Commentary on Unused and Unimplemented Game Features

[Trenacker]

I laughed out loud at the "small white rat" line.

I think the Planet penalty arises from the same idiosyncrasies that today explain why so many religiously-motivated conservatives reject anthropogenic climate change.

While, for many, it is simply a way to signal partisan allegiance and axiomatically assert their belonging to the "correct" political team as it were, it nonetheless also fits a certain kind of purely materialistic interpretation of dominion. One that says, when something is given over into your control, it is without any strings attached.

It is not that different from Morgan's thinking about the Earth. "Consumption is the point." For Miriam's followers, it's more like, "Working our will on it is the point. It's ours. We can do whatever we like with it. No obligation."

I always felt that Miriam and her followers weren't really predisposed to understand why they had to defend their own commitment to faith. In my own personal experience, people of faith do grapple with doubt, but they may also feel that they see and feel manifest evidence of God's existence each and every day, even if it doesn't satisfy the expectations of others. Yes, evangelicals devote energy to thinking about how to persuade others, but it seems to be different from the kind of persuasion they use for themselves.

[bvanevery]

I think the Planet penalty arises from the same idiosyncrasies that today explain why so many religiously-motivated conservatives reject anthropogenic climate change.

And that's pretty much the anti-Christian bigotry in a nutshell.  Like there are no Christians that are liberal, no Christian environmentalists...

it nonetheless also fits a certain kind of purely materialistic interpretation of dominion.

The Bible is a tome that can be cherry picked for almost anything one wants to say.  That's probably a big part of its cultural durability.  It's damn flexible.  Wanna kill homosexuals?  It's in there.  Wanna turn the other cheek?  It's in there.  Wanna commit genocide?  It's in there.  Down to the last goat.

And the history of the likely mistranslations is fun too.  A centuries old game of Telephone.

For Miriam's followers, it's more like, "Working our will on it is the point. It's ours. We can do whatever we like with it. No obligation."

You can paint them up like that, but it's a rather specific characterization on your part.

The game's lore, does not actually comment on what God wants done with Planet.  In fact, the entire intersectional question is completely avoided.  If the original authors had intended to deal with such matters, they would have had some Miriam vs. Deirdre dialogue.  These 2 characters completely ignore each other.  Deirdre does not have 1 line about God, and Miriam does not have 1 line about the environment.

I always felt that Miriam and her followers weren't really predisposed to understand why they had to defend their own commitment to faith.

The game actually has Miriam defending her faith left, right, and center.  God's always behind the last theorem.  Miriam's defense is she can move the goalpost forever.  She doesn't acknowledge that it's a bad defense, a pattern of self-serving argument.  She never makes the explicit comment that at the bottom of it all, the final axiom, is her faith in God.  Nothing else.  Zhakarov of course sees this as her stupidity, and humanity generally.  And as an atheist, I'm with him.

All of the original cast of 7 are arguing with someone.  Although, like radio evangelists, there's nobody actually arguing back, when they utter their great platitudes.  You can do it in your own mind, but you can't actually call in and say, "Excuse me, excuse me, Mr. Billy Graham..."  You get cut off.  On to the next caller, if there are ever any callers.  The usual format is one way sermonizing.

Or in SMAC parlance: here are my memoirs.  My Little Red Book for you to read.

[Trenacker]

And that's pretty much the anti-Christian bigotry in a nutshell.  Like there are no Christians that are liberal, no Christian environmentalists...

I disagree. Miriam's comment on the modernity--"The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress"--is actually subversive to anti-Christian stereotypes. She recognizes that the problems lie in the hearts of the user, rather than with the content per se.

If I may say so, your point seems to be that the "Christianity" of the Lord's Believers is not necessarily authoritative in any sense, and can even be considered shallow. "Christian" is a subjective term that can mean one thing to the self-described practitioner and another to their audience.

To try to clarify my point in the previous post, I think that the popular criticisms of Dominionists don't always "land" the way critics imagine. I think the malus to Planet scores for the Believers is also a case where the anti-Christian sentiment is in the eye of the beholder. To use an extreme example, if in 1860, you described somebody as supporting the institution of slavery, an abolitionist might take offense but a secessionist might affirm it loudly.

Use a milder example. Planned or unplanned, an economy can be either friendly or antagonistic to the environment. I have conceived of the Planet malus for the Lord's Believers as a reflection of the fact that they are content to prioritize human interests over those of Planet because they believe they have divine sanction to do exactly that. Planet is an object to them. In practice, it would mean that the Believers have about the same attitude toward Planet as Morgan.

You can paint them up like that, but it's a rather specific characterization on your part.

I think one of the beauties of the fiction is that it allows for that kind of speculation, although I daresay I think the Dominionist connection is blatant. It could be I've just thought more about that issue over the course of my life, so it feels familiar to me.

The game actually has Miriam defending her faith left, right, and center.  God's always behind the last theorem.  Miriam's defense is she can move the goalpost forever.  She doesn't acknowledge that it's a bad defense, a pattern of self-serving argument.  She never makes the explicit comment that at the bottom of it all, the final axiom, is her faith in God.  Nothing else.  Zhakarov of course sees this as her stupidity, and humanity generally.  And as an atheist, I'm with him.

All of the original cast of 7 are arguing with someone.  Although, like radio evangelists, there's nobody actually arguing back, when they utter their great platitudes.  You can do it in your own mind, but you can't actually call in and say, "Excuse me, excuse me, Mr. Billy Graham..."  You get cut off.  On to the next caller, if there are ever any callers.  The usual format is one way sermonizing.

Or in SMAC parlance: here are my memoirs.  My Little Red Book for you to read.

I agree that the faction leaders dialogue with each other and engage in apologia generally. However, I want to be clear that I don't think this means Miriam is insecure about her faith. I also think the practice of apologia isn't always reflective of what explains the speaker's own faith.

[bvanevery]

I disagree. Miriam's comment on the modernity--"The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress"--is actually subversive to anti-Christian stereotypes.

Again, Miriam is written in 2 different ways, possibly by 2 different authors, at 2 different points in the game's production, in 2 different sections of the game's content.  The cool nuanced way, and the anti-Christian bigoted way.  I'm in favor of all the material she was given in the quotes and videos.

[MysticWind]

A lot of the faction.txt text is borderline parody material that leans hard on caricatures of all of the factions, not just the Believers. And a lot of it is ignored by fandom- who takes seriously diplo Deidre's threat of siccing her "Environmental Police" on her enemies? Stuff like "the Spartan Paramilitary Legion" is poorly-named and doesn't exist anywhere else in the lore.

I've wanted to make a thread either here or on the corresponding subreddit about "stuff in the game that everyone kind of ignores", and diplo text would be one aspect. The major one I had in mind is how AC just has really not-hard sci-fi events like transdimensional portals, units getting cloned, supply pods triggering earthquakes. All of which are fun and provide flavor in-game, but lore-wise they're pretty silly and so no one really talks about them, since they're just random events.

[EmpathCrawler]

Yeah that's the "ludonarrative dissonance" that had a hot minute a few years ago in game commentary. According to gameplay, Planet is divided between 7 more or less equal and independent factions. According to lore, though, everyone is nominally under the Council and they pay lip service to some of the original colonization plans. All of the factions' armies, except Lal's I suppose, are paramilitary forces with silly names like Environmental Police.

[MysticWind]

I've seen the interpretation that the factions are nominally part of a mission that has continued and aren't separate sovereign political entities in fandom, but I actually don't think the game supports that interpretation very much. I think the lore and the gameplay both indicate that after contact has been reestablished between all seven factions, they decide to re-create the United Nations under the Planetary Council and have their own set of space international laws, where they pay lip service to the original mission as you say but they still retain fierce independence and autonomy within their factions, except in the case of human rights atrocities such as nerve stapling.

[EmpathCrawler]

The reason I err towards that interpretation is because factions (which is a word that implies a smaller group that's part of a larger whole) elect a "planetary governor" which sounds like what they were supposed to do, and that diplomatic language avoids words like alliance or war (though there is the "treaty" of friendship). Plus as I said factions have funny names for their militaries. It also behooves factions to pretend that the original plan is in effect when they can use it to collectively bully a faction when it gets a little too out of line (the dreaded Genetic Inspectors).

But I freely admit it's what I extrapolate for the game to make sense to me. I don't think there are many "wrong" interpretations.

[bvanevery]

It's just a bunch of dissonance.  I refuse to utter the mouthful "vendetta" when I'm writing up After Action Reports.  I'm not writing about the Italian mob.  Factions declare war.

If I were writing a clean slate 4X TBS (which nominally I am; 1st worrying about graphics stuff) I don't think I'd call these groups of people "factions".  But, Firaxis had the right idea of not calling them Nations either.  Hmm, what the heck would I call them?

Most of them are pretty close to being political parties or regimes.  Many are movements, being concerned with ideology.  None of these are great names / terms though.

'Bloc' and 'sect' are terms with some applicability.  The Believers and the Cult of Planet are definitely sects, and possibly so is the Hive.  Maybe even the Cybernetic Consciousness.

Morgan runs a corporation.  Roze runs an underground.  The Data Angels have never made sense as a faction that builds cities and holds territory.  They should be embedded in all factions.

[MysticWind]

They could be called "polities" or "sovereignties" but that's probably too dry and technical.

Funnily enough, "civilization" would be very apt, but of course the games are meant to be a departure from the original Civ series, so you can't just recycle that term in space. But "faction" also makes sense because unlike civilizations in Civ, they were descended from one common mission, that broke apart.

I think if you wanted to be specific and descriptive, something like "cause" or "movement" would go well with the ideological nature of the SMAC factions. But that doesn't sound very cool. At the very least, it's all better than the "sponsors" of Civ Beyond Earth, which are just so dull in both name and nature.

[bvanevery]

I could call them "cultures", but that would beg questions as to why cultures are immutable and exclusionary.

[Trenacker]

I don't think there are many "wrong" interpretations.

Agreed. One of the things that makes Alpha Centauri so great is how robustly it stands up to different avenues of dramatic and philosophical critique.

It's just a bunch of dissonance.  I refuse to utter the mouthful "vendetta" when I'm writing up After Action Reports.  I'm not writing about the Italian mob.  Factions declare war.

I assumed that "vendetta" was inspired by the kanly of Dune. Perhaps Reynolds felt it would seem more personal if the term for war implied a transcendence of the political to the personal.

If I were writing a clean slate 4X TBS (which nominally I am; 1st worrying about graphics stuff) I don't think I'd call these groups of people "factions".  But, Firaxis had the right idea of not calling them Nations either.  Hmm, what the heck would I call them?

One of the original players in my game coined the term "tribe" for his faction. The Human Tribe. They were a bunch of "anti-disassociationalists." In short, people who wanted to build societies that relied more on direct interaction between people in familial and geographic proximity, not commonalities of politics or other, more intangible interests.

Most of them are pretty close to being political parties or regimes.  Many are movements, being concerned with ideology.  None of these are great names / terms though.

Agreed. I think "movements" works to a point, but the factions don't scruple to contain dissenters. In the Hive, your reward for dissent is the nerve staple, not exile.

'Bloc' and 'sect' are terms with some applicability.  The Believers and the Cult of Planet are definitely sects, and possibly so is the Hive.  Maybe even the Cybernetic Consciousness.

I'm not sure the Hive is united by shared beliefs so much as shared misfortune.

The Hive is probably the hardest faction to subvert. Played straight, Yang is a monster. Slightly subverted, he's a potentially Platonic despot. But totally subverted, he's the kind of ruler who demands a strict accounting from his disciples--a kind of governing elite who are held to a higher standard in order to model proper behavior for everyone else, whom Yang genuinely supposes he is helping to survive the rigors of life on Planet.

This kind of thinking is why I like to ask, "Why does the leader think civilization on Earth failed?" Each one indisputable has a different story.

Miriam presumably thinks that we strayed from the path of righteousness, whatever that may mean. It could be a fairly pedestrian decline in church membership, a darker reference to frustrations about thwarted theocracy, or something else.

Yang, I guess, would say that humans failed to place the good of the many ahead of the good of a few. That, or we "allowed" ourselves to be ruled by unsuitable people.

Morgan thinks we did nothing wrong. We just ate our way to the bottom of the buffet salver.

Zakharov would perhaps feel that we did not sufficiently exploit all the literal and figurative tools in our intellectual arsenal to solve our problems, perhaps because we let pesky ethics get in the way. In my retelling, Zakharov blames liberal democracy for promoting tolerance of what he calls "folkways." In other words, we "freedom convoyed" our way to practical extinction.

Santiago must figure most people chose the path of least resistance and didn't fight for what mattered.

Lal's quotations indicate, ironically, that we fell prey to dictatorship after allowing ourselves to become the victims of censorship. That's quite a specific fate for a guy who is otherwise generically the "democracy" selection. Freedom of expression and obsession with bureaucratic forms aren't one and the same.

[MysticWind]

Come to think of it, "society" would probably be a great replacement for factions. Especially in the early years, the colonists are refugees forming hardscrabble frontier societies. And societies imply values, which go hand-in-hand with the factions' ideologies.

The Hive is probably the hardest faction to subvert. Played straight, Yang is a monster. Slightly subverted, he's a potentially Platonic despot. But totally subverted, he's the kind of ruler who demands a strict accounting from his disciples--a kind of governing elite who are held to a higher standard in order to model proper behavior for everyone else, whom Yang genuinely supposes he is helping to survive the rigors of life on Planet.

I think there's more interpretations to be made there. Fanon considers him to be inspired by Legalism- well then, he could be a 21st century Planetary version of any of imperial China's emperors, from Qin Shi Huangdi on. None of those rulers, even as despotic as they could, did everything themselves. (Though as a twist, one could imagine a far-future tech Yang who entrusts the administration of the Hive to cybernetic A.I. copies of himself- or actual biological clones. Ironically, the SMAC spiritual successor and knock-off/clone Pandora: First Contact did that with their Hive xerox.)

Alternatively, the seminal AC fanfic novella "Joe" by Alinestra Covelia of the olde Apolyton forums depicts an authoritarian yet dynamic Hive, an economic powerhouse and internally sound. Eerily the story, which was written in the year 2000, in some ways portrays the Hive in ways not dissimilar from the modern day PRC, complete with state capitalism and use of soft power to woo other factions. Yang even pals around with Zakharov, playing chess and go remotely. In some ways, it's the most grounded approach of writing the Hive as a working society, in that the totalitarianism is mitigated by high standards of living and patriotism against external foes. So a Hive that loses its communal austerity over time, and where Yang is a political chessmaster who uses subtlety and intense espionage to stymie his foes. Even Michael Ely's novels, which are sort of reductive in its characterizations, does portray Yang as shrewd and not simply a cult leader megalomaniac.

Miriam presumably thinks that we strayed from the path of righteousness, whatever that may mean. It could be a fairly pedestrian decline in church membership, a darker reference to frustrations about thwarted theocracy, or something else.

I'm struck by how in Michael Ely's "Journey to Centauri" novella he had Miriam be the sole vote in favor of not dissolving the mission, besides Lal. Her faith doesn't view the U.N. as the antichrist's One World Nation, at least. My read of that novella is that Planetfall was particularly traumatizing for her, leading to an intense spiritual awakening and whatever fanaticism she gets into on Chiron has a lot to do with that. I think also her focus on the faith of her father and country is because everyone else, Lal aside, pretty much abandoned the mission when the going got tough.

Yang, I guess, would say that humans failed to place the good of the many ahead of the good of a few. That, or we "allowed" ourselves to be ruled by unsuitable people.

That sounds about right. My pet theory is based on the Firaxis website bio, Yang also wanted to bring back the imperial-era Confucian system and ways of looking at the world, as he personally served as the bodyguard of a modern day emperor.

Morgan thinks we did nothing wrong. We just ate our way to the bottom of the buffet salver.

Yeah, not much to add to that. He reduces all of life to economic interactions, and as he's such a big fan of economic games, human life must perpetuate so there may be an economy.

Zakharov would perhaps feel that we did not sufficiently exploit all the literal and figurative tools in our intellectual arsenal to solve our problems, perhaps because we let pesky ethics get in the way. In my retelling, Zakharov blames liberal democracy for promoting tolerance of what he calls "folkways." In other words, we "freedom convoyed" our way to practical extinction.

Ely does a particularly good job incorporating that characterization into the opening novella's story when he has Zakharov insist on restarting the reactor or whatever over Garland and the others' objections, even when it may threaten the integrity of the ship itself.

Santiago must figure most people chose the path of least resistance and didn't fight for what mattered.

She was basically a Social Darwinian and it sounded like the Spartans believed that they were the only ones apex predator enough to survive the challenges that laid before humanity. So the people who messed up earth, both the leaders and the masses, were weak sheep who should've been led, and possibly culled, by her wolves.

Lal's quotations indicate, ironically, that we fell prey to dictatorship after allowing ourselves to become the victims of censorship. That's quite a specific fate for a guy who is otherwise generically the "democracy" selection. Freedom of expression and obsession with bureaucratic forms aren't one and the same.

Probably a legacy of earlier iterations of the game when Brother Lal led the Keepers of Wisdom and had a more science-oriented faction. No idea how they were going to manage that, since Yang's Labyrinth also had a science bent, never mind Saratov's Archons.

[Trenacker]

Come to think of it, "society" would probably be a great replacement for factions. Especially in the early years, the colonists are refugees forming hardscrabble frontier societies. And societies imply values, which go hand-in-hand with the factions' ideologies.

It's a good term. Societies are united not only by shared values, but common interests, and members of a society may compete amongst themselves for resources and influence.

I think there's more interpretations to be made there. Fanon considers him to be inspired by Legalism- well then, he could be a 21st century Planetary version of any of imperial China's emperors, from Qin Shi Huangdi on. None of those rulers, even as despotic as they could, did everything themselves. (Though as a twist, one could imagine a far-future tech Yang who entrusts the administration of the Hive to cybernetic A.I. copies of himself- or actual biological clones. Ironically, the SMAC spiritual successor and knock-off/clone Pandora: First Contact did that with their Hive xerox.)

I have read the theory that links Yang to Chinese Legalism. I've incorporated it into my own fiction. Here is some writing of mine from November 2018: "Yang propounds a philosophy emphasizing the Three Pillars: 法 (Fa), or law, meaning that the law is known, and obeyed because systematically enforced; 術 (Shu), or method, whereby the ruler holds himself apart from society and applies "special tactics and secrets" to obscure his motivations, reducing the opportunity for confidants to influence him inappropriately; and 勢 (Shi), or legitimacy, which focuses on drawing distinctions between the excellence of the ruler and the flaws of the man who rules.​"

It is just possible to see this Yang as possessing something that seems like humility. Trying to work out how to foster insight, talent, virtue, reserve, discernment... all the many ingredients a successful leader might need.

Such a description even creates a basis for Lal to engage with other factions that focus on exploration of the self. What could Colonel Corazon Santiago teach him about fortitude? What could Factor Roshann Cobb or Dr. Aleigha Cohen tell him about the true wellsprings of creativity?

The "Clone Yangs" idea certainly aligns with the presentation found in both the game and Yang's own Firaxis biography. In my fiction, Director Tamineh Pahlavi and her Human Ascendancy make off with Mission's genetic index and seed banks. After Planetfall, they turn their efforts to growing Neosapien in a test tube and establishing a geniocratic colony.

I'm struck by how in Michael Ely's "Journey to Centauri" novella he had Miriam be the sole vote in favor of not dissolving the mission, besides Lal. Her faith doesn't view the U.N. as the antichrist's One World Nation, at least. My read of that novella is that Planetfall was particularly traumatizing for her, leading to an intense spiritual awakening and whatever fanaticism she gets into on Chiron has a lot to do with that. I think also her focus on the faith of her father and country is because everyone else, Lal aside, pretty much abandoned the mission when the going got tough.

I imagine a high-minded Miriam, someone who fought back against the most regressive manifestations of religion in politics on Earth. During the Unity Crisis, I have tended to think of her as one of the few willing to take wounded aboard her Landing Pods. This merciful impulse means that her faction is among the most populous at Planetfall, but also in urgent need of medicines, food, and other supplies she simply does not have. Hence the tendency of her flock to raid. Miriam considers all Unity survivors to be among the Elect--a singular group of people who enjoy God's favor, and to whom she has been enjoined to minister.

That sounds about right. My pet theory is based on the Firaxis website bio, Yang also wanted to bring back the imperial-era Confucian system and ways of looking at the world, as he personally served as the bodyguard of a modern day emperor.

I can see Yang instituting a cycle of regular exams to identify potential Talents.

Yeah, not much to add to that. He reduces all of life to economic interactions, and as he's such a big fan of economic games, human life must perpetuate so there may be an economy.

I find Morgan fairly one-dimensional. In my lore, he was born a colonial subject and became an outlaw and sometime-collaborator before his material success allowed him to flout the color line. In his mind, wealth is an indispensable means of self-actualization.

Ely does a particularly good job incorporating that characterization into the opening novella's story when he has Zakharov insist on restarting the reactor or whatever over Garland and the others' objections, even when it may threaten the integrity of the ship itself.

Zakharov is most interesting to me as a villain. A careerist "thruster" with a history of getting subordinates killed to meet quotas. A narcissist who is unable to trust. A man terrified of his own mortality who insists that the reactors must be repaired so that he needn't sacrifice himself for those not yet awake. He later disobeys orders to abandon the compromised reactor compartments and retrieves engineers in preference to damage controllers. He is ultimately the person most responsible, after Santiago, for things going pear-shaped.

A cleaned-up excerpt from my megagame from the section titled, "Planetfall."

The patchwork crew proved unequal to their new task. Damage control operations began almost at once under the supervision of Unity's Executive Officer, General Francisco d'Almeida, clearing the way for Chief Engineer Prokhor Zakharov's technicians to assess the reactor spaces. They were disrupted by multiple groups of armed stowaways who proceeded to engage in a shooting war between not only themselves, but the mainline crew. One of the ringleaders, Colonel Corazón Santiago, read aloud a manifesto over the ship's internal address system, and was able to secure for herself a face-to-face meeting with Captain Garland. Thirty-six hours later, he was dead at the hand of an unknown assailant.

The surviving leaders fell into rounds of recrimination. Without extraordinary measures to correct drift, Unity would overshoot Chiron, be forced into a long elliptical orbit, and return only after a transit of eighty-four years. All the crew now-awakened would either need to re-enter cold sleep, a deadly-dangerous proposition, or attempt emergency landing on the world below with whatever diminished quantities of supplies they could reach in the chaos. Zakharov, whose advanced age greatly reduced the likelihood of survival in either contingency, insisted that it was still possible for his operators to save the ship and permit an ordinary landing with much of the cargo intact, but other division heads protested that their personnel were too disorganized, or else too few in number, to provide him with the necessary support.

In the end, every hand turned to sabotage. It wasn't enough that Santiago's brutes opened fire on the same people trying to seal rents in the hull. Nor that Jean-Baptiste Keller's followers used the cover of chaos to avenge themselves on Holnists and U.N. Marines alike. Zakharov, too, bitterly assailed his peers and refused them the benefit of his precious engineers. Deirdre Skye, the mission's head Xenobiologist, diverted first responders away from engineer tasks to reinforce the structural integrity of the ship's remaining greenhouses. Records show that Francisco d'Almeida awakened 400 more personnel than was ordered, none of them with the firefighting or heavy rescue billets relevant to the present danger, but all of them combat-trained. Aleigha Cohen oversaw the nerve-stapling of hundreds of newly-awakened prisoners in the ship's forward detention blocks. Leaving her post in an overcrowded surgery, Tamineh Pahlavi ventured into the heart of the ship and, with a few determined followers, made off with the genetic legacy of Earth--an index of every organism alive on Earth, and some already extinct at Mission Launch. Citing her authority under U.N. protocol, Miriam Godwinson, whom the ship's computer still flagged as deceased, refused to force crew members in her care to breach irradiated compartments to make crucial repairs. Finding the situation hopeless, d'Almeida, acting as Garland's successor, gave the order for each leader to gather those crew still ambulatory and abandon ship. In his last official act as a United Nations representative, he unilaterally declared the Mission Charter dissolved.

She was basically a Social Darwinian and it sounded like the Spartans believed that they were the only ones apex predator enough to survive the challenges that laid before humanity. So the people who messed up earth, both the leaders and the masses, were weak sheep who should've been led, and possibly culled, by her wolves.

I imagine that Santiago actually wishes for the sheep to rise to the occasion. In my fiction, she infiltrates the Unity crew because she feels deeply aggrieved about being excluded. To do this, she and her "hypersurvivalists" make common cause with the Holnist movement. The Holnists are the dregs of humanity, hooligans and cranks who dress up their worst impulses with some low-rent Nietzsche.

Probably a legacy of earlier iterations of the game when Brother Lal led the Keepers of Wisdom and had a more science-oriented faction. No idea how they were going to manage that, since Yang's Labyrinth also had a science bent, never mind Saratov's Archons.

I've never heard of that.

I got to ask a question of Brian Reynolds, once. I inquired if any factions were left on the cutting room floor, and he said no. Where can I learn more about the earlier iterations of the game?

I bought Sid Meier's autobiography hoping for insight, but it had only a passing mention of Alpha Centauri.

[EmpathCrawler]

There are a few scattered references in some of the graphic files of the original faction concepts if you look for them. There's some old beta or concept art here: https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=media;sa=album;in=11