Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri 2/Beyond Earth Game

I obtained a more comprehensive questionnaire from the shut-down website, and used it to work out a concept. I even have some notion of the Social Engineering base effects for the faction.

Answers to the q's here:


As I said I've got reams of text now, further answers on these same points.

You said this project was multiple locations. The Frontier sweeped up the seed there, where else is this? I seem to recall it mirrored somewhere on alphacentauri2.info, can't relocate it.

I ... don't think I want to put that answer for 'fundamental nature of things' for this faction. It's out of tune if their methodology is education. I will put it into the radicalist Kantians, makes way more sense.

Super condensed version:

1. 'Equal opportunity' is a great phrase, but clearly not sufficient rhetoric for the goal. In this society, the educators will make you capable of equal opportunity. And whatever you perform in life, that will have a meaning, because no condition in which you live will not have its critics, its commentary, its unending commentary... and when you're through with it, you can provide your own. You will have the means, the skills, the practice.

2. Complacency about the imposition of cumulative cultural wisdom into the phenomenological world.

3. Between Man and the World are the constructions of His ancestors. Mankind is not fundamentally sick, but Man + ill-understood constructions is an illness, a pathological dyad, against which the World is unforgiving. So Humanity is capable of continual, virtuous adaptation through the construction of culture, but that construction must be accompanied by watchfulness, and learning, and not forgetting, or Humanity will build itself out of mere Terrible Nature into literally Horrifying Disaster.

Forget about the fundamentally unknowable bit. Let's have that be up for debate as far as this faction goes. Their name is the 'Crystal Ladder', I think.

4. Education. The complete guidebook to every decision anyone ever tried, and the tools for everyone to add notes. Communication - Vocal citizenship.

5., 6. unchanged.

Comparisons:
There's a... unethicalness about Zakharov's university, whereas it's the opposite here - here they are populist. The Ladder is all about studying especially the social world and phenomenological conditions, whereas the University is material, and rationalist. But if you defined the Crystal Ladder it would be "Knowledge network."

Morgan could be the most similar, only the aversion of this faction would have to be an uncontrolled economy. Not only is it not inclusive enough obviously in practice, it is 100% contrary to the goals of controlling what people are capable of, of the existentially socialist investment it has in the capacity of each citizen. Much different from an untrammeled state-of-nature condition like a laissez-faire market. But Morgan in one way was about this dealmaking, that anything can be negotiated, and settling resources between people was a virtue of clearing markets and that's that; and that articulation and acumen, and recognition of the fundamental unknowability of a "final" equation answer beyond the market's prices, Morgan's attention was to letting people work out the solution continually, and his conviction was that, apart from his one ideology, no other concept was beyond discussion , beyond a price. He's a.... mirror, of the Ladder.

Yang, I never even understood. In the files he's supposed to be high-achieving, and motivated to make people capable of higher awareness and such? Something you wrote, I think, Kast. But then everything after that in the game is just sick puppy. His was the most masochistic of communisms. Completely unrelateable. But he has to be reckoned as the last comparison to the Crystal Ladder. They're collectivists, only the Ladder uses that term not politically but economically. The collective is where the answers are, not what (necessarily) the goal is. The self does not need to sacrifice itself to the group - the self needs to incorporate strength from the group, which can only come from nurturing co-operation, some give-and-take, and that's only going to come if you're trustworthy to negotiate with, and you aren't blind , and aren't tricking yourself with delusions of pride or subjugation or competition, and that's going to take humility.

EDIT: Morgan is their mirror. Yang is the shadow. University is the reverse.

I thought it might be amusing if the faction were polytheistic, too. In a new-age way - there would be an idiom of gods in the Olympian image, and a shared public ongoing dialogue about the pantheon and its extent.

AC2 thread, Seeking Development Team and Players, is here: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=16418.0

Just posted there:

BUncle link=topic=16418.msg76882#msg76882 date=1437080963 said:

Here's the parallel thread at CFC: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=531593 BTW.

The ones at 'poly http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/211519-Alpha-Centauri-2-Seeking-Development-Team-and-Players
-and WPC http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/showthread.php?8893-Alpha-Centauri-2-Seeking-Development-Team-and-Players
-could use a little TLC.

This project is generating custom factions that will be good for the whole community, so let's support it...

Click to expand...

Looks great, Hermi! Follow the link provided by BUncle and we’ll try to get more folks commenting.

To provide some context, the “desperation” prompt had to do with the background material for the first game: each of the factions was recruiting aboard the doomed U.N.S. Unity. The leaders were literally making their pitches to crews stumbling out of cold sleep and into smoke and fire.

Is your faction properly called The Crystal Ladder? Do you have a proposed leader head? I love your concept. I think it fills a unique niche.

I also like the polytheistic angle. Your faction is passingly similar to a concept I'd designed called The Diadochi, who idealized the cultural achievements of Alexander and pan-Hellenism.