4 ms·

The Wacky Geopolitics of ‘Civilization: Beyond Earth’

60 points by benbreen 12y ago

aaron-lebo 12y ago
> There's a lot more of the politics we could get into — like how crazy it is that China would attack its ally, North Korea, or that India somehow sits idly by while the bombs are falling. Also crazy: India and Pakistan put the past aside and become allies! But let's move on. The story line in the game starts in 2064, so 50 years from now. In 1940 France and Germany were bitter enemies, by 1990, they were best buds. Not that crazy after all, especially when crises change the world order. The article also goes into discussing the necessity of a world hegemon to keep trade open. I wonder if this is less necessary in an age where global economies are much more connected and so many more countries are liberal democracies.
- HCIdivision17 12y ago
  That's a great perspective to keep in mind. 50 years is a long time. It's less than our life span, so I guess we don't think so, but wow, have things shifted and accelerated. I'm frequently perplexed about people decrying unrealistic future politics. Heck, Back to the Future makes the joke about Japanese tech in the same way. And hey, at least the Siliciods aren't peacefully declaring war on you for your hyper-aggressive inaction on turn one (Master of Orion 3 shall always have the most broken politics). Edit: double checking, the article notes the game starts hundreds of years in the future (and a couple other non-spoiler sites corroborate). Frankly, at that point from now, all bets are off. (A hundred years ago, power grids were just starting to be a pretty cool idea.)
  - throwaway7808 12y ago
    Most likely you and your kids are gonna be wiped out by intellegent machines just in a few decades.
- smsm42 12y ago
  My personal suspension of disbelief was more strained by the premise that nuclear war would somehow lead to very significant warming. Shouldn't just the opposite happen - all the dust and debris causing the infamous nuclear winter? Looks like the game creators are mixing the popular horrors from the 70s with the modern ones and just handwaving over the contradictions.
  - gsnedders 12y ago
    To be fair, this is consistent with the results of nuclear war in earlier Civ games. :)
  - jerf 12y ago
    The Wikipedia article, which is very interesting in a number of different ways, even has a section on "Nuclear Summer": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter 'A "nuclear summer" is a hypothesized scenario in which, after a nuclear winter has abated, a greenhouse effect then occurs due to CO2 released by combustion and methane released from decay of dead organic matter.' That's all it says about that particular thing, but it's worth a read for everything else.
citizenkeen 12y ago
Solid read; but fails to acknowledge one of the many reasons certain countries aren't mentioned - expansions. I'd argue Austria and Spain had some influence on world history, but they don't exist in vanilla Civ.
- eropple 12y ago
  Spain's been balled up in "Franco-Iberia", at least.
- gsnedders 12y ago
  Austria is in Civ5, at least (or maybe one of the DLCs?).
  - Kudos 12y ago
    They're in a DLC, which is why they said "vanilla".
tedks 12y ago
>I tried to reach the redditor to find out how things are going, but I got no reply. Maybe they've left that wasteland behind for greener pastures on another planet. With Beyond Earth. What horrible reporting. I expect better from someone associated with the Washington Post. The save file in question has been uploaded and shared with Reddit, and the community centered around it is https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar . As it happens, the thousand-year stalemate was the cause of the original player simply being bad at civ. He kept building tanks and trying to perform land invasions of his enemies, rather than crossing the oceans and attacking amphibiously. By using a landing force comprised primarily of Howitzers, and landing in a well-developed area, a new player was able to prevent the Vikings from obliterating his army with nuclear weapons due to his presence deep inside their homeland. By constantly reinforcing the army across the ocean, you can defeat the Vikings and move on the the Americans, which have a strong air force but a weak ground military. Ground forces can eliminate American bases and cripple their air force. The writeup is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/uzm4w/took_58_years_ingame_but_i_pulled_it_off/ https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/uzm4w/took_5... This is literally on google, I can't believe the journalist was that lazy.
- goldfeld 12y ago
  Geopolitically, the stalemate's veracity would have to be assessed with either the same player trying to win with each of the nations, or playing it out with all computer players. As it stands, pitting a very good Civ player against the dumb AI determines how good the player is at Civ, not why the stalemate goes or doesn't go on. So the original player being bad at Civ seems to put him in the same league as his computer opponents, which is all to say: it makes for a more dramatic AAR.
Apocryphon 12y ago
I'm sure Firaxis put a lot of effort into their backstory, but I don't see how the geopolitics for Civ: Beyond Earth is any more plausible and meant to be take more seriously than any other pop sci-fi work with a dystopian result for humanity. Nuclear war, environmental collapse, things fall apart- that's the stuff of speculative fiction for decades. In fact, the original Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri game had it in the background as well, though less explicitly.
- mxfh 12y ago
  That's why SMAC worked so much better in the far future (22nd century) without the burden of explicitly extrapolating current geopolitics and going all in on agenda/ideology driven factions. The current faction/sponsor selection looks way more nationality based and just seems to cater too much to the respective major digital game markets of today: US, Western Europe, Brazil, Australia, Eastern Europe, plus the token African Union, while all of Asia get's lumped in into one minus the Indian sub-continent. This just all feels like Oprah Winfrey driven game development («You, get a faction, you get a faction, everybody gets a faction»). Maybe I just miss those cut scenes and quotes, they really set the tone in SMAC; Beyond Earth so far, is sadly enough an OK game, yet forgettable.
  - Apocryphon 12y ago
    Well, SMAC happened in the unspecified 21st century as well, but all of the background pre-Arrival fluff was written very subtly, and all of the factions were based around fundamental human philosophies/ideologies/motivations. The national backgrounds of the faction leaders was purely for flavor. All of the real meat of the story and characters was in the gameplay itself, which all takes place on Planet. You didn't need to know what exactly happened on Earth, except that it was bad stuff, and it helped to shape the faction leaders who are the personifications of those primal ideologies.
eastbayjake 12y ago
Why is this the thing we're discussing about Civ 6? What I want to know is whether the writing is as good as the original Alpha Centauri. Even 15 years later I still think about quotes from that game's tech tree -- and I can quote many of them by heart. Here's one for Brian Fung at WaPo: "I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment." -- Anonymous, Datalinks
- bobcostas55 12y ago
  Not even remotely close. There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn, nonetheless, for the latter. -Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "Address to the Faculty"
- patmcguire 12y ago
  "Richard Baxter piloted his recon rover into the fungal vortex and single-handedly held off six waves of mindworms. We immediately purchased his identity manifest and repackaged it as the Recon Rover Rick character for a multi-tier media campaign: movies, touchvids, holos, the works. People need heroes. They don't need to know that he died clawing his eyes out and screaming for mercy; the real story would just hurt sales."
- Vektorweg 12y ago
  You are the children of a dead planet, EarthDeirdre, and this death we do not comprehend. We shall take you in, but may we ask this question--will we too catch the planetdeath disease? -- Lady Deirdre Skye, "Conversations With Planet" For more: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri
- Vektorweg 12y ago
  A handsome young cyborg named Ace, wooed women at every base, but once ladies glanced at his special enhancement, they vanished with nary a trace. -- Barracks Graffiti, Sparta Command

60 points by benbreen 12y ago

> There's a lot more of the politics we could get into — like how crazy it is that China would attack its ally, North Korea, or that India somehow sits idly by while the bombs are falling. Also crazy: India and Pakistan put the past aside and become allies! But let's move on. The story line in the game starts in 2064, so 50 years from now. In 1940 France and Germany were bitter enemies, by 1990, they were best buds. Not that crazy after all, especially when crises change the world order. The article also goes into discussing the necessity of a world hegemon to keep trade open. I wonder if this is less necessary in an age where global economies are much more connected and so many more countries are liberal democracies.

HCIdivision17 12y ago
That's a great perspective to keep in mind. 50 years is a long time. It's less than our life span, so I guess we don't think so, but wow, have things shifted and accelerated. I'm frequently perplexed about people decrying unrealistic future politics. Heck, Back to the Future makes the joke about Japanese tech in the same way. And hey, at least the Siliciods aren't peacefully declaring war on you for your hyper-aggressive inaction on turn one (Master of Orion 3 shall always have the most broken politics). Edit: double checking, the article notes the game starts hundreds of years in the future (and a couple other non-spoiler sites corroborate). Frankly, at that point from now, all bets are off. (A hundred years ago, power grids were just starting to be a pretty cool idea.)
- throwaway7808 12y ago
  Most likely you and your kids are gonna be wiped out by intellegent machines just in a few decades.
smsm42 12y ago
My personal suspension of disbelief was more strained by the premise that nuclear war would somehow lead to very significant warming. Shouldn't just the opposite happen - all the dust and debris causing the infamous nuclear winter? Looks like the game creators are mixing the popular horrors from the 70s with the modern ones and just handwaving over the contradictions.
- gsnedders 12y ago
  To be fair, this is consistent with the results of nuclear war in earlier Civ games. :)
- jerf 12y ago
  The Wikipedia article, which is very interesting in a number of different ways, even has a section on "Nuclear Summer": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter 'A "nuclear summer" is a hypothesized scenario in which, after a nuclear winter has abated, a greenhouse effect then occurs due to CO2 released by combustion and methane released from decay of dead organic matter.' That's all it says about that particular thing, but it's worth a read for everything else.

citizenkeen 12y ago

Solid read; but fails to acknowledge one of the many reasons certain countries aren't mentioned - expansions. I'd argue Austria and Spain had some influence on world history, but they don't exist in vanilla Civ.

eropple 12y ago
Spain's been balled up in "Franco-Iberia", at least.
gsnedders 12y ago
Austria is in Civ5, at least (or maybe one of the DLCs?).
- Kudos 12y ago
  They're in a DLC, which is why they said "vanilla".

tedks 12y ago

>I tried to reach the redditor to find out how things are going, but I got no reply. Maybe they've left that wasteland behind for greener pastures on another planet. With Beyond Earth. What horrible reporting. I expect better from someone associated with the Washington Post. The save file in question has been uploaded and shared with Reddit, and the community centered around it is https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar . As it happens, the thousand-year stalemate was the cause of the original player simply being bad at civ. He kept building tanks and trying to perform land invasions of his enemies, rather than crossing the oceans and attacking amphibiously. By using a landing force comprised primarily of Howitzers, and landing in a well-developed area, a new player was able to prevent the Vikings from obliterating his army with nuclear weapons due to his presence deep inside their homeland. By constantly reinforcing the army across the ocean, you can defeat the Vikings and move on the the Americans, which have a strong air force but a weak ground military. Ground forces can eliminate American bases and cripple their air force. The writeup is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/uzm4w/took_58_years_ingame_but_i_pulled_it_off/ https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/uzm4w/took_5... This is literally on google, I can't believe the journalist was that lazy.

goldfeld 12y ago
Geopolitically, the stalemate's veracity would have to be assessed with either the same player trying to win with each of the nations, or playing it out with all computer players. As it stands, pitting a very good Civ player against the dumb AI determines how good the player is at Civ, not why the stalemate goes or doesn't go on. So the original player being bad at Civ seems to put him in the same league as his computer opponents, which is all to say: it makes for a more dramatic AAR.

Apocryphon 12y ago

I'm sure Firaxis put a lot of effort into their backstory, but I don't see how the geopolitics for Civ: Beyond Earth is any more plausible and meant to be take more seriously than any other pop sci-fi work with a dystopian result for humanity. Nuclear war, environmental collapse, things fall apart- that's the stuff of speculative fiction for decades. In fact, the original Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri game had it in the background as well, though less explicitly.

mxfh 12y ago
That's why SMAC worked so much better in the far future (22nd century) without the burden of explicitly extrapolating current geopolitics and going all in on agenda/ideology driven factions. The current faction/sponsor selection looks way more nationality based and just seems to cater too much to the respective major digital game markets of today: US, Western Europe, Brazil, Australia, Eastern Europe, plus the token African Union, while all of Asia get's lumped in into one minus the Indian sub-continent. This just all feels like Oprah Winfrey driven game development («You, get a faction, you get a faction, everybody gets a faction»). Maybe I just miss those cut scenes and quotes, they really set the tone in SMAC; Beyond Earth so far, is sadly enough an OK game, yet forgettable.
- Apocryphon 12y ago
  Well, SMAC happened in the unspecified 21st century as well, but all of the background pre-Arrival fluff was written very subtly, and all of the factions were based around fundamental human philosophies/ideologies/motivations. The national backgrounds of the faction leaders was purely for flavor. All of the real meat of the story and characters was in the gameplay itself, which all takes place on Planet. You didn't need to know what exactly happened on Earth, except that it was bad stuff, and it helped to shape the faction leaders who are the personifications of those primal ideologies.

eastbayjake 12y ago

Why is this the thing we're discussing about Civ 6? What I want to know is whether the writing is as good as the original Alpha Centauri. Even 15 years later I still think about quotes from that game's tech tree -- and I can quote many of them by heart. Here's one for Brian Fung at WaPo: "I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment." -- Anonymous, Datalinks

bobcostas55 12y ago
Not even remotely close. There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn, nonetheless, for the latter. -Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "Address to the Faculty"
patmcguire 12y ago
"Richard Baxter piloted his recon rover into the fungal vortex and single-handedly held off six waves of mindworms. We immediately purchased his identity manifest and repackaged it as the Recon Rover Rick character for a multi-tier media campaign: movies, touchvids, holos, the works. People need heroes. They don't need to know that he died clawing his eyes out and screaming for mercy; the real story would just hurt sales."
Vektorweg 12y ago
You are the children of a dead planet, EarthDeirdre, and this death we do not comprehend. We shall take you in, but may we ask this question--will we too catch the planetdeath disease? -- Lady Deirdre Skye, "Conversations With Planet" For more: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri
Vektorweg 12y ago
A handsome young cyborg named Ace, wooed women at every base, but once ladies glanced at his special enhancement, they vanished with nary a trace. -- Barracks Graffiti, Sparta Command