Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire > After Action Reports
Continental Consciousness - 256x128 map
jroussey:
I also enjoyed this AAR (and your others) very much. To answer your question, I personally think that, since you are so extensively modifying many elements of the game, while still trying to stay true to the core principles of the game and storyline, it might be fun to see this played out for the first time with the original 7 factions, possibly on the (huge) map of Planet.
bvanevery:
Hmm I agree with you on the factions. As it turned out I changed most of the original factions slightly, making them less extreme in their handicaps, and nerfing some of their advantages. For instance, nobody's getting +2 Support out the gate, it's way overpowered. Nor is Morgan going to be crippled with -1 Support, that's just a death sentence. Spartans don't get +1 Police anymore, that's Yang's turf, and I will not have the Spartans with better police than Yang. Spartans don't get an industry penalty anymore either though. Believers are now a Growth faction, with population boom as their big weapon, not probe teams. Police State becomes the slightly better way to do probe teams. They aren't as crippled at research. Generally speaking nobody gets +2 anything unless it's a late, powerful social engineering choice, and often not even then. A +1 in anything becomes much more significant, and there aren't anywhere near as many disruptive -2 things.
I'm going to skip The Map of Planet though. I believe in playing on random maps, and also I want to playtest my extensive world building settings on an Enormous map. The mod is ready for beta testing now, I just don't have the energy right now to start playing. I'm thinking of taking the Fusion Power Is Now challenge 1st, although I might play both simultaneously, on different laptops. Got more battery power that way.
jroussey:
--- Quote from: bvanevery on May 01, 2018, 06:47:57 pm ---Hmm I agree with you on the factions. As it turned out I changed most of the original factions slightly, making them less extreme in their handicaps, and nerfing some of their advantages. For instance, nobody's getting +2 Support out the gate, it's way overpowered. Nor is Morgan going to be crippled with -1 Support, that's just a death sentence. Spartans don't get +1 Police anymore, that's Yang's turf, and I will not have the Spartans with better police than Yang. Spartans don't get an industry penalty anymore either though. Believers are now a Growth faction, with population boom as their big weapon, not probe teams. Police State becomes the slightly better way to do probe teams. They aren't as crippled at research. Generally speaking nobody gets +2 anything unless it's a late, powerful social engineering choice, and often not even then. A +1 in anything becomes much more significant, and there aren't anywhere near as many disruptive -2 things.
I'm going to skip The Map of Planet though. I believe in playing on random maps, and also I want to playtest my extensive world building settings on an Enormous map. The mod is ready for beta testing now, I just don't have the energy right now to start playing. I'm thinking of taking the Fusion Power Is Now challenge 1st, although I might play both simultaneously, on different laptops. Got more battery power that way.
--- End quote ---
I like a lot of the changes you're making. The original 7, while balanced well against one-another politically, need some work in terms of game play. I've toyed with changing their faction bonuses a few times myself but never really did any extensive testing. Sounds like you're approaching the re-balancing similarly to how I did, though - generally more well-rounded factions altogether.
Regarding the Spartans, the Industry penalty combined with the preference for Power always irked me. Seemed like a poor game design to essentially default them to -30% Industry (with proper techs, of course). I always figured that this was the major reason why the Spartans tend to stagnate mid-game. Have you considered using the 'Robust' social engineering option so they only receive 1/2 of the penalty for using Power? Essentially -1 Industry instead of the usual -2.
I'd love to see a clear breakdown of your revamped factions if/when you have time (once done with your changes).
bvanevery:
I did better than that, I got rid of the -2 Industry penalty for Power. It's really annoying when you want to build Secret Projects. Now it is -1 Industry -1 Economy. That's generally how I've solved a lot of -2 Whatever problems. I've split the penalty into 2 different categories so that it's not as horrid to take the hit on any 1 category.
Spartans are actually pretty boring on the faction abilities now. +2 Morale, that's it. They're warriors, they aren't anything else.
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