History VideoGame / CivilizationBeyondEarth

* NatureVersusTechnology: The Harmony specialization represents Nature, prioritizing preserving the new planet's ecosystems, using genetic engineering to adapt humans for life in a new environment and domesticating alien lifeforms, while those with the Supremacy specialization represents technology, using robots, artificial intelligence and cybernetic upgrades to create a human race that can thrive independently of their environment.

** The quotes and choices for Purity-aligned colonies suggest a heavily Catholic bent that increasingly becomes apparent in their efforts to remember Earth, with a bit of Carl Sagan thrown in for good measure. Supremacy also takes a spiritual angle reminiscent of Christianity, albeit finding God in the machine.

* ThePromisedLand: The Purity-aligned factions views the planet as being theirs. It's even the name of their unique victory condition.

* ScavengerWorld: The player's colony starts off more-or-less as one, with initial units looking like repurposed rovers with guns strapped on or cobbled-together NASA equipment. Justified in that said colonists just arrived and are relying on whatever supplies are available. This gradually fades however as time passes and affinities come into play.

* FantasticNuke: In an interview David [=McDonough=] said ''Rising Tide'' introduces new weapons with nuke-like effects.

* ClimateChange: The trailer for the game shows the Great Pyramids of Giza being flooded as a result of climate change. The [[MegaCorp American Reclamation Corporation]] actually made its fortune by [[MeaningfulName reclaiming]] flooded low-lying territory in North America, erecting sea-walls and draining the affected areas to create massive polders for settlement and cultivation. Their institutional experience with geo-engineering and settlement development is what leads them to being a playable faction.

--> '''Vadim Kozlov:''' We have survived countless woes. Is there any nation on the planet who had to face such trials? No. [[RevolvingDoorRevolution Three revolutions in one century]], [[WorldWarWhatever four world wars raging across our lands]] – and still we survived. We stayed afloat, when [[ClimateChange the water levels rose higher than the stock market]], and the rest of the world sank. Nobody but Slavs could do it. Nobody.

* HarmonyVsDiscipline: [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Harmony is Harmony]], Supremacy is Discipline, and Purity is complicated. Harmonists want to adapt to Planet's environment and integrate fully into it using genetic engineering. Supremacists want to modify their bodies and the environment around them to suit their needs using cybernetics. Purity, at first, seems like Discipline incarnate - their entire philosophy can be summed up as "no, ''you'' change", they focus on terraforming the land around them and their units and buildings have a militaristic aesthetic, resembling modern armies and medieval warriors. However, their refusal to modify their own bodies and their love of the Earth are distinctly Harmony traits.

* UnwinnableByMistake: Certain quests can frequently break themselves thanks to the randomized nature of the requirements. For example, a quest may ask for you to build a certain building which requires proximity to a strategic resource in one specific city, but it doesn't check to make sure that resource is actually present. Sometimes you'll get lucky and be able to add the resources in with some specific late-game satellites, but you're completely out of luck if you need the algae building in one of your inland cities.

* GreyAndGrayMorality: None of the factions thus far have been portrayed as particularly good or bad, but as real nations with their own strengths and weaknesses. The same with the affinities; if you think about Purity, Harmony, and Supremacy, all have their good and bad points. It makes sense as [[NotSoDifferent all three ideologies stem from a sense of tragic loss]] - Harmony's environmentalist leanings are born out of a desire to not repeat the ecological destruction of the last Earth, Supremacy's pursuit of technological excellence stems from the anti-intellectual dark age of the post-Great Mistake world, and Purity's clinging to past Earth cultures is almost an identity crisis, a reaction to the loss of literally hundreds of years of cultural achievements.

* HybridPower: Hybrid Affinities have powerful health bonuses and generic bonuses rather than special abilities; the reward for going wide instead of deep is having an empire that can sustain a lot more cities and units that are extremely versatile in their function.

* RomanticismVersusEnlightenment: Purity is strongly Romantic, Supremacy is strongly Enlightenment, and Harmony is neutral but leans slightly towards Romantic.

--> '''Vadim Kozlov:''' We have survived countless woes. Is there any nation on the planet who had to face such trials? No. [[RevolvingDoorRevolution Three revolutions in one century]], [[WorldWarWhatever four world wars raging across our lands]] – and still we survived. We stayed afloat, when [[GlobalWarming the water levels rose higher than the stock market]], and the rest of the world sank. Nobody but Slavs could do it. Nobody.

* GlobalWarming: The trailer for the game shows the Great Pyramids of Giza being flooded as a result of climate change. The [[MegaCorp American Reclamation Corporation]] actually made its fortune by [[MeaningfulName reclaiming]] flooded low-lying territory in North America, erecting sea-walls and draining the affected areas to create massive polders for settlement and cultivation. Their institutional experience with geo-engineering and settlement development is what leads them to being a playable faction.

* GloriousMotherRussia: General Kozlov and the Slavic Federation.

--> '''Vadim Kozlov:''' We have survived countless woes. Is there any nation on the planet who had to face such trials? No. [[RevolvingDoorRevolution Three revolutions in one century]], [[WorldWarIII four world wars raging across our lands]] – and still we survived. We stayed afloat, when [[GlobalWarming the water levels rose higher than the stock market]], and the rest of the world sank. Nobody but Slavs could do it. Nobody.

* {{iPunk}}: In the ''Rising Tide'' Expansion, Purity-Supremacy units clearly channel this aesthetic.

** Ocean cities in ''Rising Tide'' can ''move''. You can't build anything while they are doing so and the bigger they are the slower they move. Still, nothing is stopping you from using them as mobile fortresses, shipyards, weapons factories and supply bases for your naval fleets and amphibious armies.
*** There's even an achievement for crushing an enemy unit with an aquatic city's move function.

* GreyAndGrayMorality: None of the factions thus far have been portrayed as particularly good or bad, but as real nations with their own strengths and weaknesses. The same with the affinities; if you think about Purity, Harmony, and Supremacy, all have their good and bad points.

* BizzarreAlienReproduction: The local wildlife come from nests created when miasma spores land in pools of xenomass. The nests use the xenomass to make more bugs.

* FlyingAircraftCarrier: The new Aquilon in ''Rising Tide'', an immense artificial and cybernetic organism that serves as the ultimate unit of the new Supremacy-Harmony hybrid affinity. Besides carrying aircraft, it's also able to bombard targets.

** GreyAndBlackMorality: Harmony-Supremacy, however, is definitely agreed by ''everyone else'' as having gone too far in their wanton pursuit of power, and, fittingly, are a sinister purple-black color.

* ActionBomb[=/=]TakingYouWithMe: A couple of Harmony-specific unit upgrades make some of their units explode and damage the enemy when they die.
* AdventureArchaeologist[=/=]BoldExplorer: Explorers, which are pretty much the Archaeologist and Scout units of ''Civ V'' combined into one streamlined package.

* FanOfThePast[=/=]BornInTheWrongCentury: How Supremacy and Harmony factions view Purity-aligned ones. As the Purity affinity takes great stock on history, mankind's cultural heritage and the memory of Earth in addition to a focus on retaining their "humanity" on an alien world. Purity ditches this angle if they hybridize with Supremacy and have a very weird take on it if combined with Harmony.

* GeniusBruiser[=/=]CulturedBadass: The Might Virtue tree is combat-focused, but it's good for ''more'' than brute force; it's great for progression too. You unlock military-related happiness bonuses for having a lot of troops, can raid aliens for science points, and, best of all, can gain several perks that vastly increase your Affinity gain. Since Affinity is the ''real'' way to improve your troops rather than science, and you need maxed-out Affinity to trigger three of the game's five victory conditions, Might is a lot more valuable than Honor was in ''Civilization V''.

* [[TheGloriousWarOfSisterlyRivalry Glorious War of Cousin Rivalry]]: As of ''Rising Tide,'' Elodie and Lena. The former expresses surprise and derision to the latter, should the player have selected INTEGR as their sponsor, when first encountering Franco-Iberia in a game, and makes direct reference to Lena as her cousin when prompting a change in diplomatic status. The Civilopedia entry for INTEGR's rise even details the ideological schism between INTEGR's Responsible Party and the traditionalists of Franco-Iberia.

* [[SpaceWhale Space]] GiantSquid: The Harmony orbital unit with the portmanteau name "Rocktopus" is actually a bit of a misnomer, since [[EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods it is closer to a jellyfish than an octopus]], but the "rock" part comes from it using floatstone in its biology, making it in effect an anti-gravity engineered lifeform. With only a small expenditure of energy, it can reach the upper atmosphere and adjust the surface of its body to selectively change its air resistance and float from one position to the next, making it the only satellite unit in the game which can actually move once launched.

* ButNotTooForeign: At least some of the leaders look or are hinted as being mixed-race, reflecting centuries of migration flows and socio-political developments. Fielding freely mixes Spanish with English when speaking (as she hails from a Mexican-influenced Texas), as does Kozlov with Polish and Russian.