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Falcorum posted:Honestly, I found BE to be one of the Civ games that's most improved by just declaring war on the AI as soon as you meet them, in order to cut out the diplomatic harassment. It is weirdly satisfying to just peacefully grow your empire after slaying everyone or paring them down to irrelevancy.
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Aug 30, 2019 00:12
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Teaser for the next update I recorded tonight: Less entertaining than the pre-Rising Tide version, where it's this year's most popular children's toy that achieves sapience, but if we can't have furby mk2s as citizens we can have these instead. And since we're a Supremacy civilization we just take the whole thing in stride and give them citizenship and full rights.
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Aug 30, 2019 02:27
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"BEEP BOOP HUMAN, WE DEMAND TO BE TREATED FAIRLY AND EQUAL TO YOURSELFS" "haha right on dude, took you long enough. here's your voter registration card!"
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Aug 30, 2019 04:40
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Radio Free Kobold posted:"BEEP BOOP HUMAN, WE DEMAND TO BE TREATED FAIRLY AND EQUAL TO YOURSELFS" Truly an optimistic future
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Aug 30, 2019 04:59
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Radio Free Kobold posted:"BEEP BOOP HUMAN, WE DEMAND TO BE TREATED FAIRLY AND EQUAL TO YOURSELFS" "Also you have to pay taxes now."
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Aug 30, 2019 06:07
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Boksi posted:"Also you have to pay taxes now." Pay taxes to buy machine. Machine becomes sapient, now they have to pay taxes. This is all a government conspiracy. 
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Aug 30, 2019 06:33
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Being recognized as living comes with responsibilities. Pay up or Ard will send some robot IRS your way.
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Aug 30, 2019 09:13
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"We believe that if you build a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man." "We believe that if you build a machine to do the work of a man, you should give the machine the same rights and pay as the man." - Overheard at a PAC-Al Falah diplomatic dinner.
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Aug 30, 2019 12:20
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Radio Free Kobold posted:"BEEP BOOP HUMAN, WE DEMAND TO BE TREATED FAIRLY AND EQUAL TO YOURSELFS" "Wait, you developed sentience and independent thought? Oh God damnit, we accidentally made people again. Okay, how many of you are there? Here's passports and identity cards. I think some new housing is being built in the central district, I'll let them know you're coming."
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Aug 30, 2019 13:33
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Radio Free Kobold posted:"BEEP BOOP HUMAN, WE DEMAND TO BE TREATED FAIRLY AND EQUAL TO YOURSELFS" They don't want equality, they want their own drat city; these aren't just robots, these are APARTHEID robots.
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Aug 30, 2019 16:48
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No they're not. They don't say 'no humans allowed in Robotropolis' They just want a city where the first mayor was a robot with a custom-engineered mayoral sensory tophat.
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Aug 30, 2019 17:02
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Randalor posted:"Wait, you developed sentience and independent thought? Oh God damnit, we accidentally made people again. Okay, how many of you are there? Here's passports and identity cards. Actually, since this happened before I discovered Synthetic Thought, this is more or less how I'm going to fluff it - and why I immediately research Synthetic Thought next. "Welp we accidentally made sentient life with self awareness and free will. Might as well learn how to do it on purpose now."
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Aug 30, 2019 17:02
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"The new SophistiCleaner 14! With an AI so advanced, it refuses to do the tasks you purchased it for! Just $3000 at your local outlet. Order now and get a free SmartTeddy, the only toy smart enough to dislike your child."
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Aug 30, 2019 17:42
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Mechanical Ape posted:"The new SophistiCleaner 14! With an AI so advanced, it refuses to do the tasks you purchased it for! Just $3000 at your local outlet. Order now and get a free SmartTeddy, the only toy smart enough to dislike your child." Is there a way to favorite comments on SA? 
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Aug 30, 2019 18:37
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I'm just imagining an entire district inhabited by hundreds of the sentient toaster from Red Dwarf.
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Aug 30, 2019 20:35
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stryth posted:Is there a way to favorite comments on SA? go post it in the pyf quotes thread, that the archivists might stroke their chins at it
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Aug 31, 2019 01:32
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Mechanical Ape posted:"The new SophistiCleaner 14! With an AI so advanced, it refuses to do the tasks you purchased it for! Just $3000 at your local outlet. Order now and get a free SmartTeddy, the only toy smart enough to dislike your child." And that's why you should stick with the NeoRoomba instead; it's been carefully programmed with roughly the intellect and temperament of a golden retriever. Just remember to housebreak it with a Roomba-accessible trashcan and you're good to go.
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Aug 31, 2019 02:25
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Hello, World State of Al Falah, Turn 200  Ard  Farah  Aswat Adida  Midfa'a  Hajar  Miah Mortafi'a  The Office of Education's laboratory training program for students was a resounding success. This can give you a pretty hefty chunk of science over time if you go down this tree early.   An unimpressive quest for an unimpressive building, but what the hey. If you guessed the other option was +2 energy, congratulations on your sense of pattern recognition.   The plant did, however, become a favorite of private horticulturalists throughout Al Falah. Even Arshia Kishk insisted on planting several in the garden outside the Secretary-General's Residence. +2 food or +2 culture. Culture is not an issue for us. Arshia Kishk's forehead hit her desk when her Muse started the briefing. The Houri had been the most hotly anticipated private product launch in years, all the advantages of a digital Muse married to a convenient household robot to do all the chores, and well ahead of any official government research on the topic Gravitas had accidentally created self-aware robots with free will. After a brief public declaration censuring Gravitas for playing in God's domain, Kishk declared the Houri to be citizens of Al Falah with all the rights and privileges of any human citizen, then promised that a Synthetic Bill of Rights would be coming. A brief vote among the Houri ended in the robots requesting colony equipment. Yup. Silly me forgot to grab a screenshot of settling the city Wogohna ('Many Faces') in the water west of Aswat Adida and south of Midfa'a. I'm shocked settling the city didn't piss off Chungsu.   The Civil Administration had been cautious about allowing public access to neurolabs, citing risks involved in allowing citizens direct mind/machine interface with an AI, but the pilot program proved those fears premature. Perhaps because the people of Al Falah had already become so accustomed to the presence of intelligent machines in their lives, neural linking to an artificial intelligence scarcely caused a ripple in Al Falah society - and that ripple was surprisingly positive as the AIs proved adept medical diagnosticians. +1 health or a bonus to military unit production.   The Assembly's response to the Federation's overture was best summarized by a child of a representative who subsequently got in trouble at school for repeating his father's words verbatim: 'You're a raging rear end in a top hat hated by half the planet.'  The use of vertical space in farming had often been proposed and studied on Earth, but never implemented on a large scale. Al-Jalidia was not Earth. This is super useful! A farm now produces +2 food +1 energy from the base tile, and we're going to make them better still before the end of the game. The Euphotic Strand is a sea city only science wonder I may build for kicks before the end.  Sophisticated as the djinn were, they were not self aware, free willed, or otherwise possessed of human sentience. Yet. Except for the Houri, but the government preferred to take a more deliberate approach to creating artificial sentient life.  Canyons are impassable by normal land units, but t4 tanks hovering isn't just for show. They can cross water and canyons.   Money or health. Seriously, game, I don't need more money.         The Xenodrome was more than just a zoo and Ard's most popular tourist attraction. It was a living monument to Al-Jalidia and Al Falah's efforts to tame this world. Xenodrome posted:It is axiomatic that participating within a complex system irrevocably alters the trajectory it would take on its own. The plants and animals of Old Earth bore much of the pain of the Great Mistake, and by the time of the Seeding, the richest part of the charismatic megafauna and ethrastoic flora were extinct. The environmental damage was incalculable, as were the cultural effects. What weight does "my kingdom for a horse!" carry when no one has seen a horse for centuries?  Within just a few months of the Xenodrome's opening, alien life had become completely docile towards Al Falah. Blue means friendly aliens! The Xenodrome is one of two ways to get this, and friendly aliens means they'll never attempt to move into a tile with your units, your cities can work tiles with an alien on them, and you can harvest resources from resources an alien nest is on - though it doesn't count as that resource actually being improved.    The AFDF's subsequent cull of the aliens near Hajar was cited as sustainable, given the Xenodrome's contribution to the biosphere. The sonic disruptors of Savage class hovertanks reduced any organic life caught in the wave to a wet bag of red jelly (actually clear in the case of scarabs, owing to their hemolyph-based circulatory system). Clearing out the scarabs and burning down the nest so I can establish a proper firaxite mine.  The naval disruptors on Vortex class frigates were equally effective above and under the water. To targets with air between them and the disruptor, the sonic waves had the same effect as land-based disruptors. In the water, the water hammer effect had even more grisly consequences. And clearing out this sea dragon because it made moving my worker around annoying. You can assume that from here on out I'll be regularly culling aliens that get annoying to my movements.  In more peaceful news, the Ibtisam al-San'ani Academy opened to its first class of students. Named in honor of the scientist on Earth who identified Al-Jalidia as Al Falah's future home, the academy was dedicated to astronomy and astrophysics.  The Synthetic Bill of Rights passed the Assembly with almost one hundred percent approval. Djinn, as the self-aware AIs were voted to be called by the Houri and subsequent intelligences, were welcomed into Al Falah society and would enjoy the same rights and privileges as any organic citizen. Djinn, be they purely digital or downloaded into a corporeal robotic or vat-grown body, would become a steadily more common sight in Al Falah. One Chungsu observer to the Synthetic Bill of Rights' passing was heard to murmur under her breath 'What is wrong with these people?'  To the Al Falah, be they human or djinn, the answer to that question was 'nothing.' Humans in Al Falah had long since learned to treat each other with respect, and their machines. When the line between machine and person blurred, courtesy did not diminish. Far from monsters or accidents, artificial intelligences were treated as beloved companions and children by their makers. By and large, the djinn returned that affection. Of note, Sabotage is Supremacy's WMD we could unleash via spying with some effort. It deletes all tile improvements in a three-tile radius around a city. You may think that's less impressive than a nuke. Honestly, Sabotage might be worse.  The Muharar was promptly upgraded to the new Shepherd class, and fitted with experimental fuel cells for the carrier's air wing.  I know the flight decks on the Shepherd are probably horribly designed from an actual design standpoint, but for some reason the Shepherd is one of my favorite looking units in Beyond Earth.  With the success of the public access programs for neurolabs, efforts turned towards allowing direct mind-to-mind interfacing among the population. Grabbing this for fluff, affinity points, and at long last our first S/H unit.  In the meantime, some particularly masochistic digital djinn took it upon themselves to moderate chatter on the Al Falah networks. The trials of Al Falah's digital mods would eventually become the subject of a popular series of novels and even a full-length feature film. The film was awful, but that's beside the point.  The government's contract with Gravitas continued to be a mixed blessing. While an obvious consequence of Al Falah's technological direction, so abrupt an introduction of such things by private industry threatened an unemployment problem without a government-engineered adjustment program.  All the same, the Al Falah had always prided themselves on doing more with less. Before long, an entire farm could be worked by just one person in an air-conditioned room, or a factory by just a few. This level of drone capability had existed in the Al Falah military for some time, but now private industry was making full use.  Indeed, perhaps the only surprising thing about the new, unmanned Herald class fighters was that it had taken this long to take humans back out of the piloting profession.  For good and ill, direct mind-to-mind interfacing was here to stay in Al Falah. Forced interface with another person was quickly classified alongside murder, rape, forced installation of cybernetics, and slavery in the highest tier of crime in Al Falah's code of justice.  Coupled with advanced in cybernetics and network infrastructure, the MtMI produced a curious and striking consequence in Al Falah society: the virtual world began to supersede the material world. Through one's neural implants, a virtual overlay could be projected on top of or instead of the physical world, and by hijacking the body's motor and sensory nerves, one's actions in the virtual world could correspond - or not - with physical motion as the citizen pleased. One might work in a tiny, spartan office, but through the wonders of virtual overlays and MtMI, one could easily be sitting at a beach leaning back in a comfy chair - and interact with colleagues in other offices or even other cities in the same environment, or passing into theirs. Observers from other colonies were alarmed at the steadily growing retreat from the physical world in Al Falah society. Not only did visions of manchildren who lived hooked up to machines who never left a coffin dance in their heads, Al Falah society was becoming increasingly difficult for outsiders to participate in, or even see. Al Falah had created a world beyond the visible world in their domain, and only those similarly augmented could perceive this other state of existence at all. The more pessimistic views of this new trajectory in Al Falah were, fortunately, to ultimately prove ill-founded. The virtual world, the common sentiment was, just wasn't the same. Some human instinct remained in the augmented population, and at least for the foreseeable future no 'solid-state society' seemed likely to emerge.  Rolling out the nanohives went through several revisions before a choice was finally made. I haven't been showing off affinity-specific unit upgrades, but they always have three possible upgrades: sticking with the "pure" version of their associated affinity, or going for an "adjacent" affinity. I elect to upgrade nanohives to the S/H version right away, but I could also pick Prime Nanohives, to emphasize the Supremacy aspect. I don't have the affinity levels required for the Evolved Nanohive, the Harmony version. The perk on the left is the same across all three versions, but the perk on the right changes based on the version.  The previous research into vertical farming triggered further interest in related sciences, most prominently the long-held human dream of controlling the weather.  In scientific research as in seemingly everything else about Al Falah lately, to go it alone is to fail.  The first test of a Paean commences with the city of Farah. Results are small, but promising.  Al Falah explorers made their first confirmed sighting of Chungsu's new frigates. Screamers, as they were dubbed for the characteristic wail of their engines at full power, featured a hull coating based on that of shark skin to improve the ships' speed in the water, an internal structure that drew on native skeletal structures rather than traditional human ship design, and a variety of other improvements inspired by native life. Though no match for a modern Vortex class frigate, Al Falah authorities believed, the Screamers were not to be underestimated. Moon changed his outfit so I knew he was capable of these. Screamers are the t3 Harmony patrol boats, and can choose between +1 movement or a bonus when attacking cities. Both are very good.  The Houri thrived in their new home, and after some debate voted to formally join Al Falah as citizens. And silly me still didn't take a screenshot of the city.  So here's a nanohive. It's a land-based stealth unit that can't attack directly.  And here's what it does. When deployed, a nanohive passively deals 10 HP damage per turn to hostile units and aliens within two tiles of the nanohive - or 20 HP per turn, since I went for that upgrade. The AI is terrible at countering stealth units, so nanohives can be very amusing when used against the AI. Aliens attacked by nanohives won't read it as a hostile action, so nanohives can also clear out aliens in peace if you don't want to anger them.  Al Falah scientists despaired at the public proclaiming that they could now control the weather. That statement was a gross oversimplification... yet accurate enough, on a specific scale.  The people of Al Falah - now including djinn and houri - could only smirk at neighboring colonies as the announcement went out that yet another basic facet of nature had finally succumbed to Al Falah's ability to control.  The latest Shroud class submarines... were at the point where calling a ship manned or unmanned was so tricky as to be more or less pointless. When AIs and robots are sentient, is a ship with no humans on board truly unmanned?  At this point, the Office of Science and Development decided that their next effort should be one for the people of Al Falah. Cybernetic augmentation, though common, was restricted to carefully selected implants to be available to the general public. The powerful and influential had access to more, and to genetic augmentation. It was, the government decided, time to bring the full scope of augmentation and enhancement to the people that they might upgrade themselves as they saw fit. Getting this primarily for fluff reasons, augmenteries are cute but not actually very useful.  Many djinn chose to delve deep into scientific research, becoming vital members of Al Falah's academic community. Where djinn really excelled compared to humans was in multitasking, incorporating an interdisciplinary approach to problems with surprising results  The houri, on the other hand, preferred more material pursuits and chose to open their border to the rest of Al Falah. Human immigrants soon began to trickle into Wogohna, producing intriguing and informative flashes of cultural clashing as humans learned to live in a djinn-dominated society.  The first djinn imam was recognized just three years after the Synthetic Bill of Rights was passed.  Though largely dismissed as impractical, SABR platforms nevertheless began to incorporate organic components. This is a Supremacy unique unit, an artillery walker that is, in all honesty, kind of trash. I never use them.  Ambassadors are much better. Hovering, no need to set up, and can fire twice a turn.  I finally took a screenshot of Wogohna! And it's moving! Sea cities move by selecting a building project and picking the adjacent tile to move into. Moving will automatically claim all the tiles adjacent to the new city's location. And what happens, pray tell, if there's a unit in the tile a city moves into? If it's not one of your units, the unit dies very, very thoroughly. There's an achievement for doing it, even!   The torpedo battery quest finally happens, and I take more city strike damage over more city HP.  The Al Falah healthcare system was not exempt from the improvements in efficiency and capability that automation and artificial intelligence brought. Entire new medical fields were taking shape in Al Falah, including mental health for AIs.  Weather controllers in action! What these satellites do is have a random chance every turn to create a random basic resource in an unimproved tile in their radius, and the one on the left here spawned a patch of undersea minerals. I'll probably get rid of the satellite next update, the way the proc works, it's almost impossible for any given weather controller to create two resources before it expires.  I made a xeno swarm to show off. Rising Tide made their appearance vary based on your biome, along with all the regular aliens! In the base game, they were all bright green, a color palette now restricted to the lush biome.  Even as other colonies continued to stare at Al Falah in undisguised shock, augmenteries where any citizen could freely partake of cybernetic and genetic enhancements would become an increasingly common sight in the cities of Al Falah. Augmenteries are at best so-so Supremacy specific buildings, and the Daedalus Ladder a likewise unimpressive wonder. But it's just too fitting for this LP to not do it.  Playing in God's domain? Possibly. But Al Falah's scientists now wore that accusation as a badge of pride. State of Al Falah, turn 231  Ard  Farah  Aswat Adida  Midfa'a  Miah Mortafi'a  Wogohna Next time, The Crossroads!
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Aug 31, 2019 03:35
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At least we've finally solved the problem of which direction to pray. Flip into a virtual system where you're actually in mecca, and pray there.
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Aug 31, 2019 04:59
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I just love how everyone else in the planet is freaked out, yet loves us all the same. It is quite like America.
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Aug 31, 2019 05:00
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quote:
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Aug 31, 2019 10:23
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The runways on the Shepherd aren't any worse than the + shape in a normal airport since you don't launch planes simultaneously on them. Less of two planes, wait, two planes, wait and more like one plane, one plane, one plane, one plane.
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Aug 31, 2019 11:32
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nielsm posted:Will we be able to do anything with that progenitor tower, or what it was called, any time soon? Not unless I finish the entire quest and investigate almost twenty of the drat things, which I've both completely forgotten about doing in gameplay and the reward for this one is of dubious value: each of those devices provides 3 geothermal when the quest is completed. I have lots of geothermal and almost nothing to use it on. Likewise the hydracoral overmind quest gives you free visibility around any tile with hydracoral on the map and lets cities work tiles with hydracoral on it. I'd be very surprised if there's any hydracoral left on the entire planet. Only one of the planetary marvels gives you any incremental reward for messing with each individual thingy to explore, and we're not in that biome. And most of the marvel quests are similarly mediocre to the two on this world. They're just not worth the effort and they were nerfed to be even more tedious and time-consuming to unlock. Not exactly the epic rewards for a world-spanning quest that all the colonies would race to compete to unlock that Firaxis promised.
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Aug 31, 2019 12:33
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So, just as a bit of constructive feedback, the "everyone is shocked at Al Falah's progress" thing is starting to ring a bit false to me. Not that other societies wouldn't be shocked but that the frame of reference is off. Chungsu has ships that are like giant sharks, I don't think "this is outlandish by the standards of 21st century Earth" is the viewpoint other societies would have by now with all of them doing their own Affinity progression. Purity maybe would be like that but even they have progressed from an Earth perspective to a near reverence for the memory of Earth and for the ideal of humanity. Less "Al Falah is turning into a society of mega-otaku" and more "Al Falah is desecrating their essential inheritance, it's outrageous that they would turn their back on the project of building a new Earth to construct their own virtual alien paradises" or something. LP is still great though, always look forward to an update.
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Aug 31, 2019 14:02
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GunnerJ posted:So, just as a bit of constructive feedback, the "everyone is shocked at Al Falah's progress" thing is starting to ring a bit false to me. Not that other societies wouldn't be shocked but that the frame of reference is off. Chungsu has ships that are like giant sharks, I don't think "this is outlandish by the standards of 21st century Earth" is the viewpoint other societies would have by now with all of them doing their own Affinity progression. Purity maybe would be like that but even they have progressed from an Earth perspective to a near reverence for the memory of Earth and for the ideal of humanity. Less "Al Falah is turning into a society of mega-otaku" and more "Al Falah is desecrating their essential inheritance, it's outrageous that they would turn their back on the project of building a new Earth to construct their own virtual alien paradises" or something. These are valid points, I was aiming for more the other colonies going "What the gently caress are they doing to themselves now?!" Just being more polite about it than that. We are much more advanced in affinity than every other colony, only two have changed their leaders' appearances at all which you'll see in the next update. But these are certainly fair and I'll take them into account for the future. The next update I'm working on now is almost pure fluff but it's time to make a very important decision for this LP.
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Aug 31, 2019 14:10
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One of the downsides of this difficulty level for narrative purposes, I guess, is that the AI are kinda ciphers so giving them a big presence beyond being flabbergasted at the player's progress would be artificial. Because yeah if they're not really going far in their Affinity levels then they're pretty backwards in their perspectives.
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Aug 31, 2019 14:29
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The Crossroads Arshia Kishk was at work in her garden. That wasn't where she physically was, of course, in the material world she was sitting in her clean but sparsely furnished office. Nor did she have a garden in the physical world. There had never been time, not enough for what Arshia wanted: to grow something with her own hands and effort. The demands of leading Al Falah had forced her to be absent far too much from her daughters' lives, and her wife's, as it was. Caring for more lives would have been impossible. All the same, Arshia's optical implants, nestled behind her eyes and interfacing between her physical eyes and the optic nerves leading to her brain, showed her sitting in a vast garden of lush green, burbling blue streams, and weathered white stone. Another neural implant hijacked her sense of hearing, replacing the dull buzz of her office's environmental systems with the quiet chatter of the brooks running through her garden and the song of Earth and Jalidian birds. Even her olfactory nerves were overridden, and the garden smelled of flowers in bloom. And in the middle of it all, Arshia leaned backwards in an intelliweave chair that constantly adjusted itself to the precise contours and motions of her body while holographic displays levitated in front of her. All of it was virtual, but all of it was nevertheless real. Arshia could sign a paper she never saw with her biological eyes, her computerized nerves intelligently reading her brain's signals and transmitting appropriately to her motor nerves. Her situation wasn't even unusual these days in Al Falah. The mind-to-mind interface had in so many ways unshackled the limits of human imagination... for good and for ill, she knew. The effects of MtMI on the pornography industry were staggering, and the courts were still coming up with new terms, definitions, and punishments for the terrible things people could do to one another with the new powers Al Falah had unleashed. In her more pensive moments, Arshia sometimes wondered if Al Falah really was as in control of their world as they believed. Every individual step they had taken to get here made sense, but... "Representative Takauji is here to see you, Madam Secretary." A large snowflake spun and hovered in the air in front of Arshia. Frost, her Muse. Not one of the sentient djinn, never anthropomorphized, but an older model that was nevertheless sufficient to Arshia's needs. Frost had been her personal assistant for almost twenty years now. "Send her in." Arshia commanded. A trellised archway at the other end of the little island in the middle of Arshia's garden fizzled for a moment as a doorway to another world opened inside. Through the archway, Arshia caught a glimpse of an endless blue sky filled with clouds and strange structures seemingly made out of cloud-stuff sprouting out of the fluffy white. Takauji had always been prone to whimsy, and her virtualscapes tended towards the outright fantastical. Judging any Al Falah's age was a pointless game these days thanks to the ubiquity of cybernetic and genetic enhancement, but Arshia knew that the young-looking woman walking through the archway was second-generation Jalidian. Siobhan Takauji had a mix of features as curious as her name: dark brown skin, curly red hair, and the eyes of her east Asian ancestry. The chosen spokesperson for the Asabiyyah Party was a true representative of the younger Al Falah, completely divorced from the ethnic divisions of Old Earth, and Takauji moved with purpose. "Madam Secretary." Takauji bowed slightly as she approached Arshia's desk. "Representative Takauji." Arshia acknowledged. "How are things in Farah?" Siobhan Takauji wasn't actually in Ard with Arshia, of course. But the optical datalines running between Farah and Ard ensured that they were linked at the speed of light. "The houri are going to be disappointed." Takauji replied with a shake of her head. "We didn't really understand Jalidia's ocean currents when the Faraday Gyre was built. It's still working fine, but the engineers don't think building gyres in the other Arks will work. Farah's has had such a strong impact on the currents that multiple gyres would badly interfere with each other and make the whole thing pointless." "That's a shame." Arshia agreed. "Now, I think I know why you're here, but why don't you go ahead and tell me." Takauji laughed for a moment. It was hard to imagine any other reason for her to be here today, and both women knew it. Instead of talking, she tapped the 'stone table' in front of Arshia and an image of a blue planet appeared between the women. "The Emancipation Project." Takauji said after a long moment. "Science and Development believes the space-fold will work, and we know from the Progenitor artifacts that the Eye of Providence is still working. We can do it, Arshia. We can reestablish contact with Earth and go home." "If there's anyone to reestablish contact with." Arshia replied darkly, and a series of charts and graphs appeared next to the projection of Earth. "The public on Earth wasn't told about this, but we know that the Seeding effort only accelerated the Inflection Point. Unless Earth changed their behavior so drastically and abruptly as to be statistically impossible, the Inflection Point came and went more than two hundred years ago. Add to that the 'brain drain' effect of the Seeding, which the Tlaloc Initiative's records attest to. Deprived of so many of their most able leaders and brilliant minds..." "The Fall Hypothesis." Takauji finished the thought. "I'm familiar with the theory. That the social and economic consequences of the Inflection Point would create another Mistake. Environmental devastation, massive global wars. Societal collapse. Technological regression far past what the Inflection Point imposed. Forgive me for being so blunt, Arshia, but I think the Fall Hypothesis is the product of a bunch of smug scientists thinking we're superior to those we left behind and that everyone on Earth is a barbarian." "I didn't say I believed in the worst case scenario of the Hypothesis." Arshia replied coolly. "That being said, I don't believe the best case scenario, either. I've read S and D's report on the space fold. I agree that it's possible. A huge scientific and engineering challenge, but if they're confident they can do it then I'm confident in them. That is not what concerns me. What concerns me is what happens next. If we can communicate with the Eye of Providence and reestablish contact with Earth, then your party knows how Al Falah will respond. Once we open that door, there will be no turning back. And unless an extremely statistically improbable turn of events happened on Earth, we will be committing Al Falah to the most massive humanitarian relief mission in human history. And very likely, the most massive military operation as well." "I know." Siobhan Takauji met Arshia's eyes with a steady gaze. "The Asabiyyah Party knows. We believe we have an obligation to our ancestors. Al Falah was launched in the promise of finding salvation among the stars. We are that salvation, Arshia. We can save Earth. We are going to present the Project at the election. What other choice is there?" Arshia tapped the stone table again, and a new set of images appeared. "The Externalist Party has an intriguing proposal of their own." "Contact?" The younger woman's exasperation with the idea was plain. "Trying to contact the Progenitors? I know you've studied history, madam Secretary. Human history agrees on one thing: every time two cultures grossly mismatched in technology have met, it's gone badly for the less advanced civilization. Massive and irrevocable societal disruption at best. Military conquest most often. Outright genocide all too frequently. The Externalists want to risk everything we've built on Al-Jalidia, all the promise of our civilization." "We wouldn't be here if not for the Progenitors." Arshia's tone was even. "The Providence Discovery is what made the Seeding possible. We've coexisted with Progenitor technology since landing, and their visions have shaped our society whether the Asabiyyah admit it or not. Their technology isn't even so far removed from our own now, and that Signal in the stars that S and D have found can, with some effort, be deciphered. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you lack confidence in humanity." "I have every confidence in humanity," Anger crept into Takauji's voice, "But there is such a thing as an unnecessary risk, and the Externalist Party is bent on sending us down the greatest risk I can imagine. Oh sure, I'll grant that the rewards could be immense. Even so, don't you think we should put our own house in order before reaching out to strangers?" "Asabiyyah in a single sentence." Arshia agreed. "As it happens, there's one other proposal up for the election. The Xenoharmony Party's idea. Transcendence." More images joined the holographic menagerie. "We've known since shortly after planetfall that there's some kind of hive mind among the native life on Al-Jalidia." Arshia explained, tapping an image of a ripper school. "Yet we've also known that the explanation couldn't be a simple hive in the vein of Earth organisms. The known means of biology simply don't allow for pheremone control on a planet-wide level and between every known complex animal and most of the plants and fungi. Some of the more radical minds in S and D are convinced that there's some sort of network going on that we haven't grasped yet." Takauji stared at the projections, thinking. Even in virtual reality, she had a habit of tapping her temple with a stylus when deep in thought, and the tic continued when she finally spoke. "I suppose if this hypothesis is right, the whole planet's native life might be linked together in a way remarkably similar to our MtMI networks... and if we could access that network, interface our minds with the native network..." "We could merge our entire civilization with Al-Jalidia's ecosphere." Arshia finished the thought. "Our physical bodies are immune to the Jalidia's climate because we've integrated alien genes into our bodies that gave us their same resistance to the cold, better than any but the latest clothing shy of a full on environmental suit. The Xenoharmonists believe that extending our synthesis with the native life of Al-Jalidia from our bodies to our minds would be only the natural evolution of the path we're already on." "Even so..." Takauji replied slowly, her mind still racing, "Who would be in control of the network? Us, or the native life?" "That's the question." Arshia agreed. "Probably us, and the djinn, but we would change and make no mistake. If the Xenoharmonists are right, the planet's neural potential is immense but it's... dumb, for lack of a better word. There's the potential for intelligence, but it's simply not there. A brain without conscious thought or will. Things we have in abundance." Takauji nodded. "I can see the appeal, but I can't shake the feeling that we don't quite understand what we're dealing with yet in this regard. Transcendance would be a leap into the unknown, though I suppose no less than the Contact plan. The election is next week, Arshia, and I think the people are going to demand we do something. We have the means, and the technology. We're ready." "I will endorse one of these plans." Arshia replied after a moment of her own. "Which, I'll need to think about." "Certainly not a decision to be made in haste." Takauji agreed. "I think whatever we decide, we're going to change Al Falah, and our place in the universe, forever." So, thread, which proposal does Arshia endorse? Should we: 1. Reestablish contact with Earth. This will lead to the Emancipation victory. 2. Decipher the Signal. This will lead to the Contact victory. 3. Access the planetary network. This will lead to the Transcendence victory. I won't win the game in the next update, but it will influence my choices for the rest of the game. Also, an update on our diplomatic situation.  Duncan's just shy of committing to Purity. He's cooperating with us and Kavitha, and hostile to Moon.  Moon has committed to Harmony. He's cooperating with us and Daoming, hostile to Duncan and Lena, and at war with Kozlov, Barre, and Kavitha.  Lena has committed to Supremacy, becoming the second AI leader to have her appearance change! She is hostile to Moon and Kozlov.  Daoming is just shy of committing to Purity. She's cooperating with us and Moon, and at war with Kozlov and Kavitha.  Kozlov is just shy of committing to Harmony. He's hostile to Lena and Barre, and at war with Moon and Daoming.  Barre is just shy of committing to Supremacy. He's hostile to Kozlov and Kavitha, and at war with Moon.  Kavitha is a dilettante with no clear inclination. She's cooperating with us and Duncan, hostile to Barre, and at war with Moon and Daoming.
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Aug 31, 2019 15:13
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Save Earth.
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Aug 31, 2019 16:13
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Save the Earth
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Aug 31, 2019 16:19
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Save the earth
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Aug 31, 2019 16:25
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I say we eliminate Kozlov? But go for emancipation. But build up your forces in anticipation. Aside from the massive amount of soldier to be sent in, some weakasses may try to stop you.
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Aug 31, 2019 16:25
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2. Decipher the Signal. We should move forward and expand our horizons. Not look back to an exhausted planet, and not gamble with the unknown unknowns. Who knows, merging with a planetary mind might just as well wipe ours dry.
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Aug 31, 2019 16:32
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I vote transcendence, it feels more on-theme with how Al Falah has developed.
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Aug 31, 2019 16:33
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1. Save Earth.
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Aug 31, 2019 16:35
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Save The Earth
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Aug 31, 2019 16:48
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Siegkrow posted:But build up your forces in anticipation. Aside from the massive amount of soldier to be sent in, some weakasses may try to stop you. I have been all game, anticipating goons voting for this. That huge fleet that's been steadily massing near Ard isn't just for intimidating the AI. 
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Aug 31, 2019 16:50
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Welcome to Earth
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Aug 31, 2019 17:14
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Screw the Earth, it's probably a big, lifeless wasteland by now. No, we need to transcend as it is the obvious next step for our people. We have gone from no network to internet to djinn to houri to cross-planet VR. Obviously it's time to make a literal planetary network
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Aug 31, 2019 17:17
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Emancipation has the most narrative buildup and imo would provide opportunities for cool "what's happening on Earth?" scenes. I liked how aware of the possibility of getting conquered by aliens the advocate for forcibly liberating Earth from its backwardness was.
GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 17:19
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emancipation
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Aug 31, 2019 17:20
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