The Colonization of Mars

[Quintillus]

For the uninitiated, about 21 months ago I started a story in the Civ 3 forums that grew rather long, based on the premise that I would conquer everything in the world. Turns out that game took a lot longer than I planned (real time wise) - 31 civs adds up! But in February I finished the conquest, and my Greeks were masters of the Earth, prosperous and enjoying their newfound peace.

Since then there's been little word of them. But why would history end with world being conquered? So here's the story of the next big adventure in Greek history!

Settings:
Game: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Difficulty Level: Librarian (which is equivalent to Regent in Civ3 in terms of production, and somewhere in the range of Monarch in content-citizens)
Map Size: Huge
My Civilization: The Spartan Federation
Ocean Coverage: 30-50%
Erosive Forces: Weak
Native Life Forms: Rare
Cloud Cover: Sparse
Victories: Conquest or Diplomatic. Cooperative victory allowed.
Other non-standard settings: Look First on (can move initial settling pod before settling), Do or Die on (that is, no AI respawns), Tech Stagnation on (slower technology), Blind Research off (can choose exactly what to research, rather than general categories).

This will be my first SMAC game, so things could get a bit rough. No guarantees on victory here!

For those of you interested in knowing the pre-story to this, see The Conquest of the World. Here, we begin after that story left off in 2050.

Table of Contents: To be created when necessary.

So without further ado, here's the beginning of the tale:

---------------------------------------------

Part One: Life on Earth, and Soon Beyond

For many decades after their conquest of the Earth, the Greeks focused their efforts on improving their own quality of life. Indeed, they were quite successful at this, becoming ever more prosperous. The people were content, there was no war. Generally speaking of course - every so often there was a small rebellion, and once in a while there'd be significant backlash against a royal decree. But generally, life was good.

Even so, it was inevitable that eventually the happy Greeks would venture far beyond their own skies. They had first reached the moon more than a century ago, in the still-warlike days of 2004. By 2075 a profitable mining operation was in place, bringing back titanium from the Moon. But it was concluded that there wasn't much point to colonizing the moon. Per the Space Ministry's Colonization Report of 2092:

For the reasons outlined below, the Ministry concludes that colonizing the Moon would be a most silly expenditure of resources:

a). That there's not a whole lot to be gained from a colony there. Though titanium mining has proven a good investment, there's just not that much else that's worth going there for, economically speaking.

b). The fact that the Moon is not conducive to plant life. By which follows, we'd have to keep importing all our food from Earth, or growing it within our space stations. While this is acceptable for the relatively small and very important mining operations in place, it would be entirely impractical for a large society.

c). The fact that we can't breathe the Moon's air. We suspect that most people would tire very quickly of always having to wear a spacesuit when they went outside. The miners only put up with it because they'll be quite rich when their five or ten year stint is finished - after awhile the novelty does wear off.

d). The remaining dependence on Earth. A good question to ask is, if something happened to the Earth, would our first colony survive? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if the Earth were obliterated, the Moon would go careening way off course soon afterwards and probably be rendered hopeless. And then there's the issue of if we do something that messes up the Earth to the point we can't live on it, but left it physically intact (that is, still a near-sphere of similar mass in a fairly unchanged solar orbit). In such a case, our poor Moon colony may be able to survive on its own, but the chances of it ever being able to expand beyond the Moon without the help of the Earth are nigh nothing.

King Basil XXIX gave this decree his approval that year, and indeed there was no mass colonization of the moon in either his reign of those of his successors. But in 2117, King Anthimus III declared that extraterrestrial colonization was to begin - on Mars. He cited several factors:

*Even with advancing technology, eventually it will be necessary to colonize another planet to support all the Earthlings.
*The Martian environment, while cold, will support some hearty plant and bacteria life, and does have, if not anywhere near as much water as Earth, at least enough water to be eminently useful.
*Mars has a much greater mineral base than the Moon, giving a reasonable chance that a colony on Mars could, at some point, spawn its own colonies if necessary.
*Mars would be independent of any disasters on Earth, barring the possibility that the new Considerably Original Mammoth Powerful Anti-Charm and Top Accelerator (COMPACTA) malfunctions and produces a black hole that swallows the entire solar system. But scientists are relatively certain that won't happen.
*With 38% of the gravity of Earth versus the Moon's 16%, golfers will have a much less difficult time adjusting to Mars than the Moon.

So planning began within weeks. The humans were going to go out into space!

 

[uat2d]

If this is going to be as exciting as the other story, I can't wait !!!

 

[kingfire87]

Oooooh, Quintillus returns. Completely and utterly *Subscription.*

 

[Phatkarp]

Interesting!

 

[vyeh]

If you have the expansion Alien Crossfire, you might consider playing that with

the two alien factions
the cult of the planet
Morgan
Hive
University

I believe the alien factions would add to the story.

 

[Quintillus]

If you have the expansion Alien Crossfire, you might consider playing that with

the two alien factions
the cult of the planet
Morgan
Hive
University

I believe the alien factions would add to the story.

Unfortunately I do not; SMAX was inordinately expensive on Amazon and eBay when I bought SMAC, and, checking prices again now, still is. Four times as expensive regardless (new/used/whatever) as SMAC was new for the expansion - just doesn't seem quite worth it when I can get three other complete games for the same price.

The next section is partially written at this point; expect it to go live sometime tomorrow GMT.

 

[Meteor Man]

Will this new story have screenshots as well?

 

[GooglyBoogly]

Sounds good. I cannot wait!

 

[D0NIMATRIX]

Looks cool.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

I also would like to see how this turns out.

BTW, Mars has quite a bit of water, though most of it is locked in sub-terranean permafrost and/or at the ice caps at the poles (as is almost half the atmosphere... Interestingly enough, I read in a recent book, A Traveler's Guide to Mars, which was based on the latest research as of 2004, that Mars is actually undergoing a spell of global warming right now, causing more of the CO₂ to evaporate, thikening the atmosphere, which, in turn, is warming the planet further. The Mars Orbitor has documented recent water flow in a number of areas.....

 

[D0NIMATRIX]

I also would like to see how this turns out.

BTW, Mars has quite a bit of water, though most of it is locked in sub-terranean permafrost and/or at the ice caps at the poles (as is almost half the atmosphere... Interestingly enough, I read in a recent book, A Traveler's Guide to Mars, which was based on the latest research as of 2004, that Mars is actually undergoing a spell of global warming right now, causing more of the CO₂ to evaporate, thikening the atmosphere, which, in turn, is warming the planet further. The Mars Orbitor has documented recent water flow in a number of areas.....

Uh-oh. Teh alienz iz chargin there lazers!

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Uh-oh. Teh alienz iz chargin there lazers!

No, more likely that they're trying to pull a "Total Recall" (if anyone remembers that movie and/or what happened near the end.....)

 

[Meteor Man]

Thats ironic. I just watched Total Recall for the first time last night, and then you come over here talking it up about it and Mars. Weird.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Thats ironic. I just watched Total Recall for the first time last night, and then you come over here talking it up about it and Mars. Weird.

That was one excellent film.... My broter is one of those utterly annoying types who seems like he can always guess what's going to happen next in any film he sees, but "Total Recall" even had him stumped.

 

[Maniac]

There's a Mars scenario for Alpha Centauri out there btw.
http://www.civgaming.net/public-files/smac/scenarios/Mars.zip
Edit: Oh never mind, I see you don't have SMAX.

 

[Quintillus]

Will this new story have screenshots as well?

Indeed it will. Not sure quite how many, but the first one will appear in a few minutes (albeit not in-game for the first one).

I also would like to see how this turns out.

BTW, Mars has quite a bit of water, though most of it is locked in sub-terranean permafrost and/or at the ice caps at the poles (as is almost half the atmosphere... Interestingly enough, I read in a recent book, A Traveler's Guide to Mars, which was based on the latest research as of 2004, that Mars is actually undergoing a spell of global warming right now, causing more of the CO₂ to evaporate, thikening the atmosphere, which, in turn, is warming the planet further. The Mars Orbitor has documented recent water flow in a number of areas.....

I may end up doing the middle H₂O level actually; I'd been uncertain of what the best choice would be there.

Didn't know you could do subscripts on CFC before! Quite a good set of forum tools we've got here.

And here's the update. Got sidetracked a bit by zombies, GalCiv2, and the college football championship tonight, but it's here! Enjoy the last episode before planetfall!

 

[Quintillus]

Of course, it wasn't all as simple as just sending people to Mars and letting them run about their new daily lives. Many technical obstacles had been cleared in the past century, but they would still have to be implemented. The two most important challenges were creating significant surface water (not ice), and increasing the atmospheric oxygen content. The first would be accomplished primarily through chemistry - in 2106 Greek scientists had discovered a new substance that allowed water to remain liquid down to -115 Fahrenheit, without any adverse on life as adding that much salt would produce. The latter would be accomplished primarily with bacteria. Hearty plants had been genetically engineered to withstand the generally frigid but also quite turbulent Martian temperatures.

So it happened that the first missions to Mars were to melt polar ice (a careful operation, as melting it all would result in an aquatic planet), and to bring bacteria that would increase the oxygen content. Both of these required some time to accomplish, so it wasn't until 2138 that it would finally be time to launch the colonization mission.

But oh, what misfortunate struck in 2137! An asteriod, 471 Dodger, not only failed to dodge Earth, but easily passed through the improvised laser defences, and struck the Earth in Australia's Gibson Desert. The crater was well southwest of Rostov, the nearest occupied settlement, but was also right on the largest oilfield in that quadrant of the Earth. Fires raged, the economy tanked, and countless resources were diverted both to rebuilding the infrastructure and containing the larger environmental damage. The King decided to go ahead with the space mission the next year, but was obliged to heavily reduce further funding the the space center in Orleans, Australia. There would be no further missions to support the colonists until the situation on Earth was sorted out. But the scientific community was confident everything would be just fine for the colonists as it was. Perhaps a little slower development, but nothing dangerous.

So it was that in August, 2138, the Greek Space Command launched its last probe for many years, the New Frontier, towards Mars. It was one of the most celebrated days in the history of the world, and headlines on the ship's progress captured the news headlines throughout the following months. But one headline above all caught the attention of the world:

"The communication chip apparently was defective," concluded the head of the Greek Space Commission two weeks later. "We'd press our supplier for warranty coverage, but we have no idea how they'd replace it, so we'll just take monetary compensation instead."

Scientists were reasonably certain from telescopic observations that the vessel itself was still fine. And indeed, the vessel itself was. But the diplomatic process inside of it - not so much. With no more earthly leadership, travelers quickly started proposing alternate courses of action to the prescribed plan. A few went so far as to float the idea of turning around and colonizing Mercury instead. But within the next three weeks, several magnetic personalities emerged, each with a different idea of how to run Mars, and the Mercurial factions aligned themselves with these:

The Spartan Federation

Led by Corazon Santiago, these are the heroes of our story. Dedicated to the greater Greek Empire, they seek to further the Empire first. But they know that to do this, Mars cannot be a patchwork of independent kingdoms as Earth was. Thus they seek to unite the Red Planet, by diplomacy or force.

Human Hive

The Hive similarly believes in the concept of Empire, but not subject to Earth. Rather, they seek to establish a powerful Martian Empire under the leadership of Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang. To Corazon, this is the ultimate betrayal of the Greek Empire. She sees two rival empires just 45 million miles away as destined to be disastrous, probably even more so than the empires that were 4 or 5 miles away back in the old days.

Morgan Industries

This faction is dedicated to building a wealthy, capitalist society, and thus objects to Chairman Yang's more communist approach. To such a degree that they've decided to forge their own state to prove that capitalism is better!

That's what happens without the Cold War - it just enacts itself on Mars instead.

Gaia's Stepdaughter's

Gaia's Stepdaughters are dedicated to preserving the natural beauty of Mars, and thus find themselves in direct opposition to the profit-centered Morgan Industries. Although they have no direct quarral with the Spartan Federation, they also thus far refuse to act as one with them due to the Spartans' not yet having signed the Red Air Pact. And we haven't even made planetfall yet!

The Lord's Believers

The Lord's Believers are a religious group that, during the journey, came to the realization that Mars, in fact, is the Promised Land. Their leader is amazed that it never occured to a previous prophet that perhaps a nice, peaceful place like Mars rather than the confict-ridden Near East was the Promised Land. At any rate, his followers now praise him immensely. Unfortunately for them, the less religious members of the voyage just see Mars as a fairly regular planet and follow other leaders.

University Mars

The citizens of University Mars have a burning scientific curiosity, and, seeing the opportunity of having so many scientists working together, hope to use their unusual opportunity of having no higher authority to discover deep, sometimes dark, secrets of the universe. If you thought COMPACTA was dangerous, well, just wait until University Mars gets going. They may not figure out how to destroy the universe for awhile, but many of the other factions fear they will figure out, if inadvertantly, how to destroy the fledging Martian colony with their risky experiments.

The Peacekeeping Forces

Somewhat inaccurately named, the Peacekeeping Forces seek to establish democracy on Mars. Knowing well what happened on Earth to democracy, Corazon is determined to return these Martians to their rightful King. Democracy - such an inefficient method, bureaucratic method of administration! Just think if a Congress had had to save the oil industry after the asteroid last year! They'd have done hardly anything and there might not have been enough oil to move the New Frontier to its launchpad by this August. No, you need a powerful central ruler to take action and rule to solar system!

 

[The Loser]

subscribing!

 

[Meteor Man]

"We'd press our supplier for warranty coverage, but we have no idea how they'd replace it, so we'll just take monetary compensation instead."

Nice Quint.

 

[Perfection]

what abouts the bugs?!