JarlWolf's Custom Factions

[Buster's Uncle]

A neg Planet stat ought to make good sense story-wise, too; the Comrades are more or less in the Soviet tradition, yes?  The Soviet Union had a pretty bad environmental record...  Even if you have it that they're in the BEST tradition of the Soviet ideal, I could still see the emphasis on worker excellence/industrial vigor being problematic on Planet.

[JarlWolf]

A neg Planet stat ought to make good sense story-wise, too; the Comrades are more or less in the Soviet tradition, yes?  The Soviet Union had a pretty bad environmental record...  Even if you have it that they're in the BEST tradition of the Soviet ideal, I could still see the emphasis on worker excellence/industrial vigor being problematic on Planet.

They aren't exactly Soviet, no. The only thing that they do take from the Soviets, and mind they only take this from the ORIGINAL Bolshevik revolutionaries, is the fervent militarism and spirited troops, with lots of support from the locals and communities. Basically imagine the Soviets before the Soviet union was formed: This is more of a revolutionary faction then a great Socialist nation state one. They are Communitarian communists who are very militaristic and have a spirited revolutionary outlook.

This also means that they are less about state capitalism as Stalin, (and even Lenin to extents) was and more about simply survival and operating efficiently: Which means they plan their industry far better then most factions will. They don't care about profit and all forms of private enterprise are shoved aside to that properly planned economics takes hold: The -1 ECONOMY is more then just removing free enterprise, it's also because the planned industry is focused on resource efficiency and reduced environmental damage with maximum mineral output, which explains a lot of the bonuses.

The 3+ support even ties in with this as the societies are very communitarian: People share resources willingly and collectively store and share them. The planned industry also means that due to the efficiency of their system, they also have more resources and thus can support their people and military in far greater terms.

The -1 Probe comes in because of this system, as efficient as it is is vulnerable to outsiders or malcontents within the system: People can abuse the system to their own needs and while the system will shrug it off and recover easily enough, it still is enough of a problem to affect things. Plus the system is quite decentralized and information isn't as controlled as it could be. The Soviet Union on the other hand was HIGHLY centralized.

The reason I don't have planetary negatives with this on another perspective: The Crimson Comrade's can either be an industrialist society or Agrarian: They can even be Green Communists, living in eco friendly communes and farming communities, where they live in frontier esque towns living off the land and pooling resources equally.


I see your perspective of the Crimson Comrade's, but be aware that this is NOT a mere Soviet spin off in a good light. It carries some characteristics with the Soviet Union in terms of militaristic spirit and support of said spirit, but that's as far it goes.

In essence: This faction is comprised of relatively autonomous communities that answer to a shared doctrine with a united national/ united front military.

The government is run by a council, which is made up of leaders from each region. Each region has a popular vote on who should run. A process of voting from each town/city district elevates them up in a sort of ladder during elections, and the whole city or township votes out of those who made it past their local voting, and them it continues to mount up until it goes to regional, and then finally, national leader. Each region is relatively autonomous, and while all regions must adhere to the constitution of the Comrades and all its set laws, Regions can manage their budgets and what they focus on as they please, and run themselves how they please provided they follow the constitutional law frame.

Regional leaders have set elections every 3 years, and as for the faction leadership this would hypothetically also change every 5 years but for the sake of the story we can just save Vazheli is a benevolent dictator who regardless is elected keeps a strong gaze on things to make sure it doesn't derail.


The Crimson Comrades promotes Social programs to support it's citizens, and everything is publicly owned. All citizens have equal rights to healthcare, the same civil and political liberties. Income tax is high, and all the communities have pro communal doctrines to further a sense of community. Nationalism has been replaced with an internationalist ideal of communist doctrine.

Overall they are much more decentralized communitarians as opposed to centralized autocrats. The Soviet Union was a centralized Socialist Autocracy with some mild bureaucratic democracy and structured militarism with a fairly good police system.
In terms of flaws: Can be repressive, the enviro-economical efficiency and safety was often poor and the bureaucracy tied things up a lot of the time. I state that from personal experience, especially on the last bit.

The Crimson Comrades on the other hand are a decentralized Socialist/Communist Communal Confederacy with the closest form of direct democracy available while still being representative, with revolutionary, zealous militarism and a strong communalist system.
In terms of flaws: There is security issues within the faction in terms of information, and coordination and uniformity can sometimes be an issue.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, I think we've discussed my opinion before that Lenin made changes that Marx would never have approved of.  I see the Comrades as, at least in part, keeping the basic Marx and throwing out the somewhat antithetical authoritarian stuff Lenin and his crowd grafted onto a political system that was supposed to be centrally egalitarian.

I do wonder if it's realistic to aspire to a faction being equally proficient at both the earlier industrial-competitive-revolutionary stage and the decentralized agrarian end stage Marx envisioned.

[JarlWolf]

Realistic as having a total green society on an alien planet  , an anarchistic/total liberalistic state of hackers  , or a faction of peacekeepers and humanitarians in a world full of brain sucking parasitical worms and creatures, extremist factions that are all bent on killing each other off and realizing their dream of utopia and the fact they are on an alien planet with completely new environments  . It's amazing any of these factions function at all.

In terms of this working, it would, and history has proven this to some extent (the Paris Commune ran for 20-40 years before being dismantled by the French gov't) and was relatively successful. And Socialist nations have and still are successful, some of our forum members including myself having been in or living in a Socialist nation. (We have Swedes here, you know who you are.)

But I won't harp about ideological contributions. All ideals in their extremes, in reality will fail, and when applied correctly will benefit the user. Real societies have to adapt and change, which is why I stated the Comrades can go multiple directions.

[Sigma]

The Crimson Comrades on the other hand are a decentralized Socialist/Communist Communal Confederacy with the closest form of direct democracy available while still being representative, with revolutionary, zealous militarism and a strong communalist system.
In terms of flaws: There is security issues within the faction in terms of information, and coordination and uniformity can sometimes be an issue.

Wouldn't a completely decentralized organization manifest a really poor Efficiency as well?

[JarlWolf]

Wouldn't a completely decentralized organization manifest a really poor Efficiency as well?

Not necessarily, because in a centralized system you are applying a single method or policy to a large and varied group. This can lead to problems as different groups have different needs, and some people have to run differently due to environmental or other reasoning. Plus a system that's truly centralized will have issues communicating with other sectors and getting down their problems because the central authority has to deal with ALL of the others. In a decentralized system the varied groups take care of their own problems efficiently and don't trouble the main group about it, and contribute to the group. Of course other groups will help their fellows if problems persist and such, but overall people aren't tied up in centralized bureaucracy and useless protocol and procedure that doesn't apply to them.

Lets take a historical example. Two relatively repressive men, Iosif Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Stalin and his generals won the war, Hitler and his didn't. Why? Hitler was much more centralized and meddled in his generals affairs and planning constantly. He was the central authority and he wanted absolute control. Stalin on the other hand, while being a centralist as well, knew not to constantly and directly interfere with his generals planning. His Generals handled their own situations to their own accord and requested help when needed, and thus won the war as they had more autonomy and the ability to make decisions on their own. Vatutin and Zhukov in particular were famous examples, Vatutin leading his own aggressive assault policies and Zhukov keeping a strong stalwart defence against the fascist invader. While on the other side of the fence the 9th and 6th armies were constantly boggled by Central commands orders and prohibited in action.


Edit: Do note I did not say completely decentralized, they aren't anarchists, they have a central body of gov't. It's just they are decentralized in the fact that regions have autonomy and can dictate their own policies provided they stay within the major guidelines.
2nd Edit: Do note that I follow the SMAC/X style of factions: factions are both in their most positive utopian light and dystopia. This faction is a loose revolutionary organization and its represented in their drawbacks, -1 probe for a militaristic front is pretty dangerous: It means your information is vulnerable and gameplay wise Probes can sneak in and twist my kidneys and kick my liver all they want, and that hurts the faction big time as it makes us vomit our hard earned techs, among other things.

Plus on terms of gov't they can also go police state: They'd still have voting but things would be rationed and there'd be tighter security. In terms of imagining, Martial law. Not used very often but its there if its needed.

[ete]

My suggestions come more from game balance/improving how the AI uses the faction than flavor, since the faction has one very large advantage (massive support) without something significant enough to outweigh it (lack of +1 energy/square is the closest, and running green/planned is fine). I'll distill my suggestions and reasons:

The probe - has almost no gameplay effects, since they'll usually run Knowledge for -3 Probe which has exactly the same effects as -2 probe, making it irrelevant for most of the game. Effects with minimal impact seem not ideal, and other penalties which make sense from a flavor perspective would help balance the faction.
Possible counterpoint: Running Demo+Power to maintain +3 Support may be worthwhile over Know, though -2 Industry is a huge hit to take whatever the situation.
The Support emphasis only serves to trick the AI into using poor social settings, since it already has plenty of support. Giving an alternate option (or just having none) should help the AI out without impacting the human player.

[JarlWolf]

Mhm, I thought of changing the emphasis of support to something else, or having it as none. When I was making this faction I was still very inexperienced.

[Yitzi]

If you want to balance the Comrades against other factions, I would say you should probably change it to: +2 SUPPORT, +1 MORALE, -1 ECONOMY, -2 PROBE, Immunity Planned, Immunity Wealth, Immunity Eudaimonia.  Now they can run planned/wealth for good industry to complement their morale and support bonuses, but don't have such good research and are vulnerable to probe teams.  With Eudaimonia, they get to further boost industry and get that long-awaited +1 energy/square at no penalty.

[ete]

I'd be inclined to keep the +3 Support, which is kinda the core of the faction, and attempt to balance it out with another notable penalty (which could replace the irrelevant probe penalty). The ability to run either Demo/Power PS/Knowledge at +3 Support is very cool and unique, just powerful enough that for proper balance the faction needs a bigger drawback than no +1 eng/square.

Thoughts on the others:

The Iron Regime

First thing I notice: AI will be crippled by emphasis on Police. The faction's greatest strength is arguably being able to run FM at war, which is a massive strength.

Overall, lots of nice bonuses, and disadvantages that while not.. entirely minor, don't seem to come close to balancing it out. I'd encourage the +2 Effic to be dropped, which would at least make it not an amazing builder as well as brilliant at war.

The Valhallans

Quite an.. extreme faction. I'm not sure what to say about this one, +4 almost anything is hard to predict without playing with, and it does have some moderately harsh penalties. My gut feeling is that the fanatic bonus and techsteal together with very early elite troops would be an absurdly deadly early game force, and no normal faction would stand a chance if starting near them, and that they'd have some difficulty if they had no one to fight, but not as much difficulty as some due to no econ/indust/growth issues. I'll play with them before giving much specific suggestions, other than Emphasis: Morale is a bad idea when you naturally have +4 Morale.

The Imperium Crescit

+2 GROWTH: The Imperium promotes large families and people often try to have as many children so their families have more workers or means to get income.
+2 ECONOMY: The wealth made from the backs of slavery combined with the constant, brutal struggle for wealth amongst the elite make the empire very wealthy.
-2 MORALE: The corruption, backstabbing and general dislike of superiors within the empire does not really motivate people to fight.
-1 POLICE: The throngs of slaves and lower classes are often unhappy and in terrible conditions, so the need to enforce law and order is even more prevalent.
They get a drone per 3 citizens.
50% Hurry- Where there's a whip there's a way!
Their bonus is they get Children's Creche already built.

Their ideology selected is Free Market.
They may not use Planned Economics, as that's perceived as government regulation and the bourgeois would not allow it in any form, as it's against their competitive ideals.

Too strong. Far too strong. Instant +1 energy/square and pop booms with just demo will make this an absurdly effective builder, and 50% Hurry with the amount of cash they can easily get combined with likely tech advantage should let them overwhelm better trained foes in battle, plus not having to run FM for +1 energy/square lets them fight wars without hurting their development much. Their disadvantages are not particularly important, -1 Police does nothing to them and -2 Morale is only a minor hindrance. This is the kind of faction you give to the AI once they can't beat you any more, which is nice to have as an alternate version, but it'd be better imo to have the main version fit for human balanced use too.


The Machine Mandate

+3 INDUSTRY: The Machines are very good at production and can crank out more of their brethren very quickly, and harvest resources efficiently and reduce costs.
+2 EFFICIENCY: Cutting edge technology combined with the precision of machinery, and lack of Human/Progenitor error means all operations are more efficient.
-4 PROBE: Machines are very vulnerable to harmful AI and can be easily captured by probe teams.
-2 ECONOMY: All the citizens of the Mandate are machines or some sort of artificial life/inorganic life, and thus need energy to run themselves as opposed to where humans/progenitors can survive with basic needs. This drain means the economy suffers.

Their bonuses are: Free Prototypes, the faction are machines and AI themselves and can easily make and know how to make new things without inefficiency's.

They get free Trance and Empath techs.

They may not use Thought Control in social engineering. The very reason they revolted was due to them being slaves.

Again, I'll probably have to play this to see how the Indust bonus and Econ penalty play off eachother, but my guess is this would be a very powerful faction. They'd have to pump out a ton of defensive probe teams to stand up to pressure, but they can afford to do that with their production. Econ hurts, especially on research, so maybe that would be manageable.. but +2 Effic and being able to handle worms easily adds a lot. Definitely less crazy builders than the previous faction, but still perhaps too much for an equally skilled human using an original faction, and AIs don't either use or defend against probes very well. No specific suggestions, but compare to existing builders like the drones and yang if you want balance there.

[JarlWolf]

Note on the Imperium: They grow strong and have fairly good tech but in combat their flaw makes up for it. I've playtested all the factions and this is my observations:

The Imperium grows fairly well and gets pretty large, but once it gets in a war it needs to rely on numbers to be a true threat. A normal faction can easily gun down Imperium units and rip them to shreds, they are weak due to their morale penalty. Add in hardcore military factions like Valhallans, Comrades or Iron Regime and they have a really tough fight on their hands so I think they are actually pretty balanced, they are good in peace time but have issues during war. You also have to remember:

The Imperium gets 3 extra drones per base. This is a HUGE problem combined with their -1 Police.

As for the Valhallans, they are great fighters, Valhallans can be very deadly and just rock entire factions if they can get close enough in tech. But the thing Valhallans have issues with is research: Valhallans are always lagging behind in research and if you can beat them in the tech race and hold a strong enough defence to last for a counter attack you can beat them back with a normal military.

Again on the emphasis of each faction: I was green when I made these so those will need alteration. With the Valhallans I would probably put their emphasis on Growth or something similar, and for the Comrades I'd either go Morale or growth.
I don't want to really change the stats of the Comrade's too much, as in gameplay I've found (as an AI) that they are relatively fleshed out and balanced. They aren't horribly overpowered and if you use probes against them you can seriously cripple them. The usage of probes in game is severely underestimated and I for one can account to the AI and myself using probes in deadly fashions, especially when you get really wealthy factions and they use mind control probes or other mayhem.

I'd also feel that making the Comrades have an immunity to Eudaimonia and Wealth would be way too overpowered: You'd basically be getting such a powerful production and industrial machine going that combined with the lack of military penalties that'd give you'd be an unstoppable faction.

As for the Regime in gameplay terms, I have both played and played against them, and what their biggest problem is is growth: This faction might seem like a good builder but they are not. Their bases remain pretty small for a long time and they have to use their military pretty tactfully to be effective. They get a nice research bonus from their efficiency and their research and military is pretty much the only things truly going for them besides their good police benefits for free market; an effective strategy is just to have several low population settlements as they don't grow very well anyways. In game playing versus them the AI doesn't grow much at all but their technology is at least on par with the current levels if not better, and they have a fairly decent military. You do not want to fight a large force of them, they will probably win. The key to beating them: Grinding them down and killing units before they can replace them.

As for the Machine Mandate, their probe bonus hurts them more then you'd think. I've seen entire Machine Mandate bases being captured by Imperium or Morganites simply by mind probing them, and having such a low probe score makes it just the easier for those factions to do it. (and mind this was AI doing the mind probes, not me.)


Mind I am happy for your suggestions and I am taking in account of them. I'll be looking into the stats of each and reviewing them and I am DEFINITELY going to change their emphasis so they don't stunt themselves.
Edit: Be aware that I do not aim to have these balanced with the original factions. Their storyline is that they were the successors or usurpers of many factions, so it makes sense why they are much more inherently stronger then the original factions. All that matters is that they are balanced with each other: If people put them with other factions outside the set its at their own decision.

[Green1]

I agree with you, Jarlwolf.

If folks actually used custom factions for Multiplayer, yeah, balance. But to my knowledge I have never seen an MP game with custom factions allowed.

For SP, I would go more with what universe I wanted and ignore balance. Antimind is not balanced. I like it that way. But even then, I prefer the AI single player custom factions to be balanced in favor of being slightly over powered.

But then again, Ete knows a lot about how the AI does things, too. He is a very good guy to listen too.

[ete]

It would be useful to have a clear answer as to whether you're intending to balance the factions against each other or against the original human factions, because the average level of power of your factions seems significantly higher so testing them against primarily each other may lead to appearance of balance.

Secondly, would you be willing to make two versions of the factions, one intended to be balanced with existing factions (so some MPers may accept it, and it would not turn the game into a total cakewalk for a human using it) and one which is powerful enough for an AI using it to give a human a hard time? That is what I plan to do ultimately for the factions in the faction pack, and it would be good to have you building these alternate versions for your factions.

In answer to specific points:
Yes, -2 Morale is a problem so they're not going to do brilliantly if rushed very early on, but they get the two ultimate aims of a builder faction virtually for free and far sooner than any other faction so I find it hard to see how they would be unable to massively outproduce virtually any faction after the early game, and be far enough in tech to compensate for their poorly trained troops.

1 drone for every three pop.. okay, but consider that with Rec/Holo you're clearing out four drones. They've got cash to spare, so pumping enough energy into psych to convert 1-2 drones into Talents is not a huge investment, and at that keeps size seven bases happy, which is fine because by the time you've got larger bases, you should be so far ahead in every way thanks to the builder advantages that you'll be fine.

Neither of those penalties is entirely without sting, but neither is the kind of penalty that would come close to compensating for free pop booms and excessive income, at least in the hands of a moderately skilled player.

I understand not wanting to change the Comrades too much, and they do seem like a faction I would like to play against an AI using in their current form, but perhaps you'd be willing to make a human friendly version? And similarly for the Regime, I'd like to play against them the way they are currently, but I feel if I was to play as them I'd find the game far too easy all the way through, rather than the current situation of having an initial struggle for dominance on Transcend, then pulling far ahead of normal factions midgame/overpowered factions later in the game.

As for Probe bonus, I believe after -2 all probe negatives function the same, so that particular disadvantage should be no greater than the Unis, and backed up by some large advantages. Still, -2 econ stings, and half cost for buying units is bad, but a competent human would mass produce probes as a defensive measure and build/spread like crazy, with the effic mostly balancing out the econ penalty after the early game (other than not being able to get +1 eng/square).

Edit: Starting a Transcend game with the factions in the OP download plus some random normal factions. Not sure which I'll play as.

[JarlWolf]

Hmm. I could make a "watered down" version for multiplay or even just for more of a "balanced game."

What I am going to do regardless for the originals is edit the emphasis of the factions: and then for the second version of what you suggested I will modify the stats but still keep the flavour of the factions there. Though in my opinion I doubt people will care for balance if they are using a custom faction, lots of the time the point of a custom faction is something new and crazy and to shake you like a ragdoll. I'll make a second download though, two versions: Balanced and Original. I'll get to the edits in a little bit.

Download the current ones at your own risk, I will get some improved versions up soon and and the optional balanced one.

[Buster's Uncle]

Hey ete - if you were to make that faction editor you've talked about, it would come in very handy here - Jarl's using Facedit...