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[EuchreJack]

That reminds me of one of the wrestlers that i found amazing back when i watched some WCW , Chris Benoit .
He  had incredible wrestling skills and such an aggressive intensity that even if you knew wrestling was all scripted, you would not want to be the other guy in the ring.

Past the end of the nineties i ceased to watch any wrestling, i just had lost interest with the amount of crap matches that were going on more and more often and other stuff in life caught more my attention.

So some years ago, googling to see what happened to those old wrestlers i appreciated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKTrQWRSqL8

I learned that Chris Benoit murdered his wife and one of his children (that was 7 years old) by strangling them before off-ing himself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Benoit_double-murder_and_suicide

Apparently in the article it is mentionned that doctors found he was under some level of brain damage from his wrestling years but some other article dispute that and some investigation apparently showed that he was preparing the murder since a long time before, but whatever is the reason it's hard to separate the incredible wrestler he was and the fracking evil wife and child murderer he became when i see some video featuring him.

From what I was reading on wikipedia, it was fairly apparent that there was definite evidence of brain damage from his wrestling years and steroid use, and a lot of denials on WWE's part because they didn't want to be liable and didn't want to change their ways.

So, you can, if you so wish, think that Chris Benoit was a great wrestler that was a victim of the Wrestling Industry, along with his family.

[Rolan7]

I'm in an alignment debate mood, but nothing as plebian as DND's 9 quadrants nonants.
Can we find virtue in each of the factions?  And evil?

Not sure what order to use, so I'll use what's on https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Factions_(SMAC) completely arbitrarily so as to avoid unconscious bias.

Spartans:
Probably a less-relatable pic, but there is virtue here:
Flexibility in doctrine that supersedes all other tradition.  Honesty.
Rigorous self-improvement.
Above even the others: a dedication to protecting ones family, ones faction, and even ones species.
Evil: Mechanically they hate Wealth as a virtue, which translates to an overall disdain for culture and leisure.  AKA, weakness.  AKA, happiness.
Ascension goal: Defend and improve.  Possibly like the other Manifolds- hiding from the Progenitors, and preparing.
Stellaris: Militarist

Gaians:
My personal favorite, naturally (heh).
Where to start?  Sustainability.  Tolerance.  Flexibility.  Perhaps culture as well, though the Cult shows us how that might just be Deidre's preference.
Attuning to one's environment is a natural way to survive peacefully, AND to avoid repeating the mistakes of Earth.
Evil: Any being who will not be convinced to work with Planet is a cancer which must be removed, callously, in screaming terror.
Ascension goal: To synchronize humanity with Planet and become a healthy new lifeform, eager to meet and coexist with other manifolds.

University:
Third favorite, and a community favorite...
Knowledge.  Truth!  Objectivity.
Survival depends on knowing what is going on, and developing tools and strategies appropriately.  Beyond survival, we find even more honesty than the Spartans.  A marketplace of ideas with minimal bias, where an insight is the ultimate good.
Evil: Menial work must be done, but is given no social value.  No wonder the drones are unhappy- even once most industry is automated, they remain unvalued... except as experimental subjects.
Ascension: A curiosity that will never be sated.  Rampancy a la Durandal, perhaps?  Godhead Pickle Inspector, fondly regarding existence?

Peacekeepers:
hrm.
Egality, discourse, peace.  "the fuckin libs, man" as a leftist friend has on soundboard.
Wonderful in theory, of course.  Let's not discount their mechanical bonus- if they are elites, it's because *they raise their people up*.  They treasure education and every single person's potential.  My bitterness is washing away as I consider their states goals.  And this is a world where, perhaps, they can win.
And they'll do that through consensus!  Any faction can be democratic, but it's fundamental to the Peacekeepers.  As is winning via nonviolent means, and that's laudable!
Okay I've talked myself around on them.
Evil: wait what is their disadvantage?  can't use Police State, hahaha!  Okay but seriously...
Evil: They're idealistic to a fault in a game about competing ideals.  I hate to say it, but the common person clearing fungi in a survival situation might not have meaningful input on the best course for humanity as a whole.  Even with all the education- heck, it's kinda hard to hate these guys.  They're just not the best, okay?
Ascension: Everyone stays autonomous within the collective being, valued and unique and having a voice.  Even when overruled, the dissenting voices are heard and acknowledged, considered.  rather uniquely beautiful IMO

Hive:
fuck.  shit
Okay but like... they're just ahead of their time.  Most of the factions subsume their humanity to some extent, right?  Agh, this is difficult.  As the Paean explains, this is likely the most horrific option for most players.
It's a faction all about self-policing, which is... weird!  How can that be an ideal??
I even have a weird *appreciation* for hierarchy but even I wouldn't idealize it... ah... 
Humanity becomes a superorganism where suffering is meaningless.
Evil: Humanity becomes a superorganism with no humans
Ascension: Humanity becomes a superorganism

Believers:
Time for something light :U
Strength of conviction can be a virtue.  This is a setting where humanity has almost died.  Worse, it's *going* to die.  It's going to edit itself into an unrecognizable state, stripping by steps everything that made us human.  What do we end up with?
Conviction answers that question.  As much as I despise their inspiration, the Believers (and the Peacekeepers) are the last vestige of humanity as we know it.
Is that a good thing? - Deidre
We must dissent recognize their strange version of anarchy, too.  Is there a difference between zealous rebels and anarchic rebels?  Do they have a place in the future? hm.
Evil: Strict scriptural beliefs and a disdain for personal liberty
Ascension: someone tell me because I can't even.  Like...  Miriam does have an open mind about certain late game advances.  How would she react to the truth of Planet?  Would the Believers flee into the stars?  Or... become a Planet/Manifold who seeks... what exactly?  hrm

Morganites
Haha, my second favorite!  Bet you didn't expect that!  They're so awful tho
Famously they're the "greed is good" faction, but that's pretty understandable in a free-for-all.  They want to accumulate and enjoy.  Why not?  Why shouldn't they?  Why shouldn't we??
Technically they support individual liberty, but only for the hyper-wealthy.  The game demands extra housing space for Morganites, but I don't see the drones enjoying that.
Although... being fair... what if they actually have class mobility?
Could the faction be an actual meritocracy?  Why not... yeah!
They do even benefit astronomically from democracy and the free market, whereas the latter is a fuckin disaster under real-life capitalism.  In a proper meritocracy with equality of opportunity, perhaps it would work better!
Evil: They harm Planet.  It's debateable whether they harm their citizens, but they're monstrously abusive to Planet.
Ascension: uh.  uhm.  OH I KNOW!  A constant cycle of rapid unchecked growth, near self-awareness, then painful die-off. Then eventually, rampant growth again.  In perpetuity.

[Egan_BW]

I do enjoy the fact that the spartans were early on wiped out militarily by the gaians. Because as obsessed with strength as the spartans were, they didn't think to use Planet's strength for themselves.

The problem with Hive for me is that the idea is that you put aside your own wants for the sake of humanity's wants. But what does humanity want or need, really? It doesn't really have a collective mind or goals of its own past what the individual elites want. Not at the start of the game, at least.

Maybe the Believers would leave for the stars. Planet is not god, but He is out there still.

[hector13]

I had a lot of fun with the Hive once. I had a lot of votes on the council so manipulated my way to rescinding nerve stalking as a crime against humanity then nerve stapled a bunch of my drones.

Then the next turn I think everybody voted to make it a crime again and declared war on me.

[IronyOwl]

The problem with Hive for me is that the idea is that you put aside your own wants for the sake of humanity's wants. But what does humanity want or need, really? It doesn't really have a collective mind or goals of its own past what the individual elites want. Not at the start of the game, at least.

This. Hive doctrine makes a lot of sense as a strategy- instead of everyone whining about their own personal desires, you arrange the whole of humanity into one vast machine to accomplish far greater things than any one human, any one nation of humans, could possibly achieve on their own.

The issue is... which things? You've already told everyone their desires are stupid and you're not doing them. What's left to reach for?


Gaians have sort of the opposite problem in that they know exactly what they want, but it's easy and simple to do. A Gaian victory is just kinda chilling in harmony with whatever living things you've decided don't need to be mind wormed or coerced into chilling in harmony. This sounds pleasant but complacent; it doesn't really go anywhere or enable anything. It's a dead end or a long rest before deciding (or being forced to by outside forces that) they want something else.

Another interesting snag here is that "harmony" with Planet is a lot easier when Planet doesn't really want anything either. We're not sure if that's the case once it wakes up. Suppose it decides to enslave all life in the galaxy; do the Gaians revolt against their own planet in order to force it to remain peaceful, or adapt themselves to harmoniously cut down the foes of their world?

Maybe the Believers would leave for the stars. Planet is not god, but He is out there still.

Most likely. People like to give the Believers shit for being fanatics, but there's a fair bit of optimism and drive in a lot of Miriam's entries, and they're uniquely positioned to take revelations about Planet in stride. They'd probably take the prospect- and challenge- of abandoning the entire planet to wander the stars looking for the real promised land shockingly well.

Alternatively, they might just attempt to slay the leviathan beneath their feet, what with that +25% attack bonus and all. This strikes me as less likely given Miriam's tone regarding manmade horrors beyond comprehension, though.

[Egan_BW]

The quote that plays during ascension victory does sound like the plan is to just hang out until the stars go out, yeah.

[Radio Controlled]

Say about the Hive what you want, but in the (canonical?) ascension victory, humanity does, in fact, leave its individualism behind and becomes a single whole... only instead of metaphorical by each person leaving behind individual wants and desires, it's very literally forming a single consciousness.

If our society seems more nihilistic than that of previous eras, perhaps this is simply a sign of our maturity as a sentient species. As our collective consciousness expands beyond a crucial point, we are at last ready to accept life's fundamental truth: that life's only purpose is life itself.
-Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Looking God in the Eye"-

“No longer mere earthbeings and planetbeings are we, but bright children of the stars! And together we shall dance in and out of ten billion years, celebrating the gift of consciousness until the stars themselves grow cold and weary, and our thoughts turn again to the beginning.”
-“Conversation with Planet”, after you develop the “Ascent to Transcendance” where your faction merges with the planetary sentience-

Or, to butcher one of Yang's quotes, ""It is every citizen's final duty to go into the fungus and become one with all the Planet."

Whether any of that is good or bad is another thing, but you can't deny that the Hive seemed to be ahead of the curve here.   :v


One of Miriam's redeeming qualities, to me, is that while she isn't a straight up technophobe, she is one of the few who actually speaks up when things start getting rather dystopian. She goes from

The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. Though the song of yesterday fades into the challenge of tomorrow, God still watches and judges us. Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil.
-Sister Miriam Godwinson, "A Blessed Struggle"-

(A quote that I still really like.)

to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwqN3Ur-wP0

Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind.
-Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We must Dissent"-
(Accompanies the Secret Project "Self-Aware Colony)

This is played when you get the Self-Aware Colony secret project, aka fully automated police state watching your every move. In the video a dissenter who just spray painted this slogan is isolated and eliminated by the city itself, while the traces of his act of defiance are quickly and quietly erased.

[Robsoie]

Planet Busters or how to solve ideology debates between factions on Planet .

[Rince Wind]

I haven't played in a long time, but wasn't there an option to stay human and continue your live in the ascendent victory? I seem to remember that only thoase that want to join planet have to do so.

[Aoi]

I haven't played in a long time, but wasn't there an option to stay human and continue your live in the ascendent victory? I seem to remember that only thoase that want to join planet have to do so.

For some reason, I want to say that was a thing in the expansion pack... or maybe another 4X game? Once somebody kicked off the endgame, it turned into a mad dash to the finish line on one side, and the opposing side could claim a counter-victory by defeating all the factions that went in for it.

[Culise]

I never heard about Darkover before, looked into the wikipedia entry and it seems there's a lot of world building with it, with lots of fans making fan factions that sometime were acknowledge by the author and incorporated in its lore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkover

Then i checked the author's wiki entry to see what else she may have wrote :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley

And ... what the hell ... if those accusations are true she and her husband were fracking horrible people.

Aye.  I loved the Darkover books when I was younger.  They were entertaining books that mixed sci-fi and fantasy much like the Anne McCaffrey and others, and considering from a more modern perspective, they were revolutionary for the time for their early push for LGBTQ+ and feminist inclusivity into fantasy: homosexuals appearing as socially accepted heroes, bi people existing at all (and also being heroic), civil/"freemate" marriages, and even what we would today refer to as a polycule.  Reading them as an adult, though, knowing what we know now about the author's personal life, is awkward as *heck*.  It turns some bleak subplots in certain stories from "powers-that-be abusing their powers" or "a regressed neo-medieval colonial culture having problematic issues of its own with an unreliable narrator" to "holy crap is this her husband the serial pedophile molester."  For me at least, it makes rereading some of the books flat-out impossible.

[Radio Controlled]

I haven't played in a long time, but wasn't there an option to stay human and continue your live in the ascendent victory? I seem to remember that only thoase that want to join planet have to do so.

I believe you are correct:

#INTERLUDE16
#xs 500
#caption Interlude
^  "Is it possible to prevent the dieback? And can we survive as a species if this
Planet flowers to godhood?"
^  "I believe it is possible, and Planet agrees." Dr. $SHIMODA9's image swirls away and
is replaced by a detailed schematic. "It involves a process I call
the {Ascent to Transcendence,} as it will change both us and Planet
forever. In short, I propose that when the time comes, the majority
of humans upload their personalities directly into the Planetary Mind."
^  "We will have to give up our bodies, our humanity?"
^  "Those who wish to live out their lives in their original human form will be allowed
to do so, since statis generators built Planetside and in orbit will preserve genetic
material, plant and animal embryos, cold-sleep humans, and significant areas of Planet's
surface through the metamorphosis. But many of us are eager to accept Planet's gift and
join the dawning superintelligence. That's where the catch comes in.
^  "You see," $SHIMODA9 continues, "although anyone will be able to achieve virtual
immortality by uploading into the planetary mind, only a few of us will be invited to
join the dominant personality, to transcend our humanity entirely and reach a truly
higher plane of existence. Your friendship with Planet's immature mind may give us a
leg up in this area, but I predict that it is the group who best and most quickly
prepares itself for this step, the group who first embraces this {Ascent to
Transcendence,} it is that group which will be tapped to lead us into the
new era."
^  "In that case, what are we waiting for!"

(Emphasis mine.)

So, unlike with Yang, here people get to make the choice instead of being forced into spiritual transcendence.

You can find all the interludes here btw, or at least the ones form the base game: https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=articles;sa=view;article=5

I haven't played in a long time, but wasn't there an option to stay human and continue your live in the ascendent victory? I seem to remember that only thoase that want to join planet have to do so.

For some reason, I want to say that was a thing in the expansion pack... or maybe another 4X game? Once somebody kicked off the endgame, it turned into a mad dash to the finish line on one side, and the opposing side could claim a counter-victory by defeating all the factions that went in for it.

Yeah, you can lose the race to transcendence and get some more info on what happens then:

#INTERLUDE18
#xs 500
#caption Epilogue
^  The cold-sleep unit finally cycles open and you stretch muscles rusty from
decades of computer-managed disuse. But they are young muscles, shockingly young,
and it will be a pleasure to beat them back into shape. Orbital insertion
begins and you tingle with the excitement of your new mission and with the joy
of having returned to human form. Yes, you left a copy of your personality among the
Planetmind's giant matrix, but this copy, this human being $NAME1 now waking to
lead the first Seed mission, this is the only self now immediate to you and therefore
the only real you. You are flesh again, and so quite mortal, and for this too you
rejoice.
^  You despaired when Planet invited $NAME5 to join its dominant self, and
for a decade or more you moped about the bizarre virtual reality of the Undermind
with no coherent purpose, a lost spirit unable to die. But when the Seed missions
began, the Voice/Planet personality herself sought you out in the abyss and convinced
you to accept command of the {Prodigal Son}.
^  "Earth$NAME3, you are unfulfilled here and I have need of you. In ages to come
I shall have need of allies, sister Minds, if I am to keep the flame of conscious
thought from guttering out as the universe contracts or else expands to dust. Take
with you the gift of life, the seeds of all our species. Spread them to the stars,
across the galaxies, creating new civilizations, new minds, and enlisting the aid
of any you encounter. Go forth, Earth$NAME3. Go forth and multiply."
^  The maneuver at last complete, the safety shutters retract from the viewport
and you behold a sight lost to human eyes for over $NUM3 centuries. Deep blues, swirling
whites, the azure tint of a rich oxygen atmosphere. Inviting browns and greens of
continents basking in the sun, a few scattered impact craters the only visible signs of
a war now buried in the aeons. Third planet. Earth. Home.

[Egan_BW]

He, that interlude18 sounds like it's inviting you to go play a quick game of Civ4 and restart the cycle.

[Loud Whispers]

I do enjoy the fact that the spartans were early on wiped out militarily by the gaians. Because as obsessed with strength as the spartans were, they didn't think to use Planet's strength for themselves.

I think the Spartans had a pretty good run, and probably dominated Planet in the early centuries. Santiago is the one who runs the command nexus and the maritime centre, so they were able to control the flow of diplomacy and flex their military might over the other factions. The spartans also have the neural amplifier, so it seems they were at the forefront of how to "defend" against mindworms, as opposed to the University and the Morganites who were very much on the "how do we exterminate" track of mindworms relations.

I used to believe that the Spartans were wiped out by the gaians using their sneaky mindworm tactics, but the more I thought about it the more I realised there could be other things at play too. The Gaians' "secret war" also included use of psionic agents and psychic warfare, which isn't fully represented in game (although one can easily imagine some probe teams are psionics?). The Spartans seem to have also reached a point of technological singularity with the cloning vats/cyborg facility/the nanomachine pastes implying they had reached a point where the spartan citizens themselves were as much interchangeable tools as the weapons in their hands. That they reach the point of hovertanks also suggests the spartans made it far.

One of the coolest easter eggs (spoilers obviously) is probably when you first relocate your HQ. Every time you make a building for the first time you get a cool bit of flavour text, but there's almost no reason to relocate your HQ unless you've lost it or you're super late game and have a new core cluster of bases. When you relocate the HQ...

"As we approached we were confronted by the ruined splendor of Sparta Command. The true immensity of the place became instantly apparent as our Quantum Tank crunched over the rubble and parked next to a shattered bunker, but the extent of the destruction took weeks to assess. The shielded datacore had sustained several massive breaches and smoke still billowed from the numerous cannon ports. There were few signs of human life."
-Lady Deidre Skye, our secret war.

The Gaians were fielding quantum hovertanks when they took Sparta Command with no survivors. Between mind worms, the University developing retroviral weapons, psionic mind-fuckery and who knows what else, it looks like the Spartans had everything and the book thrown at them in order to overcome their sheer military might.

I think there's room for alternative interpretations where there are multiple endings, e.g. one where the Morganites make the transition from merchants to Emperors and corner the global energy market, one where the Gaians/Peacekeepers/University share transcendence, one where the Spartans conquer planet. The only two who seem to be the odd ducklings are the Hive who just kinda disappear and the Believers, who seem to have taken over all of Planet and then just... Left.

The problem with Hive for me is that the idea is that you put aside your own wants for the sake of humanity's wants. But what does humanity want or need, really? It doesn't really have a collective mind or goals of its own past what the individual elites want. Not at the start of the game, at least.

I think his philosophy is beyond humanity too though, beyond "wants" of any kind. So you are not subordinating your "wants" for humanity's "wants," you are transcending them completely akin to buddhist enlightnenment. In this sense Yang wishes to shape humanity into more "advanced" and "useful" versions of itself. This is why I think Yang's quotes go in sequence from "we use crude tools to fashion better tools, and better tools to fashion more precise tools and so on," to recycling humans / editing human genetic codes / creating specialised human castes. In the great Hive there would be no discord or disorder, just an elite caste of transcends, talents, police & drones, all in perfect harmony working towards a kind of deterministic ideal of "material progress."

This probably reflects real life inspiration from marxist historical materialism, of the idea of history "progressing forwards" in terms of some sense of "civilisational development." And this reflects in Yang's faction focusing literally on growth & exploitation for the sake of growth & exploitation as inherent goals. I think MetalSlimeHunt said it best when he said a lot of Yang's factions ills rest from his "insistence" that people live so :p

Gaians have sort of the opposite problem in that they know exactly what they want, but it's easy and simple to do. A Gaian victory is just kinda chilling in harmony with whatever living things you've decided don't need to be mind wormed or coerced into chilling in harmony. This sounds pleasant but complacent; it doesn't really go anywhere or enable anything. It's a dead end or a long rest before deciding (or being forced to by outside forces that) they want something else.

That's why I love the Gaians. Because their win state is not plunging planet into the same 4x industrial hellscape that most playthroughs with other factions reward. Doing nothing is a violently revolutionary act

I made a super big post here about different factions, playstyles and how they reward playing like their faction's philosophies. Some snippets below summarise the massive post pretty well. Just one look and you can see how amazing it is that you actually can live in harmony with planet as the gaians and do a brilliant good job of it too. Most 4Xs run the Jevons paradox of even the "green eco faction" ultimately just being a more efficient version of the free market or industrialist factions. The gaians are the only one I can think of where their eco faction actually is shockingly powerful if they live in harmony with the ecosystem

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Morgan city-states on hilltops with solar-park farms; still ultimately turn the landscape around them into an exploited suburban sprawl.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

PERFECT YANG EFFICIENCY TOTAL PLANET HARMONY OVER 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 DRONES STAPLED

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Agrarian Believer parish valley pastoral paradise

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Total Gaian fungus park harmony blue sky hippy economy

All of these were super viable, even optimal economic-environmental strategies. And there is something really special about "not doing anything but fungus and trees" or even "not doing anything unsustainable + blue sky economy" being viable economic strats

Most likely. People like to give the Believers shit for being fanatics, but there's a fair bit of optimism and drive in a lot of Miriam's entries, and they're uniquely positioned to take revelations about Planet in stride. They'd probably take the prospect- and challenge- of abandoning the entire planet to wander the stars looking for the real promised land shockingly well.

Alternatively, they might just attempt to slay the leviathan beneath their feet, what with that +25% attack bonus and all. This strikes me as less likely given Miriam's tone regarding manmade horrors beyond comprehension, though.

I picked the Believers for my first playthroughs, as I thought they were going to be the least alike my mindset, both in playstyle and philosophy. Holy smokes did Miriam sucker me in. I got absolutely destroyed first time through but as I got good with her, I really started to see how much love had gone into each character and their philosophies, and Miriam was more in love with the human spirit than Lal was. She doesn't even hate technology!

[Salmeuk]

i think its really really cool that this game can still spawn discussion around the philosophical interpretations of the factions... and the morality of the gamestates... you don't really get that from Civ, do you? hehe

I still want to properly learn this since i missed the boat as a youngling. I know this is rich coming from a bay12forum poster, but the UI is kinda horrendous, particularly the unit creation stuff.

isn't there some overhaul mod, too? hmm