For the sake of Police State, the most oppressed Goverment in SMACX

[EtheMind]

Having established the irrefutable evidences with the help of my colleagues I now present my thoughts on the behalf of all dictatorships not able to defend themselves from the harm done by freedom fighters and hippies of worst kind


First some facts

Police State, +2 Police, +2 Support, -2 Efficiency
Thought Control, +2 Police, +2 Morale, +2 Probe

Broodpit, +2 Police etc.

The Ascetic Virtues +1 Police etc.
The Self-Aware Colony, if use of police allowed one extra unit in each city *the coolest demo ever*

Spartans, +1 Police etc.
Yang having no negatives from Police State

Non-lethal Methods(Intellectual Integrity, E3)


Police

+3 Can use up to 3 units as police, effect doubled
+2 Can use up to 3 units as police
+1 Can use up to 2 units as police
+0 Can use up to 1 units as police
-1 Can use up to 1 units as police. No gas for the people
-2 No units as Police No gas for the people *checks the holy manual in shame*
-3 extra drone if more than one unit away
-4 extra drone for each absent unit
-5 two extra drone for each unit kicking enemy


I'm not suggesting that even one of you really needed to read all this in order to state arguments concerning the current topic, but there it is, in case someone forgets. I certainly did. If something's missing I'm not the man I used to be. Feel free to add any relevant facts as you see fit.


My argument is essentially, considering my somewhat extensive experience from running dictatorships since the days of Civ2, I am suggesting that Police control is neither realistic or practical feature in the SMAC(X). Having managed Police States in ordinary and control centered factions one can only come to a conclusion that there are no means of oppressive population control in the mid-late games using Police.

The main problem is the fact that Police becomes obsolete, as the game progresses and the ultimate control goverment "Thought Control" fails to provide adequate means of modern control which is sustainable without the extensive use of various facilities. The control given by Police State is more or less inadequate concerning the oppressive and highly control centered nature of such goverment. In fact in many situations Police State can do more harm because of it's rampant -2 Efficiency, I'm referring to a serious threat of b-drones which any above the average empire must face.

Non-lethal methods can fight against the b-drones problem which Police States face very early on in the game. The problen however exists a lot sooner than they can come up with relatively advanced technology of Intellectual Integrity. At least, from my experience. Police States will have the imminent and continuous fight against the ever-developing b-drone dilemma. It's actually the main theme of Police State domestic policies. Police States can rarely afford expensive pop. control facilities early on and their cities are inefficient and can hardly support the basic infrastructure.
This is how it's suppose to be. The problem is that Police State does not deliver, from any perspective, except for Support.
Using Police State in most of situations is suicidal if you need some peaceful development, however minor or short termed. In reality "Police State" is sustainable in control of mass populace despite of obvious setbacks.
That 3 units as police is enough to keep those 4 citizens quiet(in utopistic condition of not having b-drones). Add Non-lethal methods and you're quite fine for the next decade or two. However, the limited resources of Police States have to be poured into Police Units, all three of them, taking up the majority of that free units support associated with the Police State. With whom you are going to attack the enemy, and they make a lot of enemies? Have some Police Scouts throw rocks into the Spider silk armors of build-all-build factions with the neat facilities and tech to handle to drones thousand times better than a goverment, MADE FOR CONTROL?(!)

Various projects enchancing factions populace control through Police or other means area usually preserved for Technocrats who use those neat facilities to not only control populace but have golden ages around their ever-growing wealthy empires while the poor Police States rush to build Police Scouts in order to keep their empire from falling apart....Nerve Staple Gas turns other factions into animals when diplomacy is concerned, they eat you up alive! Never want to see your nerve-stapling faction ever again. If you have Atrocities removed within council? Get real, with all those big, wealthy nations with big populace and inherent bonuses, Empath Guild and Clinical Immortality you're up to far too much challenge.

And you thought Nietzsche's superman philosophies turned into reality with sufficient technology you'll never get first would give you some tools to fight those Drones? You better go and think again! First of all, they take you're support away. So you won't be able to support even hand weapon armed kids without costs. Then they give you simple +2 Police, +2 Morale and +2 Probe. Certainly those probes can hardly compete with Democratic probes who happen to have those same bonuses with the help of high tech and facilities. That morale is a laughing stock of Chiron, "Get Bioenchancement centers you obsolete stalinist", say the wealthy rulers of Chiron who pull every string in planetary council and kick some serious butt with their new Plasma Shards while you cook up Chaos Guns. +1 police goes to waste and that one really can matter, or then again, maybe not. Having huge bases in the late game, and serious b-drones(up to 2-4 extra drones per base)...you will still be fighthing those unwilling minds as others rush for Trancend.

Any opinions from those who actually were stubborn enough to read though all that?

[RedFred]

Well it makes sense to me that a biblical story would come out of the bibble.

Just one question on your post though, if you don't use Police for Yang, then you must be using Fundy?

[EtheMind]

Makes sense to me too, but have little idea from your point

Well...it was a long post for me, nice to have even that one question. I wouldn't go for Fundamentalist when playing Yang. Drones would eat you alive, as they do even with Police State. Fundamentalist doesn't even follow Yang's personality.

[JustinSane]

The b-drones are a problem with police state, but I think it has a few viable uses. The first, and most obvious, is in an early attack, particularly as yang: Eff. at zero is not so bad with +3 growth, +2 Industry, +2 Support, and +2 Police. This is more than most factions get out of their social engineering early game. Furthermore, the tech that allows for Police State also allows for the Command Nexus. The combined effects of this SP, yang's industrial prowess and the support boost from police state make the Hive a killer momentum faction. Note that even if Yang could use Demo, it would kill his rover rush ability to do so. Another point about Police state is that every base means 4 units supported free. Thus, your core bases can churn out attack units without ever running into mineral loss due to support, as long as you keep building new bases to re-home the new units. The cumulative effect of this strategy can be pretty impressive: you could easily field a 20-30 unit army with just 10 or 15 bases, with no support cost. A defending faction would be hard pressed to come close to matching that without massive mineral loss due to support.
Though yang is the natural for this strategy, I've also found it works very well for the spartans and planet cult as well. Police state pushes the spartan police rating to +3, with the doubled police effect. This basically takes care of drone problems into the middlegame without facilities. The +2 support is also critical if santiago wants to attack, since with the -1 industry, mineral loss for support can be fatal. For the Cult, the support bonus allows them to reach critical mass needed for a successful attack. More support allows more rovers that capture more mindworms, which in turn capture more mindworms. Once 6-10 worms and or spore launchers are captured, combined with the rovers, you've got a fairly lethal attack force. In this use, the police rating boost is a fairly minor side benefit, though it can keep captured bases from losing population due to starvation sometimes.
The second use is when combined with either the ascetic virtues SP, thought control future society, or Power Social engineering choice, the last two being viable primarily with the aid of the Cloning Vats. In each case, Police state pushes some social engineering variable to a critical level: +3 police doubles the effect of police units, and +3 support allows support up to base size. If you've got several size 14 bases, power-police state allows an enourmous army to be fielded without wasting slots on clean reactors, to be replaced with such goodies as sopophoric gas and high morale, or nerve gase, or any number of other fun special abilites. I actually use police state pretty extensively, mainly because I'm a momentum player and it supports the attack nicely. Empaths are also critical to a police state, since the +2 econ they generate is not affected by eff., in addition to the drone control benefits. In conclusion, police state is valid for a certain play style, but likely not of benefit to builders.

[RedFred]

Hey EtheMind, you edited the "bibble" out of your sig! NO FAIR!

I would like to add to JustinSane's comments. Consider Police SE when in steamrollering attack mode even if you are not Yang. If you can combine a high police rating with a high support rating you can have a base that is fully functioning when you take it over, instead of having such huge drone problems that you have lost population by the time you have rebuilt the rec commons.

[Nadexander]

Originally posted by EtheMind

First some facts
Police State, +2 Police, +2 Support, -2 Efficiency
Thought Control, +2 Police, +2 Morale, +2 Probe
Broodpit, +2 Police etc.
The Ascetic Virtues +1 Police etc.
The Self-Aware Colony, if use of police allowed one extra unit in each city *the coolest demo ever*
Spartans, +1 Police etc.
Yang having no negatives from Police State
Non-lethal Methods(Intellectual Integrity, E3)

Police

+3 Can use up to 3 units as police, effect doubled
+2 Can use up to 3 units as police
+1 Can use up to 2 units as police
+0 Can use up to 1 units as police

I totally agree. The solution is very easy, straightforward, logical and opens up a whole new style of gameplay, but unfortunately it requires a patch from firaxis (i.e. you cant mod it with alpha.txt)

+6 Can use up to 6 units as police, effect tripled
+5 Can use up to 5 units as police, effect doubled
+4 Can use up to 4 units as police, effect doubled

It would also be nice if non-lethal methods and +3 police resulted in controlling 4 drones as one would think (x2 for non-lethal is 2 drones x2 again for +3 polic is 4)

This would allow to powermongers continue to keep up with the builders in terms of drone control as improving tech allows a much higher police rating (easily +7 by the end game) wich with non lethal methods could appease 42 drones. Not bad i say.

Police states definately need the edge in drone control to compensate for lagging efficiency/economy in order to make the totalitarian strategy balanced. Otherwise there is no reason for a good player to not run demo/FM from the mid game on, even if they are war mongering.

FIRAXIS! Help us out! This simple fix would give the game umpteen hours of new play time!

Btw. Anyone notice that if you quell a double-drone (bright red) with police the city screen incorrectly displays the drone as still out of control? The F4 citizen screen shows the citizen as quelled and so does the psyche view in the city screen. Your cities wont riot in this state but its really annoying to look at. I was having huge problems playing as yang until i realized it was just a bug and i didnt really need 3 police units to keep a size 2 city happy.

[WhiteElephants]

The thing I find problematic with Police State, thougth I still think it's a viable SE choice, is that once I choose Police State I have a very difficult time "getting out" of it. For instance, if I try to pop boom I generally have to run Demo/Planned and once I switch out of Police State I lose those extra police I was depending on to quell those drones, so I typically have to build a psych enhancing facility to quell the drones the police units were quelling in order to pull off a quick boom and revert back to Police State. Now it's easy enough to do this with a handfull of bases, but on a faction wide scale your going to be delayed quite a bit because your stuck building rec commons and the like, or your going to have to pay out your nose to rush build all those facilities. What this does is ruin one of the reasons I want to run Police State at all, which is to avoid the accumulating upkeep from all the psych enhancing facilities. So by the time I switch back to Police State I've got the facilities in place taht I was trying to avoid building and probably above and beyond the amount of police units I'd need until late in the game.

I haven't tried this, but it just occured to me that this might all be avoidable if I tried to pop boom while in Police State with a creche, Planned, and a Golden Age. With -4 efficency from Police State/Planned this could be a tough one to pull off, but maybe not for Yang. Of course I'd need to be playing SMACX, but hey who doesn't?

[Method]

i usually run police/green with most factions (except yang and aki) but now i'm playing a game as pirates, and you can't do police/green because of the -3 growth you get from it. so i had to do demo/planned until mid game then switched to green. "what does this have to do with police?" you ask. well since i usually run police i found that the was an extremely large amount of drones when i ran demo. so if you're not going to do police, it will be necessary to add 10-20% to psych to keep the drones away and maybe even GA some places (plus pop boom! yay!). now usually i don't even touch the 50-50 labs and econ, because both are important. but actually i have an amazing set-up going on. demo/green/knowlege, gives you paradigm economy which compensates for the -10% i took from econ, and adds to research and the +2 research plus the effic compensates for the -10% from research, and GA's here and there add to it too.

i'm probably telling you stuff you already know/do regularly but i think that adding to psych really pays off. i also need to mention the ascentic virtues living refinery and brood pits give you a built-in police state and thensome without the -2 effic.

[Tokamak]

I'd just like to remark that Police State is extremely viable when using the "all-specialist" approach. In fact, when playing the game this way, it's probably the best political model you can choose.

"All specialist" empires are almost completely unaffected by efficiency. Engineers, etc don't lose productivy to inefficiency, and drones are irrelevant when you don't have any workers to begin with.

[Mr. President]

Someone mentioned good players might use Democracy and Free Market after the mid-game. I was wondering how you manage it? I've tried that combination (usually as the University) and I get torn to pieces. When I get into a war, my bases tend to rise up behind me and defect to my enemies. Also, mind worms swarm over me, fungus grows right to the outskirts of my cities, and the Gaians try to kill me.

I usually play as the Gaians, for whom it makes more sense to use Police State because of their negative Police rating. They can also stand the efficiency penalty because of their innate properties. If you use Green as well, you're back to +2, and Knowledge boosts Efficiency to a respectable +3. Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to eliminate all negative effects as the Gaians. (The Spartans can do it - lucky sons of _______!)

[Avenoct]

Working backwards:

Mr. Prez, do a keyword search for 'specialist' in the strategies section. there are many many posts about how to run an effective all-specialist empire under any government. In a nutshell, you can run FM very well, even wage war, if your workers don't work squares at all, but are all turned into specialists, at least at one base where you 'home' your army. Also, one can use punishment spheres for the same effect, but with a dent in labs. BTW, heavy use of Crawlers is the obvious way to do this. With the Gaians, I'm sure you'll get other opinions, but it's usually best to play to your strengths rather than compensate for your deficciencies...ie, make a worm army and use facilities and specialists for drones.

See Ned's work on B-Drones and psyche. Increasing psyche allocations can (to agree with you TKG) often increase both your lab output and your energy returns. Often you will need to play through a turn to see the net result of setting your SE to say 40/20/40, as Golden Ages, etc. don't take effect untill a new turn.

WhiteElephant...I've had the same experience! Note that GA can push you to +2 economy at that base as well, so using it to boom is a great way to go, even under Poor State, I mean, Police State.

Nadexander: I totally agree. The game would be wild if you could have 5 police control 15 drones!

Ethemind: I have to say I like that Police State isn't a very good SE choice in general. Human beings don't seem to do well under those conditions! Imagine being 'forced' to go to work by an armed guard, having all your civil liberties suspended or revoked at any moment by the all-powerful police. Perhaps this was a comment by Firaxis? At any rate, I agree though that Thought Control should just make Police a thing of the past. No Drones, as long as you have some odd Thought Control Facility in the base.

-Smack

[Nadexander]

Originally posted by Mr. President
Someone mentioned good players might use Democracy and Free Market after the mid-game. I was wondering how you manage it? I've tried that combination (usually as the University) and I get torn to pieces. When I get into a war, my bases tend to rise up behind me and defect to my enemies. Also, mind worms swarm over me, fungus grows right to the outskirts of my cities, and the Gaians try to kill me.

There are lots of ways to get around this. Usually by midgame i have the basic facilities in place and a bit of terraforming done (usually just roads and forests and the odd farm or two). Once you switch to FM and start rush builing tree farms its pretty mucha a no brainer. between research hospital, tree farm, and holo theater a 10% psyche will take care of your drone problems. The forests will deal with your polution problems. Its a short tech jump to clean reactors and punishment spheres for fighting wars.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to eliminate all negative effects as the Gaians. (The Spartans can do it - lucky sons of _______!)

Dont worry about eliminating negatives. Try to get around your weaknesses (i.e. clean reactors with low support) while maximizing your strengths. You'll be much better off then try to get a faction with no advantages or disadvantages

[Mr. President]

Nadexander and Smack: Thanks for the tips! Speaking of which, did you ever notice that Morgan (who I presume uses Free Market) rarely seems to have problems with pollution and drones when he's controlled by the computer?

Also, which do you think is more important: Efficiency or Growth? I mean, they're both equally important, but if you had to sacrifice one for the other (as in the choice between Green and Planned economics), which one would it be?

I actually did see Ned's post about bureaucracy and drones. I didn't get quite a bit of what he said, but the I got the general idea.

[Nadexander]

Originally posted by Mr. President
Nadexander and Smack: Thanks for the tips! Speaking of which, did you ever notice that Morgan (who I presume uses Free Market) rarely seems to have problems with pollution and drones when he's controlled by the computer?

The computer cheats

Also, which do you think is more important: Efficiency or Growth? I mean, they're both equally important, but if you had to sacrifice one for the other (as in the choice between Green and Planned economics), which one would it be?

Choose growth over efficiency in the early game when you need a faster growth rate in order to expand. Planned is great here because it allows you to build colony pods much faster with improved growth and industry. Emphasize efficiency as you expand beyond the bureaucracy warnings and controlling drones becomes more of an issue. At a certain point there will be so many drones that you might think of the -2 growth of green as a blessing.

-Nadexander

[Fitz]

Originally posted by EtheMind
First some facts

Police State, +2 Police, +2 Support, -2 Efficiency
Thought Control, +2 Police, +2 Morale, +2 Probe

Broodpit, +2 Police etc.

The Ascetic Virtues +1 Police etc.
The Self-Aware Colony, if use of police allowed one extra unit in each city *the coolest demo ever*

Spartans, +1 Police etc.
Yang having no negatives from Police State

Non-lethal Methods(Intellectual Integrity, E3)

Police

+3 Can use up to 3 units as police, effect doubled
+2 Can use up to 3 units as police
+1 Can use up to 2 units as police
+0 Can use up to 1 units as police
-1 Can use up to 1 units as police. No gas for the people
-2 No units as Police No gas for the people *checks the holy manual in shame*
-3 extra drone if more than one unit away
-4 extra drone for each absent unit
-5 two extra drone for each unit kicking enemy

First of all, you missed that with Thought Control, you have -3 support unless you have the Cloning Vats. Granted, you might resonable expect that in a single player game, but in MP? ::shrugs::

Next, allow me point out the following:

Police/Free Market/Knowledge and Hunter Seeker Algorithm (or lots of probe defenders).

-3 police (only on drone/ unit), +2 Economy, -3 Planet, -1 Effic, +2 Reseacrch, -2 Probe, +2 Support.

Add Aethetic Virtues: -2 Police (NO extra drones).
Add Brood Pit: -1 Police, 0 with AV.
Add Thought Control to above: +2 Police, +2 Economy, +2 Research, +2 Morale, -1 Effic, -1 Support, -3 Planet.
Get the Cloning Vats and -1 Support goes back to +2.

Remember that Children Creche adds +2 Effic to the base it is in. So if you get the Aethetic Virtues, Living Refinery, Hunter Seeker Algorithm and build Brood Pits & Childrens Creches you can either run Police/FM/Power or Police/FM/Knowledge and have effectively a 0 police and efficiency.

[Nadexander]

Originally posted by Fitz

Police/Free Market/Knowledge and Hunter Seeker Algorithm (or lots of probe defenders).

-3 police (only on drone/ unit), +2 Economy, -3 Planet, -1 Effic, +2 Reseacrch, -2 Probe, +2 Support.

Add Aethetic Virtues: -2 Police (NO extra drones).
Add Brood Pit: -1 Police, 0 with AV.
Add Thought Control to above: +2 Police, +2 Economy, +2 Research, +2 Morale, -1 Effic, -1 Support, -3 Planet.
Get the Cloning Vats and -1 Support goes back to +2.

Remember that Children Creche adds +2 Effic to the base it is in. So if you get the Aethetic Virtues, Living Refinery, Hunter Seeker Algorithm and build Brood Pits & Childrens Creches you can either run Police/FM/Power or Police/FM/Knowledge and have effectively a 0 police and efficiency.

Ah! -1 or 0 efficiency sounds okay, but really its a disaster, especially when running free market. Unless you got the magic +4 your gonna be losing lots of energy to inefficiency. Even with +4 your losing ~5%. This might not seem like alot but consider that at that point in the game you have lots of energy enhancing facilities so a single point of energy could come out to 5-10 points of labs/econ/psych. The worst part though is that your missing out on eudimonia or cybernetic or knowledge or wealth. Any two of these in combination would _Dramatically_ increase your energy production. There are many much easier (and much cheaper in terms of oppertunity costs) ways to deal with drones and have high morale troops than to use PS, Power, or Thought Control.

-Nadexander

[EtheMind]

It's nice to find a fellow defender for Police State Nadexander. And your idea of improving Police effect on higher levels is a very good one. I might point out that Police State only and even when running PS only, it should have more effect.

i usually run police/green with most factions

That's interesting. I used to play a lot of games using Police State. Wonder why? But as I started to learn that Firaxis had betrayed the dictatorship I switched my allegiance for the sake of practise. Democracy works so much better, in most of the cases, sometimes even in war, which is just absurd.

I have to say I like that Police State isn't a very good SE choice in general. Human beings don't seem to do well under those conditions! Imagine being 'forced' to go to work by an armed guard, having all your civil liberties suspended or revoked at any moment by the all-powerful police.

You hippie... No, Police State has proven to be inefficient in some matters and the majority of people might find it somewhat...stricting system. But if I'm calling all the shots then I like it And if I'm suspending your rights then I'd like it to have a better effect too

It has been brought out that Police State goes well in the early game, and has nice effects in special circumstances: specialists society(Who does all the WORK there ) and with Yang. And it has also been agreed that Police State doesn't go very well in the mind-late game, nor the police consept in general.

I think the problem is that Police State doesn't fit very well into any overall strategy, which just isn't realistic or "fair". In our history, we have examples of Police States not in constant stage of war but still going high despite having obvious difficulties with an oppressive system dictatorship tends to be.
China, being the only almost-super-power having Police State is handling it rather well, not bringing out the obvious ethical dilemmas. At this point, China, is the only modern Dictatorship integrating capitalism and govermental control.

[Avenoct]

Mr. President,

Morgan doesn't get drones or pollution as an AI very often because his support and pop limits, as well as his [-1, 0, 0, 1, 0] pacifist builder strategy limit him severely. He'll tend to build few bases, which grow slowly (doesn't anticipate needing a hab complex, duh), so ecodamage or drones from lots of workers tends not to happen till the late game, with a lucky Morgan AI. Change Morgan! Make him [-1, 0, 1, 1, 1] and take off his hab limit and you'll see him play like the big guys, wreaking havoc on his people and the environment.

Ethemind: Yah, yah, hippie, you called it! It's just that, as you said yourself, police states loose the efficiency of their workers pretty badly in real life. 'Martial Law' is usually only used in emergencies for that reason...but I suppose that's slightly different from Police State. So you consider modern China to be a Free Market/ Communist / Police State? Interesting.

-Smack

[Basil]

Originally posted by Nadexander

Btw. Anyone notice that if you quell a double-drone (bright red) with police the city screen incorrectly displays the drone as still out of control?

I hadn't noticed - good tip! I had noticed that the same thing happens with punishment spheres - some drones still show up on the base screen even though the base won't go into riot.

What really kills Police State as a long term peacetime strat is not (just) the inefficiency or the police arguably not being effective enough, but the total lack of growth. Assuming for the moment you're not the Hive, if you're running PS you're not running Demo, and you probably (except for a couple of factions) can't run Planned because the -4 efficiency is a killer. That means you're talking about 0 growth, +2 growth for bases with creches. That's just not enough to keep up with someone who's got +2 growth for Demo and can get +2 for Planned or +2 for GA. Now the Hive can keep up because of their inherent +1 growth and their ability to run Planned without penalty, but other factions can't.

If you do get the Cloning Vats, Police State becomes a much more viable late-game option, since not only does it negate the disadvantages of Power and Thought Control, it also negates the disadvantage of Green, so you can freely run Green for the efficiency if you wish, and it also removes one of the advantages of Democracy - the +2 growth becomes meaningless. If you have something else giving you a bonus to Support - Power or the Living Refinery - the resulting +4 Support is significant even in the late game, although perhaps overkill for peacetime... Of course, games that are still in contention after a player gets the Cloning Vats are few and far between.

[EtheMind]

I had such a high minded reply ready...before it was erased

[johndmuller]

I'm attracted to the idea of Police/Green for early Morgan (Morgan should probably have some restriction viz-a-viz Green as well as Planned); that goes with a general attraction to moderating the characters' personalities with somewhat opposite SE choices (its awfully hard to resist Police/Planned for early Yang however).

Morgan with Police / Green:
+1 Econ; +1 Support; +2 Police; +2 Planet; -2 Growth

The -2 growth is not so much of a penalty with the Size 4 Base limitation (if he is still running it later in the game, it is easily overcome with just an extra nut crawler or two which were built, along with the Police and whatever extra goodies you chose, earlier in the base life instead of the Rec Coms &/or Holos which weren't needed so early. The +2 police is probably an overkill for this stage of the game, but the +2 Planet and +1 Support give early Morgan more flexibility to pursue an aggressive strategy at the beginning. I know someone is going to say that 0 efficiency is lousey, but hey, this is only the beginning of the game.

There is probably some merit to the idea of maximizing the factions' strengths rather than mellowing their extremes, but I'm not convinced that it is the way to go.

[EtheMind]

I know someone is going to say that 0 efficiency is lousey, but hey, this is only the beginning of the game.

Who is? I won't. That kind of efficiency doesn't make much difference at the beginning and +1 Economy makes it up.

These kind of settings might really come into use if you happened to land next to an aggressive faction which just won't like you now matter how much neat tech and spare energy you keep pumping into his warmachines.
In fact, you are going to need some focus into military in this case.

There is probably some merit to the idea of maximizing the factions' strengths rather than mellowing their extremes, but I'm not convinced that it is the way to go

I've tried both ways and both of them work. But the first of them is of course more efficient but also less balanced and often a bit harder. In MP game I'd go for maximizing advantages though. Unless...you're just so damn good you're in no need of that.