Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

[ScottishMartialArts]

This is probably by the point the Americans have given up any pretence of democracy in favour of unleashed state corporatism. Being head of "American Reclamation Corporation" would likely fall to someone more fitted for the job. Someone with more experience with these things.

Well in that respect, Latinos start more businesses than any other demographic group in the US. Look I'm not wanting to come off as a Latino/a progress cheerleader but the simple reality is that in less than a year, the US Presidential primary campaign will be under way, and two of the candidates for the GOP nomination -- the GOP! -- will be Latino, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio probably has at least a 1 in 4 shot at actually winning the nomination. In other words, there is a distinctly real possibility that by January 2017 the President of the United States will be... Latino. If in less than three years the US could be governed by a Latino, are you seriously going to say that 100 years from now, or whenever this game takes place, its totally unrealistic for the "American Reclamation Corporation" to be governed by a Latina?

And it's funny how badly the whites want their own demographical and hierarchical demise, at least in America, I cannot think of any collective suicide throughout history that is comparable. There was no war or any last straw that broke the will of the people, they will just slowly die out until they either are fully absorbed into the other populations or become extinct due to the low birthrates. What ever happened to you guys? You used to be pretty cool back in the day when you still had some dignity and self respect left. The throbbing megacock of the American and European empires of old has lost its erection and instead of trying to get it up again you go for a castration, why? This makes no sense to me.

Eastern thinking hasn't changed much since the days of the Persian Empire I see: I couldn't help but be reminded of the passage from Aeschylus's Persians in which Xerxes expresses his amazement that the Athenians would still fight on at Salamis after their city had been sacked. "Why would they fight for a city that has been destroyed? All their buildings and monuments are gone. Why fight?" "As long as the men of the city live, so does the city." When the Romans took on the mantle of furthering Western culture, something remarkable happened: to be Roman, a city founded by vagabonds and outcasts, wasn't to be a member of an ethnic or racial group, but it was to adopt Roman culture and to believe in the idea of Rome. While I don't wish to minimize the social problems posed by mass immigration, in the end, white racial supremacy isn't what's going to make or break America, or Europe for that matter; it's whether new Americans continue to adopt the animating ideals of Western culture for their own.

 

[Shannow]

They are taking the Fiction part in Sci-Fi a tad bit too literally.

Because it's totally unreasonable that a country's largest minority and fastest growing demographic group could in the near/mid future elect someone to that country's highest office.

Are you saying only Hispanics/Latinos would vote for a Hispanic? Does that mean only half-blacks voted for Obama?

Anyway: Obama /argument

Would have brofisted your last comment, but then you went and mentioned

the animating ideals of Western culture

Whats that supposed to be? Waging war on the weak to appear strong at home and to funnel money into the military industry? Rigging elections and protests? Overthrowing democratically elected governments? Torture? Murder? Bribery? Making the rich richer and keeping the poor poor? Mass surveillance of the own population and "friendly" nations to stomp out any dissent as early as possible? Consumerism? Peddling useless, unhealthy and dangerous products?

Don't get me wrong, not everything is bad about Western "culture", and a lot of stuff may be worse in other regions of the world. Just don't see why anyone (who's not an asshole) would want to adopt it entirely, instead of just picking the few good things it has...
Enough GD. Back to whining about graphics

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

The brazilian leader is called Bolivar?
Bolivar.
Bolivar.
What the fuck...

First Chairman Yang with his inhumanity, then that Pandora yellow emperor who keeps cloning himself and now this chinese woman with "ME SO EVIL" look in her face. Is China STILL the boogeyman for the west? Because this is getting to be a cliche.

I liked chairman yang, he seems to be just another evil tyrant at first, but he's quite a 3d character and i perceived more of it as i got older. Same thing for Sister Miriam.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

The brazilian leader is called Bolivar?
Bolivar.
Bolivar.
What the fuck...

First Chairman Yang with his inhumanity, then that Pandora yellow emperor who keeps cloning himself and now this chinese woman with "ME SO EVIL" look in her face. Is China STILL the boogeyman for the west? Because this is getting to be a cliche.

I liked chairman yang, he seems to be just another evil tyrant at first, but he's quite a 3d character and i perceived more of it as i got older. Same thing for Sister Miriam.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Whats that supposed to be?

It basically comes down to self-criticism and a perception of the world/universe as operating under intelligible rules. As a preface, I would make the argument that Western culture is built around a set of ideas that originated in Ancient Greece, and have been predominant in Western Europe for most of recorded history, but that Western culture isn't exclusively the domain of Western Europe, and that at times non-Western European civilizations could accurately be called Western, i.e. Roman North Africa and Syria, and at other times, say Dark Ages France, it would not be accurate to call Western Europe a Western culture. That aside, Western-ness, in my view, is about an ability to be critical of your self, your people, your society, your religion, etc. and in fact to have that criticism generally be celebrated, aside from perhaps the immediate object of it. This affords a certain dynamism, a certain willingness to say "this isn't working; let's try something different". This means that just because religion of your fathers says the universe works one way, doesn't mean you can't figure out a better explanation for how it works. Tied into that is the notion that the world is rational, intelligible, and operates through rules which can be discovered through careful inquiry. Conversely, where rules seem to be lacking or not applying "properly", there is an attempt to impose a human order.

I'm trying to avoid going into much detail here because I don't necessarily want to prove that this definition of Western culture is correct if all you're interested in is hearing how I'm defining it. I could easily get going and spend 10,000 words describing the historical conditions that led to the emergence of a liberalized Greek culture in the Archaic age, and cite examples from Greek and Roman literature illustrating some of the ideas I've mentioned, i.e. Aristophanes openly mocking the leaders of Athens in plays that were state subsidized, etc. Honestly, if you're that interested just read "Who Killed Homer?", one of the authors was a professor of mine in college, and my understanding of Western culture borrows almost entirely from his.

 

[sser]

Bleh. I was hoping for more procedural factions, ones that better indicate large populations moving across the galaxy. These are more like nationalistic football teams setting up franchises on another planet.

 

[KoolNoodles]

Yeah, just like Alpha Centauri.....oh wait. Jesus fucking christ. Let's just have some nebulous masses as starting factions. That's real fucking interesting.

 

[King Arthur]

Eastern thinking hasn't changed much since the days of the Persian Empire I see: I couldn't help but be reminded of the passage from Aeschylus's Persians in which Xerxes expresses his amazement that the Athenians would still fight on at Salamis after their city had been sacked. "Why would they fight for a city that has been destroyed? All their buildings and monuments are gone. Why fight?" "As long as the men of the city live, so does the city." When the Romans took on the mantle of furthering Western culture, something remarkable happened: to be Roman, a city founded by vagabonds and outcasts, wasn't to be a member of an ethnic or racial group, but it was to adopt Roman culture and to believe in the idea of Rome. While I don't wish to minimize the social problems posed by mass immigration, in the end, white racial supremacy isn't what's going to make or break America, or Europe for that matter; it's whether new Americans continue to adopt the animating ideals of Western culture for their own.

Heavily armed warships plundering technologically inferior countries around the equator. Spreading small pox and disease. Spotting land, blasting every native in sight, claiming ownership. Pointless, bloody revolutions, in the name of freedom. The freedom fighters all keep slaves. Industrialists, great land owners, shameless exploitation of farmers and factory workers. It seems to me that Western culture was always about the acquisition of wealth and power, and that this philosophical mumbo jumbo is nothing more than an imaginative fantasy.

And can you really say that there are animating ideals in a country where everyone's needs are taken care of, and where entertainment is the only pass time anyone cares to partake in? Even philosophers are only philosophers because they get a kick out of it. I'd say that the entire human experience has been about a species trying to entertain itself, and stumbling to great heights of scientific achievement due to uncontrollable Darwinian factors.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Talking about factions, I think it would be nice if they took a leaf from paradox and had something like break-away factions. I like the idea of say, some splinter factions of rebels (remind me of the SMAX factions, but probably appearing like the expansion factions do in Planetfall) or a too-big-for-his-boots power magnate to suddently declare himself KING OF [NAME]land or something. Weirder things have happened.

 

[tuluse]

Talking about factions, I think it would be nice if they took a leaf from paradox and had something like break-away factions. I like the idea of say, some splinter factions of rebels (remind me of the SMAX factions, but probably appearing like the expansion factions do in Planetfall) or a too-big-for-his-boots power magnate to suddently declare himself KING OF [NAME]land or something. Weirder things have happened.

Civ 1 and 2 did this. If you took the capital city, the country would split like 60/40 with a new Civ taking the 40%.

There is a mod for Civ4 called legends of revolution that adds break away civs to civ 4.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Civ 1 and 2 did this. If you took the capital city, the country would split like 60/40 with a new Civ taking the 40%.

There is a mod for Civ4 called legends of revolution that adds break away civs to civ 4.

Yeah I remember it but the game had to be down one or more civs because Civ 2 only allowed 7 players, max. It was also kinda retarded because taking the capital was a sure shot to winning wars, even if you only had the capacity to send a single doomed army to take it.

I remember there was a mod for Civ4 focused on barbarians and revolutions (might be the one and same with a new name), it was kinda cool to fight a civil war from time to time, too bad vanilla Civ4 is boring and I would rather have such a feature in a cool mod.

btw, is CiV bad for modding? Because it has been out for quite a while and I never heard of any great mods for it, like Fall from Heaven. I haven't touched CiV and from what I've heard, I think I'm gonna wait another expansion, or CiVI.

To be fair, CivIV was good but not great until Beyond the Sword, which added a lot of cool stuff and increased the number of stuff that could be played with in mods. Firaxis has been heading deep into popamole since CivIII, and Civ4 was the last good thing from them, I hear.

 

[tuluse]

Yeah I remember it but the game had to be down one or more civs because Civ 2 only allowed 7 players, max. It was also kinda retarded because taking the capital was a sure shot to winning wars, even if you only had the capacity to send a single doomed army to take it.

I remember there was a mod for Civ4 focused on barbarians and revolutions (might be the one and same with a new name), it was kinda cool to fight a civil war from time to time, too bad vanilla Civ4 is boring and I would rather have such a feature in a cool mod.

btw, is CiV bad for modding? Because it has been out for quite a while and I never heard of any great mods for it, like Fall from Heaven. I haven't touched CiV and from what I've heard, I think I'm gonna wait another expansion, or CiVI.

To be fair, CivIV was good but not great until Beyond the Sword, which added a lot of cool stuff and increased the number of stuff that could be played with in mods. Firaxis has been heading deep into popamole since CivIII, and Civ4 was the last good thing from them, I hear.

Civ5 makes it really hard to do any meaningful mods from what I understand. You can just mess with surface level stuff.

Even worse, you can't play multiplayer games with mods. I got hundreds of hours out of civ4 from playing modded games with my friends, and that's just completely out now.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Heavily armed warships plundering technologically inferior countries around the equator. Spreading small pox and disease. Spotting land, blasting every native in sight, claiming ownership. Pointless, bloody revolutions, in the name of freedom. The freedom fighters all keep slaves. Industrialists, great land owners, shameless exploitation of farmers and factory workers. It seems to me that Western culture was always about the acquisition of wealth and power, and that this philosophical mumbo jumbo is nothing more than an imaginative fantasy.

All cultures engage in imperialism; it's just been that the West has dominated that venture and been far more successful at it than any other culture since the Enlightenment era.

In the Ancient/Classical world, that dominance was evident as well, primarily due to innovations, such as Hoplite and later Roman Manipular warfare, that were distinct products of Western-ness, i.e. you cannot have Hoplites without a relatively egalitarian society of yeoman farmers, nor can you deny more representative government to your people when military survival depends upon the full participation of the middle class in the phalanx, and later the lower classes rowing on triremes.

I need to go to a doctor's appointment, and thus can't cover the details, but there is a good argument to be made that a big part of WHY the West is so successful at conquest, particularly in the past few hundred years, has to do with the very "animating ideals" which sound so pretty in isolation. To say that a culture is successful is not necessary an assessment of its moral worth, and certainly a culture which can hold up things like equality before the law and freedom of speech, and then derive strength from those ideas which allows it to conquer and colonize foes, should give us pause before we assume that cultures fall into one dimensional moral categories.

 

[Trash]

Those leader portraits actually look kinda nice. Also got the distinct impression that while it most assuredly will not even come close to Alpha Centauri it will at the very least make for an entertaining Civ V expansion. Which is not really what you would want but probably the best you could expect from modern Firaxes.

Speaking of which. Anyone know why Firaxis so utterly curtailed the possibility of mods for Civ V? One of the big things that give Civ IV its staying power are the amazing amount of high quality mods that their community made. This nerfing just seems so counterproductive.

 

[Torrasque01]

It's the engine. Civ4 ran on LUA and because of that it had pretty awful performance but it was also very moddable.

 

[sser]

Those leader portraits actually look kinda nice. Also got the distinct impression that while it most assuredly will not even come close to Alpha Centauri it will at the very least make for an entertaining Civ V expansion. Which is not really what you would want but probably the best you could expect from modern Firaxes.

Speaking of which. Anyone know why Firaxis so utterly curtailed the possibility of mods for Civ V? One of the big things that give Civ IV its staying power are the amazing amount of high quality mods that their community made. This nerfing just seems so counterproductive.

Boardroom decision, probably. At least that's what I always assumed. Some cost-benefit analysis on whether or not allowing gamers to use your engine to make their own games was profitable to themselves. Considering CivIV had excellent space and fantasy-based mods, I also wonder if it was a preemptive decision to stop people from making mods that would be in competition with future products.

 

[Johannes]

It's simply more effort to include proper mod tools than not.

 

[Shadenuat]

Gen. Kozlov of Slavic Federation

Woman.

No, that would be "Kozlova".

So the only white male in game would be leader of slavic federation

 

[Morgoth]

Slav. Male. Authoritarian.
Gook. Female. Treehugging.

'sup Firaxis. Using subtle clichés isn't making this any less racist.

 

[Angthoron]

Gen. Kozlov of Slavic Federation

Woman.

No, that would be "Kozlova".

So the only white male in game would be leader of slavic federation

You say that like you don't know the Western convention for slav surname inflections

 

[Raghar]

Reskinned Civ V -- another 2K cash grab.

I paid 0 for Civ V, so I welcome to get it for the same price.

 

[Hellraiser]

The PBEM game of Alpha Centauri we're playing with Kalin and Cassidy reminds me just how retarded Civ:BE looks compared to good old SMAC.

So many things could be improved while still retaining much of what made SMAC great, instead we'll get Pandora: Popamole Edition.

Modern game designers are fucking morons.

 

[Raghar]

The PBEM game of Alpha Centauri we're playing with Kalin and Cassidy reminds me just how retarded Civ:BE looks compared to good old SMAC.

So many things could be improved while still retaining much of what made SMAC great, instead we'll get Pandora: Popamole Edition.

Modern game designers are fucking morons.

I said that 5 years ago about new people in the industry. They became experienced, but they didn't reach the quality of theirs predecessors. I guess it's a result of cell phone culture, and lack of sufficient piracy. Also I think there is much less pressure from new employees. In garage games times there was also dozen of quality developers who learned programming by self education, and had brain. Part of them was excellent, and they were cheap. If they are not as common as they were game development industry must suffer.

 

[Destroid]

The PBEM game of Alpha Centauri we're playing with Kalin and Cassidy reminds me just how retarded Civ:BE looks compared to good old SMAC.

So many things could be improved while still retaining much of what made SMAC great, instead we'll get Pandora: Popamole Edition.

Modern game designers are fucking morons.

I said that 5 years ago about new people in the industry. They became experienced, but they didn't reach the quality of theirs predecessors. I guess it's a result of cell phone culture, and lack of sufficient piracy. Also I think there is much less pressure from new employees. In garage games times there was also dozen of quality developers who learned programming by self education, and had brain. Part of them was excellent, and they were cheap. If they are not as common as they were game development industry must suffer.

I don't think bad programming is causing bad game design choices.

 

[Hellraiser]

Somebody mentioned it here in some other topic (or even this one possibly), but this is probably because the current generation of game designers got raised on video games rather than on geek/nerd shit like PnP RPG, tabletop wargaming and good contemporary science fiction like the previous one did. The previous generation were pioneers seeking to experiment with new shit, now you have copycats without any capability to experiment or be truly creative.