Community custom faction balancing - Poll

[ete]

ops, sorry, I'd not actually played them just looked at their info. mcs should be prog though.

[ete]

Ok, let's make this a poll. Please order the nominated factions from most to least wanted (you don't have to include all of them). I'll do an instant runoff poll ending tomorrow or the day after and we'll start on the winner right away, then add those in second and third place with a few days between them. Then we'll review the process.

Factions:
Freelancers, Dreams of Earth, Guardians of Morality, The Showbiz Enterprises, The Antimind

[ete]

1. Guardians of Morality
Interesting and different flavor, and a playstyle which encourages a set of tactics I'm not usually accustomed to.

2. Dreams of Earth
Distinct flavor, strongly encourages a style of play (heavy forest, free market, peace).

3. Freelancers
Free HQ everywhere is very cool, decent flavor concept.

4. The Showbiz Enterprises
Could become good flavor with some tweaks, definitely potential but nothing draws me to them like the others.

5. The Antimind
"Community custom faction balancing" - Balance and the Antimind are not very compatible. Let's pick something a bit easier first off.

[Green1]

The Antimind scoffs in the face of your "balance" as he eats Marr for lunch once again, this time with a side of Diedre salad. Poor Marr, my last 5 matches.

I say leave Antimind as is, but tell people what it is. It is beatable. But it is meant to be a monster. A horror even Progs have nightmares about.

It has now, of all the NN factions, earned a permanent place in my alphax.txt and in my heart. May not be everyone else's style.

I think the world would be a better place if more people could follow in Antimind's footsteps (if the thing even has feet).

I have no problem with going with your suggestions if you are determined about just three. Showbiz was not so much a tweak as me wishing for an ideology I do not think is represented. I would have to murder the faction and strip it for art. Then, why would I want a NN faction when i could make my own?

I conceed with your choices.

[Kilkakon]

Yeah agreed. I think any Antimind tweaks should just be fixing up any spelling mistakes, adding a few cities names, etc. He's awesome as is, and the only way to make him fair is to really cut down his bonuses.

I like the choices. I must admit I don't particularily like the graphics for Freelancers or Dreams of Earth, but hey. I do like the work that's gone into Guardians of Morality though, especially the voice having the right accent for a believable preacher type.

I will say that Dreams of Earth seem a little strong--Hybrid Forests come with a lot of bonuses and I don't know if the disadvantages counter that effectively. One of the factions I had in LE was similar, and I had to cut him out eventually. Still, if people think that'll work, then hey. As it stands, the faction would be good on the offence and defence, due to the morale bonus and high production from forests.

As far as choices go, I'm happy with the three you've picked.

[Darsnan]

An aquatic Cha Dawn: Having watched the various AI(s) play, the first thing they do with their initial CPs in MY2101 is pop pods if there is one adjacent. This is OK for the other factions, as between MY2101 - MY2105 if the CP has to battle a worm from a bad pod-pop, then (even if the CP is in fungus) it will survive the MW attack. However Cha Dawn doesn't arrive till MY2107, and if there is a pod next to his starting CPs, he will use the CPs to pop the pod, which if it ends up being a worm, Cha will lose the CP. This is very devastating for any faction to lose an initial CP, but for the production-starved Cha it is catastrophic, and is one of the main reasons he plays so poorly (i.e. an extremely retarded start).
What I have done in the past to counter this is to aquatize Cha. Then if there is a pod adjacent to his starting location, if its a bad pod-pop then there is a chance the Sea Colony Pod will be able to escape, or that the initial starting military unit (you can replace the MW with an IoD) can come to the rescue, or snag the wild NL. The other benefit for the AI in an aquatized environment is the increased nutrients and minerals: the AI (especially on higher difficulty settings) can really put to use the +2 sea nutrients, and can use this to neatly compensate for the industrial penalty. A human playing an aquatized Cha Dawn would have to contend with additional drones from the nutrient rich environment, so would not receive as muich benefit from the additional minerals.

D
 

[ete]

Darsnan: Is that a nomination? Because we're working on custom factions here, mostly NetworkNode ones. Maybe there'll be some faction creation projects later and we could make something along those lines?

Green/Kilka: Glad you guys are ok with the choices, if there's no objections I'll probably close the poll this evening and we can start on the actual balancing.

[Darsnan]

Darsnan: Is that a nomination? Because we're working on custom factions here, mostly NetworkNode ones. Maybe there'll be some faction creation projects later and we could make something along those lines?

Thats up to you. It can always be brought up later in a different thread (all I did was cut and paste the above text from another thread where it was discussed how to improve Cha Dawn, anyways). Here were the leaderhead graphics and faction description (Buncle did the graqhics for this one):

[ete]

Ah, right. If it's a custom faction (even based on an official) we could definitely work on it as part of this project. I should get around to downloading all the other factions people've made.

[BFG]

Aren't you guys forgetting the 15th stock faction - Firaxis?

[Green1]

Aren't you guys forgetting the 15th stock faction - Firaxis?

Joke/fan factions are not considered in this iteration.

[Earthmichael]

I had an idea for a faction that I posted somewhere eons ago.  Problem is, I don't know if the game programming could actually handle such a faction.

EXTREMISTS:
+2 Efficiency; -2 Growth.
Starting technology: Planetary Networks.
One extra drone for each 4 citizens.
Aversion: Free Market

All SE values from society choices, both positive and negative, are doubled.

[ete]

@BFG: That's included officially, so not a custom faction. Plus Singularity at the start is.. really unstable. Get hit by probesteal once and your only advantage is gone, far from imbalanced I would imagine under most circumstances.

Earthmichael: I don't see any way to implement that without assembly changes, and this project is not about creating new ones, just running some quality control on existing custom factions. We'll probably have some faction creation stuff once my text file creator is working (which will be a while, it's below faction ranking formula and wiki in my priorities).

[BFG]

@BFG: That's included officially, so not a custom faction. Plus Singularity at the start is.. really unstable. Get hit by probesteal once and your only advantage is gone, far from imbalanced I would imagine under most circumstances.

Whoa...I didn't realize they got Singularity at the start.  I never actually use 'em.  Forget I asked!

[JarlWolf]

Hrm. Not sure whether to give "balanced" versions of my factions... though I fear they may lose character then... hrm.