Book 1: In 2095 A.D., the US launched the first Colony Ship, headed for Centaurus: a planet in Alpha Centauri's habitable zone. The ultimate space race had been won. 40,000 Americans would arrive in ten years and found the first human colony outside our system, all for America. But in 2100, the ship vanished. The "Lost Colony" was never found.
6000 years later, the colonists found a way home from the system the accident sent them to: one of four human nations forged from the survivors of the crash had opened the EarthGate, giving them control over contact with Earth, which they visited immediately, only to find something had beaten them to the cradle of humanity and had wiped all traces of humanity from its surface,
(The Saga now has it's own group! You can find it here! The forums has information on the details of the Alternate Universe, and anyone can join. You can only contribute if you're ranked higher than user, though.
A crossover between Sid Meier's Civilization II: Test of Time's Scifi mode (it's a really awesome experience for those of you who haven't played it. Plus, Scifi mode is already a crossover between Civ and Master of Orion!) and The Conversion Bureau! Earth fell to ponification in 8080 A.D., only twenty years before the Lost Colony opened the gateway home. This was going to be a single fic, but due to a suggestion from Safhell, who preread the chapters I have at the time of posting this, it's being split into a saga! This first story is the introduction, and from there, the story will split into multiple paths following different characters and situations during the ensuing conflict until a conclusion fic is added to end the saga with the grand finale! (If you guys don't like the idea of it being a saga instead of a standalone, let me know, and if enough of you are against the saga idea, I'll just merge them all into this fic).
Please leave constructive criticism for anything I could do better, for I know this fic is far from perfect. Just remember that a lot of things use the mindset present in all Sid Meier's Civilization games, so logic is a bit skewed at times when compared to how things work in the real world (such as the colony ship being all citizens of the nation that launched it and not multinational. It's just how Sid designed the games).
Right I hope them orbital platforms are anything like the MAC cannons from halo
And I SEVERELY hope the pony's get their average intelligence in these stories
If they take the vessel I severely hope that they rant about salvation and shit
Fucking humanity!
I love it you humans!
Yee! Go humans!
6699839 Sorry to burst your bubble, but the orbiting platforms around Funestis are just that: Platforms. They were left behind by an empire that ruled Funestis long ago, and the humans and klackons (and by extension, the Proteans) just use them as extra land to build cities on. That, and they perform experiments up there that wouldn't work on Funestis. They have no military use unless a city built on one mass produces military units. The platforms themselves are harmless and unable to be weaponized.
Im pretty sure human technology in 8000s would pretty much steamroll everything in existance, even humans could have just started conducting interdimensional colonies at this time. But then again, the multiverse has infinite possibilities so its likely thay humanity screwed itself over before thr ponies took over
Welp, the ponies are going to get their shit kicked in. I just hope it's not another Murica Fuck Yeah fic. Humanity Fuck Yeah is more like it so far at least.
6700027 The US might be the mother nation of the colonists, but they want to give their gifts to all of Earth. They just wanted to start with the US because all of their ancestors were Americans. They'd give the gifts of their knowledge to the rest of Earth after giving it to the US first, so America is their first priority. Not their only one.
Can there be robots in this? Like actual intelligent robots?
6700101 There already are sapient robots thanks to the technology of Adaptive Automata. They have full citizenship, enjoy the same rights as Proteans, and even have their own offspring by constructing the generation to follow after them and making them superior to the current generation. It's all in the Civilopedia for Scifi mode. Sadly, it seems none of the robots are actually in the military, but maybe that's because they never outfitted their offspring for war, seeing as all of the units are either humans, klackons, or Proteans. Or genetically created beasts of war. You'll see. The starting story doesn't touch on the robots of the Lalande 21185 system, but I plan on involving them in one of the parts to this saga.
...... Good Lord. Equestria can only barely win again Earth in modern times and you just thrown them against planet who can go FULL VON NEUMANN SWARM and lot more.
6700131 Awesome.
would be funny if someone did a starship troopers crossover tcb
6700420 Which Starship Troopers? The books or the movies?
Curious. I'm interesting. I wonder which nations are able to set up colonies on the Moon and Mars, the latter you hinted are able to perform some strikes. So the "Pink Energy Field" can only affect things on the surface, or behind sufficiently thick structures, I can definitely see Cheyenne Mountain, Swiss Alps, Alpine, Kilmanjaro and the Urals.
6700608 Hello interesting, I'm dad.
Hmm. I shall place this in a safe place, and will read it in a bit. Here's to hoping you've exceeded my expectations!
6700466 either or. still starship troopers. movies would be easier to find than the books also they are really deep when you look into it and only 1 guy on the set is in on the whole joke the first movie was.
I love it when this happens, immunity for the win
6701560 I love the Total Immunity technology in Scifi mode. This would've been harder to write without it existing. It does lower the intelligence of the individual slightly, but given how researching it had no impact on researching more technologies, I'd put the reduction at about one millionth of one percent.
Princess Birthright seems to be the epitome of classic Newfoals.
Xenophobic, speciesist and incredibly immature.
I had to admit, Chimeron dan Bohr mocking Princess Birthright was hilarious.
Also, I liked how you hinted the Princess Celestia was corrupted by dark magic in the earlier chapter.
6701738 Thank you. I really enjoyed writing that scene, so I'm glad you thought it was funny. And nice job catching my hint in the previous chapter! Kudos to you! Have a cookie!
I say, the Speed Demons are my fave beasts now, until I find something even better in this arsenal. They remind me of Manglers.
orig13.deviantart.net/0749/f/2010/214/9/7/motivational_poster__ia__blue_by_whitefoxkitsune.jpg
6701993 I wish I could give you a picture of a Speed Demon, but the units in Civ II all use 8-bit graphics that try to look 3D by how little you can zoom in. But I can tell you some cool things about them:
1) They can survive on all 4 maps, for though they need to breathe on Funestis, they actually can seal all parts of their body that would allow air to escape and produce their own internal oxygen supply.
2) In Civ, ground units pretty much never have more than 3 moves. That privilege is usually saved for sea and air units. Speed Demons don't give a crap about that rule and have 5 moves per turn, and treat all squares as roaded (a move on a tile with a road counts as 1/3 of a move), so they really have a whopping 15 moves!
3) Their attack power's not that great, but they have 5 defense and their defense is doubled when attacked by a flying unit. Speed Demons are great scouts, and they are great for quick marches into enemy territory by having them move 14 squares, then just fortify them when they have 1/3 of a move left, making their defense even higher. They are an incredible endgame unit.
6702104 Yeah, I can see that they're a badass ingame unit.
6700647 LOL! I didn't see that mistake!
6699886 damn
Ok then I'm cool with that...
Still hoping to see humanity open a can of whoopass...
what about the humans from mars?
6705002 Oh, we'll get to them. Just not in the opening fic. They'll play a role in some future installments, though.
Also, the Clerisy don't know about the colonies on the Moon and on Mars yet.
6700012 Well, given how Sid made Civ work, India probably started a nuclear war at some point during the six thousand years (Gandhi's obsession with stockpiling nukes and firing them at everyone without a care in the world started as a bug in Civ I from an underflow error that carried over into Civ II, but starting with Civ III, Sid decided to make it an official intended part of the code because of all the jokes Civ fans made about Gandhi and nukes (for example, "Nuclear Gandhi" is a meme)), so that probably slowed things down a bit. The Civilization Bronies group even has a fic where Civ's Gandhi has a chat with Celestia about how to be a good leader, and one of the things he says makes a good leader is "mutually assured destruction". I'm not kidding.
I love reading TCB ponies getting their asses kicked.
I have only one question really. The disappeared colonists.....they modified themselves genetically and made a new species of humans? That's...pretty cool actually. Somewhat hard to wrap my head around....but cool nevertheless.
6711574 I wish I could take credit for the idea, but I can't. It's all thanks to the genius of Sid Meier and whoever the guys are that made Master of Orion working together to make a crossover masterpiece between the two games. Most who play the Scifi mode never realize that the non-humans are klackons from Master of Orion because the Civilopedia has the humans call them non-humans and whenever the Civilopedia is written from the klackon point of view, they cleverly avoid ever mentioning Kholdan by name, or even naming their own race. It's thanks to others that I found out, because they looked at the game.txt file for Scifi mode and found that it mentioned Master of Orion and its copyright, then realized that there's only one race of bug people in MoO: the klackons.
Anyway, if the Proteans ever appeared in Master of Orion, they'd make the game extremely unfair, because the human empire and the klackon empire are the two easiest empires to use to beat the game. Having the advantages of both would just be totally unfair. But here we have the Proteans who are a combination of both, making them incredibly cheap by the standards of Master of Orion, but only made fair because every nation (except the Barbarians, but they're not a real nation) can become Proteans by gaining the technology for it, evening the playing field.
(Ironically, though, the klackons never invented the wheel on Kholdan. They only discover the idea of "circular supports" from observing the human colonists. They used a sledge system back on Kholdan, and the klackons are actually very surprised they never thought of such a simple thing as "circular supports", because to them, it seems like something that any race would naturally develop in the very early stages of establishing a civilized society.)
Hmm... Pretty good.
The grammar is solid and the prose and pacing is good as well.
My biggest suggestion is to describe what the aliens look like. I had to go to a separate resource to find out what a Klackon is -- and that breaks my flow in reading the story.
Finally, most science fiction authors capitalize the names of sapient species but that's just a personal preference thing.
6712668 Huh. I thought I'd given a brief description of klackons in chapter 1. (Didn't I say that they were ant-like humanoids or something near the very beginning?) As for why I don't capitalize "klackon"... Have you ever seen anyone capitalize "human"? Even in science fiction? The term "human" isn't capitalized anywhere in the Civilopedia, so I decided to treat the term "klackon" the same, since the Civilopedia never directly says they're klackons (but for anyone who's played Master of Orion and read the game.txt file for Scifi mode, it's freaking obvious). I only capitalize "Protean" because the Civilopedia capitalizes it every time it uses the term, mainly to differentiate its use as a noun from its real life use as an adjective.
6712668 Double-checked Chapter 1, and I did indeed give a description of them: "ant-like humanoids who called themselves 'klackons'". There's not much else I can think of to describe them as a whole, but I can describe an individual klackon quite well to set them apart from the others. I'll start doing that when klackons actually get a role (or at least, Proteans of klackon descent. They'll usually have default forms resembling their ancestors, just as the Proteans of human descent generally have a human default appearance).
6712717, actually, yes I have.
David Weber does so.
6712868 Huh. Well, I've never seen anyone do it, and Sid doesn't in Scifi mode, so I thought it'd be weird to capitalize "klackon" but not "human". I wanted to try to follow the Civilopedia as much as I can.
I'm sorry, but after reading this story's first chapter, it is not in line with what we are accepting in the Conversion Bureau group at this time, so it has been removed.
6713407 *sigh* Very well. Have it your way.
6713407 Still, you should've at least read all three chapters instead of just judging it on the first. That's incredibly unfair, uninformed, and biased.
6713492 As a matter of fact, I did, on the off-chance hope that the story wouldn't go the curb-stomp route, or continue with the mindless newfoals, or the overplayed Tyrant Celestia. Sadly, they only reinforced my decision. Now, because I strongly dislike it when it happens in mine, I'm done with the discussion in your story's comments, as it has nothing to do with the story.
Can someone GIVE me a image from protheans
6715744 Hard to give an image of what a Protean looks like. They normally look just like a human or klackon (which in turn looks like an ant person), but they can take any form they want (with some limitations). So, it all depends on what they want to look like, really.
EDIT: simply put, a Protean's default form depends on the forms of their parents at the time of conception. (Unless they were artificially evolved into one, not born one. In that case, their default form is whatever they looked like before the "DNA upgrade".) Generally, Proteans try to keep their children resembling themselves and their ancestors, so it's not very common for the default form for a Protean to look like something that is neither human nor klackon. Generally, their external anatomy is exactly the same as a human being or a klackon, and the only true difference is at the cellular level.
One thing. Write out swear words. Don't censor them.
If you really have a problem with swearing, just hint at it in the narration by mentioning something like "a profanity laced tirade".
That said, I do see things significantly heating up. And who knows, Dark Celestia might have some other tricks hiding somewhere.
6719433 Good point. Your advice has been taken, and I replaced it with the implication of a string of profanities.
It's a bit funny. Assuming that sutch anachronic thing like U.S.A would be at ANY SHAPE OR FROM even around fater 6k years is just to funny.
6719506 Civ mentality: nations don't just up and disappear like that. Remember: Civ crossover. Besides, the U.S. is far more stable than you're giving them credit for. Either way, remember: Civ mentality. Nations don't ever disappear until someone else takes them out. Period. Besides, I didn't want to have to come up with names for a bunch of new nations, and there's no way I'd presume the bullcrap of a united Earth with all nations willingly dissolving their governments like they did in Star Trek. That's a bunch of baloney, especially with a Civ mentality, where even your "friends" are still your rivals, for only one nation can win the game, so dissolving your nation pretty much would count as a loss. Plus, it's a very unpatriotic move for any nation to do that, and that wouldn't sit well with people who love their nation's specific unique culture and history.
No. I believe that at some point, the U.N. will collapse under the weight of its own corruption, instead. And the U.S. has enough armed forces to hold off the forces of every other country combined because of certain advantages its presidents and other leaders came up with. A study was actually performed and determined that even if a "United nations of Evil" formed and every nation on the planet united against the U.S., the U.S. would manage to survive and repel the whole world until they gave up and dissolved the "Anti-American Alliance". Thanks to the Civ mentality of this fic, I'm sorry to say, but it'd be more likely for the U.S.A. to have evolved into the U.S.E. by engulfing every nation with their superior armed forces (even though the U.S. armed forces are mainly meant for defense to make the States virtually impenetrable. Example: almost all cruise missiles in every nation's arsenal use American technology with a very cleverly hidden kill switch encrypted in the code. They launch any of them at the States, 99.9% of them will fail and stop working. The same is true for a lot of other military devices of American origin. Unless it has no computational systems whatsoever, its got a kill switch, so in many cases, all the U.S. has to do is shut down all military devices of American origin except for those owned by the States, and the whole world would be crippled. That, and all surveillance satellites belong to the U.S. and only get their info to other nations through sending it to the U.S., then sending it to the other nations through the Internet. the U.S. has the ability to disconnect itself from the global Internet and maintain a U.S.-only Internet. If this was done, every other nation's military surveillance would go dark, with the States being the only ones with access to such privileges, granting a huge advantage. Also, only the U.S. has the know-how for the designs of those satellites, so it'd take quite a while for any nation to get the surveillance back up. And in that time, if the States so chose, they could conquer the entire planet just by blinding them. Without these essential systems, not even nukes can find their targets, for even they rely on these systems to guide the missile. So, if the U.S. disconnects itself from the Global net, the U.S. would cripple every military on the planet except their own. Also, in the case of an invasion of U.S. soil, the interstate system was designed for military strategy to make defending the States from an actual invasion a piece of cake. Sorry, but as long as the mentality of this crossover is maintained, it's impossible for the U.S. to not still be around, because in Civ, nations don't simply collapse and vanish. They have to be conquered, instead, and America's defenses are too perfect. Over the course of 6k years, they'd just make it more and more airtight. That's why they were the last to fall. The States are built to resist military invasions of all kinds.
EDIT: Strange that you find it funny that the U.S. would still be around, but have no problem with Australia also still being around. I sense a bit of bias, here.
6719433 Oh, and as for Corrupted Celestia, just wait until Saturday. It's mainly a world-building chapter for both sides, but I'm sure quite a few people will be floored by Chapter 5's content.
6719506 And yet, you're perfectly fine with Australia still being around, and don't find it funny, strange, or impossible to believe. Hmm... Anti-American bias, perhaps? If one nation couldn't survive the 6k years, then why would any of them survive it? What makes Australia allowed to last 6k years in your book, but not the States? In Sid Meier's Civilization, no matter the game, a nation doesn't disappear until they are conquered/have all their cites destroyed. By an outside force. Once again, I'm taking as many rules of the Civ games as I can , and I'm applying all the ones I want to apply to the fic. And in Civ, any nation that doesn't fall to another always lasts 6k+ years, anyway, since the game automatically ends in the 21st century if no one has achieved any victory conditions yet, and it starts in 4000 B.C. for everyone. Every nation on Earth in this fic was founded at the time they were founded in real life, but here, time alone can't cause a country to vanish. (Even after the game automatically ends in Civ, you can continue playing (Except in Revolution, for some stupid reason). Your score just will no longer increase, and the "winner" will just have been whoever had the highest score when the end date is reached. After that, if you continue playing, no country suddenly falls into oblivion because of passing times. They can last for tens of thousands of years if you can manage to get the game to last that long without everyone conquering each other.)
If you don't like this idea, take it up with Sid Meier, not me. It's his game, not mine. His name's in the title of every flipping version of the game, for Pete's sake! The idea that any country can last that long is his idea, and I'm just using it. Take it up with Sid if you think it needs to meet your personal definition of "realistic". Besides, this is a story with magical talking ponies! it's already unrealistic!
It's an interesting story. The implementation of civ 2 SciFi tech is slightly rough but kind cool. If it's still a challenge for the human side to win then it will be pretty great overall imo
6724036 Why thank you! Using Scifi mode tech for a story is a bit tricky, yes, especially since the descriptions of a lot of them make them sound insanely overpowered. However, the Proteans only got lucky the first time because the ponies had no idea what they were up against. Delerium-116 doesn't exist in the Solar System, let alone on Earth, and if any monopoles do exist in this system, they're most likely in gas giants, which is also where all the solid hydrogen is. The Proteans had the element of surprise to aid them, and that's the real reason they won the battle so quickly and easily.
But ponies, just like any other sapient lifeform, can learn. So, they can learn to deal with Lalandean tech if given enough time to figure out its weaknesses (the breath mask of a MonoSkin suit being one example). So, the longer the saga goes on, the more difficult it'll become for the Lalandeans to achieve total victory.
Kidnap Proteans? Yeeeeaaaaaaahhhhh, good luck with that.