If they added 8 more Factions in an Expansion pack..

[Dargoth]

Who do you reckon they should add?


My 4 cents

United states of North America
Terrirotory: Canada, USA with the exceptions of Arizona, New Mexico and southern California and Southern nevada which are now part of the PSOLA and Hawaii is now part of Polystralia and Alaska which was lost to the Slavic Federation
Leader: President ****
Capital: Columbus (Ohio)
Strengths: Military, Culture, Growth
Weakness: Science, Trade, Religion
Citiy names: Will use the surnames of Signatures on the delcaration of Independence

Very Isolationist much like how the US was in the 1930s and pre war 40s. They just want to be left alone as such they dont want to trade either in money or technology (Hence the weakness)

Faction bonus: Bonus to units when defneding inside there own terrirotry, and a how defence for cities that they have founded.

Favored Affinity: Varies will depend on what resources they find in their territory

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Islamic Republic of Africa
Territory: Morocco, Algieria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Somalia
Leader: Walaalkaa Barre (Brother of the Peoples african Union leader)
Strengths: Military, Religion, Culture
Weakness: Diplomacy, Growth and Health
Favored Affinity: Purity
City Names: Named after capitals of earth in Muslim world, New Mecca, New cario, New tripoli etc
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Papal states of Latin America
Terrirtory: Central America, Columbia, western Venzula, Peru, Arizona.New Mexico and southern Nevada.
Leader: Pope Estefan IV
Strengths: Religion, Culture, Science
Weakness: Growth, Commerce
Favored Affinity: Varies If Harmoney then they believe that Planets sentnece is god, If Supremacy then they believe that by linking everyone togther through technology that they bring themselves closer to god (Think Borg with religion). If purity then they remain pretty much as written and the goal is to bring Religion back to Earth.
City names: Catholic Saints. So all cities are Saint XXXXX
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shogunate of Shikoku and Kyushu
Captital: Nagasaki
Terrirtory: Okinawa, Shikoku and Kyushu
Leader: Shogun Shugosha
Strengths: Science, Culture, Production
Weakness: Health, Growth Commerce
Favored affinity: Supremacy or Purity
City names: Japanese Province names
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other ideas might be Alien factions who already live on the planet perhaps one based around each affinity.

Thoughts?

 

[Catalytic]

I think that
1) The expansion is a very long way off
2) Three of the factions you suggest fall within already occupied design space - ARC, Brasilia, and PAC have North America, South America, and Far East Asia well represented.
3) There is room for an Islamic Republic in the design space, but this a very politically touchy issue right now. Alienating part of your customer base by touching on very hot issues of the day is not good business. The last thing Firaxis wants is a mass social media outcry being created by activists who don't understand the concept of "game" and trashing their rep. It's very difficult for them to add such a caliphate. The religious movement they did add with the Kavithians is a new religion with few actually defined tenets and values.

4) I could envision an X-Pack storyline where they advanced Earth history another century, realigned the factions a little and created a new storyline for a second, late landing, or a landing on a new/different exoplanet.
5) Faction addition is very difficult with this design because all new features are hypothetical. They have to create biased playstyles for each new faction, not just pick a UU, UB, UA, and a few city names and let the playstyles over lap. How many religious-biased factions can you have and still have them be unique to play? Or military? Or cultural? Or Economic? If you mix and match too much, you end up pre-making that decision for your player in a game that's supposed to be about the player creating a new future for humanity.

 

[Martinus]

Not sure what part of the customer base would be against an "Islamic Republic" as a faction, if the faction is not depicted as jihadists/terrorists - and more importantly, does Firaxis really want that part of the customer base?

 

[waytofailself]

I personally hope they don't add 8 factions to an expansion. More factions do not necessarily equate to more fun.

What we could see is more variety in alien life and planets. More random events. Additions to the tech tree. New victory conditions. Subterranean layers (wishful thinking re: Civ 5 engine but it works in AoW).

Obviously there will be more factions. I can't think of a civ expansion that didn't at least add some. But I want more than new faces in a paid-for update to the game.

 

[Lord Tirian]

But I want more than new faces in a paid-for update to the game.

Or a new subsystem like almost every Civ expansion before. But we'd need to see how the game plays out first in order to get a feel for what is needed.

Also, out of the four proposed factions, I only like the Papal states idea - somewhat. It's a neat counter-point to the Protectorate, but I'd worry about the implications of having it so strongly tied to an existing religion. I'd make them somewhat less specific and make them more like the church in A Canticle for Leibowitz, making the religious faction the keepers of the past and science. The ones who want to guarantee that mankind and its thoughts and achievements will not die in another Great Mistake.

The other factions sound really boring and cliched.

 

[AriochIV]

It bothers me more than a little bit when people are planning the contents of hypothetical expansion packs when they haven't even played the base content.

For all we know, 8 factions might be too many. Play the damned game before you start talking about how it needs to be changed.

 

[Dargoth]

It bothers me more than a little bit when people are planning the contents of hypothetical expansion packs when they haven't even played the base content.

For all we know, 8 factions might be too many. Play the damned game before you start talking about how it needs to be changed.

Disagree (Not suprisingly)

1) Every recent Civ game has had expansion packs that have included more factions/Civs including SMAC which had Crossifre that doubled the number of factions

2) Every Civ has had some group of fans who have said "Why did they include faction/Civ X! they should have included Faction/Civ Y!

3) Some where in Firaxis offices theres probably an outline for an expansion pack already in the works or someones working on it.

I perosnally think 8 factions probably isnt enough if your playing on a huge map they could proabbly do with 12 maybe (So long as we dont have Slow done issues)

 

[Matthew.]

Yeah, an Islamic faction has nothing to do with touchy political issues. After all, it isn't like the West has ever really "embraced" Islam, so it isn't like the current round of anti-Islam is necessarily a new idea, just more of the same. I still don't really want to see one for the same reason I wouldn't want to see a Christian-based faction. The Kavitha faction already covers a religion angle, which is more than enough. I wouldn't say religion would necessarily disappear in the future, but I have a difficult time believing either Islam or Christianity would resemble anything it currently does or did, that far into the future. It is like trying to bring 1900's political ideologies into the game... they existed at the time they did, but it is unlikely we would be seeing a scenario where these ideologies would be playing out on a new planet set in the future.

But in response to the thread, obviously a north Europe Germanic/Nordic faction. I am biased here, as I favor production factions... so... it would ideally be a production faction

 

[KrikkitTwo]

MTA: Maritime trade authority (global/non territorial) controls many port cities and a significant fleet... Naval bonus

AU: Antarctic Union-Terraforming/tile improvement / settler bonus

SSD: Society for Spiritual Development (global/non territorial)- anti-rebel* bonus

ME: Mediterranean Empire (rest of Italy, Greece, Turkey, parts of Middle East)-can't found cities/annex. Can change stations into puppet outposts, buy in puppets.

Liberation Front: (global/nonterritorial)-rebel* bonus

CSE: Confederate States of Europe (Nordics, Germany, British Isles)-energy from internal trade routes

ITT: institute for technological transformation (global/non territorial)-affinity bonus

USA: (includes Canada, parts of Mexico)-culture from kills



*rebels are the new mechanic that causes unhealth and rebel unit generation in other factions' cities

 

[Louis XXIV]

I do kind of want a Middle Eastern player involved. That being said, the appeal of new factions isn't anywhere near the appeal of new Civilizations. If they did have an expansion pack, I wouldn't mind a handful (there's certainly enough work put into making them that they won't want to do it for free), but it certainly wouldn't be the draw like it is for Civ expansion packs.

 

[wulkos]

My dream for this game, but not many hope for it: A laïcal Turco-Iranian empire, in the continuity of modern turkish republic and late Pahlavi periode.

Included Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey(anatolia and cappadoce), Armenia, Turmenistan, Uzbekistan, and fiew parts of Irak(kurdistan) and khazakstan.

A burocratic meritocraty with intance cultural propaganda of persians empire/osmanli heritance, and glorification of the lots of minders, philosophers, artists, poets of the region history. But a very idéalised and active cultural propaganda, with greats projects of monuments restoration/reconstruction, like Bamiyan's bouddahs, Cyrus's tomb, or even Persepolis herself, and a rich scolar program, mainly in history lecons( ).

Decentralised federalism, allience of pan-eranism and pan-turkism with preservation and helping of regionnals minor cultures(like kurds) and minor religions (like zoroastrism, with a huge nationalist mod effect with it in upper/upper middle classes)

Because of strongification of regionals tongues and cohabitation of 2 differents linguistic group, the creation for administration and politic of an esperanto-like common tongue, fusion of various altaic and aryan vocabulary and structure (including avestans words)

Infortunately, internal tensions with both various turkishand iranic terrorists movements who don't likes to live with the other cultural group.

Iranian shahanshah (married to a turkish noble of osmanli line) and as in-game leader a turkish prime minister. The royal family is a symbol and don't have any power.

 

[poom3619]

My dream would be a HRE-esque Fifth Reich. a pan-Islamic state. A New Poland-based Commonwealth independent from SF and an NGO Security force ala Pravin Lal's faction.

 

[Catalytic]

Perhaps I should clarify my thoughts on the addition of an Islamic Caliphate. I'm not personally against it. It seems quite feasible and I expected it would have been included as a religious-based unified Middle Eastern state.

When I saw they hadn't included it, I figured it must be because of current politics. There are a certain set of widely known groups seeking to create such a state right now and they are controversial to say the least. Firaxis' inclusion of their envisioned state could be spun as 'supporting their cause' in various ways. The gamers who read this forum are intelligent, informed people who have, for the most part liberal (small 'L': open-minded) views, and are quite able to suspend disbelief when playing a sci-fi game. There are those who aren't so open to diverse ideas and aren't able to separate current reality from a sci-fi setting. Firaxis is a game company. They sell games. They want to make their game appealing to as many people as possible when they market it. The worst thing they could have is some activist targeting Firaxis in a social media campaign for "supporting terrorists" or some other contrived nonsense. Including something like this (or a 4th Reich) baits these kind of people, and they could create some atrocious negative publicity, making their game not sell as well as something with a wider appeal to more potential players.

The question for Firaxis to consider is: what compelling reason do they have for including something like this that is of more value than the potential risk?

An argument can be made for both:
-An Islamic caliphate is a way to unite a vast swath of people who think similarly about government and culture.
-This group lives on land that would be mostly unaffected by a 60m rise (I use the flooded Great Pyramid of Giza to get this number) in sea levels
-That land is resource rich, despite the desert parts and could support trade and industry
-There is a very strong history of shared culture from Islam, but even farther if you include Persia
-If you look back at the history of the Dark Age of Europe, it was these people who preserved science and culture when Rome fell. It would create an artful symmetry if they preserved science and culture through the Great Mistake.

-A case for a Germanic faction is also strong
-There's a long history of transnational ethnic similarity of Germanic people dating back to the Roman Empire. Language, culture, and religion all create a strong common identity that would survive border shifts.
-Plentiful resources in central Europe, concentrated wealth, convenient trade portal between F-I and the SF already introduced (unless one or the other annexes these people =)
-If I were looking for a 'compelling argument', I would suggest that the Germanic people have always been a hardy, tough, industrious people. They took down the Roman Empire, and have themselves fallen and risen again from the ashes time and again. I would want the first human colonists of a new world to be similarly hardy, tough, and industrious to survive whatever challenges they might face.

 

[GeoModder]

Current geopolitics barring a game company from implementing a faction? If that was the case, you could as well wonder why "evil Russia" is in Beyond Earth.
Besides, the game is likely longer under development then the latest geopolitical antics came to the attention of the world.

 

[NASAROG]

How about rogue factions? A crime family put all it's resources into one ship and goes to give the legit factions a run for their money?

 

[Cyon]

'La Cosa Nostra' or the 'triad' would be a cool faction, or a a secretive order of some kind.

Or a more posetive approach, the Mondragon, a real basque cooperative that are a world power in Kim Stanly Robinson's novel "2312" or another simular coop.

 

[GeoModder]

I doubt "rogue nations" have the resources, political clout (internationally seen), and finances to sponsor a Seeding.
And I highly doubt the power blocs would even allow a criminal organisation to reach orbit.

Also, I've wondered why the developers specifically use the term "sponsoring" for the Seeding missions. To me, that sounds like they're organized by some kind of treaty organisation and not the individual sponsors themself.
Perhaps sponsors need to supply the resources and finances for "their" starships, but something/one else actually constructs them in orbit.

 

[dapperbandit]

Britain should feature, either independently or as leader of the Commonwealth (albeit without Australia apparently)

Germany should also return in some capacity, alone or as part of a western European bloc.

A grouping of Arabic states...to me, in 200 years religion will hold less sway in that region, so I'm not sure about a Caliphate. It's contentious right now as well with Iraq etc.

Then some offshoots that are less geographically based, big corporations that don't stick to one continent. A private military corporation or a trade organization perhaps.

To me there should really have been more factions to start with. Knowing exactly who you're up against before you've even started a game on a large map sucks. 12 would be a good number.

 

[COF]

Germany, UK and Scandinavia in an alliance. Probably focused on Science and Health, maybe Culture too.

Central Asian union, while not very realistic it would be pretty unique in my opinion. Probably focused on Production, Gold and Military.

An Arabian state, perhaps including Iran and Turkey too, Growth, Faith and Diplomacy.

Not sure what else would be left except maybe Canada and Central America.

 

[NASAROG]

Please, let's keep the old religious dogma on earth. Let's not infect another planet with that cancer.

Back to the topic, why wouldn't a rogue state be able to do it?