue-skies and a fanatical eco-terrorist. That's part of what makes SMAC good, and having Deirdre forced to pick between one or the other would damage it.

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>>49915184

Well, Fallout 1&2 (and New Vegas) painted them as a scary, ultimately suicidal techno-cult. It's difficult to love them when they were painted as insular, brutal and uncaring (Fallout 1) ineffectual and weakened (Fallout 2) ineffectual, brutal, insular and bound to oblivion (New Vegas).

Bethesda can't write for shit, and so they went to make them post apoc Paladins. In F3 they are pretty much "good guys" while in F4 they are painted as your garden variety fake speesh mehrens.

It was quite clear that in the original the BoS was never meant to be a positive faction: they don't adapt, they don't expand, they don't live. They are a monument to the past and will be mauled when a new world comes, making futile last stands following an outdated way of thinking (their entire plotline in new Vegas, where they are weirdly similar to the Enclave).

That said, Chicago Brotherhood is the best. I know it's barely canon. but c'mon, 12 years old me loved them to death and I can't be bothered to change my opinion 15 years later!

>>49910646

Canonically, Santiago bites it in the early game, and it shows. Her quotes are entirely about the early stages of society so we never get to see where she was going with it. Surely she had plans, but the quotes are always about things that they're trying to accomplish *right now* which means ultimately only Zhakarov and Deirdre get to talk about their end game.

>>49916354

On the contrary, Beth's Fo4 BoS is heavily similar to the Midwestern chapter in both tactics and ethics, trying to undo their mistake of making them into Space Paladins.

>>49885483
Well... At least no one will try to fuck with you. Knowing that a fellow neighbour leader not only has an army of robots but is also more crazy than a honey badger makes you act cautiously around him. Or else.

>>49915810

Is this the first time you've ever committed to a very specific timetable like this? How did your last go at it turn out?

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>>49916383

Nah.

"I swear, back in my times we didn't have all those tribal recruits."

"I'm getting old, I never thought that we would be recruiting Ghouls. Whaaatever."

"Sentient Deathclaws? And they want to join up? Well... I GUESS WE COULD....what do you mean they are already there?"

"And now SuperMutants. I'm losing control of this."

"That's a robot? And it's with us? What else, we're going to recruit Chinese now?"

Chicago Brotherhood in FT is kinda clumsily written, being substantially the Brotherhood That Can Do No Wrong (shares tech, supports tribals directly, recruits cats and dogs). F4's Brotherhood is Space Marines with the trademark shit Bethesda writing. Not saying that FT was well-written, but I give it a pass thanks to nostalgia.

>>49885946
Nuts. Can you make a custom faction that's right?

>>49917102
Yes but the custom faction editor is fucking awful to use.

Also why bother?

Just take a broken faction and use social engineering options to make it unfucked.

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>>49917102
No work needed, it already exists

>>49917123
Because I have to be right all the time. It is the only way I can hide my guilt at not saving my father from his heart attack.
>>49917137
But aren't robots even more vulnerable to garbage in, garbage out than humans?

>>49917152
Correction: Not robots, a cybernetic consciousness.

>>49917164
So an AI, basically? Same difference.

>>49917179
It's not an AI. It's a network of cyborgs calling itself a state. Every citizen is a cyborg, every citizen has a say in every action taken by the collective of other cyborgs, and through direct democracy the collective decides on what to do with itself.

>>49914901
Yeah, Alien Crossfire takes a game that's already a powergamers dream, and then adds a few things that snap it completely in half.
Looking at you cloudbase and domai.
>>49913395
Gaians, I'm a builder who likes to have earlygame offensive options.

>>49917102
I've never messed around with the faction editor, I have this idea for a more peaceful religious faction based on Catholicism to contrast to the Believers, but I have no idea what the civ ability should be. I do have a general idea of what the plusses and minuses should be.

>>49917356
You know, it would be interesting to combine Unitarian Universalism with the Catholic top down organization formed into a state. It has its own creed of things you can not do, a community orientation through its lavish churches, and promotes its own canonization process, but it's not tied to a single religion.

It could have been formed through a serious of various priests, philosophers, and community leaders that were upset at Deidre's "betrayal of common sense", and then set out to fully set in stone their own proper way to live through the study of ethics to oppose her, and the other factions which they find "equally morally bankrupt".

>>49917209
Basically a bunch of wankers that never decide what to do on time to be relevant.

>>49917549
Unitarian Universalists are what remain today of the old american puritans.
You can BET they'll never compromise with Catholics, even if they both hate Deidre. Some alliances are just not meant to be.

>>49916427
No It's not. I had no problem predicting the dead would rise to vote Obama in 2012 and they'll do that again in 2016.
I had no problem predicting "republicans" with a majority on the house would just kneel and worship Obama's cock approving of everything he ever did and funding it.
I have an impressive track record, actually.

>>49917764
Which is why it would be interesting. In their effort to construct a universal ethic they end up applying various Catholic organization principles to carry out their state. It's not an alliance of two groups, it's a collection of various groups that ram their ideologies into one another and strictly enforce what came out of the process. In fact, the discussion on the existence of a divine being, or several divine beings, is even punished in their system because it promotes theological unease.

Their big thing would be talking about justice. What is just in their eyes must be promoted through any means, and what is unjust punished through any means.

>>49916354
I'm so glad we have memes to let us know what games have good and bad writing.
It's really important, especially since this thread is ostensibly started to talk about a game with some of the laziest setting creation ever that we pretend is better because people have a hardon for the gameplay.

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>>49916354
Since we're now talking about Fallout lore as well, I just wanted to let you know that this is a thing. You can East BoS to your heart's content. Was playing it last night and it's great. Highly recommended.

>>49916348
I agree, totally. The comment you are referring to was made in the context of a conversation I was having with another anon about repurposing BE affinity mechanics so that they would not erode the interestingness of the sponsors. The goal was to make a hypothetical BE more resemble the awesomeness of SMAC, not make SMAC worse by having the characters forced to choose. What we were discussing was a way of interpreting affinities by allowing for choices, stuff like that, and how to not have cookie-cutter sponsors with no sense of identity.

Basically, it was about how affinities were this stumbling block for BE that prevented the emergence of interesting and complex characters, like Deirdre (or, for that matter, any of the original seven).

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>>49908343
>And Making Space Rome Great Again, Purity, is basically what I'm looking for when I play.

Purity annoys me because it's aesthetic is wrapped in the trappings of ancient western civilization, but like why the fuck is the ARC trying to look Roman? Or Kavitha? Purity for the ARC should look like Colombia from Bioshock infinite, India's purity should look like Bijirao Mastani, Hell you could make a "Civ: after earth" SF game that would have a different aesthetic for every faction just around that.


Also, Where was the environmentalism that was present in SMAC in BE? SMAC is the only game that ever portrayed environmentalism right, and gave you a good reason to not be a polluting dickhead (read: not wanting your faction to resemble John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up but no Trainites) and it and every other interesting ethical question is gone in the New one to be replace by hollywood science fiction "ethical dillemas" that have nothing to do with the world.

>>49918074
For what it's worth, that may be an impossible task, which represents an interesting paradox for game designers: if you give people the power to choose, you actually might detract from what makes a sponsor or faction leader fundamentally different from you. Playing Deirdre and *being* Deirdre are not the same things. So there's this question of simulation - and it may be the more you allow the mechanics of a system power over a character's identity, the less individualized, interesting and memorable that character actually becomes.

And so BE was a flop and SMAC was and is remains the bomb, because - somehow - the characters felt lifelike enough to make us want to reflect on them.

>>49913395
Yang.
Though I never seem to be able to do early-game aggression right. I'm too much of a secret-project whore, and playing Domai for tat doesn't feel entirely right for some reason.

>>49911786

>He doesn't always play Lal

India is my favorite IRL country so I picked him anyway

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>>49918243
Totally. This is something I was also thinking about...the terraforming aspect was the part of BE that I actually liked. And clearly the developers did too - not only is Prosperity tree probably the best virtue tree, but all of the little resources that you can improve and other stuff actually makes the colony you are developing feel lifelike and interesting. Once you wipe out the aliens and get your cities set up all you do is roll to your win condition. By the time I get to the mid-game I basically want to put the entire game on auto-run, science, culture, everything. There's just nothing left to do.

Environmentalism in SMAC was doing things that are ridiculous. How about volcanoes that appear and change the map? Fusion busters making craters? They didn't even bring that feature to Civ 5. Terraforming is one of the most interesting features of SMAC, and that's even without the possibilities raised by having the planet also be a semi-sentient being at the same time, responding to you with increasing numbers of mind worm boils and so on.

Agreed that Purity makes no sense at all when you play with a sponsor that has a non-Western culture group (like the PAC). It's totally ridiculous.

It's why I feel like maybe one alternative would have been to take the three affinities and four virtues and sort of make that the sponsor background. Get rid of the national/culture group sponsors altogether and build them around seven ideologies: Purity, Harmony, Supremacy, Might, Prosperity, Knowledge, and Industry. Then re-write the quest decisions so that you only get quest decisions for the affinity to which you belong.

>>49918388
Or, instead of doing that...you could just play Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

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>>49918315

>>49918552

My gf is Indian and I've never seen her shit anywhere besides the toilet. Checkmate /pol/

>>49915810
>Next, in 8 years, you'll elect an emperor, you'll put the laurels on his head as victor of Civil War II, and America will be dead forever.
Good, it's time that democracy died and we got back to proper government.

>>49918588
Why do you watch your girlfriend shit?

>>49894455
an ocean-going faction is a good base to build a faction concept on. it only went full retard when they gave them the "we be pirates! yarr harr harr!" aesthetic, which made absolutely no sense and was just obnoxiously dumb.

>>49918645

Why do you not?

>>49917793
>I had no problem predicting "republicans" with a majority on the house would just kneel and worship Obama's cock approving of everything he ever did and funding it.

He said, with the most obstructionist do nothing congress in US history in office right now

>>49918700
Thanks for confirming your shit indian fetish.

>>49920216
How can you say you love someone if you wont eat their poop?

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So.

About that secret Easter egg faction. Any clues what their ideology is like or leader personality?

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>>49921894
Isn't it obvious?

>>49922067
Throne of Games.

>>49923389
They're called "mindworms", could they be anything else than horrifying?

>>49917793
I love how, whenever the specter of 'voter fraud' is raised, people just sort of say 'the dead voted in Chicago durr hurr' without bothering to cite any proof, when actual studies show that incidents of voter fraud via impersonation happen so rarely that they might as well be a statistical rounding error.

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>>49923502
>Not letting the dead vote

Wow! Holy sit that's some straight up vitalism right there.

>>49905637
>he thinks clinging strongly to the old morality is what a letzesmensch would do
>he thinks the letzesmensch actually HOLDS the societal morality rather than just following it enough to avoid getting in trouble
>he thinks the letzesmensch does anything other than ride the societal currents while being too apathetic to have any morality of his own
Look at this shitbird pretending to know what he's talking about.

>>49882991

Lal

>>49923972
He's probably the one best to live under the rule of. Problem is he's also the least adaptive.

>>49923483
Yes?
I mean, it's entirely possible to have mindworms that do nothing except give you psionic powers and enhance your nervous system.

Just, you know, that's not how it works in alpha centauri.

>>49925840
>fucking Santiago

So if the Unity had crashed on the same planet that the Seeding ships landed on and that planet was Planet what would have happened?

For maximum clusterfuckery assume all factions are present.

>>49929179
What is source of this pic?

Google is giving me nothing.

>>49882991
Morgan is.
(Santiago is most left)

>>49909306
He's good looking

>>49896138
>bandits
>neutral in any sense of the word

bro they kill people on sight

>>49923598
Thank you for that nostalgia.