PCGamer Interviews Lena Brenk

[Aeson]

https://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/11/civilization-beyond-earth-e3-interview-diplomacy-quests-and-putting-the-pieces-together/

PCG: I almost died to the miasma a minute ago.

Brenk: Lesson learned! And you can research things that help you survive in miasma. The aliens actually heal from it, so if you study them well enough, you'll get that ability too. Later on, the other expeditions join you on this planet, there's a staggered start. They say hi when they touch down. In the mid-game, it becomes more about diplomacy, so now it's about...say I'm the Purity player. I picked Purity as my affinity. I want to remain as human as possible and change the planet to fit me. I don't want to change. I'm human. Human is awesome!

But your direct neighbor may be going Harmony. He wants to be like an indigenous life form to this planet, to figure out how to best make use of the natural resources. So he's starting to adapt his genes to this planet, and now you're starting to tear up this planet and make it more like Earth. So there's a conflict of interest there in how you see the future of mankind unfold. So it'll become more about how we develop in the future and the different visions for the future and who will ultimately get their vision.



PCG: Are those diplomacy traits adapted versions of, say, religion in classic Civ, where Purity is Christianity and Harmony is Buddhism, and they don't get along well at all?

Brenk: You could say there's an analogy to ideologies in Civ 5: Brave New World. If you went Order and somebody else went Freedom, they're kind of suspicious of you. It does have some impact when you start terraforming to be like Earth in this game, you're removing all the miasma as a Purity player, the Harmony player has been so adaptive to the whole world that he can use miasma, so he's spreading miasma wherever he can because he heals in it now. So it's not just a clash of ideas, it's a clash of your actions on the map.

In SMAC it was SE choices that drove diplomatic relations, but if leaders are getting upset because you cleared too much miasma or spread too much of it .. you might have to balance your own economic development a bit with the relations with your neighbors. Very interesting.

[Lorizael]

I very much like the idea that different affinities will dislike each other for solid, mechanical reasons. I know this is something that BNW did, right? To me, it feels a lot less arbitrary than an AI simply disliking you for being different. That leads to the AI making dumb decisions because they're "supposed" to dislike people of a different religion or what have you. But if a differing affinity genuinely negatively affects your civ, then you have a reason to be in conflict.

I'm trying to think of a way that Supremacy might mechanically influence the other affinities. Hm. I could kind of see Supremacy hogging up the orbital layer.

[N35t0r]

Strip mining for resources?

[Aeson]

BNW has aspects sorta like it. Even SMAC had similarities. But in both cases they were more along the lines of Policy choices conflicting, rather than actual actions on the map. The other factions didn't care at all if you were planting forests or fungus or clearing them. Though indirectly you probably adopted SE that went along with those actions and that would cause changes in diplomacy.

It should be easy to get a Harmony vs Supremacy game mechanic because of the way they view the planet and the mutually exclusive way they interact with Miasma. Harmony vs Purity is the same. The tougher one is Purity vs Supremacy. They both react to Miasma (which only has 2 states as far as we know) the same way.

[Aeson]

Strip mining for resources?

That could be good. Purity will still want Food production and wildlife. Supremacy could be able to detach themselves from that more and more as the game progresses, and you could make a case that to reduce competition they might try to kill off organic species (though that's stretching it, machines can make good use of chemicals from organic processes). I doubt they will actually do it that way. But it could be very cool if over time Supremacy starts building population more with Cogs than Food, and the Farm to Mine ratios or some manner of mutually exclusive terraforming affects diplomacy.

[Aeson]

I'm trying to think of a way that Supremacy might mechanically influence the other affinities. Hm. I could kind of see Supremacy hogging up the orbital layer.

Hmmmm ... what if there's an orbital construction that gives more energy (solar collectors... harnessing solar winds... something else) that negatively affects the Food production of tiles in it's shadow (which could be 1 tile, or several) and has an effect on global climate? This could give a clearer Supremacy vs Harmony/Purity dichotomy. But only if they disconnect Supremacy from Food reliance somehow.

[N35t0r]

At some point, supremacy pops require 1 food and 1 power rather than 2 food?

Although it would be to complicated for the stock game :-/