JarlWolf's Custom Factions

[JarlWolf]

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...

Cough* I'm primitive* cough*

[Geo]

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.

In my old MP game, I was allowed a custom faction. It was pretty much balanced, with -2 growth the biggest negative IIRC. But it was a nautic faction as well, so that was bearable.

[JarlWolf]

Which faction in particular was it?

[ete]

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.

I like playing against crazy factions with insane bonuses. It's only fun to roll all the AIs in the early game, or get such a lead that you're just proving you've won and can beat everyone else ganging up on you after the first 50-100 turns, and I like being able to use new factions without doing that.

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...

noted. bear in mind my planned faction editor would support exporting as text/wiki markup, but would likely not support loading text files without considerable effort since it'd be based on google docs.


Anyway, my AAR from that game:
Started on an island as the Comrades, had a pretty poor start location which delayed my bases settling long enough that Morgan decided to declare war on me, which was annoying. He had armor and I had scouts, so I had to wait for tech to attack him properly, which took longer than I'd wanted and delayed my formers because he was harassing with his defenders. Beat him down and killed him off entirely, there was not room for a vassal on this island. Did I mention this island lacked any landmarks and was fairly barren on the left, and fungus infested on the right?

A machine scout chopper flew in and killed a former of mine out of the blue, though I fairly quickly made peace with them and swapped a couple of techs. The machines and the Imperium were gobbling up the early projects due to my delays, I only managed to get the WP thanks to cashing in an artifact and lost everything else. Still, raising land was urgent, and I had a lot of terraforming to do. The Imperium got elected, and they were way up in the power charts. Contacted everyone, got a few truces mostly, though Lal and the Spartans were fighting and lal declared war on me first. Got the locations of everyone, the Vikings were below/to the right of me on their own large continent (one square of water between us!), which was unfortunate for them given they need to steal early tech. The Spartans were directly above me, also with only one square separating us. The Machines were above them, and the Imperium right at the top of the map, with Lal being to the left of the machines. Spent quite a lot of the game sitting back and terraforming my island into a paradise (and working my way up to mid on the powergraph), with the only major war being Lal/Spartans, but then the Imperium decided to get expansionist..

My allies the machines put up a decent fight, but they were outmatched and slaughtered, and all their SPs gobbled up by the Imperium, who was still by far top of the power graph and climbing rapidly. Santiago had been making angry noises at me, but she was decimated a few turns after finally beating Lal and quickly made peace with me. I'd made a land bridge to that continent, since funneling foes into a stack has been effective before.  Santiago bought me time to get my tree farms and Hybrid forests up, but the imperium had beaten me to air power. I had gatling lazer rovers against chaos planes, and lost virtually all of my crawlers/formers when the bombing raids started. Luckily my terraforming was mostly done, and the crawlers (collecting nuts) were unnecessary now I had hybrid forests. I switched from Knowledge to Power and turned everything to production, and.. just about hung on until I got air power. Probing them was impossible, they has the HSA before I had the tech needed for it (and before i had contact with their bases). There was absurdly much coming at me, if it was not for the AI playing their units so badly I was killing 5 of theirs for each they killed of mine, I would have just lost there. Once I have air power and my ~9 fully equipped bases, usually it's plain sailing. Not this time, because not only was the full weight of the imperium bearing down on me, but they gave the vikings air power and missiles to stab me in the back with. Several times I ran out of offensive units and just had to rush buy and let the invading foes kill my forests. Eventually I stabilized, mostly due to getting Fusion Power (though it was after them, that was a few hard turns), the vikings deciding that the Imperium was a bigger threat and getting a truce after i took a couple of sea bases, and even though I got to MMI long after them, they missed out on the CBA for some reason. With that in hand, I had a foothold in the air, and managed to start making proper counter attacks, going in and clearing out bases full of air units. Even insane production is useless if you leave a dozen expensive units undefended. I made a sudden push when they seemed weak using chop&drop plus a ton of elite chaos rovers, and went right up towards the base with the HSA, which I took 4-5 turns into the attack. And from this point, I've pretty much won, even though they're way above on the power graph still. Maybe I'll finish it tomorrow.

My thoughts after playing with all factions bar the Fascists (which did not load properly for some reason?):

The Imperium is incredibly broken, and is exactly the kind of faction I like playing against, but is not even close to balanced and a human using it would find it virtually impossible to lose. Giving me a hard time despite letting me tech most of the way to air power and get a stable core of bases before reaching me is scary for the AI, even if it did get kinda lucky in eating all those SPs.

The Valhallans are.. strange when left alone. They made a load of small fairly well developed bases. I'd like to see what happens when they actually get to meet someone.

The Machines are amazing at getting early SPs, and had good tech despite the econ issues, but could not hope to stand for long against the flood of the Imperium.


Also, the Imperium's colors make it very hard to read basenames against the normal ground, which was frustrating because I could not infiltrate them to be able to click and figure out what bases had SPs.

[JarlWolf]

Your report is very valuable, and I agree with the colouration. I will probably make their font much darker, like black or something.

Also the Imperium for singleplayer is a colossus economically but if you grind them down they will fall. And they are big, so when they do fall, they crash down hard. But I have certainly noted that and I will adapt and change the stats.

What would you suggest for the Imperium? I'm thinking of making their Police rating even worse: Then they have to field a large army and if they get grinded down their people revolt. It makes sense character wise and balances them out. Your thoughts?

[ete]

I honestly think that free pop booms AND free +1 energy/square is too much to reasonably balance out without some extreme crippling penalty, either one of those is a HUGE deal.

[JarlWolf]

I honestly think that free pop booms AND free +1 energy/square is too much to reasonably balance out without some extreme crippling penalty, either one of those is a HUGE deal.

What about increasing their POLICE problems? The original intention of their faction was a Social Darwinist Slave state with Merchants and privileged upper class living a life of utopia (as they believe as they were wealthier they were inherently smarter and a cut above everyone else and thus deserve what they earn) and a HUGE slave class. You can of course rise up out of slavery but it is incredibly hard and like a real Social Darwinist state/Capitalist state, people will boot you down to secure their own place on the top.  And with this lots of people are discontent and if there isn't proper control measures upheaval and revolt will happen. In terms of a real life society comparison, think of Rome and the massive revolts of Sparticus and other such things. Rome had to have a large military not only to keep invaders out but to constantly suppress revolts.

[ete]

Even with major police problems.. well, consider that to just get +2 Econ, not the easy pop booms, most factions are quite happy to take a -5 Police penalty. Perhaps it could work, but more likely it would encourage peace and a beeline to Punishment Spheres in a few bases for re-homing, then result in exactly the same issues, except the AI would be somewhat worse at dealing with them.

Basically, the faction even with -5 Police gets to run a better FM (no worm problems!) as well as another economic model (all the economic models are great), and has easy pop booms (huge deal) in exchange for a morale penalty (notable, especially really early, but can be worked around and not a huge deal).

[Geo]

Which faction in particular was it?

IIRC, I called it the Atlanteans. Don't know if it still exists though, I deleted all things SMAC/X related on my former laptop years ago when Civ4 became playable.

[JarlWolf]

Even with major police problems.. well, consider that to just get +2 Econ, not the easy pop booms, most factions are quite happy to take a -5 Police penalty. Perhaps it could work, but more likely it would encourage peace and a beeline to Punishment Spheres in a few bases for re-homing, then result in exactly the same issues, except the AI would be somewhat worse at dealing with them.

Basically, the faction even with -5 Police gets to run a better FM (no worm problems!) as well as another economic model (all the economic models are great), and has easy pop booms (huge deal) in exchange for a morale penalty (notable, especially really early, but can be worked around and not a huge deal).

They don't have an impunity to Free Market, just so you are aware. They get the drawbacks of it, its just their preferred ideal. So they still get the planet drawback as well as police. I think increasing the Police problem will help quite a bit, bases CONSTANTLY revolting is going to be a huge issue for them, production being stalled constantly would debilitate them in a war. I'll make their Police drawback -3. That should help even things out.

[ete]

I mean they get the benefits of FM without needing to run it, and if you give them -large number police, a human will be able to deal with it. It'll be less of a punishment than actual FM, because the faction has no inherent planet penalty, so it can get the crucial + eng/squared for much less cost than a normal faction (does not use up the economics social eng, and does not give a major vulnerability to worms). -3 is still an inconvenience at most, not a killer penalty, which even -10 or something like that would still not manage.

[Yitzi]

Perhaps if the Imperium got only -2 POLICE, but also -2 EFFIC and 1 drone per 2 citizens.

[ete]

That may be enough to cripple the AI to the extent it does not easily roll over every other faction, but using primarily drone problems I don't think you can balance it in human hands. In the game I played I saw size 10 bases starting with all drones, and some facilities/Psych/specialists/HGP kept them all under control (rec+holo=4 workers, HGP one talent, enough psych for one or two more talents, and a few specialists). That's with the AI's terrible decision making, lack of crawler+specialist use, lack of Punishment Sphere+crawled mins bases, etc. There is a hard limit to how much of a problem drones can be, and a human can deal with it even in worst case scenarios, though it does force facilities and a few other things.

[JarlWolf]

What if I decrease their planet rating? Their massive amounts of growth, consumption and imperialistic attitude and exploitation is bound to be bad for planet.

[ete]

That may help, especially with a very large penalty (-3/4). Giving them major worm trouble and a clear weakness to native would mean that at least some factions would do okay against them, but they could just mass produce weak trance units and hold their own.. I could see that working decently as an achilles heel, especially combined with their Morale issues. Still an extreme level builder who flies past anyone if left alone or on a not to fungus infested area, but have some problems.