Path of Artificial Thought or Path of Orbital Death Lasers.

On one hand... Strong AI. On the other... Orbital Death Lasers. ORBITAL DEATH LASERS.

Marital Dominance sounds nice. We should do that. No sense in delaying since only half a year.

And then probably the health focus.

If we're not going to war we might as well build some more hospitals.

 

As per the Board's wishes, we have embarked upon the creation of an entirely new type of life. I am very excited about the potential inherent in this course of action.

March 2615: The first stage of the Path of Artificial Thought is completed, and two new and incredibly fascinating employees have joined our roster.

First, we have the result of the 'Precog Project' which has been built on the outskirt of the city. Known as 'Oculus' to our security personnell, she has been given authority over our defense forces and has assured me that victory would be ours in any defensive war. For the first time, I believe it.



Technically she'd be under Senator Lamora's authority, but I really wouldn't try bossing her around, Senator. The troops already, uh, kinda worship her.

Secondly we have Master Control, housed in the monolith outside Oceanus. MC is a much simpler AI than Oculus is, and thus is content to be known merely as MC and does not appear to have an identifiable gender or personality - nevertheless, they have already proven themselves to be an incredibly useful resource, as their oversight has greatly increased the rate at which our workers are improving the landscape.

June 2615: A shocking discovery has been made, thanks to Oculus' obsession with Firaxite-based observatories in Kuombi Saleh and Oceanus: there is a massive asteroid on a collision course with our new home.



That said, we are not the helpless victims to the whims of the heavens we once were. Work has already begun on the vessel to take a team to deal with this menace.

July 2615: The mission was a complete success. The asteroid was successfully hijacked by our team and brought off it's collision course, at which point it was captured. Further course corrections have brought it into a stable orbit, where it is already having a noticeable effect on the tides of this planet - one we can use to our advantage.



Our team up there also preemptively planted a flag before anyone else could. Our employees seem more excited about our successful moon landing than the prevention of their extinction, and Oculus has used the goodwill generated by her part in this to start redesigning the armour of our troops in her image.



Rather striking, don't you think?

We're also working her into city-wide surveillance networks to cut down on recent unfriendly activity inside Aristos Achaion, since at this time it's not really practical to reassign our agents from watching our enemies to counter-surveillance. Don't worry, if she starts going all Daisy Bell I've got her mainframe wired with nanothermite.

October 2615: Once more the Slavic Federation is beseiging Hekima Station, and this time it looks like it's going to be the end of the Hekimans, as the armour and infantry are backed by rocket artillery. While it isn't worth declaring war against the entire Slavic empire, who's grasp of cybertechnology is second only to our own, we are turning a blind eye to the fact that our cargo ships from them are more full of refugees than the usual spices, and we're moving a team into place to secure the site once it falls.

November 2615: To our considerable shock, Hekima Station was able to wipe out two armoured batallion and a squadron of infantry without falling, despite heavy rocket bombardment. To our even greater shock, the Franco-Iberians swooped in and successfully assaulted the greatly weakened defences. As the Hekimans piled into our merchant fleet, seeking the protection by the Ares Macrotechnology sigil (and the autocannons and missiles of our nearby fleet), Franco-Iberian troops looted our old trading partner, blowing up what they could not loot. Convoy after convoy of salvaged equipment was dragged out of the wreckage and taken up the coast to the Franco-Iberian city of Le Coeur.

January 2616: We seem to not be the only ones to have noticed Franco-Iberia's treachery. The PAC have officially denounced them and the African Union seem to be preparing for war against them. It seems that we are no longer the most hated people on this continent.

We shall have to try harder.

February 2616: The Africans, too, have denounced Franco-Iberia, and the PAC seem to be eyeing their land as well. Intriguing.

Before you ask, I have looked over what we know of their territory, and between their inland position, their proximity to relatively useless tundra, and the lack of strategic resources nearby, their cities would not be a good addition to our empire. Their best use is as a target for the expansionist impulses of our neighbours.

March 2616: While Oculus is an overwhelming tactical advantage in our territory, her being dependent on a constant stream of input makes her unsuited to a closer role with our military, as she is largely unable to fully understand something so fundamentally limited as a human being. To this end, we have created and/or recruited Mark in Duris Ulixes.

Mark is the prototype, template, overseer, and father of a new race of soldier-AIs. It is projected that AI-human partnerships will revolutionize battlefield command within a few short years. For his part, Mark is a little aloof and temperamental, but me and him have been getting along fine.

May 2616: The last of the research required for the Path of Artificial Thought is complete, and our engineers are working on the final two projects in Kuombi Saleh and Lebensraum.

July 2616: Tensions have finally boiled over, and the Africans have declared war on the Franco-Iberians. This has caused the Franco-Iberians to abandon Hekima Station, and our forces have moved in to start evacuating what survivors remain and secure the area for our salvage teams.

We'll also be moving additional forces into the area to watch events unfold, as well as collect any errant refugees - we're still having trouble growing our population as fast as we are our food production, with our capital projected to exceed ten million employees by the end of the year, with another six split between our other cities.

October 2616: Between reports from our teams watching events unfold, and, uh... this...



It seems the Franco-Iberians have gone a bit native. This may explain their tensions with the Africans, who according to our agents have developed an almost cultlike adoration of Earth.

November 2616: The siege of Le Coeur will be interesting. Their defences are formidable, but so is the African army. Mark and Oculus have had our agent in Le Coeur gain access to their security systems as well as set up a few new cameras so they can have a front-row view of the action.



February 2616: The siege of Le Coeur was long, bloody, and violent, but in the end the defences were too formidable for the Africans, who are falling back through the desert. The action did reveal to us a new and worrying development.



The Franco-Iberians have tamed and weaponized the native life, packs of whom are harrying the African retreat. A very worrying development, as Oculus' simulations predict that their combined power would be enough to take out a squad of our infantry.

May 2616: We have revolutionized farming again. Having run out of sideways, we've started going down, and every surface farm is now mirrored by level after level of subterranean hydroponic facilities.

Considering the Franco-Iberians have taken a new quantum leap in warfare, we shall have to do the same, and our research into tactical robotics has begun.

July 2616: It seems the Brasilians are on the same path as Franco-Iberia, having recently berated us for not following their cultish obsession with the native life.



August 2616: With our tapping into a huge source of oil under the Sea of Ares, we can expand our weather control satellite network from four to seven. Does this count as revolutionizing farming again?

Our tactical robotic research is completed, and the CNDR platforms are ready for construction and deployment.

It is estimated that a squad of these could be commanded by a single Markov Eclipse general and take on twice their number in conventional human infantry, or eke out a narrow win against the xeno swarms that Franco-Iberia has been deploying.

Thus completes our latest Paths. There's two months until Kuombi Saleh completes their AI project and four until Lebensraum does the same, at which point each of our cities will be host to an AI of some description. I'm sure this won't blow up in our face in any way, shape or form.

The future has never been brighter for Ares Macrotechnology. What facet of our bodies, society or empire should we recklessly jam machines into next?

FARMS: Back on Earth, insects would pollinate plants and fertilize the soil. Here, the insects are nowhere near as friendly. Tiny little robot bugs could restore that niche, revolutionizing farming yet again. 14 months.

OUR LIMBS: With the wide-scale acceptance of brain-machine interfaces, our society is ready to accept the cybernetic augmentation of their bodies. This would improve our society in pretty much every way. 14 months.

OUR BONES: Weaving Firaxite-based bioglass into the human skeleton and musculature has been proposed as a way to greatly increase the durability of the human form and make the interface between flesh and machine even easier. 14 months.

OUR ORGANS: We've been experimenting with cloning since the early days of our colony. Cloning organs is old hat to us. Cloning entirely new organs, on the other hand, could give us an entirely new avenue for improving the human body. 14 months.

OUR INTERNETS: Our employees still use their smartphones to access the internet. This is unacceptable. Let's implant the internet in their goddamn retinas. 4 months.

OUR EYES: Speaking of eyes, human ones kinda suck. Cybereyes, anyone? 6 months.

SPACE: Orbital death lasers are an even better idea now that we have AIs that absolutely will never go rogue on us. Additional possibilities exist for satellites that can fold space and effectively 'teleport' our military forces pretty much wherever we desire. 14 months.

Author's note: We're nine levels deep into Supremacy, out of the 13 required to start the Supremacy victory. We're closing on the endgame. That said, there's no low-hanging fruit left - all the tech-based Supremacy levels are on the most expensive techs in the game, so unless the RNG god smiles upon us and gives us some quests, those last four levels are gonna take a while. But on the bright side we've unlocked a lot of really fun buildings.

 

OUR INTERNETS->OUR EYES->FARMS

 

I'm with the esteemed undead one on this.

 

I like Zombie's path as well, but with as much as we've done for farming and food production, I'd put it on the tail end after even the internet. I do like that order though. Space first at the very least.

 

I agree with Zombie's path.

 

Yeah, Zombie's path is the way to go because we really do need all the things.

 

Research has begun into new forms of satellite, to rain death upon our enemies or transport our troops behind their lines. Unfortunately, these satellites will take up the same resources that are currently being invested in our weather-control program, so we will have to scale that program back should we have to deploy them. However, our industrial powerhouse of Dirus Ulixes could produce one of either every month, so it will take very little time to change course, should it be necessary.

October 2616: The Cynosure is completed, and it's... more and less than we had hoped.

It is vast, mysterious, arrogant, unhelpful, and infuriating. I've instructed the team working on the Bytegeist to ensure that it will be more helpful.

December 2616: I have never regretted anything more in my life.

Lebensraum is now host to - or, to put it more accurately, infested with - the Bytegeist, an absolutely infuriatingly servile swarm intelligence that absolutely insists on making everyone's life more interconnected and informative.

I am very close to ordering a quarantine of the city to prevent it from spreading.

In equally aggravating news, our agent in Magan has discovered that the Africans have taken cultural manipulation to an entirely new level with the super-scale weaponization of cliches. They have founded the Memetwork, a black-ops sociological experiment dedicated to monkeywrenching the human thought process.

For now, it is dedicated to spreading the pro-Earth cultishness that has taken root in the African cities.

July 2617: The Slavs and the Asians are off to kick the shit out of the Franco-Iberians. Don't know what they've done to piss everybody off, but Le Coeur is no less of a fortress than it was when the Africans broke their army against it, so I don't see this going anywhere productive.

And we've finished out satellite research. We've scouted out new oil fields on the extreme periphery of Dirus Ulixes so we won't have to wind back the weather control programs to put it to use.

October 2617: The Mark 1 Eyeball and it's failings has long been one of near-infinite millstones around humanity's neck. Now, it is obsolete. Facilities to mass-produce and fit bionic eyes for the masses are being constructed throughout our empire - however, the board, of course, need not wait. Your autodocs have been programmed and refitted to allow for implantation at your leisure.

Research has begun into bioglass for implantation, and we expect to see results within the year.


Upon implantation of the eyes, one of the first things you notice is an incoming message. In disjointed but florid prose, using terminology and arguments seemingly tailor-made for your biases and beliefs, it explains to you that humanity has proven itself too limited and unreliable to be allowed complete freedom - while Ares Macrotechnology, the Slavic Federation, and the PAC show promise, all of the other factions have rejected the true path.

It promises that should you follow a few simple and completely safe steps to allow it access to key systems, you will be given an eternal place of high authority among the New Order.

Do you:

a) Agree to help?
b) Warn the CEO?

This is not a winner-takes-all - the number of board members who follow each path will be important.

 

The very nature of my activities mean that I long ago conceded people are more important than ideas. Time to warn the CEO.

 

Warn the CEO!

Those New World Order thingies never end well..

 

Power! POWER! POWER!

I'll take the New World Order, thank you.

 

No pros and cons are forthcoming, only arguments about how humanity needs a caretaker to bring it to the also-unclear 'proper path'. The messages are going out of their way to avoid giving any concrete details.

They also hint that your cooperation is unnecessary, and is merely a test of character for you to see whether you are worthy of a position of power rather than required for the New Order to flourish. Whether you believe this is entirely up to you.

 

b) Warn the CEO
It's not like the constant surveillance on my person hasn't already alerted the CEO.


Besides, proper path? Whatever path Ares Macrotechnology is on (ie, the most profitable path) is the proper path. Bowing to some shadowy group offering vague promises of power is out of the question when we already are the group other people bow to for that exact reason.

 

It looks like we have an AI presenting this argument. On one hand, power. On the other hand, I really like my personal freedoms as a board member. I've grown quite pleased overseeing our reade routes.

I am agreed with VanRopen. The CEO has shown attentiveness in the past. If he is to be disposed (and as long as profits remain I don't see why that should be) then let it be done by the board. Time to warn him.

 

Yeah, time to warn the CEO who probably already knows about it.