posted 05-01-99 10:46 PM ET        

+1 Industry(It's called Morgan INDUSTRIES for a reason)
-1 Planet(All the polution from the industry ticks Planet off)

posted 05-03-99 12:21 AM ET         

Smeagol:

I have played Morgan quite a few times, and I find him a very well balanced faction. If you use FME with Morgan often, you are just shooting yourself in the foot. As I see it, Morgan's greatest strength is that he does NOT need to use FME to get that vital +2 Econ. He can instead take Wealth and get the same effect.

Without his pop limit, Morgan would be insanely powerful. Just because you do not know how to use a faction does not mean it is underpowered.

JT:

Do you mean under the control of a player, or under the AI? If you think Morgan needs tweaking player-wise, just try harder. I found it hard to get used to playing as Believers. But now I find them one of my favorites.

Under AI I tend to do this to Morgan:

Set his goals to Wealth and Growth.
(Large map only) Give him +1 Efficency to compensate for the excess 'rabbiting' he has to do to maintain decent population.

posted 05-03-99 01:35 AM ET            

Oh, and by the way, your population limits may be skewing your opinion just a bit... that turns the tides a bit more in Morgan's favor.

If you want to see some of my arguments against Morgan, I refer you to the game forum thread "most popular faction." If you still want to argue with me after reading that don't bother because you'll just make me waste more of my time in these forums!

It seems you have something against Free Market... have you really given it a shot especially considering the strategies that get around its penalties?

posted 05-03-99 09:03 AM ET         

Why NOT use Green, Smeagol? Morgan has low pop limits, so he won't be growing much anyway.

The Morale hit for Wealth, in my opinion, is alot better than the massive planet hit and tremendous police hit with FME. With Wealth on it is still possible to wage war, not so with FME.

JT:

You made FME way too powerful. If I (or heck, even the AI) just goes Police State/FME they instantly have gotten rid of the biggest glaring weakness of FME. Too strong. I think FME works how it is, -5 Police makes it impossible to wage war, -3 Planet makes sure you'll have to wage war.

As I said, I find Morgan to play alot better as the AI by just changing his agenda, not tweaking his stats. Set him to Wealth/Growth, and make his political agenda Wealth. He won't be a super-power, but he will stand up for himself.

posted 05-03-99 09:39 AM ET            

IF you opt to remove Morgan's population caps, REPLACE them with a -1 or even -2 Growth.

posted 05-03-99 04:17 PM ET            

First off, there is no need to lower the penalties of Free Market, because that benefits all factions anyway. I use it every time I play a peaceful faction, and the -5 police and -3 planet are easy to manage if you know what you are doing. In fact, by midgame you can have an army as big as anyone else, and I've explained this again and again but it doesn't seem to matter, so I'm going to save my breath... er, fingers. The penalty from wealth is actually much more detrimental with regard to your army, and it will prevent you from ever making advanced morale troops.

Al-- I told you not to respond to me unless you took the time to understand what I'm saying. I don't feel like arguing with you because you are saying exactly the same things I used to say about Morgan. There are just some nice tricks in this game that allow a peaceful faction to annihilate a warlike one, and as far as peaceful factions go, Morgan doesn't cut it. Do me a favor and try the PKs with this strategy:

Switch to Free Market and Democracy as soon as you can. Obviously expand as much as you can early. Give all of your base defenders a probe ability so they will have no support (wasn't it you that came up with that?), and also give them hypnotic trance so that low planet rating isn't as much of a factor. As soon as you have creches up and some drone facilities, switch to planned to get the population boom. Rush your way to tree farms and hybrid forests and put up forests (all standard procedures so far). Keep up with those population booms as often as you can, and boost psych to suit your needs. Soon you'll make your way to punishment spheres and clean reactors-- put a sphere in a base with your best mineral output and build your army there with clean reactors. Even if you don't want to build your whole army this way, you can just build the Ascetic Virtues so that your police is -4 (1 drone per military unit away), and if your psych is only 20% you can still build an army and use it however you want without drones being a problem.

Morgan can't do this nearly as effectively because of those population limits. So why play him? Sure there are other winning strategies but nothing can beat this one, providing you can survive long enough to get that army up. Against the computer I've never had a problem getting there, so I don't think it is difficult at all. (just frustrating paying the Spartans off to leave you alone).

posted 05-03-99 10:05 PM ET         

Smeagol:

I try to stray away from the "power stack city" style because if the central city is destroyed or captured that whole army is instantly destroyed (or, worse yet, if it's subverted it changes hands!)

But, as you said, my strategies differ from yours because I have the settings on different levels. Since I set tech to 40-30% normal I usually can't expect to get Punishment Spheres for up to 150-200 turns. And Morgan plays much better when his pop cap is set at 7 before complexes instead of 4.

So, you can hate 'em, I think he's alright.

JT:
I just do for Morgan what I do to UoP's AI, make them agressive.

Agenda:
Growth
Political Agenda:
Wealth
Willing to Use Force:
Indifferent.

With these settings Morgan isn't dumb enough to pick fights with the superpowers like he normally is, and if you set his agenda to only growth he actually does expand a decent amount. But the political agenda will make sure he stays true to his capitalist roots. The reason for indifferent instead of "no" is I find that the force setting translates into the AI's priority of setting up a war machine and defenses.

I find that the benefiets/penalties of a faction is not nearly as important to its strength as its actual AI settings are.

posted 05-03-99 11:13 PM ET            

ECONOMY

+1: +1 energy/base
+2: +2 energy/base
+3: +3 energy/base, +1 commerce
+4: +2 energy/square, +3/base, +2 commerce
+5: +2 energy/square, +4/base, +3 commerce

posted 05-03-99 11:24 PM ET            

ECONOMY:

+1: +1 energy/base
+2: +2 energy/base
+3: +3 energy/base, +1 commerce
+4: +1 energy/square, +3 energy/base, +2 commerce

posted 05-03-99 11:39 PM ET            

ECONOMY:

posted 05-04-99 03:11 AM ET            

It seems like a good idea, but maybe a little drastic. This will change a lot of things about peace, and not just for the Morganites. I'm scared that this will push things in favor of the Warmongers and that black, blue, and orange will dominate the map.

How about two minor changes like:
1) increase Morgan's hab limits to five and 12 (-3 pop/city is a little much, isn't it?).
2) change economy slightly:
+1 through +3: same
+4: same but +4/base not +2/base
+5: same but +8/base not +4/base

This will ease Morgan's pop limits a bit (hey, with Aestetic Virtues he'll be even with everybody now!!!) and give him a little bonus when he goes FM/Wealth.

posted 05-04-99 10:51 AM ET            

However, my attempts so far at changing the economy settings have done nothing. It seems that even if I do change them and start a new game, the old effects are still in place. This did make me notice something, however, and this is that the listed effects of economy are not correct. Here is what actually happens (without any modifications from me):

ECONOMY:

+1: +1 en/base
+2: +1 en/sq
+3: +1 en/sq, +2 en/base, +1 commerce
+4: +1 en/sq, +4 en/base, +2 commerce
+5: +1 en/sq, +4 en/base, +3 commerce

Note that the +3 econ and +4 econ do not behave as listed, and +5 isn't any different from +4 other than the commerce. Odd.

Dowdc-- So I just can't justify only changing the requirements for +1 en/sq to +3 economy, since it still doesn't make Morgan worth playing.

Al-- I think it would be even more drastic for me to make him impune to those. Maybe make him impune to wealth, but I'm not sure this helps him too much anyway.

posted 05-04-99 07:50 PM ET            

I'd like to just prohibit all factions but Morgan from choosing Free Market, but I guess if I just decide not to use it myself when I play anyone but Morgan that is good enough, considering how poorly the computer plays as it is. And I guess it would be a huge mistake anyway, because all the other factions would hate me with an aversion to free market! (I just realized that last point)

posted 06-29-99 05:57 PM ET            

I'm a fraction off topic and I'm not looking for an argument (as you might guess I'm a big Morgan fan). Anyway, my question is linguistic.

I take it you don't like to play Morgan so you say, in your beloved phrase, that he "blows". Over here (UK), I would think that would (on balance, it's not concrete) mean that he was kicking butt. Do I take it then that you mean that Morgan "sucks" and that, somewhat breathlessly is the same as "blows"?

posted 07-01-99 02:26 PM ET            

I love hearing arguments from people who still think Morgan is one of the better factions. His was the first faction I played, and believe it or not I actually liked playing as them. As I've said in later posts, I don't believe them to be a bad faction, but after analyzing this game in every which way I've come to the conclusion that though good, Morgan is greatly disadvantaged in comparison to other factions. I'd rank him 6/7.

posted 07-07-99 09:23 PM ET            

Allright now to matter at hand... Morgan is just fine the way he is. U guys should listen to Smeagol, his plan for Morgan is a good one.
1 - Expand like crazy
2- Build some supply trans to get those early S.P. (WP and VW)
3- Go to FM as soon as you can
4- Station 1 military unit at every base and then
5- Built probe team to explore. Since you'll be insanely rich you can buy off any attacker and turn his own troop/bases against him
6- Once you 've built creche and hab complex you go 40 20 40 in your SE choices and you get pop boom from Golden Age and also U get back the energy and lab research loss because of the +1 bonus of G.A. (which transfer to a +3 bonus with Morgan)

If by then you didn't left everybody in the dust research wise then you're either doing something very wrong or you got the best opponents I have ever seen...

posted 07-17-99 04:50 PM ET            

So I decided to change him to this :

TECH, Indust, SOCIAL, +ECONOMY, SOCIAL, -SUPPORT, HURRY, 75, POPULATION, 3
#DATALINKS2
^+1 ECONOMY: {Industrial conglomerate}
^-1 SUPPORT: {Followers have expensive tastes}
^HURRY BONUS 25%: {Industrial power}

Tell me what you think (I've play test it a bit and it makes the Morganites a real force when it comes to building cities and SP...(but they still blow on the military aspect)