What do all the faction symbols represent?

[ptoss1]

Does anybody know? I'm quite interested.

 

[El Castellano]

I think they can mean the following:

- Al-Falah: Looks like a bird sitting on a stone column, so I would say that is a symbol reminiscent of ancient Egypt.

- NSA: It is a Scandinavian symbol that could look like a reference to the Viking drakkars.

-INTEGR: It is supposed to be the symbol of the German party which led this faction, also could be considered a philosophical, ethical and religious symbol the style of Confucianism, representing the new philosophy brought from Earth.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The ARC's logo is a variation of the all-seeing eye, found on American dollars and a common theme of conspiracy theories about secret organizations. Seems appropriate for a corporation that loves spying.

 

[Westwall]

The ARC insignia very clearly takes after the Eye of Providence while Brasilia resembles a falling sword flanked by a set of wings.

Franco-Iberia seems styled after the fleur-de-lis and Kavitha appears roughly inspired by Hindu aesthetics depicting ripples from a water droplet.

African Union looks to be a basket or bowl with stalks of wheat under a sun and Polystralia is very tribal while simultaneously expressing a sense of connectivity.

Slavic Federation is clearly space-oriented with its laurels around a star and orbiter and NSA looks like an anchor with a Nordic symbol jutting upwards.

And of course Al-Falah has an Arabic-Islamic aesthetic.

As for PAC... I honestly couldn't say. I think they should've chosen a Mandarin symbol over whatever the hell this is supposed to be.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I think the PAC one looks like a face a bit. Sort of in the style of early 21st century computer icons like that of Napster. I don't know if that's what Firaxis is going for or how it relates to PAC. It's just what I see.

 

[Al-Iskander]

The PAC symbol, I think, is meant at least in part to echo socialist heraldry. China is the presumptive core of the PAC. Vietnam is in there too. Mongolia is also involved, and though today democratic, it also had a significant historical period of socialist /communist statism. All three of these countries have histories of socialist heraldry.

Whether or not the PAC is actually communist is, I think, left up to the player. All of the factions have ambiguous backgrounds that could be as warm-fuzzy or as sinister as you like. But the symbol, I think, is just meant to echo the recent shared history of the PAC's constituent members/vassals/puppets/etc

Examples here, which I think will drive home my point pretty quickly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_heraldry

 

[Al-Iskander]

Also, it may be worth noting that the circular laurels, if viewed as wheat, and gear teeth of the SlavFed logo appear to invoke that same heraldric tradition

Edit: Wheat.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Oh yeah. Now that you point it out, the resemblance is striking.

 

[ptoss1]

I thought those were the arms of robotic laborers.

 

[DWilson]

PAC seems to come from the National Emblem of the People's Republic of China as pointed out by Reddit User Martin 23230 here

 

[Galgus]

I think the PAC one looks like a face a bit. Sort of in the style of early 21st century computer icons like that of Napster. I don't know if that's what Firaxis is going for or how it relates to PAC. It's just what I see.

I always thought it looked like a coin of some sort, mostly because I couldn't see anything else in it.

 

[Westwall]

I think the fact that it provokes such a wide range of interpretations kind of proves it doesn't really look enough like anything for anyone to be sure.

You can say those are arms or horns or stalks of wheat... but as the African Union symbol showed, there are ways to make wheat actually look more like wheat, even on a "futuristic" symbol.

Kind of wish they'd close that gap at the top so it at least looks more like a dome or sunset or something.



Voila!