The Affinity system is the element of the newly launched Civilization: Beyond Earth which mostly defines how players will shape their faction in the turn-based strategy title and the kinds of victory conditions that they can try to achieve.

Initially, choosing between Harmony, Supremacy or Purity does not have much of an impact on how the game plays and only introduces a few updates for units, which are useful but cannot be used to turn the tide of an entire battle.

During my first few games, I accidentally gained almost the same amount of points with each affinity by simply trying to get the technologies I wanted in order to shape my abilities.

As Beyond Earth progressed, I began to see how some factions were closer to me, even if I refused trade or open border agreements simply because I was sharing their convictions, and then I began to access units and buildings that were only open to those who were attuned enough to an affinity.

Playing as the Franco-Iberians, a faction focused on culture and progress, at one point I was best friends with the Pan-Asian faction because we both chose to follow Supremacy, which allows humans to extensively use tech-based augmentations to become better able to survive in the long term.

Role playing versus pragmatic choices

Purity is more focused on keeping humans as close to their incarnations on Earth as possible while giving them the means to dominate the alien planer, while Harmony aims to create a link with the native life forms and work with them in the long term.

After a few games of Beyond Earth focused on discovering the core mechanics, I wanted to actually complete a campaign and I found myself at a loss when trying to decide which affinity to choose.

I played a lot of Alpha Centauri games, the spiritual predecessor of the new Civilization, which ended in the equivalent of a Harmony victory.

But in the world that the new Firaxis game creates, the idea of working with such a hostile planet seems weird.

Purity, with its focus on the past and on keeping humans as clean as possible from any influence, is too conservative for me and too limited in its vision for the future.

That leaves the Supremacy affinity as the one I will work with, but the choice is not entirely satisfactory for someone who was haunted by the Star Trek-created Borg in nightmares in his youth.