Reimagined Original Factions

[EmpathCrawler]

Tithing goes to the church, though, so why would the faction's energy reserves be reduced if it's run as a theocracy? It's hard to peg Miriam down (well we can rule out Eastern Orthodox LOL) but she's probably meant to be some kind of 1990s American dominionist and the Lord's Believers are maybe organized under presbyterian lines? There has to be some kind of hierarchy there to enforce her orthodoxy but I don't see her appointing archbishops/bishops/cardinals.

Yea considering she calls herself Sister and not some higher rank, it implies a flatter power structure. More egalitarian. Hence I think growth or effic are quite fitting benefits.

Edit: Also I ended up swapping University's talents with PKs tech share. Talents probably better represent happiness, of all factions PKs seem the one that would value that the most. The happiness in turn allows more citizenry to be 'elite', but thats an effect not the cause.

Growth is good, though mechanically very powerful. There's the real life conservative "Quiverfull" movement which I'm sure would find a home in Miriam's theology when they have a whole Planet of demonic horrors and godless types to out-procreate.


"Happiness" is exactly something a middle of the road liberal sort of leader like Lal would favor. There are a lot of ways for people to happy and Lal doesn't want your "pursuit of happiness" to force you into anything too radical or different hence his large bases and voting edge.

[Nexii]

+2 growth, +2 econ, +2 industry all definitely are strong. Ended up getting rid of planet penalties so I could give morgan a bit more downside -1 morale. The AI barely pollutes so -1 planet isn't like a huge deal past the early game. Whereas morale hurts for all wars including psi combat. Morgan wasn't crazy overpowered just a touch too good at war.

Miriam seemed about right despite that strong benefit. Because she's always crippled for research, which is a huge downside when going for SPs.

Drones I put to -1 police instead of -1 planet. Plus this gives me space to put -1 planet more on Free Market though I'm not sure it really needs it yet...but perhaps.

It feels to me PKs got bigger bases just for game mechanics reasons. I still think the large bases fit Hive the best. They're packed in like ants or bees inside a Hive. I would say CyCon too but I imagine all the control and research equipment takes up a lot of space.

Did more reworking. Got rid of all immunities. Cult got FANATIC to compensate. Gaia got Hybrid Forest in the late game.

Was tired of seeing CyCon get trashed. I'll see if this version without Punish Spheres does better. Punishment spheres was interesting but it ate up 4 type 2 slots. freefac, drone, techcost, then research. Easier to just do NODRONE, 100. Back to their original penalty of -GROWTH. A faction with no drones should be interesting to play if I get a game in. Though I do recommend doing IMMUNITY, POLICE because P-drones are calculated after NODRONE. So is -TALENT and Genejack but I'm less worried about those. 1 police sentinel will counter that, since police units are always last.

Same with Pirates, small buff, -PROBE instead of -GROWTH.

[Nexii]

More tweaking, Cult was a bit strong with Fanatic, but it's fitting. So I gave them -1 IND instead of -2 ECON and FM aversion. They pretty much get a mix of what Gaia and Believers do which is fine. Just getting 2/1/1 fungus tiles everywhere is nice, and fungus goes to 2/1/2 at Centauri Meditiation which isn't too high of tech. They do sit there while though before Genetics (2/2/2) and Psi (3/2/2).

Mostly it's Angels that need some work now. I think too much of their benefits are early game only. They often start great then just get outclassed. Anarchistic (penalty to all Politics) is probably a bigger downside as the game goes on than I realized, but I like the idea of it. It's a kind of 'pick your poison' penalty which feels unique. In my SE set penalty makes Police State -2 growth, Democracy -4 police, and Fundamentalism -4 research. They're still worth picking over Frontier but it's tough to swallow.

I think I'll jump Angels to +2 ECON like Morgan, she is ex-Morgan after all. For lack of other ideas what they would be good at. The reality is that PROBE alone doesn't make a faction good. They never were very good to begin with.

[bvanevery]

I'm trying to retool my own Angels.  In my mod they stall out.  A built-in Planetary Datalinks ability is only powerful in the early game, as eventually some faction pulls ahead of the others and they don't end up getting that faction's tech.  I also believe that generally speaking, pure Conquer factions stall out.  My mod has a strict separation of Conquer from everything else, i.e. you get weapons and armor.  There's more Conquer than anything else in the tree.  That's the reality of what Firaxis actually provided as game features.

Anyways, I had my Angels' obsession as Thought Control.  But the reality is, they don't really need it.  They already start with +2 PROBE and if they go Police State in my mod, they'll have +3.  My current Thought Control, +2 POLICE +2 PROBE -2 RESEARCH, doesn't really provide a worthwhile benefit to anyone.  It's Tier 6, which is earlier than the stock game, but it's late enough that everyone will have solved their happiness problems by then.  Originally I had imagined it as an "end the game by taking over everything with probe teams" tech, but in order to nerf the power of probe teams, that course of action is now pretty darned expensive.  At least, I think it is.  Haven't really tried again lately.

So I don't really know what I'm doing with my Angels at present.  I've removed their obsession.  Now they don't obsess about anything, nor do they have any restrictions.  I don't want another Democrat in the game, I've got enough of those.  I also thought the original game idea that they can't use Power was lame.  I have them doing Discover, Build.  I've started a test game, and they're my next door neighbor, so soon I'll see how they do with it.

[Nexii]

Yea even probing is more of an early or mid game benefit. As I think it was Bearu pointed out, the more you mind control the more the cost goes up.

I'm trying them out with +2 ECON +2 PROBE Techshare and Covert Ops facility. And the Anarchy thing which is pretty much either -1 GROWTH or -2 POLICE or -2 RESEARCH. All my factions have 4 benefits and either 1 or 2 penalties (as some benefits are super strong like Gaia's Tree Farms and Hive's Recycling Tanks).

They're kind of similar to Morgan. I think I may do the same. Remove their Free Market compulsion, remove Power aversion (which I only just re-added). Give them more of a freedom/anarchist feeling. I've had them at Erratic to make them more aggressive than Morgan.

Yea Conquer factions can stall out. I see them win a fair amount of games even so. When a Builder faction wins it's usually because they had good geography. Being on a large island alone is ideal for making a sort of fortress. I noticed the same when I started re-doing tech priorities. That Conquer has about 2x as much techs as the others, maybe even 3x. Explore shoots up super fast early, Build and Discover catch up mid-game.

Pirates might also need a little something, I'm not sure. Have to test them out more as well. I feel like they should do better than they end up doing. Conquer factions are funny though one game they can look OP and the next they just get outbuilded.

[bvanevery]

My Pirates are Passive and have Wealth as their compulsion.  They can't choose Thought Control.  They have done very well as a pure Build faction, consistently one of the strongest factions in the game.  They have this huge moat around them called the ocean, with oodles of minerals and food and energy in it.  I am currently experimenting with making them Explore Build, to make them even scarier than they already were.

[Nexii]

Yea stock sea terraforming is underrated. 4/3/0 or 4/1/4 for stock pirates, and that's without Free Market. The AI also terraforms sea much better because there's not really any advanced options. I ended up making tidal harnesses give 2 energy and putting Aquafarm/Thermo/Trunkline as mid-game techs. I'd probably have to nerf sea again to make an aquatic faction balanced. 2 nutrients with kelp farm or something. That or give the aquatic faction big downsides, cause that much production early is an easy runaway

Angels ended up being close but a bit strong, added penalty for Power. They can pick it, just adding some pain.

[vonbach]

I usually keep the pirates out of my game unless I decide to make a sea going faction.  Its just too easy to play a faction like that and any sea faction pretty much has it made.
I keep them closer to the original because sea moranitesis just too overpowered.

[bvanevery]

I also pushed Thermocline later.  It's at Tier 5, Advanced Ecological Engineering.  Subsea Trunkline I pushed all the way to Tier 7, Industrial Nanorobotics, late game.

I've currently got Aquafarm at Tier 3, with Ecological Engieering and the Weather Paradigm.  This is also where I lift nutrient restrictions.  Since the tech is guarded by a Secret Project, AI factions won't just trade it with the human player.  In practice it takes longer to get Aquafarms if you're not expressly focusing on that research.  A midgame sort of thing.

It takes even longer to reach Tier 4, Environmental Economics, and Tree Farms.  Tree Farms fooled me for many years, making me think that Aquafarms are fairly useless.  If you have both, and you click on the center of your city to get the workers to auto-adjust themselves, they will always choose the forest squares.

But recently in a lot of games, I've gotten access to Aquafarms way before Tree Farms.  I have found they can be quite powerful for accelerating population, maybe even overpowered.  You end up with so much food, that all those 1-2-1 forests get used "as is" with it.  Who needs Tree Farms?  I do build them anyways when I get them, but lately I've been wondering why I'm bothering.

Perhaps it is best to think of an Aquafarm as the oceanic equivalent of a Soil Enricher?  Having it appear in SMACX as a Tier 1 tech, may have put us all in a wrong cognitive category about its power.  My tech tree, I did repurpose Progenitor Psych, so I don't need Aquafarm to appear any place in particular.  P.P. is where I give Hypnotic Trance.  My lore modification is the Aliens figured that out, humans can't just sit down and sing kumbaya to make it so.

[Nexii]

By tech this is how I did food boosters:
EthCalc - nutrients unlocked
EcoEng - condensor (only +1, not +50%, so 4-5 fop)
EnvEcon - enricher and tree farm (~5 fop on land)
EcoEng2 - aquafarm and hybrid forest (~7 fop on land and sea)
SentEco - hydroponics satellites (gg)

So I had aquafarms quite late, sea is strong. It does have the downside of more expensive formers but fast former times cancel that. I considered just removing the unlocks since they seem to hamper the AI quite a bit.

Anyways I'm not sure what else to give Pirates. They aren't terrible or anything just a little lacking. I could up their MORALE to +2 I suppose, but that's kind of Sparta territory. +Commerce might make sense but it's not so helpful on an aggressive faction. +2 support would probably make them fine but I don't know about pirate army hordes, lol.

[bvanevery]

Are you aware that without Sky Hydroponics Labs, your UI for orbital satellites will be broken?  It has to be the 1st one for things to work right.

[Nexii]

Not sure I understand? I have Sky Hydroponics in game and they show up on the UI. They just require more tech. By unlocks I was referring to the resource caps

[bvanevery]

Do you have any other kind of satellite appearing before Sky Hydroponics Lab?  This includes a tech branch where SHL is not an ancestral tech.  If you do not have SHL first, the orbital attack UI will be broken.

[Nexii]

Oh, I'll have to test some more. My thought was I might end up putting all satellites into one 'super' tech sort of like EcoEng2. Probably Solids due to the lore, moving Hab Domes elsewhere. It's a lot later than the ridiculous tier 6 the stock game had them at. Tier 10 is up there, though they're still so powerful. One way to temper them a bit is also to put Hab Domes a bit later too.

Also I've noticed that although the AI doesn't exactly use the more extreme Governor logic, it does seem that Conquer factions don't put a high priority on facilities. This is probably why they tend to fall behind by the mid game. It makes sense why none of the default factions had pure Conquer as an agenda now.

I think I figured out what I wanted to do with Pirates. They get strong support and a bit of police. Removed their morale, it made them too much combined with the strong support and too similar to Sparta. A lot of the time pirates didn't even fight, they just intimidated ships into surrender. Strong negative to probe (pirates will do anything for money). Immunity to Prosperity, they wouldn't be demoralized by luxury, pirates always want more treasure. And they bleed credits, cause pirates either squander their wealth or hide it away to be discovered later. Knowing the AI it still won't pick Prosperity, lol.

[Nexii]

Anyone find that the drones REVOLT ability never works? I may give them COMMFREQ instead. Can see it fitting into the lore, they revolted from whatever faction you have contact with.