Human Genome shouldn't be cake

[JMN4444]

About for my earlier post regarding how rare it is for Lal to say he'll ruthlessly crush my faction, say hello to my latest playthrough as Miriam.
Yes we all know how bonkers Miriam is, then again, this doesn't seem like something would likely say if he's defending himself from a horde of fanatics.....

[bvanevery]

He's channelling his inner Islamist.  I never really had a problem believing in Lal as a Fundamentalist, but I always thought it would manifest as overweening and total UN bureaucracy.  You will obey the rules!

[JMN4444]

That is what actually makes Alpha Centauri different from most of the other Civ Games at that time. Whereas you only get to choose 1 government in most cases, Alpha Centauri allows you to mix and match to your heart's desire. It's even weirder if you are going to see  going cybernetic, or  going fundy. But I believe the most terrifying Social Engineering choice is that if  went for thought control. Scary SE choice combined with mindworms just makes me think that if others would use Technology to implement it, then I believe that the Gaians would go for something more conventional (Native Lifeforms) to implement such a rule  . The possibilities are endless.

[bvanevery]

Morgan going Fundie isn't weird at all.  It's the Church of the Almighty Dollar.  Deirdre as the Thought Police may be terrifying but it's not weird.  In fact it's to be expected, she's an eco-Nazi.  In my mod, Roze requires people to use Thought Control.  My reasoning is that in the future, the power of mind control probes has gone to her head.  It's also game mechanically sound, it's the future society that increases your PROBE rating.  Roze can also make any social engineering choice she wants now.

[JMN4444]

In that sense, Roze can become more versatile than Lal since she could choose whatever SE choices she wants. It could be because of how wildcard the Data Angels are, unpredictable and unexpected, or because of how manipulative Roze is. And because of that, they can also choose any allies as well.

[bvanevery]

Except that Roze does insist on Thought Control.  Which means that if she, Domai, and Aki Zeta5 are around late midgame in my mod, they're all going to war with each other.  Nobody had Thought Control as their personal snit, so I thought someone should.

Now a player, of course, doesn' t have to do Thought Control.  But it's the only way to improve one's PROBE rating in my mod, and PROBE is the main benefit Roze has as a faction.  You could claim that having an ability like The Planetary Datalinks is a benefit, but you could just choose another faction and build The Planetary Datalinks first.  I think an actual human player is very likely to follow in Roze's footsteps, although they'll probably minimax it to have an ultimate +3 PROBE, not +4 PROBE which is wasteful.  I'm not sure if the AI understands that there's no further benefit past some threshold.  In case it does, I deliberately didn't make Roze have any secondary social engineering preference, i.e. seek more PROBE.  In my mod it's redundant anyways, as only Thought Control can increase your PROBE.

I basically threw out the whole "Fundamentalist is for probe teams" mechanic.  Now Fundamentalist is just a variation on Police State, with slightly different benefits and penalties.  I kept "Fundamentalist is for war and bad at research".  I wonder if I'll ever run into a playtester who complains bitterly about what I've done?

BTW nobody had Wealth as their personal snit either, so I thought Svensgaard should have it.  It's boring having him be "Sparta on the water".  He's turned out to be very good as a Builder faction in my current game, he's clearly the #2 power and has had techs I don't have.  I've had to steal from him, and we're getting to the end of the tech tree, so I'd better put him out now with a full assault somehow.  Except my production just isn't working... I need to stare at the unit costs thing again, and see if I should change anything there.

[JMN4444]

Now, it seems that every single faction does have a preference with no SE choice left behind....... Except Planned  . Nobody would seem to have it as their preferred Ideology. Maybe I guess could be a good choice, but Eudaimonic fits more for him, as the diplomacy screen shows that a Eudamonic Society is referred to as a "Working Man's Paradise", which aims for.

Also, about what you've said about Svensgaard being a good builder faction, you could probably agree on that. One of my playthroughs as (Favorite faction ), there were only few factions that remained. And 2 of those were humans ( and ) and the 2 Progenitors   .... In the scoreboard,  stands as king on the overall section.....

[bvanevery]

The Aliens of the original game both insist on Planned economy.  Chairman Yang is the only one likely to please them at that, so I figure he's really an Alien.     In my mod, I said Marr wants Power because he's a conqueror.  He's not some economist, and there's no reason why he should choose the same kind of government that his sworn enemy does.

Furthermore in version 1.13 of my mod, I've decided the Caretakers are going to be unable to choose Police State.  The Usurpers are unable to choose Democracy, so I think there should be a tit for tat.  Of course both can choose Fundamentalist, which totally fits both of them.  I think the limitations of each faction should be roughly equal.  Each should have a "can't choose this", and each should have the same number of bonuses and penalties.

[JMN4444]

Although I do seem to notice that in your mod, when SE reactions are triggered for aliens, they seem to magically get human dialogue. Since they did originally get Planned for their SE choice (Which had a dialogue for them), once they have Power as their SE choice, because there was no specific alien line for them, they sound human without the "Progenitor:stuff:stuff" thing.

Maybe a unique alien dialogue for all SE choices could fix that?

[bvanevery]

Not shocked; was sort of expecting that.  I can look whether anything Alien specific can be done.  Don't know whether they provided complete possibilities, or only what was needed for the Alien changes they actually made.

The names for all the events appear in Script.txt.  For Marr's new interest in Power, one would want to implement various SOCIAL2CATxxxx events.  There are no such events in the alienuscript.txt file, but maybe if some are put there, the aliens will start using them.