Livestream #3: "Affinities: Which Direction?" - Aug 28th

I liked the topic and how it was presented. My one issue is the way they commented on choosing an affinity. They acted like going into the game with the idea of sticking to one affinity was somehow logically faulty, and that you should adapt to your landing spot. That is metagaming. If your idea of my leader is that they have a Purity-type outlook, then from an RP perspective you wouldn't change your style because there is no floatstone but there is a ton of xenomass.

It is like "I think that humans should retain their essential humanity, but it is inconvenient to stick to my principles due to lack of resources, so I'm going to hybridize with aliens because the resource is readily available." It doesn't make sense unless you are metagaming, playing the game as if it is a game. Which it is, but I don't think that sticking to one affinity is as logically faulty as they made it seem.

It's not entirely flawed, but stubbornness will get you killed, or at least hamstring yourself for a long time.

Ie, decide you must go supremacy but there's no firaxite anywhere. Yes, you can do it, but the you will find that the AI neighbour who chose affinity based upon their surroundings will be much further ahead than you.

Edit---

To be clear though, meta gaming is when you decide to be harmonious with the planet, before even knowing that you can. Ie, affinities arise from being on the planet. Not from before that (else you'd start on that path already).

So picking an affinity based upon surroundings is actually rp.
 
He has a point. It would be like being on a water based map and yet refusing to build up a navy.
 
So picking an affinity based upon surroundings is actually rp.

Besides the availability of affinity resources, are there any other reasons to pick one affinity over the other?

Is one affinity better than the others at a domination victory? At a science victory? If a I land near lots of desert/water/etc., is one affinity better than the others in this situation?
 
So does anybody know if this is up anywhere that doesnt require adobe flash to watch? Which is actually a suggestion in and of itself, lots of people have to watch this stuff on there mobile devices and a lot of mobile devices cant support adobe flash wirhout breaching the warranty.
 
My understanding is each is good at each victory (although they have their own unique victories too, which makes comparison difficult). However, they do accomplish the victories in different ways. A domination victory with purity and a domination victory with supremacy require different skill-sets.
 
Wonder how much fixate, xenomass, or float stone you really need to be effective with each affinity. You do get 4 of your affinities special resource at the mid tier of your affinity.Even if you have none arround your area you can always take over your neighbor to get it. Fixate is suppose to be for late game units.
 
Hard to say. If the Affinity resources are only used for late game units, you can probably limp along without it, just using infantry and cavalry and not the unique units. But if it is required for buildings, that's a different story.
 
Hard to say. If the Affinity resources are only used for late game units, you can probably limp along without it, just using infantry and cavalry and not the unique units. But if it is required for buildings, that's a different story.

I would think it is possible to stick with an affinity before landing rather than picking an affinity based on nearby resources but it might be a bit harder. The Affinity resources seem to be spread out pretty evenly so chances are that whichever affinity you pick, its chosen resource will be around somewhere. But you might need to expand aggressively to reach it or conquer your neighbor to get it. Once you reach the affinity level that gives you 4 free resource in that affinity, you'll have a little bit to help you build your unique units and use that as a launching point to forcefully take more of your resource. You might also need to barter with other factions and try to trade for it. I think it is definitely doable but will require more careful play.

I definitely don't think that the game forces the player to pick the affinity of whatever resource you happen to land next to.

It also seems to me like there are some definite synergies between the sponsors and the affinities. For example, the orbital bonus of Supremacy works well with the Slavic Federation satellite bonus. So it would make sense for the Slavic Federation to go Supremacy to maximize their sponsor ability.
 
I'm a bit curious to see what kind of descriptions they provide for the various resources, and why they would seem to be so indispensable to one affinity and not as useful for another. What is it about Firaxite that encourages a philosophy of cybernetic upgrading? How does Floatstone inspire civilizations to follow the path of Purity?

Sure, the resources are necessary for the units, and the units are (somewhat implausibly) limited to specific affinities... but if the affinities are being styled as philosophies or ideologies, I'm curious to see if they can come up with a reason for the cybernetically-oriented visionaries passing up the opportunities for floating hovertanks...
 
I'm a bit curious to see what kind of descriptions they provide for the various resources, and why they would seem to be so indispensable to one affinity and not as useful for another. What is it about Firaxite that encourages a philosophy of cybernetic upgrading? How does Floatstone inspire civilizations to follow the path of Purity?

Sure, the resources are necessary for the units, and the units are (somewhat implausibly) limited to specific affinities... but if the affinities are being styled as philosophies or ideologies, I'm curious to see if they can come up with a reason for the cybernetically-oriented visionaries passing up the opportunities for floating hovertanks...

Speaking for Firaxite at least, i believe one of the interviews mentioned that it's properties making it ridiculously good fr Computer chips, hence why it leads to the Supremacy style of cybernetization and advanced technology. Xenomass leads to Harmony for an obvious reason, what with xenomass being raw tools that can have many uses. As for purity and floatstone... i have no idea.
 
As for the explanation of why the affinities don't capitalize on all three, I can give a weak but realistic answer: The same reason why our own world cultures stick to certain practices, even if we stop and see that another culture is doing something in a better way. Doesn't explain why or how they get onto the affinity path, but human tendency to stick to tradition and routine should not be underestimated. If one faction goes deep down a supremacy path for a number of years, it is quite likely they will continue to stick to it unless some major catastrophe convinces them to change (major war, huge depression, etc.)
 
A 50+min "live stream" that could have been delivered in around 10 Screenshots worth of information. Did they press "end of turn" once? :p

The other streams were nice, especially the 2nd one.
 
I'm a bit curious to see what kind of descriptions they provide for the various resources, and why they would seem to be so indispensable to one affinity and not as useful for another. What is it about Firaxite that encourages a philosophy of cybernetic upgrading? How does Floatstone inspire civilizations to follow the path of Purity?

Sure, the resources are necessary for the units, and the units are (somewhat implausibly) limited to specific affinities... but if the affinities are being styled as philosophies or ideologies, I'm curious to see if they can come up with a reason for the cybernetically-oriented visionaries passing up the opportunities for floating hovertanks...

Simple, it takes time to research floating hover tanks, time that you use researching robots instead.

I believe it Might be Possible for a Supremacy civ to get the Floating Hovertanks, they would just have to get very high in Purity as well.
 
Speaking for Firaxite at least, i believe one of the interviews mentioned that it's properties making it ridiculously good fr Computer chips, hence why it leads to the Supremacy style of cybernetization and advanced technology. Xenomass leads to Harmony for an obvious reason, what with xenomass being raw tools that can have many uses. As for purity and floatstone... i have no idea.

Pete mentions that floatstone is the only substance that can allow something so massive as a LEV destroyer to levitate. So I think that is why Purity likes it. Basically, Purity wants to build giant fortresses with cannons first and they study how to build them. Just using Earth technology, the problem of levitating such a massive structure safely appears insurmountable. Then they discover this incredible substance called "floatstone" that solves their engineering problems and allows their giant fortress to levitate with little effort.As a result, floatstone becomes their preferred affinity resource.
 
Pete mentions that floatstone is the only substance that can allow something so massive as a LEV destroyer to levitate. So I think that is why Purity likes it. Basically, Purity wants to build giant fortresses with cannons first and they study how to build them. Just using Earth technology, the problem of levitating such a massive structure safely appears insurmountable. Then they discover this incredible substance called "floatstone" that solves their engineering problems and allows their giant fortress to levitate with little effort.As a result, floatstone becomes their preferred affinity resource.

Whereas Firaxite is, amongst other things, a room temperature super-conductor which is why Supremacy wants it bad.
 
And xenomass is alien poop so Harmony folks want to spread it all over their bodies so they can glow shiny!
 
And xenomass is alien poop so Harmony folks want to spread it all over their bodies so they can glow shiny!

HA HA! Seriously, I think they need the xeno-mass to do their frankenstein experiments. The xeno-mass probably contains genetic material that Harmony can use to genetically engineer their alien-human hybrids.
 
Xenomass and Firaxite have very cool mechanics. The former spawns alien camps and the latter allows a spot for satellite coverage. Both can lose their specials if improved. I like how, if left unimproved, affinity bonus' provide free resources.
 
I don't know what is metagaming or what it should be, but what you describe sounds more like role playing to me.

Metagaming is just using knowledge from outside the context of the game within game. In this case, having a plan to go for a specific affinity frombefore the game proper starts. In contrast, roleplaying is here being considered as coming up with the plan for an affinity within the game itself, likely from availability of resources.

Regardless, I know i'm going to force a Harmony playthrough my first time around, because if worst comes to worst, then I can rob alien nests for the Xenomass.
 
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