Owerwhelming faction

[Kassiopeia]

All factions are supposed to have a down-side - Yang: Inefficiency, Santiago; minerals, Morgan: support...
But, how about a faction with
+2 Efficiency
+2 Research
Can steal tech even if denied in game rules.

That is right, the Cybernetic Consciesness.
It's only "downside" is a -1 Growth penalty, but in gameplay that's merely nonexistant.
Why do I get a feeling that there has been a little mistake at Firaxis? Maybe a -2 commerce penalty (obscure attitude, no respect for humanity prohibits trade) or alike missing?

In a nutshell: Why is Aki-Zeta Five so overwhelming? Where is the TRUE disadvantage?

[Avenoct]

Kassiopeia, did you read this excellent thread about: Rebalancing Smax factions

And yes, we are still waiting for Icewind to start our MP game..

-Smack

[JustinSane]

Actually, the cybernetics, though powerful, do have a real disadvantage. They can not pop boom without the cloning vats or a golden age. This means that they can only pop boom mid-early game if they meet at least one and probably a couple of the following conditions: a lot of doctors/empaths and nutrient crawlers, drone control facilities and secret projects, police, heavy psych allocation, or a small enough empire that eff. drones aren't a problem. Though it can be done, it's a lot of tedious micro-management to pop-boom with Aki, and there are always costs, whether they be population units rendered close to useless (doctors), crawlers carrying nutrients rather than energy or minerals, up keep and build time for drone control facilities, or loss research or money for the psych allocation. (which is the one part of the equation which is almost always necessary)

[big_canuk]

I disagree that the CyC is overwhelming.

All the other benefits are linear. The benefit of growth is exponential. -1 growth means that the CyC cannot pop boom until later, and even then, it is not easy to do so. They are powerful, but no more so than the UoP, who get free NNs early, and can easily pop boom.

edit: cross-posted with above.

[WhiteElephants]

Big C, et al. As difficult as it is to compare a faction by its stats alone, wouldn't you agree nonetheless that, say for instance, Aki, Zak, and Domai are "better" or "good" factions?

I know a players "style" of play is a factor in the success of failure of any faction, but given players that are of nearly equal caliber don't you feel that certain factions would tend to be in a better position, say after the first hundred years?

I shy away from the idea that a certain faction is "overwhelming" because in the context of a multi-player game there are just too many varibles, diplomacy in particular. Even the "best" player playing the "best" faction stands very little chance of defeating three average players playing average factions who are pacted together and are intent on deystroying the "best" player.

For instance, I'm fairly comfortable saying that Zak is the "best" faction to choose from out of the first seven. This doesn't imply that every time I play Zak, or play against Zak, he'll win. I'm just suggesting that this faction tends to out preform the others and because of this more opportunities tend to arise for this faction.

[cbn]

WE


I definitely agree that there are factions that I think of as "better" but I reject the idea that any is overwhelming. I spent time in a recent thread arguing that the Drones are not unbalanced and have seen similar claims for a multitude of factions. I even wentv as far as to challenge a player who claimed the Spartans were unbeatable to a PBEM 3 game match (see the Drago Sinio-cbn thread in Multiplayer)-- I always thought of the Spartans as "weaker" in anything other than momentum situations but was amazed at the vehemence of the support for them.

While I agree that there are factions that I might consider "weak" I do not consider the Cult, the most popular choice as weak sister, to be one of them. Thats the problem with all these claims. While there may be some "popular" choices for weakest or strongest faction there is far from a consensus. For example I suck as the Pirates and would rank them just above the believers as WORST but I bet if I started a thread on the subject, I would see people claiming they are in fact the strongest faction. I do not dispute these claims, I just think I haven't got a good feel for them.


On the original topic, I find --1 Growth to be a huge penalty and usually favour the university over the borgs. On my personal list of favorites they probably rank about 5th so I would not see a huge need to tweak them.

[death_head]

I would say that Growth is a considerable disadvantage as well, but if Aki is left to herself, her tech and energy edge can give her huge gains in the long run...

On a slightly unrelated note, I find it hard to play as the Cyborgs, simply because it's very hard to emphasize with an emotionless faction

[WhiteElephants]

cbn -- I understand where your coming from when you say there are dozens of supporters of various factions, but that doesn't invalidate my arguement or anyone else's. For instance, you'll find people around the world who will tell you their totalitarian dictatorship is the best form of government and defend it vehemently, but that doesn't mean that an arguement for representative democracy is invalidated by the arguement for totalitarian dictatorship. I think we have to consider the evidence of each arguement seperately, rather than simply discard each because there is someone somewhere who would deny it.

What I'm getting at is that while you and I find the arguement for the Spartans being overwhelming hard to swallow, I find that the arguement for say Aki, Zak, the Drones, and the Aliens being overwhelming much more compelling.

I also tend to think that the molre controversy around certain factions tends to suggest that the majority of those factions have some compelling evidence to suggest that they are in fact powerful or overpowered.

By the way, which faction (or factions) did you choose to play against the Spartans?

[Kassiopeia]

Maybe I was a bit too hasty pounding the Cyborgs as I did. I just didn't see a 10 percent slower growth rate so bad. With their techonological advance, they are the most probable ones of the AX factions to get the Cloning Vats first (If aliens don't count).

If the Cyborgs are to be emotionless, how come do they have drone riots? Then Pop Boom would be a lot easier even with - 2 growth.

And is Domai 'better' at all? I guess that my research-tilted playing style just doesn't cope with Domai or Miriam. Well, Miriam's just a *****, Domai is allright
Well, you can't argue about taste.

[death_head]

Lack of Drone Riots would imbalance the game.

[Kassiopeia]

Of course it would,
but I was talking about logic. It would be logical. They could then have lots if restrictions, in Growth, Effic and Econ.

Why doesn't the Manual's promise about Drone rioting bases going to Domai -concept never come true? Never happened to me.

[Avenoct]

I don't even have Smax, but I do know it takes a lot of drones a long while to have the gusto to make a new flag.

[cbn]

White Elephants

Against the Spartans I was limited to the the SMAC original 7 since my opponent couldn't play crossfire. We are playing 3 games on different size maps. I chose

Standard -- Hive
Large -- Gaians
Huge -- University

I almost went with the peacekeepers instead of the Gaians but since the major assertion was that a high morale faction was unbeatable, I felt it was in the spirit of the challenge to take the weakest morale faction?

OH an I don't quite agree with your government analogy. Many people expect and desire very different things from a government and come at it from very different backgrounds. A person that values authority might seek something different than one that values freedom. In the game, we all have the same background (common rules) and all have the same goals when we play (want to win). The culture is the same for us all and we all operate based on the same facts-- the game parameters.

But I do agree that there are more popular candidates for the title of strongest faction. The ones you name are considered "stronger" by a lot of players and I tend to like them myself. I definitely DO have my favorites. BUT I have not seen any one faction that I consider overwhelming. Also there are are all kinds of situations where I might even favor the ones often considered weaker( with a close enemy I really like the Cult or Spartans). The true test is ALWAYS play. For a person to assert any faction as overbalanced, they should be able to win a significant majority of games against human opponents.

The fact that some of the very best players ( who I presume are trying to win their games) choose different factions, means to me that there is a real difference of opinion which is best. What measure of the best faction would you use, other than the opinions of some of the best players ?? The only better measure would be interfactional competition but the number of games that would be required to show statistically significant results considering the different skill levels (and luck of the game) would be daunting.

Even if there are 3 or 4 better factions its no big deal. Most MP games involve no more than 4 players so each can choose one of the superior factions and have at it.

.... And I do agree the Aliens are overpowered. I make that assertion based on their stats and from play. But as for the rest I see about 5 factions from which I can't pick a clear favotite.

[death_head]

One note about the Aliens-

SP is set up so that while the aliens are more powerful, the human faction AI is set up to not like the aliens very much, and thus the overpowering is lost due to the problem of having to fight six wars at once (assuming both aliens are in the game, which balances it).

However, in MP, players are free to like and hate whomever they choose. Since most players would find it advantageous to ally with such a powerful faction, the aliens have a much easier time. Therefore, I propose that the aliens be limited in multiplayer (maybe take out the colony pod?)

I guess this isn't a huge problem, though, because nobody likes to play as them...

[Fitz]

Disadvantages of the aliens in MP is Nerve Gas. It causes no eco-damage and no loss of commerce (sanctions) if used against the aliens, and apparently many human players around here love to use it. Of course, this goes both ways. The aliens are free to gas the #&$ out of humans, AFAIK. I haven't tried it though.

Another is no commerce income, which explains why the Alien AI loves to call a vendetta on me.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I strenuously believe that the Cybernetic Consciousness needs a morale deficit of some sort. If you read the manual, it even states quite clearly that they have a deficiency in reproduction and in war. Why Firaxis then forgot to include this deficiency in-game is beyond me.

As far as I can tell, their inability to pop boom is insufficient drawback on its own to make CyC a fair faction. The Hive and the Morganite factions cannot pop boom either, and they have further hefty penalties on top of that (Economy for the Hive, and Support/Police/Habitation limit for the Morganites). The CyC's increased tech means that they will have a better-equipped army than most, and thus can use it to conquer. This in turn will give them whatever extra techs the enemy has, and further cement their technological lead.

A -1 to Morale and perhaps even a -1 to Support would be enough, combined with the -1 Growth, to rebalance the faction. After all, aren't they supposed to be far more rational than humans? And isn't war generally held to be a symptom of human irrationality?

[Cybergod]

[commenting on Alnestra's post]

If you wanna go by those lines, they should get both less drones and a higher industry rating since they are highly evolved and efficient. I do think that the -support rating would be too much since they don't have to draw humans from their military resource pool - they could program robots instead!

[death_head]

Giving them an industry bonus would be completely unbalancing. Factions with an industry bonus are devastating in the late game if they turtle.

[Cybergod]

Originally posted by death_head
Giving them an industry bonus would be completely unbalancing. Factions with an industry bonus are devastating in the late game if they turtle.

**cough** **cough** YANG!!! **cough** **cough**

Also I don't see anyone complaining about

**cough** **cough** DOMAI!!! **cough** **cough**

PS. Don't take my comments too seriously but I do not consider CyC an overwhelming faction and I do find it a hard time expanding with them in the early game, when it's most crutial.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Cybergod, my observations of the Cybernetic Consciousness' intended weakness wasn't based on personal opinion.

(Oh, hang on. Just re-read my post. Okay, maybe a little bit, concerning the -1 to Support )

But the big point I was trying to make was that Firaxis themselves had said that the Cybernetics found war difficult, and thus receive a military penalty (presumably in morale). However, no such penalty is evident.

All my other observations were indeed personally fabricated theory, so feel free to shoot down or support at your own discretion, but I strongly felt that they had missed out a major rebalancing factor in the wartime penalty for the CyC. The fact thus indicates that the manual doesn't hold true with the game - something I don't normally associate with Firaxis (especially given its superb SMAC manual, which could be a politics/sci-fi/sociology handbook on its own).

SMASH THE EVIL DEERTICK CONFEDERATION!!!

[death_head]

I didn't mean to suggest that Domai and yang are unbalanced. -2 research is a serious liability, as is -2 econ.