Alien Xenocide

[Elz Majesto]

Hello CFC,
Its been too long since I posted something, so here I go!

I would love to see "Alien Xenocide" as a prerequisite to the Purity (and perhaps by extension Supremacy) Affinity Victory Condition.
My reason for this are simple:
It is a logical conclusion, stemming from the assumption, that if Purity is ideal of what was/is best of Humanity, and it wants to propagate the notion of a pure Human race to recreate Earth on an alien planet, that vision should also entail eliminating the natives.
The same can also be applied to Supremacy.

However, I think if this is a mechanic that is allowed (and it should), it will be a full out declaration of war against the planet and the Harmony factions. I envision this as a mega quest, that starts with the Alien Planet centralizing all of their forces in player territory, with a "hive mind" unit that is guarded by siege worms on its border tiles, and powerful units that get spawned every turn until either the offending faction(s) capital are destroyed, or the "hive mind" unit is destroyed.
Also, this will only be available once a faction achieves the highest tier of their affinity.

Thoughts?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

What I'd prefer to see is some type of a "Global Terraforming" meter

Purity can do things to Increase it and requires it to be >50% for Settlers to come through

Harmony can do things to Decrease it and require it to be <50% for the Transcendence victory to proceed


(there should be other effects tied into it.. aiding in some type of spontaneous 'local' terraforming efforts.. but it should have that tie in) Where the two affinities battle over the planet.

 

[Elz Majesto]

That would be interesting. It could be part of a battle of ideology that takes place on many fronts.

 

[Acken]

I don't really see why the wildlife would be a problem for Purity Ideology. From what I understand Purity just want humans to remain pure while having an enjoyable life (able to breath outside etc) and if the planet has to be changed for that to happen then so be it.

Terraforming the planet at the cost of present ecology would make more sense.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Purity doesn't want to exterminate all alien life, just make the planet close enough to Earth that people can go outside without being eaten by grabboids, zerglings, beedrills, dragonairs, tentacruels, or seithr.

 

[Falrinn]

Since the promised land victory requires you to greatly expand your territory towards the end of the game, you are probably going to be killing an ungodly number of aliens just to clear out the space.

To me, purity is more about an indifference to the alien life rather then a hatred for it. They want to turn the new world into another earth, killing the aliens is a means rather then the goal.

In addition none of the other affinity-specific victory conditions explicitly require you to go to war with members of other affinities*, so an alien xenocide would be alone in this.

*=(I suppose domination technically doesn't either in BE, but something tells me that flipping every rival capital with a coup in a single game even on low difficulty settings would probably be so difficult as to be worthy of song and legend if you pulled it off)

 

[AriochIV]

It should be up to the player how much of a monster he chooses to be. Victory conditions shouldn't force these kinds of things on us. If you want to play nice with the aliens while still championing Humanity, you shouldn't be prevented from doing so. The fact that I love Humanity doesn't mean that I hate nature.

 

[elprofesor]

If anything, I would argue that Supremacy wants to erradicate the Alien wildlife more than Purity. I could envision Purity domesticating the wildlife as the replacement for Earth's wildlife, the latter probably being either unsuited for the new planet, or downright extinct because of the Great Mistake. While xenoforms have no place in a world of computers and robots which have outgrown all bodily needs, and furthermore might pee or drool all over their circuits.
The game quests don't seem to agree with this, though.

 

[gunnergoz]

More than any of the other Affinities, Supremacy makes me think they will happily ditch this planet to move on to the next one, bringing as many assimilated humans with them as care to join, or dare not resist. It is all about moving forward and acquiring new resources and new tech for them and the best place to do that is on other planets.

 

[Ryoga]

I could be wrong but, judging from MadDjinn's gameplay, it seems that several quests on the purity path involve killing aliens and eradicating nests.
Moreover another faction on the purity path was happy with the player because he had the same "idea" on how to deal with aliens and miasma (he removed them as much as he could).

There's also the fact that aliens need miasma (nests do not appear where there isn't miasma), and purity doesn't like miasma because it isn't quite healthy for humans. As purity's main objective is to terraform the planet to be habitable by humans as they are, they remove any miasma they see from the environment. So even if we assume that they don't want to directly eradicate the native life, indirectly they do.

 

[AriochIV]

I think all of the versions of those quests involve killing aliens. There's just different reasons given for it.

More than any of the other Affinities, Supremacy makes me think they will happily ditch this planet to move on to the next one, bringing as many assimilated humans with them as care to join, or dare not resist. It is all about moving forward and acquiring new resources and new tech for them and the best place to do that is on other planets.

Once you become a pure digital being, I don't see why planets would even matter to you anymore. All you need is energy and minerals for your computers and machinery, which you can probably get easier in space. Just set up some asteroid mining and move to a solar collector station around the sun.

 

[gunnergoz]

I think all of the versions of those quests involve killing aliens. There's just different reasons given for it.


Once you become a pure digital being, I don't see why planets would even matter to you anymore. All you need is energy and minerals for your computers and machinery, which you can probably get easier in space. Just set up some asteroid mining and move to a solar collector station around the sun.

True as far as the sci-fi concept of transcendence goes, but I'm not so sure I buy into the possibility of it quite yet. In my script the Supremacists never quite get there and sort of morph into this resource-hungry entity that in my worst nightmares become armies of VonNeumann machines, spreading out and taking over entire solar systems, occupied or not.

But yes, if you believe in the ultimate idea of Transcendence, consciousness is somehow freed from corporeal limits and wanders time and space at will. I'm not quite able to swallow that whole just yet. It's taken humanity this long to devise the idea of gods and will probably take longer yet to become them. - My two bits.

 

[lordrune]

I think the thing about Purity, Supremacy, or Harmony, is that they don't necessarily have to be a position of extremism. The exception being the unique Supremacy victory, which does imply a lot of ideological extremism. To a lesser point Harmony might do so, if the impact of transcendence affected other colonies who weren't participating in the "experiment".

The Purity victory is, really, the least extreme of the options. Relatively speaking.

If you weren't specifically pursuing a victory condition, but simply survival and prosperity, then it would be possible to roleplay a tolerant approach with all three affinities. But AI civs being what AI civs are, on higher than average difficulties, that would probably be difficult to maintain

 

[gunnergoz]

A cogent argument could be made that the three Affinities in BE are simply going to impose their will on yet another planet and in doing so, forever alter its environment and biome, very likely for the betterment of their faction, but to the detriment of the other factions and most certainly to the original flora and fauna of the planet. Even Harmony will corrupt the planet's ecosystem and lifeforms. All three factions bring the seeds of the Great Mistake with them and stand to repeat the mistake all over again unless something else happens.

In my script, that "something else" is the Contact scenario, were the humans finally encounter sentient life elsewhere in our galaxy and begin to communicate with it. And we all know the various sci-fi endings that happen with such meetings: history teaches us that when two cultures of dissimilar technologies meet, only the advanced one will prevail, even if destruction of the lesser culture was not an intended consequence.

 

[Ryoga]

I think all of the versions of those quests involve killing aliens. There's just different reasons given for it.

I'd be surprised if the quest path to harmony required to "kill" native life. That doesn't sound very "harmonious".

In my script, that "something else" is the Contact scenario, were the humans finally encounter sentient life elsewhere in our galaxy and begin to communicate with it. And we all know the various sci-fi endings that happen with such meetings: history teaches us that when two cultures of dissimilar technologies meet, only the advanced one will prevail, even if destruction of the lesser culture was not an intended consequence.

This thread is called "alien xenocide". But who are the aliens?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I'd be surprised if the quest path to harmony required to "kill" native life. That doesn't sound very "harmonious".



This thread is called "alien xenocide". But who are the aliens?

Harmony=/= peace with aliens

I think the Harmony versions of That quest do actually involve building alien preserves instead of clearing nests.

However, there are a number of Generic quests that involve killing aliens (Harmony would be collecting specimens)

And Harmony has the biggest reason to clear nests... nests have Xenomass

 

[shaglio]

Harmony=/= peace with aliens

Exactly, Harmony = peace with the planet (regardless of peace with aliens).

“To me, at least, the presence, not of human life alone, but life in any other form than that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are voiceless, is a stain upon the landscape - is at war with the genius of the scene.”

 

[elprofesor]

“To me, at least, the presence, not of human life alone, but life in any other form than that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are voiceless, is a stain upon the landscape - is at war with the genius of the scene.”

That's -huh- interesting. What are you quoting?

 

[Browd]

Edgar Allan Poe - The Island of the Fay

 

[shaglio]

Edgar Allan Poe - The Island of the Fay

Bingo! I hope I quoted properly. It's been many years since I've read it, and I can't cite my Poe book since I'm at work right now, so it might not be 100% verbatim.