[Rising Tides] Hybrid Victories

[BrotherAriman]

If Firaxis or some very capable modders ever added victories for the hybrid affinities what would you like to see? Let's think of some ideas and if at all possible explain your reasoning on how it ties to the hybrid philosophy.

Purity/Harmony- Ascendency
Victory Name: The Olympian
In this victory the faction begins to poor their resources into creating the "perfect" human, someone or thing who will embody the thoughts and ambitions of all of humanity and guide it into the future as it's immortal ruler. In short humanity creates it's own God in the form of humankind by pouring the collective thoughts of their people into a single entity of immense power and potential, (Totally not the Emperor from Warhammer).
For this victory the Ascendency player constructs a wonder tile called the Seat of Knowledge, once activated to begin the creation of the Olympian all culture production and growth ceases and is instead directed directly to the wonder, (representing the collective thoughts of a people being collected and poured into this new being), in a similar fashion to how the contact victory consumes all energy production. This prevents the accumulation of new virtues as well as halts natural border growth. Once X culture has been accumulated the Olympian gains consciousness and victory is achieved.




Harmony/Supremacy - Convergency
Victory Name: The Behemoth
This hybrid is described as going beyond the limits of science and morals doing whatever it takes to gain power. In this way I wanted this victory to be not only costly but also possibly self destructive to represent the at all costs attitude of the hybrid. This victory involves creating a massive bio-organic weapon which would dwarf the xeno-titan by comparison; the ultimate war machine that no army or even the united armies of all of humanity could stand against.
The first step of this victory is to assemble the "skeleton and nervous system" of this organism in a similar way you would build parts to the space shuttle in CiV. There would be three initial parts: 1. The skeleton: requires an investment of titanium and production from a city. 2. The brain: requires an investment of firaxite and production from a city. and 3. the exoskeleton: requires investment of xenomass and production from a city. Once all three have been assembled and gathered in the same location, (deploying in a similar way once again to the space shuttle in CiV), only one step remains feeding/providing organic tissue to the Behemoth.
This is down in two ways; the first is to select an option in city processes which diverts all food collected in the city to the Behemoth which will activate once X food has been obtained. The second way is to construct a biological reclamation facility in a city you control this building essentially begins to raze your own city killing 1 population each turn providing a large flat food bonus to awaken the behemoth. Additionally after you have begun to activate the behemoth all cities your faction razes provides food towards the project.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Purity/Supremacy:
Victory: Virtual Utopia
The faction perfects subservient robots to perform every task in society, leaving humans free from need or obligation to pursue leisure of all types in a perfect virtual world of their own making. You must build The Interface Wonder, which allows all people to connect to the virtual Utopia.

 

[GenyaArikado]

I think that the Behemoth victory being capable of failing is too much. Love the ideas though.

I wish that at least the current victories texts were adapted for hybrid civilizations (ie Supremacy victory in a Purity/Supremacy civ being basically the rebellion of machines)

 

[Galgus]

@OP

I'm not really a fan of either of those, since creating a dictator is creepy and does not represent the hybrid well and no organic construct would be unbeatable.

Purity/Supremacy:
Victory: Virtual Utopia
The faction perfects subservient robots to perform every task in society, leaving humans free from need or obligation to pursue leisure of all types in a perfect virtual world of their own making. You must build The Interface Wonder, which allows all people to connect to the virtual Utopia.

Virtual worlds are more of a full Supremacy thing.

They could make that utopia in the real world.

 

[Ryika]

Purity/Supremacy:
Victory: Virtual Utopia
The faction perfects subservient robots to perform every task in society, leaving humans free from need or obligation to pursue leisure of all types in a perfect virtual world of their own making. You must build The Interface Wonder, which allows all people to connect to the virtual Utopia.

I'll pick up on that one but take the liberty and rename it to "Virtual Eden".

 

[Halbbruder]

Purity/supremacy - cybernetic victory:
- Research tech that gives you exodus gate
- Launch lasercom satellite
- Construct gate
- send settlers into city to increase their population
- have 4 cities build a Robot Quartering Station which houses all robot servants. Has a high production cost, cannot be purchased with energy and once built it functions like the Cloning Vats from SMAC.
- win game by having 4 cities above 25 population.

Purity/harmony: Human fulfilment victory
- research transgenics
- research surrogacy
- Complete marvel quest
- Settle city near the main marvel or conquer enemy city near main marvel. Must have at least 12 population.
- have that city build a Marvel Theme Park Wonder, which provides a culture and health bonus.
- aim for +30 health and hold it for 20 turns. Falling below +30 health stops the turn timer from ticking down. Negative health resets the timer, as would losing the marvel city with the wonder.

Harmony/supremacy: Evolution victory
- Research alien ethics
- Research a few other distant techs
- Construct Alien Organ Hub wonder
- Kill 2000 combat strength worth of enemy units to win.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

@OP

I'm not really a fan of either of those, since creating a dictator is creepy and does not represent the hybrid well and no organic construct would be unbeatable.



Virtual worlds are more of a full Supremacy thing.

They could make that utopia in the real world.

Supremacy is more "upload your mind". I was going more for an all virtual reality Internet.

 

[Galgus]

Isn't that what Supremacy does?

Upload their minds and live in a virtual society?

Other affinities and hybrids would mostly just change the real world, methinks.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Isn't that what Supremacy does?

Upload their minds and live in a virtual society?

Other affinities and hybrids would mostly just change the real world, methinks.

Supremacy is like the Matrix. I was thinking like Oculus Rift meets Second Life.

 

[Galgus]

That seems secondary at most, then.

The core idea for Purity / Supremacy would be to create glorious shining cities sealed behind domes.

 

[GenEngineer]

*Cracks fingers* Personally, I'd like to see some of the ideas Galgus mentioned a while back implemented in the game, which necesitates moving some of the core affinity victories to the hybrids. With that in mind, here's what I'd like to see for each affinity:

HARMONY: Transcendance - essentialy unchanged, in that you still require the same techs to research, and construct a Mind Flower wonder once they've been researched and you've reache the appropriate affinity level (15 is about right, given how the math works to place hybrid victories). Once constructed, the victory plays out mostly the same, but in addition to the time requirement (shortened by Xeno Sanctuaries), the average alien opinion of all players (weighted by number of cities and population of those cities) has to be above a certain level - so if there's somebody who's been riling up the aliens too much, you have to go bring them down to size, thus introducing some interactivity.

HARMONY/PURITY: A New Eden - unlocks at level 9 in each affinity. Requires researching Genetic Design and Biology, along with constructing the Macro-Terraformer Wonder. Once constructed, the Terraformer Wonder will start slowly converting land within your territory to hybrid forest improvements, which have effects similar to a terrascape, albeit with a bit less yield and no maintenance. Once the wonder as been built, your workers unlock the ability to plant hybrid forests themselves (both in your territory and neutral territory), albeit at a slow construction rate (possibly slower than a normal Terrascape). You win once a certain % of the planet is covered in hybrid forests (thus forcing expansion if you lack the room to accomplish it on your own. Idea is that this Hybrid is focused on taking the best from both worlds to achieve the strongest genome, and the mythological references present in a lot of the unit names make the idea of constructing some kind of 'paradise' fitting.

PURITY: A Second Chance - again, unlocks at level 15 in Purity, requires the same preliminary steps as before to make contact with Old Earth. Once contact has been made, construct a "Care Package" (stupid name, I know, but I can;t think of a good one at the moment) wonder. Build a series of packages in your cities that require being funneled into the wonder in order to restore Old Earth to it's former glory, similar to the Science victory in historical civ games. The catch is that each piece will be VERY intensive in strategic resource cost, encouraging interaction with players to attain more if needed (either militaristically or through trade). It makes more sense for Purity to seek to rescue Earth from it's current state than just abandon it, so a package to be sent back to earth. It's also fitting to see a form of reverse spaceship victory, going from the far-off planet to earth, and Purity's the only one interested in doing so in this fashion.

PURITY/SUPREMACY: Exodus - again, essentially unchanged beyond moving affinity requirements to 9 of each. No real need for further changes, considering how the need for space imposed by the Earthlings can force interaction as is. There's still the focus on making sure all humans are happy, but less of a focus on the glories of the past. So instead of trying to rebuild old earth, they try and bring the earthlings to a new place where they too can partake of peaceful, robot tended existence - for is such a society not the promised land?

SUPREMACY: Singularity - research Astrodynamics and Orbital Networks. Once you reach level 15 in Supremacy, construct a "Dyson Core" wonder. Upon construction, a number of tiles on the map (scaled according to game size) will reveal unique resources. In order to win, you must have each improved (by a worker, doesn't need to be in your territory - can be foreign territory) and covered by a specific Orbital Unit ("Dyson Constructor?") that has a fairly sizable orbital footprint. Once all have been improved and covered, you win (interaction comes from competition for space in the Orbital Layer). To me, Supremacy has no real interest in both Old Earth and the New Planet. The Dyson core is designed to be a fully self-sufficient virtual reality, traveling through space until it encounters some new alien phenomenon, upon which people can return to their physical bodies and explore for a time before going back to the dream, but that is long after they have left the Planet.

SUPREMACY/HARMONY: Emancipation - mostly as is from basegame, albeit changed to 9 in each affinity. Furthermore, requires committing some amount of population from cities in addition to military units, thus encouraging interaction as sacrificing enemy cities is more attractive of an option than sacrificing your own... This just always seemed the most ruthless to me, and the general theme of brutality present in the names of the units for this hybrid just brings to mind the same kind of contempt for common mankind.

Obviously, all tech requirements are in flux as it's impossible to know what is most practical on a given path without having full understanding of the tech web, but these are the core ideas for how each affinity should play out to me. The Hybrids should occur at 9:9 on the basis that that requires a total of 270 affinity points to achieve, just as 15 in a single affinity does. The interaction is built in to each of the victories to ensure that the games don't remain too passive and to prevent a runaway lone civ victory from being too common.

 

[Jamadman]

Personally I think some of the current victory conditions suit the hybrids more than pure affinities.

Purity/Harmony.
“Promised land”
Bringing the mortals to Olympus, home of the god like beings.

Purity/Supremacy.
“Emancipation”
Sending Robots to help rebuild old Earth and improve the lives of people there, creating a leisure planet liberated from hard labour

Harmony can stay the same but If these others were to swap it would open up the possibility of having different victories for the pure affinities.

Harmony/Supremacy
“New Genesis”
We witness the birth a new species as an artificial womb is built to create new sentient non-human life. I am not actually to sure how I would implement this one, but I do see it as the “has science gone too far” option which how I see this affinity

Purity
“old earth reborn”
Terraform the plant to resemble old earth, as good old Kozlov would say
"Yes, the world is beautiful and unspoiled. But it is wrong. Correct it at once."
I was thinking a satellite wonder that would require a fair amount of orbital space (and a tile) that when activated begins the usual count down, but the countdown is reduced with the number of terrascapes below the area.

Supremacy
“Cognitive upload”
Essentially the same as @BrotherArimans Purity/Harmony idea, only its man leaving behind their physical bodies to ascend to a pure digital form, this means putting a pause on all culture as and it is all uploaded and the more culture you would produce, the faster the upload.


I would like to go into more details but its hard to go into to much details while I am at work.

 

[DefiantMars]

HARMONY/PURITY: A New Eden - unlocks at level 9 in each affinity. Requires researching Genetic Design and Biology, along with constructing the Macro-Terraformer Wonder. Once constructed, the Terraformer Wonder will start slowly converting land within your territory to hybrid forest improvements, which have effects similar to a terrascape, albeit with a bit less yield and no maintenance. Once the wonder as been built, your workers unlock the ability to plant hybrid forests themselves (both in your territory and neutral territory), albeit at a slow construction rate (possibly slower than a normal Terrascape). You win once a certain % of the planet is covered in hybrid forests (thus forcing expansion if you lack the room to accomplish it on your own. Idea is that this Hybrid is focused on taking the best from both worlds to achieve the strongest genome, and the mythological references present in a lot of the unit names make the idea of constructing some kind of 'paradise' fitting.

This is a new quote from the affinity wheel describing the hybrids. For Harmony/Purity it says:

The Purity/Harmony Hybrid Affinity is the belief in human evolution through the combination of Alien and Human genomes; the synthesis of a superhuman lifeform.

“We have proof that life exists outside our solar system. It may even be intelligent life. It doesn’t disprove the existence of a higher power. It doesn’t prove it either. Your argument is ridiculous. No, let me finish! How we deal with this knowledge is important.”
From “They are There, Now What?” - The Documentary

I would really like for this philosophy to be extended to the planet. Harmony/Purity would be about uplifting themselves and then in turn doing so to their environment. I think it would be an interesting victory condition and the need to proactively go out and claim land to terraform is a nice balance point.

I do have a few questions on how it would work though. If another sponsor is going for the same victory. Do both of your improvements count? In my head, I would think that the game would need to keep track of them separately. A single player has to reach the limit of control. So if the enemy has 10% coverage and you have 10% coverage, the victory doesn't count that as 20%, it counts it as 2 players with 10%. However if you conquer said sponsor's cities, it would flip the control to you meaning that there is a sponsor with 5% control and another with 15% control.

The second question I have is related to the Victory Wonder. What happens if its destroyed? Do the hybrid forests die out? Do they remain? I assume workers would lose the ability to construct the improvement. Since its tied to the Wonder. Also what would the yield of the Hybrid Forest be? Does it replace ALL of your tiles? Some of your tiles? If so, which ones?

Lastly, what about oceans? We've seen a biowell on the tides so I assume nodes, domes, and terrascapes can be built on sea as well. How does the improvement work on that?

Don't get me wrong, I'm greatly interested in this idea and even more with the idea of granting Hybrids more individuality. But as always, there are lot of questions to be resolved.

 

[GenEngineer]

@DefiantMars - We know that you can't build terrascapes on the sea, actually. It's one of the things the devs mentioned in a tweet. As for this thought exercise (slash mod planning), I'd think there would need to be an ocean equivalent at least, to prevent it from being too easy on a mostly water map (if you need 20%, but there are only 20 land tiles, that's only 4 tiles to improve - too small).

As for the point about how it interact with other players going for it, one thing I forgot to mention (that has also been brought up by other people) is that the victory wonders should be true onders, only one allowed complete on the planet at any time. They can be pillaged to allow for someone else to build them, and if there were more options for VC's it's not so important that multiples be an option. So it does count all built Hybrid Forests, but if someone else had designs for that victory there'd be a fierce fight over the wonder.

AS for the nature of the Hybrid Forests and their water equivalent, I'd think that would start automatically with the tiles closest to the constructed wonder. Once destroyed, all of them stay behind, since that means it's even nastier if someone else swoops in and builds the wonder for themselves, since it doesn't matter who built the improvements or where they are. As a note, i'd say that if a hybrid forest is pillaged, it can't be repaired if you don't have the wonder either, as an even balance between them sticking around and all dying if you lose the wonder.

I'd never given much thought to the yield, but my logic was that the local forests tend to result in 1F/1P tiles and can occur about anywhere, and since Terrascapes can be built literally anywhere and yield 2F/2P/2C, having the hybrid improvement yield 1F/1P/1C seemed tolerable. I think it should be allowed to spawn on any type of tile, assuming that said tile doesn't have some form of improvement already on it that is mutually exclusive with a normal forest. If you already are filled up beforehand, well, time to start getting workers to replace some stuff.

Oceans would require me getting the chance to actually play RT and seeing all the details of how they work in practice, but would probably work very similar (same yields, same ability to appear anywhere except perhaps deep ocean... maybe).

 

[MatThePhat]

Some great ideas! Definitely inspiring me, here's my take:

Harmony : Keep it the same, but add a requirement that a minimum number of nests needs to still exist on the planet. To compensate for this, add a modified settler unit unconstrained by open borders halfway through the harmony tech tree that allows you to "found" new neutral Allen nests. This forces you to always keep watch on alien levels and plan ahead, but it can also make harmony fight proxy cold wars, as well as foster inter harmony cooperation.

Purity - harmony (God-Emperor) : I really like the warhammer idea floated earlier. After creating the Throne of Olympus monument, you can now build the God-Emperor unit. The first psionic being of any note, the GE is a human that embodies the perfect being, taking the mindnet capabilities of the planet and putting it under the control of a divine king. The emperor unit needs to destroy other units, cities, and alien nests in order to "level" until it absorbs enough biomass (soul power? Psionic waves? Whatever sounds coolest) to take control of the planet mind. As an anti frustration feature, if the GE dies you can rebuild it and it will return at the same level. Justified with cloning or by saying it's a being that has transcended our dimension or something.

Purity (gift basket): I'm putting my vote n for the idea above where you have to build a immense package of strategic material that is sent back to face earth. I feel like some kind of bonus for purity mining strategic material would need to be added or something.

Purity-supremacy (welcome to hotel planet) : I like the idea of this affinity taking over the old purity affinity. It makes sense, with robots doing all the work, they maintain a standard of living that they won't have on earth. Instead, bring in more people here where there's room to expand, the overseer class can always use more people.

Supremacy (Singularity): I cast my vote for the description above!

Harmony-Supremacy (the swarm) : what I imagine is one extremely long and slow wonder. "World Ship". You construct giant worms and start digging into the planet until you reach the core and start harnessing that power in order to create a propulsion system to the next habitable planet in order to sick it dry. As well, you start harvesting all the biomass on the current planet and storing it in the hive at the core. This will be kind of like the old supremacy victory with a couple catches, your population will start to disappear as it gets moved below the surface, destroying cities and nests will give you " biomass ", which translates as straight production to your wonder being built, and as you get closer to finishing the wonder, the planet starts getting tundra and dessert tiles appearing randomly as your planet-wide disturbances and harvesting start to disrupt the ecosystem.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

[Ryika]

I'll pick up on that one but take the liberty and rename it to "Virtual Eden".

Done: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=527890581 (went more for the "upload your mind"-version though)

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I'd probably go with the idea that the hybrids can choose one of the neighboring ones, and make those 3 more interesting

PS.. can either take people here to terraformed world to get taken care of by robots OR send robots through to help people in spite of the terrible Earth environment (military to stop the governments resisting losing control of the economy)

PH.. either take people to this new terraformed world to get genetically improved OR develop people to the point where we can tap into the system here and control it

HS.. either develop advanced technologies that can tap into the system here and control it OR send advanced technologies through to modify people to survive the terrible Earth environment (governments may resist allowing their people to be modified)

at some points the hybrids would have to choose...as in a quest...open up one quest path, or the other, or the third path of just more hybrid affinity for a better conquest/contact victory

To make the others more interesting

Promised Land... require some real global terraforming, and require the Settlers to spread out even more... possibly allow your existing cities to take up to 1 Refugee each, and only allow 1 in each "Refugee founded city". (so you could conquer enemy territory and force them to take the refugees, rather than just razing them)

Transcendance... require that real global terraforming Not happen, and make the aliens very mad against everyone (but they quickly get happy again with you)

Emancipation... have actual resistance mechanic (just numbers v. your strength, but you have to keep shoving units through as fast as possible or they will take over)..and have it require more than military units, have Culture based 'care packages' as well ['care package' integrates people into the new system].


part of it is wanting to have competition between victory conditions.

 

[Galgus]

Done: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=527890581 (went more for the "upload your mind"-version though)

Everything about that, from the description to the vision of a virtual world, screams Supremacy without a hint of Purity.

The entire virtual world concept is as pure Supremacy as I can imagine, while Purity both glorifies human nature and seeks to build a physical utopia for a humanity.

It would be a great fit for a Supremacy victory, but not for Supremacy / Purity.

 

[Ryika]

Everything about that, from the description to the vision of a virtual world, screams Supremacy without a hint of Purity.

The entire virtual world concept is as pure Supremacy as I can imagine, while Purity both glorifies human nature and seeks to build a physical utopia for a humanity.

It would be a great fit for a Supremacy victory, but not for Supremacy / Purity.

How does "We use machines to do do our work while we as humans relax in virtual worlds" scream supremacy? o_O

 

[Galgus]

Because virtual worlds that are truly lived in is a merging of machine and man, which is heavily Supremacy.

What is the difference between uploading and living in a virtual world if no time is spent outside of it?

I'm not saying that any kind of virtual world simulation is automatically full Supremacy, but one made to replace rather than supplement living in the real one is.

(For an example of supplementing, historical uses like Deep Memory and recreational uses like video game simulations could be considered not Supremacy specific.)