(Rising Tide) No speculation on Hybrid Affinities and New sponsors?

[Veras]

Personally I bet we get a Japanese sponsor, one other European sponsor, and two wildcards - perhaps something from Central America as you say.

As a Tropico player I've entertained the silly idea of a third world backwater island dictator somehow stealing a seeding ship.

I remember from some interview that while the 8 original sponsors were leaving Earth, the others from RT were struggling to reclaim their homes and, presumably, to survive. I don't remember if this aplied to all 4 or just Al Falah, but, considering the first is true, we may draw some conclusions:

-All new factions come from places that were highly vulnerable to climate change, wars or other humanitarian crisis. Taking Al Falah as an example, the Gulf States (from where I presume they came from) and the Tigris-Euphrates basin are highly vulnerable to the rising seas, and they were also very close to the nuclear wars in Central Asia. Other vulnerable places are precisely the Caribbean, the North of Europe and Japan. (There is also Antarctica, but I just can't imagine something coming from there)

-It probably took many decades, if not a century, for some of these factions to catch up to the point of being capable of pursuing the Seeding. So rather than a third world backwater dictator stealing a ship, I imagine them fighting to survive until reaching the point where they figure it out by themselves how to escape Earth with their limited resources (or just waited until their insufficient resources became sufficient). Al Falah, for instance, may have needed a huge amount of time to build their generation ship, which had to be much larger than normal ships to house a living community for centuries. Better FTL technologies available and tricky quantum physics will do the work of putting them on a planet at the same time of the original sponsors.

 

[Kakhovsky]

In some of the interviews it was mentioned that two of the new factions will be "aquatic" (Japan and some North european union). Then the remaining two are presumably more or less "all-terrain". One of them is Al-Falah with their vague city production bonus. Also the factions must be more grim in character and pragmatic in methods due to their complicated history of survival and primitive space travel.
So, my prediction:
1) Al-Falah (confirmed)
2) Some Germanic union (Viking/Nautilus Pirates style?)
3) Japanese faction (deep ocean explorers/ superior alienfishermen?)
4) Something original and unexpected/something boring and bleak

 

[GenyaArikado]

Another possible candidate is a Mediterranean union. Unless Germany did succeed at making greece a parking lot. There is also UK but they could be thrown together along the Germans more easily than the Greeks.

 

[oldag07]

In some of the interviews it was mentioned that two of the new factions will be "aquatic" (Japan and some North european union). Then the remaining two are presumably more or less "all-terrain". One of them is Al-Falah with their vague city production bonus. Also the factions must be more grim in character and pragmatic in methods due to their complicated history of survival and primitive space travel.
So, my prediction:
1) Al-Falah (confirmed)
2) Some Germanic union (Viking/Nautilus Pirates style?)
3) Japanese faction (deep ocean explorers/ superior alienfishermen?)
4) Something original and unexpected/something boring and bleak

Good guesses. because the lore says these are the second wave of explorers, I am assuming these are going to be poorer factions. I am going to go with
1)Al-Falah
2)Ocean Civ 1- Something to do with people in the pacific ocean. Polystralia was taken, but I am imagining some lore discussing how there is not enough land, so people moved to mobile platforms on the pacific.
3)New Atlantis (Ocean Civ 2)- An Atlantic version of Ocean Civ 1.
4)The moon/ asteroids (Spacers) Well, if humanity can colonize a planet light years from Earth, you should expect that humanity is mining the moon and nearby asteroids.

Other possibilities
5) A subterranean faction
6) An arctic/antarctic faction- Certainly an arctic faction would be good with water if you talk about global warming.
7) A penal colony group - much like the colonization of Austrailia.
8) Religious group escaping persecution (like the Pilgrims did)
9) Mutants. Survivors of a nuclear war who were irradiated. They would be untouchable type people. Maybe the major governments are cleaning up these areas, and these people no longer have a place to live, so they are put on a spaceship to live a new life.
10) The progenitors.
Edit- added one more idea
11) a sponsor from a different planet that was seeded. Maybe the world wasn't that hospitable, so they packed up their spaceship, and sent it to your planet.

 

[GeoModder]

4)The moon/ asteroids (Spacers) Well, if humanity can colonize a planet light years from Earth, you should expect that humanity is mining the moon and nearby asteroids.

Now there's a thought. What of the people living and working off-Earth after the Seeding winded down? Not enough 'energy' left to get things in Earth orbit, so the infrastructure up there is left to its vices, and the people manning it with it.

 

[oldag07]

Now there's a thought. What of the people living and working off-Earth after the Seeding winded down? Not enough 'energy' left to get things in Earth orbit, so the infrastructure up there is left to its vices, and the people manning it with it.

Of course, space stations are not seen in the RT expansion (or at least they haven't been announced). . . . So maybe they could save a sponsor like that for a future expansion.

 

[Gilleous]

I'm not going to speculate on the new sponsors. What I will say is that I expected them to announce another faction before their summer holiday. But they didn't.

I wonder when they will release the second faction's teaser. I hope they are not planning to shotgun the remaining 3 just before release.

 

[DefiantMars]

2)Ocean Civ 1- Something to do with people in the pacific ocean. Polystralia was taken, but I am imagining some lore discussing how there is not enough land, so people moved to mobile platforms on the pacific.

This idea is very similar if not the more extreme version of the Sponsor idea that I wrote up. With the increasing sea levels. Nearly every human population in the Pacific Ocean is at risk. This problems like

Destroyed infrastructure in the form of Air and Sea ports cutting off island cities from outside trade.
Reduced landmass resulting in reduced habitable or productive space.
Changing/degrading ecosystems due to temperature changes. Resulting in extinction and therefore lack of resources for humans.
Changing weather patterns due to changing thermodynamics, resulting in storms and droughts.

The Wayfinder Initiative I wrote up developed technologies similar to what we're seeing (not that anything I drafted up was really super innovative.) Turing water into productive space and using the ocean as effectively as land.

 

[Zenstrive]

I have this strange suspicion that Al-Falah faction start with recycler on all of its cities. The production efficiency trait they have is an indicator. Could be another bonus to production too with 1 bonus production for every 5.

 

[Snownova]

Since two of the remaining factions will be aquatic, my money is on an Anglo-Dutch alliance of shipbuilders.

 

[durfal]

Since we already got Al Falah from the middle east my guesses for the other three would be something like these:

1 A Japanese (maybe including Korea) highly commercial/research conglomerate.
I see them as an isolationist group with Corporate spies

And since we know at least two factions can or will start at sea, they should have some water based origins I guess.

2 A Caribbean Faction coming from an place on earth that neither ARC or the South American States had any interest in after the rising of the sea and basically all it's tourist income went away so they had to rely on pirating to survive. So they got some of the tech from stealing from the other factions in the region.

3 A North Sea Waterland made up of the very impoverished people of Britain (and ireland), the Netherlands, Belgium (mostly the Flemish), Northern Germany and Denmark (and maybe even the rest of the Nordish countries).
Especially Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark have a huge Seafaring history. The British are big shipbuilders, the Dutch are famous for their Water-management and the Danish have a huge Container Ship Fleet. So after losing most of their land they had to make water-colonies already on earth and since their situation isn't getting better on earth and the "big factions" starting to try their luck on a new planet, they follow suit and try to make it on a new planet, using there new learned water colony skills as a start on the new planet. So a group of Sea traders of some sort.

This leaves enough room for each faction to go with Harmony/Purity/Supremacy or a combi of those.
I'm probably completely wrong but at least I hope they went with something like these.

PS: anyone have a clue on when we get some more news about the game? Any game conventions coming up (those always are the main info giving moments)?

 

[Kakhovsky]

From gameplay perspective we probally will get the factions exploiting new game mechanics. Two water based factions are confirmed (aquatic cities), but there is also a new artifact system (some explorer/archeologist faction?) and remade diplomacy with character development (some adaptive, double faced diplomats?). Of course the old factions can be also easily changed as it took place in patches and in Civ 5.

 

[iki]

It's comic con season then I think there's a big (miniture ) Game/ rpg thing in August. Nothing as far as I know. I'm not even sure if the gamefest in Germany is happening this year.

We had far more information about the core game by now compared to the expansion and it is concerning.

 

[Gorbles]

Why is it concerning?

 

[oldag07]

New Atlantis just sounds cool, regardless where the people actually come from storywise.

 

[Lord Tirian]

New Atlantis just sounds cool, regardless where the people actually come from storywise.

Heh, whereas I always think it's one of these things you should never call something, same for other mythological names. Pandora? Will end in tears. Icarus? This plane/spaceship will crash. Atlantis? This ship/city will sink. Agamemnon? Will do something horrible and be killed/destroyed through betrayal. Odysseus? Will obviously get stranded or get lost.

 

[oldag07]

Heh, whereas I always think it's one of these things you should never call something, same for other mythological names. Pandora? Will end in tears. Icarus? This plane/spaceship will crash. Atlantis? This ship/city will sink. Agamemnon? Will do something horrible and be killed/destroyed through betrayal. Odysseus? Will obviously get stranded or get lost.

Good point.

 

[DefiantMars]

Heh, whereas I always think it's one of these things you should never call something, same for other mythological names. Pandora? Will end in tears. Icarus? This plane/spaceship will crash. Atlantis? This ship/city will sink. Agamemnon? Will do something horrible and be killed/destroyed through betrayal. Odysseus? Will obviously get stranded or get lost.

I share you opinions on this matter.

 

[iki]

Why is it concerning?

Maybe they expect most things to be a surprise or maybe they won't hit the oct/nov release date?

We know nothing about the themes of the hybrid affinities and I'd just like to see, though I do tend to hunt for spoilers and things so maybe that's why.

I'm not sure if Firaxis has ever canned a game but I really hope BE gets a lot of content.

 

[Veras]

We'll probably also get a Diplomatic Sponsor, or at least have one of the Vanilla sponsors tweaked into it (and for that I would bet on Polystralia or African Union).

A sponsor specialized in artifacts and expedictions would also be very nice. Maybe something like Japanese or German scavengers.