The Great Mistake, they call it now, long after that recognition would have helped. At the time, they cut budgets to the bone, and acted shocked when the projects failed. They used lack of results to justify further cuts, and those cuts lead to even fewer results. By the time the politicians and penny-pinchers stopped playing their games, half the world was burning, and the other half was close behind.

In the end we won, but at a terrible price. Entire nations were wiped from existence. The Earth's biosphere was irrevocably damaged. We now face the reality that our window of opportunity to leave our dying world is rapidly closing, as resource shortages and the inevitable political instability that will accompany it looms ever larger.

However, I have confidence we can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. After all, we've done it before.



X-Com's charter is clear: to protect humanity from the extraterrestrial threat. No matter what the Council of Nations - or what remains of it - may be trying to argue, the permanent damage caused by the invasion qualifies.

With our knowledge, resources, and the alien technology we have stockpiled, we can build our own colony ship, superior to any other. We can carve out a new future for humanity on this new planet, and with us in command, we can ensure that the Great Mistake will never be repeated.

So I will call the first meeting of the X-Com Conclave to order. The topic at hand - to which nation will we partner ourselves with? A necessary evil, as we lack the infrastructure and raw manpower to build, launch and man a colony ship on our own. However, the nation will be bringing their own know-how to the table...



---

Author's notes: Civ: Beyond Earth came out the other day, and Aekiel mentioned that I should do a LP of it, and the idea sprouted. If you're not familiar, Beyond Earth's backstory involves some nebulous Great Mistake that fucked everything up forever, that's intentionally left vague to let people insert their own backstory. In this case, the backstory is those chucklefucks of the Council of Nations refusing to fund the X-Com project properly.

Y'all are the Conclave leading X-Com. I'll be playing this, but you're the ones that are going to be calling the shots whenever there's a shot I decide needs calling. Majority vote has it, and the voting will be cut off at an arbitrary point, depending on how active the thread is and what other shit I got going on.

We'll be playing on standard speed, difficulty, and map size. Map type will be random. First choice: which country is our BFFs?

 

ARC. I mean come on, this is X-COM we're talking about.

 

My vote goes to the Kavithan Protectorate.

 

Pan-Asian for the same reasons as Zombie pointed out. It seems a decent enough pick for a first game.

 

Pan-Asian

After the fuck up that was European colonisation it only seems fair to give the Asians a chance.

 

Pan-Asian. I love the Asia bonus in X-COM anyway.

 

Hello again, Conclave.

While I have... reasonable confidence in your knowledge of world affairs, I have taken the liberty to include a dossier on our new partners, the Pan-Asian Cooperative.

Our partnership with the Pan-Asian Cooperative has been an encouraging success. While, of course, the government of China was one of the first to fall to the aliens, and the nations of Central Asia were never members of the Council of Nations, the states that make up the Cooperative have chosen to see us as the ones that eventually fought off the aliens, rather than those that allowed China to to fall in the first place. This, plus our gracious contribution of a great deal of technological information, has made them very willing to accept us as partners - however, we did need to buy into the project, so we have had to liquidate the majority of our alien artifacts.

Their proven track record both with megaprojects and with extended terraforming efforts indicate that they will be able to contribute a huge deal of technical know-how.

Our relative expertise with advanced technology has allowed us to take the lead with the design of the colony ship, and there are three decisions to be made.

First, the population. While, of course, our team will be going in it's entirety, the strata of society we draw from to fill the general populace of our colony will shape the society we build in a very tangible way.



Second, the spacecraft itself. We can integrate what little we have left of the alien technology into the craft, but we have to decide what features we want to integrate.



Third, we can use our allotment of the storage space to transplant part of the X-Com facilities, or instead fill the hold with extra colonists and the hydroponics facilities to feed them.



Finally, we need a name for the vessel. If a consensus arises, that shall be the name of the ship. Otherwise, I will select the name I feel most suitable out of any suggestions you may have.

The choice is yours.

 

Machinery, Fusion, Scientists. Science and Industry, ho!

And I've always been partial to the name Blackbird Claw. Was my first ship on EVE.

 

I believe we should send engineers, do a survey of continents, and have a laboratory.

As for a name. I have no preferences as long as it arrives.

 

We have Refugees who bring along Scanner technology and a working knowledge of Hydroponics.

In honour of the above, I vote for SS Genitalia as the name of the ship.

 

As our great success against the alien threat came about through the help of scientists sent from many countries, so too should we take many scientists to make our planetfall.
Our secret Labratory will, of course, be included in the spaceship's cargo. It will be labeled as "cultural artifacts."
With the Dr. Vahllan Foundation's expertise, we have advanced our understanding of possible alien signals, and have created a Lifeform Scanner to best know our enemies and how to aggressively defend ourselves from them before they come after us.

All preparations are ready for the SS Moral Relativity

 

So yeah, putting my vote forward for Artists, because getting free culture AND health is awesome, Scanners, because knowing where shit is always helps, plus it should help for future early city placement, and Laboratory, because everything else takes less time to get.

 

I vote for Artists, Retrograde Thrusters and Laboratory.

I figure we can go for a quick expansion run, so we'll need Health (from Artists), Colonists and a decent idea of where to stick our first cities. It's pretty damn difficult to get Health in this game (no luxury resources means we're relying on buildings and quests to build our supply) so anything that mitigates that is a good thing.

Pioneers is a damn useful tech because it nets you Colonists and Trade Convoys/Vessels (plus Trade Depot to get those delicious trade routes) and the earlier you're able to expand the quicker you're going to grab those awesome resources. Also, free techs. Always worth it.

Retrograde Thrusters is primarily for scouting because you gain a 5 hex radius view around the central landing tile and you get to choose from within within 3 tiles of the hex for your starting position. Very useful for a rush run, I think. Also means you can pick up on a bunch of artifact analogues on the first turn, if you're lucky.

 

It seems we have consensus on the cargo and the technology. Our teams are at work preparing the Dr Vahlen Memorial Labs for transportation, and we are fitting the ship with an array of scanners that will allow us to identify any useful subsurface resources without field research.

We still require a consensus on what skills to emphasize in the colonist selection criteria. Additionally, we will require a leader for the scouting party we will be dispatching once we make planet-fall. As I am sure you are all quite qualified for such a position, the post will go to the first to volunteer for it.

Current voting: Two votes apiece for Scientists and Artists, one for Engineers and Refugees.

 

Aristocrats because without leaders a society is worthless, lifeform scanning because it will allow us to avoid enemy concentrations and a Laboratory to jumpstart our science department.

 

The PAC was unsurprised when I informed them that we would be prioritizing the applications of those with a scientific background. It seems that we've developed a reputation. The final preparations have begun on the colony ship, which, to my overwhelming relief, has narrowly avoided being christened the SS Genitalia.

This will be our last meeting on Earth. When next we convene, much time will have passed.

---------- Post automerged at 11:21 ---------- Previous post was at 10:00 ----------



Wake up, Conclave.

Wake up and smell the ashes.



We've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's get started.

The landing was fine, as there was a clear area of grassland - or the alien equivalent - just below where we made planetfall. We were able to wake the majority of the colonists from the cryogenic pods, and we did not lose any members of the Conclave, thanks the alien stasis pods we had access to. The atmosphere isn't breathable, but we expected that. Our preparations are holding up, and many of the prefabricated structures we brought with us have already been unpacked and erected, though in the short term most of us will be living in the landing module. Our science team has run preliminary tests, and the suits we designed back on Earth are holding up fine.

Our tectonic scanner seems to be working within normal parameters. However, it seems there is nothing to detect in our immediate vicinity. We will continue to feed survey data into the sensor array as it comes in, which should help us to spot any useful materials in as-yet-unexplored territory.

The Dr Vahlen Memorial Labs have been re-established, and their preliminary work has already begun to stream in. They have rough ideas for how to overcome various logistical challenges, from trade convoys and vessels to depots to entire new colonies.

Our exploration team, lead by our brave 'volunteer' Aekiel, have surveyed the immediate area and are awaiting further orders. We can send them up or down the coast, or further inland.



Let's talk logistics.

Food is not an major concern. With the facilities we brought with us alone, we could feed our current population. With the fertility of the land our colony is built around, we could double it. But if we want to do more than that, and we do, we'll have to start venturing outside our so-far-metaphorical walls. And on that note, there are several interesting anomalies in our immediate area.

Up the coast, there is some sort of native cacti equivalent that grows a fruit our science team assures me is edible. To the southwest, there are fields of a strange tree-like mushroom infested with a silk-spinning native beetle, and our science team are excited about the industrial application of the threads. To the west are the largest native life-forms we've seen thus far - a dog-sized beetle, thankfully docile, with a hard, chitinous shell our science team is likewise excited about.

Our engineering team, finished with erecting our new home, are awaiting orders. We could expand the exploration team, build an exosuit for heavy construction to improve our immediate area, or start training and equipping a self-defence force. Alternatively, we could establish basic medical facilities for our colonists (that can discretely test the long-term effects of exposure to this world on human subjects), build a monument to the world we left behind, or begin construction on a trade depot - while there is nobody to trade with yet, our engineering team claims that a specialized warehouse district will lead to increased production from improved logistics.



Finally, our science team is requesting direction. There are currently six broad directions we can go in. Ecology, to study the native plant-life and hopefully improve our crop yield. Genetics, to track and hopefully negate any negative effects this planet may have on our citizens. Chemistry, to expand our laboratories and take measures to decrease waste. Physics, to adapt long-range weaponry to this new world. Engineering, to build a proper power source for our nascent colony. And finally, the sea to our east raises an interesting problem - navigation in an alien world. With some time from our science team, we can create starcharts and beacons to allow safe travel across the oceans of this world.



So far we seem to be alone on this world apart from a few docile insects, but I've no doubt that there are other colony ships right behind us. We have a short window of opportunity, so let's make it count.

Author's notes: The quotes from the Civilopedia are written from the perspective of someone in the far future of the game, and as such won't always fit the narrative. Suck it up. Just pretend whoever writes the dossiers has a creative streak and an odd sense of humour.

We've got three decisions to make - a general direction for our explorer to go in, what to build, and what to research. If you've got any questions ask away and I'll answer - in the future I'll preface any 'in-character' posts with the header image from this post.

Don't be afraid of making a 'wrong' decision. We're writing a story together first, playing to win second.

 

Explore: North
Production: Soldier
Research: Chemistry

Aliens in this game are mostly non-hostile; if you ignore them they'll ignore you. However, they will attack trade routes/pioneers/workers if they're unguarded and you have to kill a lot of aliens before they become hostile. So a soldier would be a good idea at this point, followed by a worker.

Chemistry is the better of the two research techs (Physics being the other) because... spoilers:

Spoiler

You get a quest early on that lets you choose between laboratories giving you more research or more energy. Energy ain't a problem for the most part and Civ has always been weighted in favour of getting as many techs as possible as soon as you can.

So I'd go for that.

Also, bets I die in the first dozen turns. On the other hand, if I do survive long enough for us to get the first Purity affinity I'll be good to go for the rest of the game.

EDIT: Also, you should always explore the difficult terrain with your Explorer. Soldiers lose way too much health to miasma if you don't.

 

I'm going to second Aekiel's post. If you need a volunteer for the self defense force, I'm your man-- Killing aliums has never seemed so fun!