A very interesting LP and review in progress

[Thunderbrd]

What have comics got to do with anything? And posses were obviously not illegal (nor were they in any sense "Armed Communities").

They are private citizens taking the law into their hands. It happens whenever the government fails to do a good enough job of it and people get sick of being burglarized and murdered and such. Comics, btw, are all about vigilantes, well most of them.

 

[Yudishtira]

They are private citizens taking the law into their hands. It happens whenever the government fails to do a good enough job of it and people get sick of being burglarized and murdered and such.

You're thinking of lynchmobs. Posses are legally 'deputized' temporary LEs.

Comics, btw, are all about vigilantes, well most of them.

The vast majority of 'vigilantes' in comics are not criminals, and are in co-operation with, not self-righteous defiance of, law enforcement.

Unless you're talking about eg X-Men, fighting for minority rights against state elements that have lost the plot. That's not vigilantism either, their targets are not civilian 'suspects', they are agents of the state security forces. Who by your definition can do no wrong. If you wanted to have a crime of 'insurgency' representing freedom-fighting against the tyrannical state, that would be a crime that might genuinely do more good than harm.

 

[Thunderbrd]

You're thinking of lynchmobs. Posses are legally 'deputized' temporary LEs.

Both scenarios qualify. The people have had it and are doing something about it.

The vast majority of 'vigilantes' in comics are not criminals, and are in co-operation with, not self-righteous defiance of, law enforcement.

Unless you're talking about eg X-Men, fighting for minority rights against state elements that have lost the plot. That's not vigilantism either, their targets are not civilian 'suspects', they are agents of the state security forces. Who by your definition can do no wrong. If you wanted to have a crime of 'insurgency' representing freedom-fighting against the tyrannical state, that would be a crime that might genuinely do more good than harm.

Spiderman, Batman, Daredevil, even Captain America, Iron man, Superman at times. All have been pursued for being vigilantes. Then you have those that are obviously taking it too far, such as the Punisher, but are still doing more good than harm despite being criminals. Sometimes they make alliances with the authorities but they're still usually technically outside the law and it becomes a central part of what the stories often delve into. I mean that's what Civil War was all about - the choice to accept becoming a part of the system and being guided by it even if it compromises your values, or to deem yourself above and outside that system, even if for a higher good according to your value system. And yes indeed the X-Men are vigilantes. As would be Freedom Fighting. There's a reason Partisans and Guerrillas are in the same league of Ruffian units along with the earlier forms of Bandit Groups.

It's entirely possible to be a criminal that is purely criminal BECAUSE you're stepping outside the boundaries of the law in taking the law into your own hands.

I'm also not saying that the state can do no wrong, only that the state defines what is crime. Even if you are doing what is right, you can still be doing crime, and perhaps in part that's because of the way you are doing it. In a more preternatural state, before 'laws' are defined, community consensus and what the leader says defines the boundaries of law and does so rather arbitrarily, without clear definition, but is largely a matter of recognition of what causes the community harm. It certainly grows more complicated than that and some criminals should be seen as heroic for what they do depending on the era. I see the scoundrel, for example, as the representation of the rise of the thinking that led to democracy itself. They were anti-state but were not necessarily bad people at all, given how oppressive some monarchy style governments had become for so long. Crime isn't JUST the rot in society. It's much more than that, the refusal to accept society and live by its rules.

 

[raxo2222]

They are in Information era.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Funny this is the first I'm hearing about the Human Mods... these are pretty cool

No, I don’t know why every form of criminal behavior in this mod is secretly sponsored by the government, unless it’s supposed to be a meta commentary on you building the hideouts. No, I don’t know why Black Hat Hacking gives you a ridiculous amount of crime relative to other things that came before it. No, I don’t know why totalitarian governments, in addition to the Great Firewall, get the ability to build Propaganda Satellites (the ones with red stars). It’s all very cyberpunk dystopian, but with none of the redeeming qualities of the heroes of such works present. Cyberpunk itself will show up eventually, but is pretty far off and isn’t really that great at capturing the theme.

Easily explained: YOU ARE THE STATE when you play this game, so if you are going to control criminal units, it must be that the state is funding and sponsoring those activities. There are barb criminals that spawn in your cities to represent the potent standout criminals of that sort that plague society purely for their own personal gain.

 

[raxo2222]

Funny this is the first I'm hearing about the Human Mods... these are pretty cool

This is how you get higher beings at first place
Anything between regular beings and whatever is on top of food chain itself

Spoiler :

 

[raxo2222]

Now they are in Nanotech.
They will be colonizing Cislunar space, Moon, Mars and Venus.

Looks like he isn't playing on latest SVN.
Also he has wonder or trait, that spawns state religion on settling city.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I think it's his negative trait, Zealous that does that, IIRC. Eventually we'll be able to expand religious spreads in space cities by transportation.

 

[raxo2222]

I think it's his negative trait, Zealous that does that, IIRC. Eventually we'll be able to expand religious spreads in space cities by transportation.

You can build route on Orbit terrain at Astrogation Constellation.
This allows spread religions and corporations spread themselves.
Religious/corporate buildings have Earth mapcategory only, so you can't build them outside of Earth.
Similarly religion/corporation spreading units have earth only map category.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Similarly religion/corporation spreading units have earth only map category.

An update down the road should make it possible for cities anywhere to be treated as additional kinds of map types, at least for the sake of units staffed there. This will eventually be critical.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I figured out why large amounts of buildings were suddenly gone for no reason, the game doesn't notify the player when nuclear meltdowns happen. Multiple Clean Nuclear Reactors died one after the other over the span of ten turns despite them having a 3 in 10,000 per turn to melt down.

Might need to review the coding on that again... this doesn't sound like it's set right at all.

Bacterium Engineering provides a large number of science buildings and the beginning of the Life series of National Wonders. I think these are supposed to tie into a planned system that isn’t 100% in the game yet, so as of right now they sort of just function as mediocre boosts to buildings in all your cities.

Is this as unfinished as he thinks or is it pretty much setup as intended at this point?

Dyson spheres are for babies. The real answer is that we rip a hole into another dimension that is pure energy and harvest it to power our society.

Do you want demons on Mars? Because that's how you get demons on Mars.

You'd think he was reading my unit planning document. Muahahaha!

@Toffer90 It looks like barbs graduating into nations aren't picking up from the tech level the barbs are at. If they did, it might help with providing cause for a surprise war in the late game now and then.

The Barbarians are the one group that has modern weaponry, which is half of why the Minor Civs keep going up in smoke (the other half is my vassals conquering them). These guys are at least Atomic Era, possibly early Information Era and do play catch up every so often. Do not poke the hornet's nest.

Starting with the barb tech level and getting a little boost from there to start off might really give them a part to play.

 

[raxo2222]

Might need to review the coding on that again... this doesn't sound like it's set right at all.


Is this as unfinished as he thinks or is it pretty much setup as intended at this point?

This was why I removed meltdown chance from all buildings at first place.

As for Space Mods (human mods NWs and life NWs), I guess concept was added, but their effects are very weak because its WIP.

 

[ssmage]

As a longish power of feedback here and a SA member, And finding this thread existed today, I'll try to explain most things going on about the complaints:

Link to chapter 21

Lol they complain about some modders being right wing.
Also that there is to much dark stuff in mod - intentional or not.
Now current modders are left wing to moderate generally.

So, this goes into a thing called the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window. Once upon a time, SA existed, now SA has existed for a very long time, and In the old days it was very much the largest paid membership only forum in the world. Back then, many members of all spectrum posted there, until one day, over arguments in the anime forum, A poster named Moot got banned and then in response created *****. Every since then, SA has been the big English Left wing forum as many right wing left for /pol/. Now, most people in the world follow the American Politics version of what left wing means, Which very many other places in the world would call Center-right. As seen by all sorts of welfare and basic health programs not existing, rich get richer laws, that sort of thing. This brings in the Overton window, and now anything that is seen as challenging the status quo while being normally left wing is seen as communism. It works the other way as well and some of the more Left wing members will see history things and get grumpy about it, since most thing in this mod scream right wing bias to them, as history has been moving more rightward.

I think the Gypsy thing is ok if you see that stealing isn't bad, but is in fact an occupation that contributes to the vital redistribution of wealth. Especially in this time-frame.
And I don't think the team is dominated by right-wingers as suggested, although the civics do seem to have a pro-capitalist bias.

This comes down to the names "gypsy" and "begger" being casual racism. Find better names for units, and the complaints will stop about it. If you want to make such things (Hitler falls into the same sort of category as this) keep it as a modular thing, not a general option.

This guy is very fast with his LP.
Of course they complained about alpha male/female buildings and some other mess.
Someone complained about SA being awful, I guess they went to other extreme at least on this thread.

Any complaints about SA being really awful is normally someone from ***** attacking us, that's fine. We do it back.

SA?
I haven't seen the complaints about alpha male/female being all that prominent except that maybe it's a little strange to some that they are 'buildings' where they aren't seeing buildings as really what they are, just 'ways cities are improved at player's options'.

What gets me is... what are these racist overtones and biotruths they are referring to? I don't really get it. Sure I understand the criticisms about how we put forward gypsies as criminals but one might later see that some criminal units are to be considered heroic rather than purely villainous. I suppose calling them beggars doesn't help. Maybe they'd be better being some cross between an entertainer and a criminal type. Better pickpocket than beggar. Still... no one person here has created everything and few of us have been trying to filter for the sake of any particular morality (some have I suppose... I remember the great debates about some of the reproductive sciences that Azure wanted to include - those got a bit heated.) But they act like there's some obvious biases that I don't think they really see aren't quite intended as they're taking it.

For example, they incorrectly assume that to include the world's biggest villain is anything more than doing just that - like they seem to think that because we include him, we're all white supremacist right wingers that think he's great. I find that weird. If history didn't have villains, it would be less fun to play through it. If villains weren't something some people wanted to play, you wouldn't even HAVE games like Grand Theft Auto or Assassin's Creed. I'm sure they try to validate those villains more than we can validate Hitler but still, we have every leader of any significant world influence that you might want to include in a scenario here and why shouldn't we? He has had more impact on the world than nearly any historical figure so it would just be stupid to not include him. If one was to assume we support every leader we include, there'd be a LOT of leaders we'd have to get rid of here... like nearly all of them.

@JosEPh_II Up to mid Ancient at least, gold balance seems really good in his game. It has been a limiting but not crushing factor, even to the point that traits were chosen to help him with his gold needs. Good job!

Pretty much putting Hitler anywhere not in a WW2 scenario screams right wing bias to them. You can say things about History written by the winners as a Fact as why Stalin and Mao existed in base Civ 4 for doing a bunch of horrible stuff as well. It lets them get away with it in peoples heads. now, Biotruths in Goonspeak is Stuff like the terms "alpha, beta, omega" when referring to people. As seen by people on ***** everywhere, calling people "beta" and themselves "alpha" gives the some sort of right wing pseudo science pleasure to them. It's very much seen in SA as "white male stronk" and everything in the mod that's supporting that like rhodesian culture and colonialism tech quotes adds to that.
Many studies have shown that Humans and many animals never had such things as "alpha dynamics" A lot of mammals since before the mods timeline were all about courting and keeping in family groups while trying to make families with new groups to keep the gene pool wide, not 1 "alpha" dominating over 10 "betas". As said above, Renaming those sorts of things is the answer. Stuff like Rhodesia, while a true history thing, will fill goons with disgust.

The quote was NOT an attempt to suggest that he was right - it was a display of how messed up the worldview that would say that actually is. It also exemplified the entire era's thought and justifications that led to great injustices to Native peoples all around the world. It's there to stir up some feeling, not support the concept nor give it any kind of heroism, though they did at the time feel that there was nobility in this sort of terrible take. I suppose I have to assume that if you read that and feel like 'yeah he was so right!' then you probably need a long hard look in the mirror, but who am I to judge?

As for Great Zimbabwe and Imperialism... Imperialism isn't a good thing either - nor was Torture, but these things exemplified the worst of what human beings were. I don't quite know enough about Great Zimbabwe itself, nor about the Rhodesian culture or its history, though I believe that Sparth was the creator of many of these added cultures. I read a little about the Rhodesian culture and can see how the origin of the nation and the politics surrounding it were related to the birth of a Global Imperialism Movement. I wouldn't think of it as the culture is being presented as the prize earned by humanity for inventing a social movement towards Imperialism so much as a good way to present the birth of that culture in the historic timeline and that the two things were related.


Some of these things are not only incentivized but also may well be more penalizing than they are worth. So you can see how it would've been a mistake from the perspective of leadership to enact them and why. Some of it does support right wing thinking theories and some of it, you may notice, also supports more left wing thinking. In part that is to give fair due to the possibility that those who think along all poles have elements of their views that are correct. Further, many many devs have worked on this mod in a very decentralized approach, and none have tried to morally police it to slant to a particular worldview across the board, though their takes may have slipped in somewhat. Any attempt to do such a sweeping moral audit would be criticized by someone who thinks from the other side of the fence.

Even if we HAVE a personal ideology, we are probably trying mostly to reflect the model of how that thing fits into the world, history, economics etc... as realistically as we possibly can.

Some idealisms and concepts being expressed from all poles are intentional so that you can play the game as the kind of leader you want to pretend you are and sometimes a player wants to play a villain, knowing damn well that's what they are doing. Those who have direct feedback on particular matters are always welcome to comment directly in the forums here and we have an amazingly receptive team that is surprisingly willing to adjust things according to feedback we get, or at least debate it into the dirt as to WHY it was established as it is. By all means, take it all as an invitation to come here and make a point if you feel you have a point to make. Though we may have some seriously deep debates in this forum, we often find that's the most enjoyable part of the modding, and we usually try not to get too angry about our disagreements (though have to steam off and separate ourselves sometimes )

This point about the Beggar, for example, I think was well expressed. I will repeat what I said elsewhere, if it were a more 'romantic criminal' type, I would get it. They were nomadic people that did not believe in the rights of personal ownership and took whatever they wished without regard to local law, believing that the laws of nature overrode all that, but they were still dignified human beings. If one sees the 'beggar' unit as a clever actor or leverager of their unfortunate situation, that spends their days as spies for the wise, an agent in an information network always watching and observing and selling information to those who needed their eyes, you could see it in a positive light. Being a useful unit, very much so, it shouldn't be hard to see it that way. HOWEVER, because the stereotype has been a little too promoted as a negative thing to set people against the Gypsies and that has led to acts of hate and violence being perpetrated against these people, perhaps we should be trying to not promote that stereotypical view and try to put them in a more positive cast.

When I review that unit, I will probably change it. Not because I think it's WRONG how it is as much as because I recognize the grievance being expressed.


The racial profiling thing mentioned in that first quote seems to me, in light of what we try to express, a perfectly designed building. Sure you might get a little more opportunity to diminish crime by getting up more people's asses and throwing more people against the wall for stop and frisk and so on, but the penalties in the injustice of it are likely to be greater than the benefits, which is how we suggest that... yeah this is NOT a good policy. Particularly when we finally get around to making excess unhappiness cause more crime... (making it potentially a self-defeating policy entirely.)

There were many human cultures that existed with many unique things about them that are forever lost to history because white washing became and still is a huge thing, and a huge part of the modern left wing is getting rid of every single piece of dog turd that supports that. I think in explained all the things about it above, so hopefully that'll explain a few things to you guys.

:edit apparently a certain imageboard is censored on this forum. who knew?

 

[raxo2222]

Any complaints about SA being really awful is normally someone from ***** attacking us, that's fine. We do it back.

They called Something Awful place of rightwing extremists, so someone didn't see revolution here.

They got annoyed by quotes of Nazi people in techs too.
I guess those quotes could be completely revamped and just directly reference techs in real world or science-fiction depending on era.
Even without that those quotes needs revision.

Also for example Minority Rights is needed to research Urban Culture tech.
This wouldn't be big deal if it didn't unlock crime related stuff.
Also some techs lead to other techs only to prevent them being dead ends.
Game has balance problems making accidental biases here and there.

You can go read entire LP thread.

 

[Thunderbrd]

This was why I removed meltdown chance from all buildings at first place.

If this is done through the actual event engine, I can see why. This should not be linked to that at all... I'll have to take a look at how it's activated.

@ssmage I appreciate the feedback. There've been a lot of modders with a lot of worldviews working on the mod and a lot of variety of biases are here, most unintentional if at all because our primary agreed upon outlook is to not sugarcoat history or try to present it WITH a bias at all. I can admit that's probably impossible since we come into this with beliefs in general.

Pretty much putting Hitler anywhere not in a WW2 scenario screams right wing bias to them

I find that really stupid honestly because he existed so why should he be whitewashed out of history now? He was one of the most impacting rulers of all time and it's not to honor him that we include him so much as it is to admit that happened. Trying to pretend it didn't... there's a saying about the devil, the greatest lie he tried to tell was that he didn't exist. He gets more power by being denied entirely. We aren't supporting his ideals to include him. Besides, he was mostly a puppet for the Thule society and SS anyhow.

Biotruths in Goonspeak is Stuff like the terms "alpha, beta, omega" when referring to people. As seen by people on ***** everywhere, calling people "beta" and themselves "alpha" gives the some sort of right wing pseudo science pleasure to them. It's very much seen in SA as "white male stronk" and everything in the mod that's supporting that like rhodesian culture and colonialism tech quotes adds to that.
Many studies have shown that Humans and many animals never had such things as "alpha dynamics" A lot of mammals since before the mods timeline were all about courting and keeping in family groups while trying to make families with new groups to keep the gene pool wide, not 1 "alpha" dominating over 10 "betas". As said above, Renaming those sorts of things is the answer. Stuff like Rhodesia, while a true history thing, will fill goons with disgust.

It's my understanding these are just psychological models of behavioral dynamics. I don't really know nor do I care if it's all that accurate. One of the modders understood that approach and used it in his buildings (Mr Azure) but I never got a political leaning out of him. What is 'stronk' exactly? Rhodesian culture is something I personally know very little about but if it's real, again, why should it not be included? The quotes aren't always to glorify and sometimes it's downright demonizing the though processes of the era that led to the quote itself. A tech is not always considered a positive improvement, just a necessary step in Human evolution. Again, the goal is to never whitewash history because if you try to think out of existence something, you'll just invite its return in your eventual blindspot.

There were many human cultures that existed with many unique things about them that are forever lost to history because white washing became and still is a huge thing, and a huge part of the modern left wing is getting rid of every single piece of dog turd that supports that. I think in explained all the things about it above, so hopefully that'll explain a few things to you guys.

Maybe we mean different things when we say 'whitewash'? I take it to mean, getting rid of what we don't agree with as if it didn't happen. You seem to see it more as racially biasing things.

Civ has always been a little Euro-centric in its core approach to history. Technology as achievements are one of the foundational platforms of that thinking where a more Native American outlook would see that more as becoming less and less connected with nature and thus a negative thing. At some point, more will be done to try to rectify that issue.

 

[raxo2222]

If this is done through the actual event engine, I can see why. This should not be linked to that at all... I'll have to take a look at how it's activated.

It never had anything to do with events (XML stuff).

It's my understanding these are just psychological models of behavioral dynamics. I don't really know nor do I care if it's all that accurate. One of the modders understood that approach and used it in his buildings (Mr Azure) but I never got a political leaning out of him. What is 'stronk' exactly? Rhodesian culture is something I personally know very little about but if it's real, again, why should it not be included? The quotes aren't always to glorify and sometimes it's downright demonizing the though processes of the era that led to the quote itself. A tech is not always considered a positive improvement, just a necessary step in Human evolution. Again, the goal is to never whitewash history because if you try to think out of existence something, you'll just invite its return in your eventual blindspot.

Stronk is meme spelling of Strong
Also I guess those Nazis used same source as Mr Azure because anything can be used by evil.
You would lose actual meme battle with cultural far left/right wingers
Welcome to dankest timeline
Maybe we should add reference to "meme warfare" between cultural left and cultural right?

Maybe we mean different things when we say 'whitewash'? I take it to mean, getting rid of what we don't agree with as if it didn't happen. You seem to see it more as racially biasing things.

Whitewashing melanin VS whitewashing manners

Technology as achievements are one of the foundational platforms of that thinking where a more Native American outlook would see that more as becoming less and less connected with nature and thus a negative thing. At some point, more will be done to try to rectify that issue.

Still I don't believe its real. Their customs could be absolutely unchanged for millennia.
Also there are more pristine tribes, that survived for longer than Native Americans.
On physical and chemical level being close or far from nature doesn't mean anything - its just molecules dancing around each other.
So this stuff is purely emergent - biological/psychological/societal.
If by closeness of nature you mean pace of tech progress, then either we:
Are overglorified monkeys
Are simple eternal Ancient/Classical/Medieval empire until we run out of metals.
Explode uncontrollably after reaching Renaissance - exhaust resources and pollute environment and maybe do nuclear winter.
Survive technological boom and become very eternal eco-technological civilization with Nanotech/Transhuman tech level, and presence across solar system.
Create and spread life among stars or even galaxies and convert some stuff to computronium to fuel tech progress (this civ would be really eternal).
Storm trough all limits and win C2C scientific victory while showing life and nature in every corner of omniverse.
What if we are nature equivalent of rogue AI? Seems like worst tech for nature are in middle of tech tree (Atomic era).

Someone has to build sentient energy fields (actual tech in last era ) to interfere with sapient beings.
Did universe cause itself, is it simulation? There is a lot of things like that in Transcendental era.
Read every tech and building pedia entry here
You can sort techs by chronology or just scroll tech tree and snoop around here.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Still I don't believe its real. Their customs could be absolutely unchanged for millennia.

So lets be clear then... YOU are a bit Eurocentric in your thinking That's fine. Is what it is. Most are.

 

[raxo2222]

So lets be clear then... YOU are a bit Eurocentric in your thinking That's fine. Is what it is. Most are.

Can't spread nature across universe without almost roasting home planet
Nature on bigger planets should have higher survival chances of that Renaissance-Nanotech period - much more resources and mass VS more land mass.
You might need fission/fusion power to start space program though (direct power or laser beams)

Also I believe if spirituality having real effects (without person doing anything) is real, then someone has to win C2C scientific victory already.
Sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic/spirituality/gods.

Video games of Nanotech and later eras just may be like that - realistic pieces of fictional universe with generated history.
You can already roleplay like that ignoring visible imperfections or modding hell out of game.

EDIT:
By the way it seems like Middle East, Far East and Europe were good places for technological civilization.
Other places were too harsh to produce thriving technological civilization out of cavemen.
For example too many parasitic diseases in jungles, that hurt humans and animal husbandry.
Also there wasn't trade chains like Silk Road.
America was discovered because Europeans wanted shorter route to spices and other China/India goods.
They were exploring seas and oceans in search of advanced civs among other stuff too.

 

[ssmage]

If you have any counter questions and explanations you wanna pass out so I can post it on the LP thread, you're welcome to do so and get replies from the others in the echo chamber.
Others would have better understandings and other takes on what the problems are, and maybe better english explanations.

 

[Thunderbrd]

If you have any counter questions and explanations you wanna pass out so I can post it on the LP thread, you're welcome to do so and get replies from the others in the echo chamber.
Others would have better understandings and other takes on what the problems are, and maybe better english explanations.

I've made a number of posts you could share. I'm not against the general worldview over there, just perhaps how to go about trying to achieve the improvements in society sought. And I wouldn't mind having my words expressed to explain some things but I realize an explanation may not be what is needed because the goal is to find anything to bash on anyhow or it wouldn't even be expressed on that site. I also don't think the mod is above criticism and it's certainly not complete yet so we're considering the feedback given there and find it interesting whether we agree or not exactly.

I definitely appreciate you explaining the term 'biotruths' as I had never heard the term before. Nor had I ever heard any criticism of such a nature anywhere.

This playthrough is fascinating to me because I've never seen these later eras, particularly with a visual guide. They've been a bit of a pet project for a few modders here and I'm doing some unit planning out through those eras and its giving me some information I've gotta consider.