Faction ranking

[Yuri_Yslin]

I do not have much experience with multiplayer sadly so this is mostly vs lackluster Transcendent AI.

S Tier: Pirates and Aliens

Pirates literally start very safe, far from being harassed by the worms & AI. AI rarely (if ever) goes to sea and it takes ages for them to get their first sea town so you can pretty much expand peacefully all over the map, unless you start at a small pond between land masses (in which case you're screwed). And because of the +1 minerals, even your wimpiest sea bases actually can develop grow well without resource stagnation and I think it's one of the only factions that can actually skip ICS and attempt to create spread-out bases because working sea tiles give you +5 food/+4 energy/+1 minerals which is usually better than small towns spamming specialists, at least for me. The only thing they kinda suck at is getting pop booms, everything else feels comfy and you always feel at an advantage.

The aliens start with massive tech advantage, they are powerful in combat, and can direct tech. From what I have seen they are the best faction vs. humans. Vs. AI it is easier for me to start at the sea so I value pirates more, but I can't deny how good it feels to be able to direct research. Perhaps I need to start disabling blind tech in my games.

A+ Tier: University

I mean, Zak only needs virtual world asap to deal with his drone problems, and then he can get far ahead in science, gets everything important 1st like crawlers or important wonders and he can snowball from there.

A: Peacekeepers, Cyborgs, Hive

Lal is one of the best ICSers around on Transcendent, and is the easiest one to win with due to easy diplo victory through his faction bonus. He can get his ICSed bases bigger and better, and thus outperform other ICSers with less effort.

Aki is like Zak but struggles with ICSing due to limited pop boom and doesn't get free +50% psych from the bases so her benefits start shining later on, and earlier=better.

Hive creates strong towns from the bat due to free perimeter defense which allows them to ICS even during wars, the -1 energy per base doesn't seem to matter that much when you can build stuff faster. Not my favorite faction but it seems to be rather good at stuff.

B: Morgan, Gaians, Drones

A weird case of a leader who benefits from pop booms but can't easily get them because he can't get planned. But he can get +1 sq energy without the cumbersome free market, just going for wealth, so his bases tend to generate a ton of power and he can easily outperform Aki or even Zak in research. He is however really tiresome to play, pretty much 100% ICS spam-cities-everywhere kind of playstyle and after your 50th city I just can't handle it anymore.

Gaians at least have a pretty leader with a pleasant voice, and can ICS well, but the -1 morale seriously pisses me off whenever I'm going for worms, though it probably doesn't matter that much.

Drones are not my cup of coffee, I always feel annoyed by them being behind the tech and needing to meticulously ICS like mad to get the best out of +2 Industry and -1 drones at bases. But I can't deny they are good at ICS-ing in general.

C: Angels, Believers, Spartans

I was excited for a spy-related faction 20 years ago as a kid when I first heard of an expansion for SMAC, but what I got was fairly disappointing and I am still not very happy with the result. All Roze really gets is -25% cost for probe missions and better odds at running away. Morgan is IMHO the better spy faction because he has much more money, which is decisive in the end.

Spartans and especially Believers really need someone to kill near them, otherwise they quickly fall behind others (Believers in particular) and lose their combat advantage offering nothing in return.

D: Cult

+1 on the planet side compared to Gaians isn't worth losing 1 eco and 1 industry. His bonuses feel pointless (double police duty for mind worms - umm, how about building a nonlethal method unit, same thing?, free brood pit takes ages because Centauri Genetics are quite a late tech) and all of that for what, +2 to planet that caps out at 3 anyway so going Green overkills it. Why would I want this guy over Gaians for a worm based game puzzles me.


In general I rate pirates high because I can play a game without being forced to do super heavy ICS which tends to be overwhelming and not fun at all. Pirates can do great with 10-15 cities and just feeding energy to a exchange+supercollider+theory of everything city to get ridiculous research rates without managing 50 towns like Morgan has to. I believe 1 crawler working a tidal generator would produce almost 40 labs in such a city with +70% research slider, which is kinda amazing.


I kinda wish there was a mod that imposes heavier ICS penalties to make going-tall viable (like Civ5), while modyfing the AI, but not changing other stuff.

[Nexii]

I've found that reducing facility costs while increasing colony pod costs helps some with countering ICS. Especially the Hab Complex/Dome

Though even then, expanding all over is still a dominant strategy

[WeMustConsentAI]

I do not have much experience with multiplayer sadly so this is mostly vs lackluster Transcendent AI.

S Tier: Pirates and Aliens

Pirates literally start very safe, far from being harassed by the worms & AI. AI rarely (if ever) goes to sea and it takes ages for them to get their first sea town so you can pretty much expand peacefully all over the map, unless you start at a small pond between land masses (in which case you're screwed). And because of the +1 minerals, even your wimpiest sea bases actually can develop grow well without resource stagnation and I think it's one of the only factions that can actually skip ICS and attempt to create spread-out bases because working sea tiles give you +5 food/+4 energy/+1 minerals which is usually better than small towns spamming specialists, at least for me. The only thing they kinda suck at is getting pop booms, everything else feels comfy and you always feel at an advantage.

The aliens start with massive tech advantage, they are powerful in combat, and can direct tech. From what I have seen they are the best faction vs. humans. Vs. AI it is easier for me to start at the sea so I value pirates more, but I can't deny how good it feels to be able to direct research. Perhaps I need to start disabling blind tech in my games.

A+ Tier: University

I mean, Zak only needs virtual world asap to deal with his drone problems, and then he can get far ahead in science, gets everything important 1st like crawlers or important wonders and he can snowball from there.

A: Peacekeepers, Cyborgs, Hive

Lal is one of the best ICSers around on Transcendent, and is the easiest one to win with due to easy diplo victory through his faction bonus. He can get his ICSed bases bigger and better, and thus outperform other ICSers with less effort.

Aki is like Zak but struggles with ICSing due to limited pop boom and doesn't get free +50% psych from the bases so her benefits start shining later on, and earlier=better.

Hive creates strong towns from the bat due to free perimeter defense which allows them to ICS even during wars, the -1 energy per base doesn't seem to matter that much when you can build stuff faster. Not my favorite faction but it seems to be rather good at stuff.

B: Morgan, Gaians, Drones

A weird case of a leader who benefits from pop booms but can't easily get them because he can't get planned. But he can get +1 sq energy without the cumbersome free market, just going for wealth, so his bases tend to generate a ton of power and he can easily outperform Aki or even Zak in research. He is however really tiresome to play, pretty much 100% ICS spam-cities-everywhere kind of playstyle and after your 50th city I just can't handle it anymore.

Gaians at least have a pretty leader with a pleasant voice, and can ICS well, but the -1 morale seriously pisses me off whenever I'm going for worms, though it probably doesn't matter that much.

Drones are not my cup of coffee, I always feel annoyed by them being behind the tech and needing to meticulously ICS like mad to get the best out of +2 Industry and -1 drones at bases. But I can't deny they are good at ICS-ing in general.

C: Angels, Believers, Spartans

I was excited for a spy-related faction 20 years ago as a kid when I first heard of an expansion for SMAC, but what I got was fairly disappointing and I am still not very happy with the result. All Roze really gets is -25% cost for probe missions and better odds at running away. Morgan is IMHO the better spy faction because he has much more money, which is decisive in the end.

Spartans and especially Believers really need someone to kill near them, otherwise they quickly fall behind others (Believers in particular) and lose their combat advantage offering nothing in return.

D: Cult

+1 on the planet side compared to Gaians isn't worth losing 1 eco and 1 industry. His bonuses feel pointless (double police duty for mind worms - umm, how about building a nonlethal method unit, same thing?, free brood pit takes ages because Centauri Genetics are quite a late tech) and all of that for what, +2 to planet that caps out at 3 anyway so going Green overkills it. Why would I want this guy over Gaians for a worm based game puzzles me.


In general I rate pirates high because I can play a game without being forced to do super heavy ICS which tends to be overwhelming and not fun at all. Pirates can do great with 10-15 cities and just feeding energy to a exchange+supercollider+theory of everything city to get ridiculous research rates without managing 50 towns like Morgan has to. I believe 1 crawler working a tidal generator would produce almost 40 labs in such a city with +70% research slider, which is kinda amazing.


I kinda wish there was a mod that imposes heavier ICS penalties to make going-tall viable (like Civ5), while modyfing the AI, but not changing other stuff.

The Alien Crossfire expansion baffles me, so I don't play it heavily (yet). This leaves my
ranking for the original factions.

Rank S: University

Again, I shouldn't have to explain this for experienced, power-hungry empire builders.

Rank A: Peacekeepers

Nearly Zak's tech edge, and higher and happier population; what more need I say here?

Rank B: Gaians and Morganites

In all my One City Challenge experience, I have only used Lal, Zak, and Morgan. Deirdre
is only good for standard games.

Rank C: Hive

If you're desperate to win militarily, Yang is the way to go. Otherwise, there are better
nations to play.

Rank D: Believers and Spartans
 
As always, you must move lightning quick to destroy your foes before they get off the
ground. Otherwise, they're going to overwhelm you. Yep, still no good.

[magic9mushroom]

all of that for what, +2 to planet that caps out at 3 anyway so going Green overkills it. Why would I want this guy over Gaians for a worm based game puzzles me.

The advantages boil down to:

1) Easier worm snowball. At game start Cha has a pre-captured worm and 45.5% capture chance for the second; Deirdre has to get the first naturally (though it's a guaranteed capture) and 22.75% capture chance for the second. Once they get Centauri Empathy they both have 75% base chance, but Centauri Empathy takes time and time is the enemy of worm rushes (because of Hypnotic Trance and the softcap on capturing worms).
2) Speaking of Centauri Empathy, Cha quite literally has a head-start on that, because he starts with Social Psych and thus needs only 3 more techs to unlock it while Deirdre needs 4. Certainly, he has an econ and industry penalty working against him on that, but he also has more money to rush-build things due to the greater number of worms trawling through fungus.
3) While ecodamage reduction maxes out at +2 PLANET and worm capture maxes out at +3, +4 PLANET does give +40% to psi-attacks.

Cha is definitely a better worm-rusher than Deirdre (though it's more questionable whether he's better than H'minee). Still, the price he pays for that is very large, and so I agree he's not as good a faction choice overall.