Commentary on Unused and Unimplemented Game Features

[EmpathCrawler]

Faction ideologies are the religious analog, it's just that Miriam's ideology is Christian fanaticism. My conception is that most of the people on the Unity were secular-minded, even if they did maintain some traditional religious beliefs. Maybe there are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. spread around Planet, but they didn't turn to their religious beliefs and double-down on them in the big crisis. Zakharov's the most overtly atheistic leader, but he's opposed to Miriam just as he'd be opposed to Santiago for valuing power over knowledge. Their beliefs (whatever they may be) are wrong, his are right.

[bvanevery]

Zhakarov isn't actually opposed to Miriam though!  He's opposed to people picking something other than Knowledge and he's incapable of Fundamentalist.  Miriam isn't actually opposed to Zhakarov.  She's opposed to people picking something other than Fundamentalist, and she's incapable of picking Knowledge.  In the original game, which is anti-religious and doesn't actually fit with her dialogue in the quotes and Secret Project videos.  I made Miriam opposed to Cybernetic, which she clearly is.

Compare Zhakarov to Santiago, which is straight up Knowledge vs. Power.

The 3-way opposition is actually Yang, Lal, Miriam.

[EmpathCrawler]

Very good point. Opposing Cybernetic makes a lot of sense, too. I take that future society to basically be dress rehearsal for Transcendence so it fits.

As for Miriam's commentary, while she makes a lot of points, I'm not sure I'd like to live under her alternative.

[bvanevery]

What's wrong with walking into a Psi Gate?  After all, she's going first...

[Trenacker]

As I learn about so-called EcoSocialism, I'm aware of some problematic differences from straight up Socialism.  Often, not enough emphasis on workers, and not enough wrapping one's head around the business environments that workers are currently stuck existing in.  So yes, it's possible for there to be differences.  I do object to the game portraying them as stark differences though, like things either camp would go to war over.

The game does play up there being some kind of difference between the operative methods of a religious vs. atheistic police state.  They call one Fundamentalist, and the other a Police State.  They're both actually police states, and use exactly the same methods to control the population, in real life.  Secret police, making you say certain things, do certain things, carry certain things, not carry other certain things, rat on your neighbors, publicly execute people, etc.  I was particularly 'impressed' by ISIS throwing gay people off the tops of minarets.  Now that's a very dramatic public statement.

I might like someone to explain to me, what the realistic game mechanical difference could possibly be, when there's no real world evidence for it.  It's really really apparent in the history of the North Korean dictators, where they have been regarded as religious figureheads.  You do worship the leader over there.  Those leaders do have special powers beyond those of ordinary human beings over there.  There's a really good Netflix documentary series lately, narrated by Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones / Tyrion fame, called How To Become A Tyrant.  Plenty of stuff on N.K.

I am wondering what game mechanical system would actually embody differences between atheism and religion.  It should probably be its own axis in a SE table.  Perhaps called "Beliefs" ?  It could get a little redundant, as everything could actually be a belief.  Anthropologists for instance talk about "belief systems", as a broader term than just religions.

The fact that fundamentalist police states function mechanically in ways that make it difficult to distinguish them from atheistic police states is probably more reflective of fundamental attributes of human nature and social organization than anything else. At some point, when persuasion has failed, and you're trying to impose your will on somebody else, the content of your ideology is no longer very relevant to the interaction.

Some of Zakharov's quotations suggest that, although his avowedly atheistic society is structured along the lines of a university faculty, they, too, employ secret police. Genetic Inspectors, I think?

Zhakarov isn't actually opposed to Miriam though!  He's opposed to people picking something other than Knowledge and he's incapable of Fundamentalist.  Miriam isn't actually opposed to Zhakarov.  She's opposed to people picking something other than Fundamentalist, and she's incapable of picking Knowledge.  In the original game, which is anti-religious and doesn't actually fit with her dialogue in the quotes and Secret Project videos.  I made Miriam opposed to Cybernetic, which she clearly is.

Compare Zhakarov to Santiago, which is straight up Knowledge vs. Power.

The 3-way opposition is actually Yang, Lal, Miriam.

I think there's a limit to which we should expect the factions to adhere strictly to one-dimensional tropes. Alpha Centauri is, in some sense, about a dialogue between genius-level intellects, each capable of incisive commentary about a broad range of subject matter.

Obviously, because this is all the work of humans, it is imperfect, and some leaders (Santiago is the standout) get short shrift.

I think it adds a great deal of depth to the world Brian Reynolds built to hear Miriam comment on High Energy Chemistry or Santiago on Nanometallurgy. It lends a bit of realism since no real person is so single-minded that they only ever talk about the things most important to them.

As for the dyads, I always thought they went...

University - Believers
Gaians - Morganites
Spartans - Peacekeepers (reflecting the war-like and peace-like valences of each, respectively)
Peacekeepers - Hive (the open versus the closed society)

Obviously, in global history, we have also seen that faith and environmentalism can be practiced in opposition to materialism and war-mongering.

[bvanevery]

Some of Zakharov's quotations suggest that, although his avowedly atheistic society is structured along the lines of a university faculty, they, too, employ secret police. Genetic Inspectors, I think?

No the University is trying to avoid the (Planetary) Council's Genetic Inspectors.  They're surely like our real world U.N. Weapons Inspectors.  "Vice Provost for University Affairs" is denying everything and saying they're not allowed to search this faction's private residences.

Spartans - Peacekeepers (reflecting the war-like and peace-like valences of each, respectively)

Lal's character may be peaceful / pusillanimous wimp,  but his faction AI is Erratic.  Which makes him a warmonger roughly half the time you interact with him.  I suppose one could chalk this up to ludonarrative dissonance.  Like when some "hero" utters lines in a cut scene about peace and humanity after the player has murdered thousands of people as that hero.

Anyways, the Spartans and Peacekeepers have no inherent conflict on the SE table.  In fact you should expect Lal to choose Power.  Now, maybe Santiago will choose Fundamentalist early in the game to get the +1 MORALE bonus, and that will bend Lal out of shape.  That's about it though.

Santiago doesn't spend any time talking about "U.N. / Planetary Council" stuff.  She's not into governance.  She only prattles on about how everyone's gonna stay permanently at war.

Lal does talk about "their own private army of demons".  Since "unscrupulous power brokers" was plural though, "violating the sanctity of unwilling human minds", there's no reason to think that Santiago was being called out specifically.  One can readily assume the Morganites and the Hive are also using such troops.

We know that Zhakarov doesn't think there's any sanctity to a human mind, although his amorality is from his faction sheet and penalties, rather than any quotes or lines of dialog.  We can't be sure that Zhakarov is anti-war so much as anti-Power, which the game represents specifically as military power.  We all know that knowledge is power... if we didn't, various characters will tell us when offering techs for sale!  So yes, Zhakarov could be a "power broker" using cyborg troops.  Add the professor to the list of suspects worthy of Lal's fretting.

[Nexii]

Based on the in-game lore, I always felt it should have been:
Aggressive: Believers, Spartans
Erratic: University, Hive, Gaians
Pacifist: Morgan, PKs

That's if you had to slot them 2/3/2 to make it balanced. I see the expansion factions being more aggressive so these shift a bit if you want to do 4/4/4 for 12 factions

[bvanevery]

Hmm what did I actually end up with in my mod?

Passive: Morganites, Peacekeepers, Pirates, University.

Erratic: Angels, Believers, Cult, Cyborgs, Drones,  Gaians, Hive.

Aggressive: Caretakers, Spartans, Usurpers.

Passive is for factions whose strategy is most favored by sitting back and not getting into wars.  Morganites = make money = Economic Victory, in principle.  In practice I need to revisit how E.V. is implemented in my mod.  Peacekeepers = make people = Diplomatic Victory.  University = make tech = Transcend Victory.  Pirates just have all these great resources in the ocean and no one in serious competition for them.

Aggressive is for factions who are clearly favored by attacking people.  Typically they have a MORALE bonus.

I'm a bit surprised that I don't have Miriam under there currently.  I did go through a period where she was more toned down and didn't even go Fundamentalist / Extremist.  But then finally I acknowledged that the diplomatic dialogue was about God and I wasn't going to change it.  I changed the category to Theocratic and put her back in the role.

Here's a note from when I was waffling about her aggression, in release 1.29 quite awhile ago:

- Believers: removed MORALE bonus.  Reinstated FANATIC attack bonus.  Changed personality to Erratic.  They have been underperforming, but I haven't found a solution for it.  I tried giving them a SUPPORT bonus but oddly, it didn't help.  These changes at least give them more flavor than a "generic fighting" faction.

I see now why I only have her as Erratic.  Theocratic became my GROWTH choice.  Believers also get a +1 GROWTH bonus.  "Be fruitful and multiply".  Their research foci are Build, Conquer.  So the idea is their role is to "get big and build stuff", not simply run around trying to be the biggest pain.  I think in practice, they tend to get large and pretty overwhelming with this strategy.  Another one of their quirks is although they don't have PROBE bonuses, they're immune to mind control.  So when AIs get in fights and the Believers win something, they tend to hold the ground.  Enemy probe teams don't reverse the situation.

[EmpathCrawler]

Erratic fits Lal and the Peacekeepers well because, as I conceive them, they are liberal interventionists. Lal typically heads the nominal planetary government and the Peacekeepers are there to enforce the Charter by any means necessary. If diplomacy fails to reverse the fragmentation of the mission, then force it is.

[bvanevery]

the Peacekeepers are there to enforce the Charter by any means necessary.

That phrasing usually means you're willing to throw ethics to the wind.  Lal is quite a bit more principled than that.

[EmpathCrawler]

Well by any means but still stopping short of actual atrocities. I conceive of Lal as more like a Captain Sisko than a Captain Picard, if that analogy makes sense to you. Then again, Sisko did poison that Maquis planet's atmosphere...

[Trenacker]

Some of Zakharov's quotations suggest that, although his avowedly atheistic society is structured along the lines of a university faculty, they, too, employ secret police. Genetic Inspectors, I think?

No the University is trying to avoid the (Planetary) Council's Genetic Inspectors.  They're surely like our real world U.N. Weapons Inspectors.  "Vice Provost for University Affairs" is denying everything and saying they're not allowed to search this faction's private residences.

Spartans - Peacekeepers (reflecting the war-like and peace-like valences of each, respectively)

Lal's character may be peaceful / pusillanimous wimp,  but his faction AI is Erratic.  Which makes him a warmonger roughly half the time you interact with him.  I suppose one could chalk this up to ludonarrative dissonance.  Like when some "hero" utters lines in a cut scene about peace and humanity after the player has murdered thousands of people as that hero.

Anyways, the Spartans and Peacekeepers have no inherent conflict on the SE table.  In fact you should expect Lal to choose Power.  Now, maybe Santiago will choose Fundamentalist early in the game to get the +1 MORALE bonus, and that will bend Lal out of shape.  That's about it though.

Santiago doesn't spend any time talking about "U.N. / Planetary Council" stuff.  She's not into governance.  She only prattles on about how everyone's gonna stay permanently at war.

Lal does talk about "their own private army of demons".  Since "unscrupulous power brokers" was plural though, "violating the sanctity of unwilling human minds", there's no reason to think that Santiago was being called out specifically.  One can readily assume the Morganites and the Hive are also using such troops.

We know that Zhakarov doesn't think there's any sanctity to a human mind, although his amorality is from his faction sheet and penalties, rather than any quotes or lines of dialog.  We can't be sure that Zhakarov is anti-war so much as anti-Power, which the game represents specifically as military power.  We all know that knowledge is power... if we didn't, various characters will tell us when offering techs for sale!  So yes, Zhakarov could be a "power broker" using cyborg troops.  Add the professor to the list of suspects worthy of Lal's fretting.

The "Peacekeepers" are literally and figuratively a caricature of the late-1990s United Nations. fresh off the follies of the Yugoslav Wars of Succession and still struggling to find its feet in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Played straight, they're an obsessively legalistic faction of sanctimonious lawyers who have a tendency to enforce their own version of morality at gunpoint... but only in the rare places where they aren't militarily overmatched by the disputants themselves. Subverted, they are the kind of faction that would empanel a human rights committee with the likes of Sheng-ji Yang and Prokhor Zakharov out of a blind commitment to the principle of fair play, or choose a negative peace over justice, such as by enforcing an arms embargo that works to the advantage of the clear aggressor.

To the extent that the Peacekeepers could also represent humanists deeply committed to self-actualization through free choice, I'd expect them to have serious objections to Spartan society.

I think the Spartans are the least well-defined faction. The lore on the Firaxis website paid naked homage to Battletech and appeared to nod to the right-wing militia movements that were top-of-mind at the time the game was made. It was easy to think of Santiago as potentially analogous to General Bethlehem in Kevin Costner's The Postman. "Might makes right" as a flimsy philosophical window-dressing for self-aggrandizement. But it is also possible to conceive of the Spartans as something short of would-be fascists. Maybe just a warrior society that prized wits and physical prowess above all else.

The Peacekeepers would take issue with the first trope because, in that case, the Spartans would be plainly transgressing against other factions. But they would also take issue with the second trope because a society that praises the thief who doesn't get caught, or awards promotion for physical fitness, has an inherent brutality to it.

The Believers suffer terribly, I think, from a disconnect between their lore and the way that they act in most games. I think it was Michael Ely's fiction that did a good job of suggesting that the Believers stole from other factions to avoid starvation in their own. In my own fiction, I've stipulated that this is because they landed with the greatest number of mouths to feed--by virtue of having tried to evacuate anyone who was ambulatory, including those sick with advanced radiation poisoning. But in the computer game, when controlled by the AI, the Believers tend to resemble the Crusaders of 1097--a rampaging army of zealots whose piety may seem contrived to justify banditry.

[bvanevery]

To the extent that the Peacekeepers could also represent humanists deeply committed to self-actualization through free choice, I'd expect them to have serious objections to Spartan society.

There's nothing terribly wrong with the survival nut side of Spartan culture.  They're a caricature of 1990s militia groups.  So they wanna run around exercising the 2nd Amendment and shooting dangerous mindworms.  What's the big deal?  Planet's a dangerous place, so shouldn't everybody be doing that?  I think only the Gaians would have issues with survival nuttery on Planet, seeing everything as a "species to protect".

But it is also possible to conceive of the Spartans as something short of would-be fascists.

It's not in the game's lore.  Fascism isn't really a subject that SMAC deals with.  Probably because Civ II didn't deal with it either.  It was in Civ I and for some reason they dumped it.

The Believers suffer terribly, I think, from a disconnect between their lore and the way that they act in most games. I think it was Michael Ely's fiction that did a good job of suggesting that the Believers stole from other factions to avoid starvation in their own. In my own fiction, I've stipulated that this is because they landed with the greatest number of mouths to feed--by virtue of having tried to evacuate anyone who was ambulatory, including those sick with advanced radiation poisoning. But in the computer game, when controlled by the AI, the Believers tend to resemble the Crusaders of 1097--a rampaging army of zealots

I think the religious far right coming after the music and game industries was in recent memory back then.  So they made a cartoon Church Chat Lady ala Saturday Night Live.  The cartoon version is dissonant from the developed character version.

whose piety may seem contrived to justify banditry.

Never got that vibe from the game.  Miriam is not in it for the wealth or resources.  She's a true holy roller.

[Trenacker]

There's nothing terribly wrong with the survival nut side of Spartan culture.  They're a caricature of 1990s militia groups.  So they wanna run around exercising the 2nd Amendment and shooting dangerous mindworms.  What's the big deal?  Planet's a dangerous place, so shouldn't everybody be doing that?  I think only the Gaians would have issues with survival nuttery on Planet, seeing everything as a "species to protect".

It's possible to imagine Santiago creating a more or less hermetic society that doesn't engage in aggression toward neighbors and is strictly focused on self-defense. It would mean that Spartan society would probably have something of a "gymnasium" culture grafted to the "survival nut" core. Like, do you even lift, bro? Talents lift.

In practice, I assume the pursuit and glorification of the warrior ideal would predispose other factions to feel uncomfortable about Spartan choices. And obviously, if the Spartans go full-90s militia group, there are blatant threatening overtones for other factions to complain about. I can see the Peacekeepers hand-wringing about the former archetype even if, perhaps objectively speaking, it should concern nobody but the Spartans themselves. Imagining conflict where it might not otherwise exist, if you will.

In my fiction, I created a separate faction, the Hunters of Chiron, for the "Man against Self"/Man striving for self-reliance aspects of the original Spartan creed, and presented the Spartans as neo-fascists almost entirely, though with a core, perhaps including Santiago herself, who were aghast at what the Frankenstein's Monster they'd created.

I always felt like the kind of person Santiago would attract, operating from her place of deep pain in the out-of-game lore, would be unlikely to actually share her vision of what makes a person truly worthy.

It's not in the game's lore.  Fascism isn't really a subject that SMAC deals with.  Probably because Civ II didn't deal with it either.  It was in Civ I and for some reason they dumped it.

As a teenager playing the game, I always assumed I was supposed to be most-aggressive with the Spartans. It boiled down to their spoken philosophy and symbology in-game. Ironically, the out-of-game official fiction actually implies that Santiago is something more than a mere brute.

I think the religious far right coming after the music and game industries was in recent memory back then.  So they made a cartoon Church Chat Lady ala Saturday Night Live.  The cartoon version is dissonant from the developed character version.

I don't think the in-game lore did Miriam as dirty as you do. I think you hit the nail on the head when you called attention to the problem of ludo-narrative dissonance as a transcendent issue. The Believers' faction design prompts both AI and player to be extremely aggressive, which can seem contrary to certain Western depictions of Christianity (e.g., "everyone knows Jesus wouldn't approve of X, which is often claimed to be done in the name of God"). But I think a lot of Miriam's quotations are not necessarily sinister, whereas I take a lot of Zakharov's to be just that, for instance.

Never got that vibe from the game.  Miriam is not in it for the wealth or resources.  She's a true holy roller.

I always imagined that Miriam and her followers would look at the Unity survivors as the Elect, and Planet as their God-given portion. Kind of the way the Bible presents the Land of Israel to the Israelites. Such an outlook would provide a broader contextual justification for hegemonistic or exploitative behavior toward other factions.

I think, from the perspective of the victims of someone like a hegemonistic Miriam, it would seem very much that the Believers preached morality without actually living as moral people.

[bvanevery]

I think the religious far right coming after the music and game industries was in recent memory back then.  So they made a cartoon Church Chat Lady ala Saturday Night Live.  The cartoon version is dissonant from the developed character version.

I don't think the in-game lore did Miriam as dirty as you do.

Quotes and videos make Miriam nuanced.  Faction abilities, one liners, and hard coded diplomatic dialogue, are all Church Chat Lady.  It's like 2 different authors, 2 different periods of authorship.  In general, the "short cookie cutter templates" of the faction.txt files, do not leave room for nuance.  You've got room for some good zingers, i.e. Santiago polishing her beloved artillery pieces.

Assuming I get my own 4X TBS effort off the ground, I will not be using the "short cookie cutter template" approach to factions.  I haven't exactly figured out what I'm going to do instead, but it's going to be a narrative about diplomacy, not a simulation of every detail of diplomacy.  I don't want players contacting each other every other turn and asking, "May I ask you a question?" and so forth.  That's just teeny tiny bits of machinery and not what a screenwriter would do.  I want a dramatization of the Yalta Conference.  Something that only happens once in awhile and is a big deal.

But I think a lot of Miriam's quotations are not necessarily sinister, whereas I take a lot of Zakharov's to be just that, for instance.

What's wrong with the small white rat?  The damage is not as great as they say.

And people are stupid about religion.  He got that one right.

I always imagined that Miriam and her followers would look at the Unity survivors as the Elect, and Planet as their God-given portion. Kind of the way the Bible presents the Land of Israel to the Israelites. Such an outlook would provide a broader contextual justification for hegemonistic or exploitative behavior toward other factions.

You can look at her that way, but there's very little game lore to support it.  She gets a -PLANET faction penalty and a claim she thinks it's the Garden of Eden.  You get the opening monologue about Cherubim, and a Sword that turns every which way.  The video for the Universal Translator certainly muddies the issue in an incredible / improbable way.  That's about it for Miriam and "God was here" though.

The dominant theme of the game's lore, is that Miriam will just keep pushing the burden of proof farther and farther back behind the next layer of science that is actually verified.  Compare "pink unicorns and flying spaghetti monsters actually cause everything".

And that she doesn't like cyborgs.

I ditched the -PLANET penalty and lore because it's a throwaway, unsupported by the rest of the game's lore.  It's that Church Chat Lady writing.  "Of course Christians are clueless and stupid about where they are and what's happening.  They must be Chosen."

I think, from the perspective of the victims of someone like a hegemonistic Miriam, it would seem very much that the Believers preached morality without actually living as moral people.

Biblical morality includes stoning people to death for various reasons.