Lore Question: When did the AI 'win'?

[Steelpoint]

I'm a bit of a lore buff so I love to delve into the tidbits of lore of the game.

When I was reading up on the new Spire, I noticed on the wiki it states "Sometime in the last few hundred years, the AI detected the Spire".

In AI War 1, I believe the implication was that the AI defeated Humanity only a few years, or decades, before the events of the game take place.

This statement however seems to imply that either the AI defeated Humanity hundreds of years in the past, thus its taken the Human Remnant hundreds of years to rebuild itself, or that the AI was constructed originally by one of the Human factions in the civil war several hundred years ago, and during the time the AI was allied with Humanity it was scanning, and found, the Spire during the Human civil war.

So that's really my question, does the game take place a few months or years after the AI won, or are we playing hundreds of years later?

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While on lore, what's up with the 'Last Federation' species showing up? I love their inclusion, but are they not supposed to not only be in an entirely different galaxy, but an entirely different era of time? Did the AI develop time travel? Or is it another mystery of the Arcen Cinematic Universe?

[arnaud_defrance]

From what I understand and remember from playing the various games:

-The Spire fleets is scattered rather than defeated, which allows the AI to fight rather than get slaughtered. That's the victory condition of AI War where you make all five spire cities then trigger the transmitter, once you complete it the Spire Army is able to come in your galaxy and demolish the AI with overwhelming firepower. It sounds like the AI used some mean of disturbing their transport system, which fit with Marauders Beacon and the like that prevent their method of transport.

-It seems less that humanity took time to rebuild and more that they needed time to create counter-measures against the AI hacking their forces and turning them against them. Without pilot-less ships the humans couldn't match the AI numbers (which is why they made the AI in the first place, till they rebelled), and they needed automated ships to have a chance at a comeback. Since there are remnants of humans around, like with resistance fighters and mercenaries, the player force isn't the only human force but one that has more ability than the rest to build up. (And good hacking).

The Last Federation had hints of showing up in small pieces of lore and dev texts in AI War 1 or 2, I can't remember. The Scourge seems like an attempt to integrate the various plotlines. The AI operates in many galaxy, with we kill is only a part of the AI, with us freeing the galaxy being less "we killed the AI forever" and more "we secured this galaxy so now we can rebuild humanity, safe-ish".

[Ovalcircle]

For the Scourge, there actually is an explanation for them. There is internal lore documented that hasn’t been released to the public (not sure if I’m allowed to say it), but the explanation makes sense. I can also safely say that time travel is *not* the reason.

[Steelpoint]

From the Scourge, the only explanation I can imagine is either there's a retcon of the Last Federation races in the timeline in respect to AI War and Humanity, or it has something to do with that aborted 4x game Arcen was making that involved the Last Federation races (which I still miss that it had to be shelved).

[Ovalcircle]

AI War 2 is a reimagining of Classic. All Classic lore is non-canon unless stated otherwise or it’s brought into AI War 2. AI War 2 has been made in a more “connected” manner to other Arcen properties. So yes, technically it is a retcon, but the timeline of the games has remained the same as of now.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

The internal lore documents are something you can paste from safely, it's definitely okay. Just not the bits from SBR, that's super deep spoiler territory that I'd like to unveil carefully at toms point. We're planning on getting more of this into the game with the help of zeus, but it gets hard to keep straight and I keep having to cross-reference things at the moment.

My natural instinct is to say the following, which might not be completely accurate:

1. The humans had a really long civil war, something like 800 years, in space.

2. During this time, the AI was already alive and active, and just not directly fighting the humans. The humans had somewhat been using the AI as a weapon on various sides.

3. BUT, the rogue AI in a stupider format had been around for a couple of thousand years by then, dating back to Earth before its destruction. The AI was never fully unified as one entity, partly because of the constraints of lightspeed and the distances involved.

4. That's largely still true even during AI War 2. The connections between wormholes make the communication distances vastly smaller than they otherwise would be, but there are groups of AI who are not near this wormhole network, and they are much more sporadically in contact.

5. If you look at the scourge as one example, they're a group that often were acting independently of the main body of the AI, and off even in another galaxy collecting other races, and now are returning here to help out. But even the scourge isn't unified, because they're spread out over who knows how much distance, so exactly how many races they've enslaved and what they are up to is unknowable even to them. We only see the ones who have come back so far.

6. The AI that were fighting the spire, therefore, were one group that were doing their own thing, kind of like the AI fighting the extragalactic war are. They're all "one AI" in the loosest sense, but they don't all have the ability to talk to one another and coordinate as one entity at all times because of distance restrictions. They don't all have ansibles, in other words, or else you'd be dead very fast.

7. A lot of these communication and distance problems are common to the other races, as well. There are lost pockets of each race that think the state of the galaxy is A-OK, and others who think that everything is dead and they are the last survivors, etc. Nobody has a really complete picture or accounting of what is truly going on when you get away from the convenience of the wormhole network, and the wormhole network only covers but so many planets in so many star systems.

8. In some respects you might feel like this is a "get out of jail free card" for us as writers, because it's okay then if there are conflicting accounts. But essentially we do maintain a central "true" timeline and set of events, even though sometimes one group or one narrative conflicts with that because whoever is relaying that information to you has incomplete information. And we DO use that, over time as we add more races and develop the story, to sometimes alter the "true" timeline based on "new information" that lets us support a more robust story. So there are times we revise the true timeline, making previously-thought-to-be-correct information a case of "oops, we didn't know about this other thing."

Hopefully this sheds some light, even though I know it's ambiguous. Essentially, something I think a lot about is how "the galaxy is unimaginably large, and without magic instant communication what would knowledge look like?" So that's how some of this comes about.

[Ovalcircle]

Since it's okay to paste from the Lore Document, here's what it says about the Last federation Races in AI War 2

"The Last Federation (dates unknown, another galaxy, a few 100 thousand years later)

Nine races all live in one solar system, in an incredibly implausible fashion.This has always been seen as incredibly unlikely that EVERY planet of a solar system, even the gas giants, would have not just life, but sentient life; and not just sentient life, but sentient life that does not share an obvious common ancestor.

For reasons unexplored, these races are essentially dumped in this solar system, back in pre-space-age conditions."

(Relevant part below)

"As evidenced in AI War 2, however, at least some of the races have a vastly longer history than is evident in this game, and in fact during AIW2 the Scourge subgroup of the AI had enslaved several of them. Genetically they share a very similar heritage, but culturally the slaves are not in possession of what their later kin have."

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

Thanks for posting that!

[Steelpoint]

Thanks for the answers. Good to know Earth blew up, I think that was implied in AI War 1 but I never really played with the content around that (the one where you get a special ship and go into sectioned off systems).

So, its likely still that the game takes place either several months or years after the AI defeated Humanity, and from what I've read in game a single Human faction won this civil war (seems to imply there was some stellar federation/confederacy/etc that fractured and was eventaully re-united for a short time) but then got beaten in short order when the AI made its move.

One things that's always impressed me is that despite how hopelessly outgunned, out teched and out smarted Humanity is in the AI War setting, that despite it all they are capable of punching well above their weight against the big players. Maybe Humanity will get a break one day? Or another civil war.