Sci Fi Fans, any missing Affinities?

Heh, first you dismiss something, and then you propose quite a similar thing? Outside the scope of a planet.

My view on adaptivity as a mix of Supremacy and Harmony is a bit different. Both those affinities are mostly about altering oneself (humans). My view would be altering things from the surrounding environment against said environment if it poses a threat to the members of this adaptive culture, but not so blunt as to only use extreme physical force as the Purity cultures intend to do.

 

Firstly, that was Lancor, not me. Not sure why you quoted it attributed to me.

Secondly, as I said before, everyone is going to see the boundaries of plausibility differently, and it's unreasonable, IMO, to dismiss other people's ideas because of your own idea of the limits of 'proper' sci-fi.

 

I'm not sure about all intelligent life altogether, but I think extinction of humanity would actually make for a pretty good affinity:

- It's a direct answer to the question "what happens to mankind next".
- It doesn't overlap with the other affinities.
- You can imagine it being something that people would actually be attracted to, knowing that humanity is a species that had (in the game's lore) already completely screwed up one planet, and was probably on its way to do the same on another.
- Although its view is depressive and fatalistic, I think you could still make it challenging. Have Extinction see themselves as the only ones who are thinking of the big (cosmic-level) picture where in a universe that's likely teeming with life, for a species that's likely unredeemable to destroy itself in an orderly manner is an act of honor.
- They have an obvious and compelling victory condition: They want human extinction, so if humanity is extinct, they've won. Given that all the affinity victory conditions involve building a big wonder and defending it while at a disadvantage, I'd say they build a Giant Doomsday Weapon and then have to defend it as it slowly kills mankind (hurting them more than it does the other factions, so that there's some challenge).
- It's obvious why they would disagree with and get into wars with any other affinity... with another Extinction faction, I suppose they could have disagreements about what to write in humanity's tombstone.
- You probably wouldn't have much trouble coming up with an aesthetic for them either...
- And if you can't write it as a compelling affinity that has real arguments going for it, you can always write it as being straight out villainy!

 

Another thought, that's a lot subtler than Extinction so I'll actually use paragraphs this time:

Unity - basically, the Human Hive, but with eyes firmly kept on the eventual goal rather than on the day-to-day of brutal repressive dictatorship. This is the affinity of those who think that more than one human individual is just too many, and we all would be better off if "we all" was a singular term. So they do things like work on brain-to-brain-connecting technologies, spend a lot of time convincing people that individuality isn't that great and so forth, wanting to eventually become one group mind.

Yes, on the way you might see things like rampant collectivism or the engineering of subhuman laborers who want nothing but to serve (i.e. having just about as much independence in society as your hands do in your body)... but you also get people who genuinely understand one another, social structures where everyone fully understands their place and function, and so on. If a member of a Unity faction had to use only one word to describe what they are about, they would say "love" - love that the other affinities can never experience or even understand, because Purity pointlessly rejects it, Harmony misdirects it, and Supremacy corrupts it (if indeed they experience anything at all in those robot bodies).

They could make for a pretty interesting aesthetic. While they don't have to be as human-wavey as the Hive (although they could be), I could imagine them being more willing to throw away some bodies than the other affinities, and so maybe having more figures per unit. Their mechanical units would be hand-assembled because they're very good at finding the labor to make stuff that way. Also, they'd have Jaegers .

The only big problem I have with them is this is that it's hard to say exactly what people should be at the end in this affinity. Normal humans with brains full of psi implants (or biological psi?), just going about human business except that there's nobody home in any particular body? Energy beings? A sea of LCL? The issue is that "all uploaded into a big computer" is the most obvious answer, but then that would just make them an odd offshoot of Supremacy...

 

Unity potentially overlaps with all the other Affinities.
Harmony definitely (if they choose to go for the merge with the planetary consciousness Victory condition)
Supremacy as a possibility (if you upload everyone's brains, you can link them all together)
Purity would have to rely on more old fashioned methods of linking/mind control...public education and targeted social media. (Google glass with an mri cap)

All of those could reach the "Unity" idea of all humanity as one mind.

 

Serenity - War aggression or at least ambition is what has led to humanity's downfall. It is better to develop a self-sufficient community and take a peaceful route to all goals because each life needs to be preserved. Focuses on defensive technology ultimately developing a computer-controlled robotic military force to protect the people who can instead focus on more important things.

Maturity - The fortunate people to have escaped Earth realise the wickedness that they have left behind. Too much evil has been done and it cannot be forgiven so instead, it must be forgotten. The future of humanity lies now in moving forward into surviving from a number of planets without crippling any and if one comes under strain, fixing it. Only in this way, can humanity hope to survive without reliving the past.


Thinking about it, both of those are sort of like Purity without the rescuing humanity part but they could be different enough.

 

I think the thing that's missing from the available affinities is the idea of cooperation with other species. We've seen this idea in a lot of sci-fi, star trek comes to mind first with the federation of planets, a collection of distinct intelligent species cooperating under a single government.

There won't be any intelligent aliens in Civ BE (outside of the contact victory), but maybe this affinity could go the route of creating a sentient species from the local native species (think the monolith in 2001). I think this could lead to some interesting game play options. Once you have additional intelligent species, you could use them as a way of achieving greater city specialization, some cities are human, some are mostly made up of the new intelligent species, and get bonuses that make them easy to specialize for production, science, unit experience, etc. Their units could show a mixture of different figures, some human, some not.

Their affinity specific victory might be something along the lines of a diplomatic victory, getting the other factions, who now represent distinct species from humanity to join the federation.

Like the extinction concept (which I also like) I think the tech path would have a lot of overlap with the other factions, but I don't think that's a big problem. I expect that the existing 3 factions will overlap each other in some ways too. I remember hearing something about purity wanting to make the best version of humanity it can, and in the unit graphics they recently released, the tier 4 soldier is looking superhuman. I don't think harmony will have a monopoly on genetic research.

 

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why everybody is so down on the floating stones as "unrealistic", flux pinning is a thing.

Sure, it requires the natural occurrence of a room temperature superconductor (similar to Avatar's Unobtanium) and stupendously strong magnetic fields (that should rip apart most things), but I think in an universe where other alien life is hinted at (Contact victory) that influenced the development of the planet you landed on, it's not too bad.

Certainly something that's more "Star Trek" than "Star Wars" (not hard sci-fi, though, of course, but not pure fantasy either).

 

Well, you are right, but BE floating stone seems to be unconditionaly floating. It could be explained somehow (you made a good point at providing explanation, even if case is a bit different, but I still think that floating stone is less realistic than other things shown so far. But don't grt me wrong - I love the idea and I'm happy they are in .

Plus, last but not least, the fact is we are still pretty ignorant when it comes to understanding laws of physics. As much progress as we (as mankind) have done recently, I'm certain there is a lot more to discover than we know already. Who knows what will turn out to be realistic in next two or three hundred years...

Back on topic - I like ideas posted above, yet I think they are mostly variations about affinities already in game. Affinities are less distinguished by cultural diffirences imo, they are rather different due to approach to technology and, primarly, further evolution of humanity: it's computing/robotics - biologic tech/genetic engineering scale imo. Middle ground is retaining traditional form of our bodies. Change to us is the key here, not change to our culture!


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This is a very interesting idea. In terms of defining a possible goal of future humanity, this one takes somewhat of a Dances with Wolves approach. If Earth 1.0 was ruined because of humanity's inability to find balance with its home, followers of this aesthetic might very well choose to seek exactly that balance with Earth 2.0, but without morphing humanity's genes with alien's genes.

If anything I see this as an idea for an x-pack, where they might introduce this as a non-standard build made into legit play style the way they added Venice and the OCC into Civ5:BNW. It would have to function as a debuff-based faction, where rather than buffing one's own units, you seek to debuff/weaken the technologically superior enemy by various means, forcing them into the balance you define. Bonuses like Ethiopia's (+unit strength vs larger civs) might find their place here.

Hybrids of the main three are always an interesting concept to explore. My completely uninformed gut feeling is that they'll enable this via the tech web, by allowing you to pick and choose your techs (and various "kickers"/bonuses). You'll be able to hybridize if you want, though the game will select one or the other affinity as the dominant one. It is also possible that some of those techs will have overlapping benefits, so hybridizing could essentially be wasting science points. It's still an interesting idea.

 

Good discussion. I remember reading that BE is going to have options for hybrid affinities via treading a path in between the three divides on the web, so we will definitely see stuff like that .

In addition, I think a lot of what people have suggested goes under the idea of a future society and their values, which I imagine will be characterized by the Virtues, instead of a future being. For instance, an ascetic or collective society is one that has certain values about how to live, but they don't necessarily drastically change the being of humanity (are you a robot? Skinny human? Genetically engineered cockroach/human hybrid?).

However, I think the Elimination idea is in the right vein (reminiscent of the Cult of Planet from SMAX). Humanity has decided it is a virus that needs to disapear. This kind of affinity even has a lot of possible virtues that don't necessarily agree with each other. Should we slowly remove our humanity until we are non-sentient animals once again? Do we value military might to forcefully close the book on our species? Pacifistically spread the doctrine and us destroy ourselves? Too dark for the optimistic BE, but maybe it will be a part of some nihilistic expansion

 

This seems more like renegade faction of Purity. Perfecting human, instead of infusing technology or alien DNA to human.

 

Nothing renegade about it, according to the dev panel video, Purity invests in gene tech to strip out all the human flaws from the human genome. So trying to be the "perfect" human or the very best humanity can be is very much part of Purity proper.

 

Wait, WHAT? Man, I was sure this belongs to Supremacy! Now I have no choice but treat Purity as the best Affinity - preserving and perfecting humanity instead of next creepy revolution leading to aliens/machines

1) Purity
2) Supremacy
3) Harmony, I don't like spiritual movements, hippies, anarchists and eco - fanatics

...fortunately this doesn't mean anything as player won't 'choose' an Ideology but it will reveal during the game basing on his choices

 

The player Does 'choose' an Affinity.
They just do it more than once
Ie everytime you choose something that raises yout affinity levels you will know
ie
Your people want to build a station. Which one do you approve?
Cybercontrol military station +6 Supremacy
Terraforming research station +6 Purity

 

It's actualy what Krajzen has posted - there is no single choice, but a series of smaller ones. This way it is revaled, and it naturally reflects choices you make while developing your civ.

 

I feel like these are some classic tropes of humanity's future extentions:

A. Through Robots, merging humanity with technology to weather any surroundings.
B. Through Genetics, modifying our bodies and our ecology to fit new surroundings.
C. Through Terraforming, using science to harness and rule over our surrondings.
D. Through Utopia, unifying the human race in purpose (whatever that purpose is).
E. Through Evolution, mostly this has dealt with psychic powers or some over superhuman ability changing the fundamental nature of our species.

Reading about CivBE's affinities; I might fit them in this manner:
Harmony: This is either the Genetics or Evolution route.
Purity: This is definitely the Terraforming route.
Supremacy: This sounds like the Robots route.

I definitely think there is room for a Utopia affinity. This can be the religion/cultural affinity some of you are looking for. But an affinity where we all work as a team (unit? hive?) may not be attractive to most of us in the individualistic Western society.

 

Proposed New Affinity: Uplifter (for lack of a catchier term)

This affinity is about raising a native species to sentience though genetic manipulation and training. Victory condition is to create the Great Creche and hatch the new life form in sufficient numbers to survive retaliation. As true natives, they would then have an overwhelming advantage (long term) over the intruder factions.

(Based on Dave Duncan's old novel Hero and his recent one Pock's World. War between designer races and 'randoms' is inevitable because they fill the same ecological niche. The only question is, what form wil the conflict take?)

This covers the idea of species-seppuku but gives it an actual postive goal. The aim is not to spread our germ plasm, but sapience.

 

I made the same point as Krazjen in another thread and was informed (I think by Arioch) that each choice will even be color coded depending on which Affinity it increases (Green = Harmony, etc.)

 

Hopefully -- and this seems pretty likely -- there are a lot of techs/options for each Affinity and you aren't forced into any of them. The developers have been pretty clear that one Purity build may look very different from another. So if you want to play Purity as space Nazis, fine... but if you don't, hopefully that's an option, too.

Now if only there was the option to say, "I'd rather skip the toga, thank you."