Is my custom faction balanced?

[pcangler]

I'm new to creating custom factions. Although I've created several in the past, I never really focused on balance and simply went for a concept or idea, for example a faction centered around terraforming or one that only excels at early game rushes. However, I tried my hand at creating a truly playable one recently, which has culminated in the creation of the Freethinkers, a replacement for the Spartans. I've come here to ask the more experienced modders/players at AC2 for their help in evaluating my balance decisions. I almost exclusively play original SMAC without any mods, so that's what I'm trying to balance them around. Currently, the Freethinkers have the following traits:

+1 industry
+1 morale
-1 economy
-2 research
1 less drone at every base
Robust efficiency (penalties halved)
May not use Wealth (AI's preferred is Eudaimonic)
Starting tech is Planetary Networks
The AI's aggression level is erratic, and it favors EXPLORE and CONQUER

Here's why I designed them this way. This faction is supposed to play like Miriam for the early game, with little tech but lots of time to widen, wage war, and build troops. Once they are capable of mitigating the research debuff with Knowledge and gaining the powerful Demo + Planned combo, children's creches will initiate a permanent popboom stage that it simply doesn't make sense to leave. The nodrone bonus is intended to make getting taller easier, but the lack of FM also means that the faction's hopefully larger military can also be used to handle drone issues. With +2 efficiency and normal research bonuses, running 60/40 in favor of labs or even 70/30 would be my choice, and now the Freethinkers are theoretically similar to a Deirdre-style economy and tech production (no +2 econ), if far behind in total techs. Because of the native +1 industry, they get the major bonus of Wealth without the morale hit, meaning that in the middlegame they should begin climbing up to middling tech placement while retaining a threateningly large and well-trained military (+2 industry, larger bases? (should I add more bonuses to this effect?), and commando troops after command center and monolith). They'll probably get beaten to Hunter-Seeker, so they'll have to be dealing with probes all game. In the late game, the Freethinkers will have won if they can keep pace with the builder factions while expanding their empire, pretty standard momentum faction stuff. Is this assessment accurate, and how powerful or underpowered are these guys?

I'm not just interested if this faction is equally as powerful as the other factions, but if they fit into the game's themes, e.g. if the AIs will play similarly to the Spartans, being the foil to the Morganites and being able to be one of the military powerhouses. I also wonder if they fulfill the ideological themes that make SMAC so good (and SMACX a disappointment, IMO). If I end up finishing the Freethinkers I might upload the faction in its entirety to AC2. To that end, here is a summary of my design philosophy, with reference to matching SMAC's own design philosophy. Their ideas are a combination of two things. One is of course freethought, which was historically a movement specifically countering the influence of organized religion. In this case, I intend it to be understood broadly as opposition to dogmatism and authority, intentionally making them ideologically opposed to Yang and Miriam (Freethinker AI almost always runs Demo). They also disagree with what they see as Deirdre's organized religious worship of Planet (AI mostly runs Planned unless Green is absolutely necessary). This is because the Freethinkers prefer independent thought, and focus on the social sciences and humanities, particularly philosophical inquiry, as a guide to their faction's goals on Planet. The second facet of their guiding ideology is socialism, although I've tried to make it less clear-cut than that (Reynolds really mastered this one with SMAC). The Freethinkers believe that a failure of Earth was in allowing the effects of class inequality on the media, education, and intellectual and personal freedom balloon to subvert the interests of working-class people in favor of whatever supported the reproduction and accumulation of capital. As such, they oppose capital accumulation in the hands of a powerful few (aversion to Wealth value) and instead pursue "the freedom and culture of the mind". This makes them the natural enemies of Morgan, who prefers Free Market (again, Freethinkers choose Planned) and almost always pairs it with Wealth. Typically, the Freethinkers choose Demo and Knowledge, meaning that they ally easily with Lal's liberal humanitarianism and Zakharov's atheist views. However, this alliance may fall apart in the late game when Zakharov inevitably chooses Cybernetic, owing theoretically to his questionably democratic elitism and highly unethical nature once he gets his hands on too many cool gadgets.

Of course, each faction has to have something that would make players not immediately think they're the good guys. Lal is out of touch and clinging to old political ideas, Miriam is an aggressive fundamentalist, Deirdre commits atrocities in the name of an ecosystem, Yang is Yang, Morgan is a single-minded egotist with no sense of egalitarianism, Santiago is consistently aggressive, employs martial law, and may not even have a civilian government, and Zakharov seems cool at first but then turns around and gleefully violates human rights, possibly generating thousands of universes and their respective suffering along the way (Singularity Inductor). The Freethinkers are, firstly, both atheistic and socialist, making them highly controversial (at least in the US, where I'm from). Next, they are designed to be aggressive, which many may see as unnecessary attempts at "liberation" masking an urge for power and control, making their actions appear more similar to the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1920 than to the American or French Revolution (of 1789). And I hope most nerdy SMAC players can find something at least charming or moderately convincing about the basic tenets of intellectual independence and economic democracy, such that they don't come out as unequivocal bad guys.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to seeing your advice!

[bvanevery]

I think I recently wrote the book on balancing the original 14 factions, albeit in the context of my own mod.  I don't think anyone else has remotely put the effort into it that I have.  That said, other people certainly have a lot of opinions and some insights into what does or doesn't matter about SE choices.  I'm surprised that I've seen less application of that to faction balance.  Maybe because testing the interaction of many factions, is a lot of work.  I did the work, so I know what's what.

Some of it still has to be ongoing, because when you change stuff around, it's not that hard to disrupt some specific faction's play style.  It can take a long time to realize you've screwed up one of your factions.  I do random faction playtesting to increase my odds of running into combos and interactions I didn't think of.

I think INDUSTRY bonuses are overpowered.  But the original game has them, both in the SE table and the Hive, so I'll refrain from harping on that too much.  In my own mod, I got rid of everything except a +1 INDUSTRY bonus for the Free Drones.  To me a major benefit of eliminating INDUSTRY from the SE table, is you're not tempted to shift your SE choices around all the time, just to complete your next silly Secret Project.  I don't miss micromanaging that.

On thematics: I don't understand the conjunction of the name Freethinkers, and a -2 RESEARCH penalty.  Doesn't make any sense.

I'll save further questions of balance until that point is sorted out.

Next, they are designed to be aggressive

I suppose you mean whether they'll attack stuff eventually, not whether their personality is set to Aggressive.  It might interest you to realize that Santiago's original AI personality is not Aggressive, but Erratic.  Miriam and Yang are the ones actually set to Aggressive.

Explore, Conquer does seem to be the land spreading choice for the original game AI and tech tree, ala Miriam.  Early iterations of my mod started on that basis.  Various previous modders in the archives, recognized the AI's tendency to spread when given this research combo.

I find it interesting that you've actually tried to verify what the AI will pick for SE choices in practice.  That's taking faction balance pretty seriously.

My SE table evolved to deal with some obnoxious original game bugs that way.  Did you know that Deidre won't go Green until she's learned how to make Locusts?  That's because Green had penalties that the AI didn't like.  This is unacceptably late game.  I had to get rid of Green penalties to work around the bug, and make Green bonuses weak to balance it.  It looks stupid on my SE table and it has put some people off, but they don't understand that it's there for a reason.  It's in my design notes, but people don't read my copious design notes.  I don't exactly blame them for not wading through a wall of text, but I wasn't daft.

Fortunately the other AI fixation works in your favor: GROWTH.  If you want a faction that obsesses about pop booming, I doubt you'll have a problem.

[pcangler]

First off, I have to thank you, both for responding promptly and for putting so much work into balancing your mod. I took a look at it, and WOW. You're probably going to remain the best at balancing the SE table until the end of time. The amount of labor put into that is admirable, and it undoubtedly goes into keeping the community alive and excited to try new things. I'll definitely try that mod out, even though it means I'll have to revamp some of my playstyle.

I don't understand the conjunction of the name Freethinkers, and a -2 RESEARCH penalty

Makes sense to me; it's made worse by the fact that their short name is the Thinkers (as a corollary to the Believers, teehee). My initial thought was sort of similar to the era of stagnation in the USSR: less motivation to innovate because of cadre stability and a lack of widespread private property norms. But first impressions are important and this is so obviously silly that I'll need to throw this one out. Besides, the ECONOMY weakness fills a similar role. Which brings up the question of what to counterbalance removing such a big debuff with.

I think INDUSTRY bonuses are overpowered

Based on this point of view, I'd expect that the Drones can only be allowed their +1 INDUSTRY because you changed the SE table to have no INDUSTRY effects (unless I'm viewing an outdated version?), so it was more of a static bonus. But for the base game, it seems like the Hive gets away with it because they have a perpetually weaker economy and can't popboom w/o golden age (no doping either). In my experience, the Hive is the weakest faction for these reasons. So given that the Freethinkers can popboom and also get morale boosts, I think that removing the industry bonus is logical. They'll still get +2 research from knowledge, and +2 efficiency should allow for some SE screen slider tweaks. Simply removing very powerful bonuses or weaknesses would also make the faction more modular overall, would it not?

I can see why you'd hold off on making more balancing judgments, because Freethinkers 2.0 have these traits:

+1 MORALE (revolutionary elements of the faction's culture)
-1 ECONOMY (aforementioned effects of commonly owned property)
1 less drone every base (sense of common goals, personal freedoms)
Robust EFFICIENCY (bc socialism, if Yang can do it they can too)
Can't use Wealth (abrogation/distrust of class systems as a form of dogmatizing authority)
Other stuff is identical

I question whether they need +2 MORALE or -2 ECONOMY instead, but I think the above is better. Let me know what you think, bvanevery.

I suppose you mean whether they'll attack stuff eventually, not whether their personality is set to Aggressive

Yes, that is what I meant. I assumed that the reason Santiago was erratic but still a conqueror was because her military was just so powerful thanks to native bonuses and AI focus on conquer, so I took the same approach with the Freethinkers.

I find it interesting that you've actually tried to verify what the AI will pick for SE choices in practice.  That's taking faction balance pretty seriously.

On this note, I have a question regarding getting the AI to not be horrible at the game. As you said, I made the AI prioritize Explore and Conquer for expansion and aggression. But in my playtesting, I noticed that the AI never builds creches, presumably because they're tagged as a Build facility. Of course, the AI rarely puts energy into psych. As a result, they never popboom, which isn't what I had in mind. Is the solution to this simply to add Build to their priorities, or would that mess up the other stuff too much?

Did you know that Deidre won't go Green until she's learned how to make Locusts?

I had no idea, but it makes sense considering I typically prefer Planned in the middlegame as Deirdre. I respect the hell out of the fact that you diligently found that out and stuck to your design philosophy in spite of popular dissent.

Anyways, I'm gonna start playtesting the Build, Explore, Conquer idea on the AI, I'll post about it once I get finished. Again, thanks for the help.

[bvanevery]

I'm surprised you think Yang is weak. I think he's one of the easiest factions to play the original game with.   +2 SUPPORT from Police State is pretty worthwhile in the early game. 

The worst faction is Morgan.  -1 SUPPORT at the beginning of the game is crippling, not to mention the silly hab restriction.

ECONOMY is worth more as a bonus than some other things.  If someone put a gun to my head, I'm not sure exactly what weights I'd put on various bonuses and penalties, but it's worth more than a lot of them.  It depends to some extent on how much you starve the players for some quantity.  For instance I have EFFIC on a very strict diet.  Ditto GROWTH.  PROBE is strict in the early to mid game, but recently I decided everyone gets to go crazy with Thought Control in the late game.  MORALE is worth more in my mod because I don't hand it out in the early to mid game.  Pretty strict diet.  PLANET is strict too.  Pretty much I'm a parsimonious jerk about the SE table.  In my mod you're playing a game of inches where +1 actually means something.  I don't let things get "fat" as that tends to blow the dynamic range of the various quantities.

I question whether they need +2 MORALE or -2 ECONOMY instead, but I think the above is better. Let me know what you think, bvanevery.

Your current quantities don't strike me as outrageous in any way, so they'll probably work.  Proceed to test!

I noticed that the AI never builds creches

Hmm, I should verify whether it does so in my mod.  I have it as a Tier 2 tech.  Not that difficult to research, and I don't do Secret Projects until Tier 3, so other factions will trade it just fine.

Yeah, as of Mission Year 2194 in my last game when I quit, the Peacekeepers built 4 and the Believers built 7.  The University and the Caretakers knew the tech but didn't build any.  The University is the runt of the game with only 3 cities, got boxed in by the Caretakers and the Cyborgs, so it's not surprising they didn't build any. 

My Peacekeepers have a Passive personality and nil for their secondary compulsion.  Meaning they have this line:

Code: [Select]

  Politics, Democratic, nil
My Believers are Aggressive and have nil for their secondary compulsion:

Code: [Select]

  Politics, Theocratic, nil
The Believers are isolated on a small continent.  They are nominally at war with me, but we're on a Huge map as is normal for my mod.  They'd have to bring a Transport over.  The point is they're not under any imminent combat pressure.

The Peacekeepers are nominally at war with the Caretakers, but the Cyborgs and the University are in the way by land.  They're starting to interact at sea.  Again, no imminent combat pressure.

Looks to me like, if conditions are appropriate, the stock AI will build Children's Creches.

The original game gives it via Ethical Calculus.  That's a Tier 2 tech with only 1 prereq:

Code: [Select]

Ethical Calculus,           EthCalc, 0, 1, 3, 3, Psych,   None,    000000000My mod gives it via Doctrine: Loyalty, which has been repurposed.  Tier 2 tech with 2 prereqs:

Code: [Select]

Doctrine: Loyalty,          DocLoy,  3, 0, 2, 4, Psych, Mobile, 000000000
In the original game it's weighted as an Explore, Build tech.  I have it weighted more as an Explore, Conquer tech, since it does give the MORALE defensive bonus.  It's also got Santiago prattling on about parents defending their homes to the det [sic].

In the original game, Social Psych is more of a Build tech:

Code: [Select]

Social Psych,               Psych,   0, 1, 3, 2, None,    None,    000000000
You say your factions aren't building Children's Creches.  Are they building Rec Commons?  If they've figured out Social Psych, it should be pretty easy for Explore and Build factions to research Ethical Calculus.  Discover and Conquer factions might have problems with this sequence.

It is possible that some other facility is more attractive to the AI than a Children's Creche, and that "bait" is more available in the original tech tree than my modded tree.  Although that doesn't look like a good explanation, as in my game I'm seeing plenty of other basic facilities have been built.

Do you play on Standard sized maps?  Perhaps your factions are too crowded, so they don't think growing cities vertically is such a good idea.  Maybe they get into wars with threatening neighbors right away.

You could run some AI vs. AI only games and see if Children's Creches get built eventually.

[pcangler]

Really? Yang is one of the stronger factions? I mean, I knew he was stupid easy to play with, but I guess I underestimated the value of PS/Planned/Wealth. I'm equally shocked by your view that Morgan is the weakest, I would've ranked him second only to Zak (Zak is OP, right?). I always thought that +1 econ was just too good. Morgan has netted me many early wins because of the combo of extra commerce and +4 econ making it easy to win economically.

Okay, on the point of the AI not building creches, I'm sort of at a loss for this one. You were correct in guessing that I chose standard maps; I chose them because of bias in favor of the mean (or whatever that's called). Yesterday I tested the new Build, Explore, Conquer Freethinkers on five separate AI vs. AI games, with the following settings:

Standard size
50-70% ocean coverage
Average erosive forces, native life forms, and cloud cover
Librarian difficulty
All victory conditions, flexible starting locations, bell curve, and no unity survey. All other game rules are off.

I played as the Peacekeepers, relegating myself to a single base w/ no tech allocation and stockpile energy, and using scenario editor to force everybody to never talk to me and also never attack me. I did this for speed of simulation, but maybe it had a minor effect. I drew out each game to completion, here I was going both for balance and to see if they built creches. As expected, militaristic factions did the best, winning all five. The Hive took three and the Believers and Freethinkers each took one. But it's still difficult to tell if this means they're balanced because the AI seems to do better with the simpler game plan of militaristic factions. As for creches, the Freethinker AI on average had by the end of the game creches in about half of their land bases, and almost none in sea bases. Other factions built a similar amount, with Gaians, University, and Morgans building more and Believers building much less. So creches do get built, just not fully and not at sea. I don't think that's normal, and it's not optimal for popbooming, I think.

Today, I saw your suggestions and tried to control for various problems. I put the Freethinkers 2.0 on a standard map as before, but this time waited only until M.Y. 2194 for a direct comparison. In this scenario, there were only three creches on planet, two built by the Gaians and one built by the Morganites. This distribution kind of makes sense if it's weighted as explore, build, but then why did the Freethinkers, Believers, and Hive build none? Perhaps the result of multiple priorities. As for rec commons, the same map had seven, with Gaians fielding three, Morganites with two, and Freethinkers and Believers with one each. So there are more rec commons, but perhaps this is due to the recent nature of Ethical Calculus on turn 94.

So I realized that putting the AI on Build, Explore, Conquer may have had little to no effect. I wonder if I should keep that. Anyways, I then moved the factions to a large map, and tested again with all else equal. This time, they seemed to build more creches as expected, but it still wasn't much. The University had three, the Gaians two, and the Morganites again had one by M.Y. 2194. Six rather than three could be down to random variation, so I performed the same test and found that in the second game only one creche existed, in Morgan Interstellar. So it might have even no effect.

Therefore, I'm left to conclude that the slow and incomplete production of creches, compared to your game, is a result of the AI getting techs at different timings and therefore preferring to build other things. Perhaps it's not that important considering it affects all of the AI, and the Freethinkers do often have more population than other factions. Their AI does tend to choose Demo/Planned for most of the game, after all. It is an interesting case study in SMAC AI.

Proceed to test!

Do you have any advice on how to go about this? I feel that multiplayer/human user balancing is more important, so should I just jump into a game with them and compare my performance with how I perform otherwise? As a modder, what methodology did you use, and how do you know when to make changes?

[bvanevery]

(Zak is OP, right?)

Hardly.  In the original game he has a crippling number of drones, and no production or financial advantages at all. +2 RESEARCH does not make his research go all that much faster than everybody else, and people steal from him like the dickens.  Tech trade in general means that techs will leak and factions will catch up just fine as far as military force.

Zak isn't powerful; it's just that some factions cripple themselves with Fundamentalist and -2 RESEARCH, getting really far behind.  This is why in my mod, my THEOCRATIC only has -1 RESEARCH, and doesn't offer particularly juicy benefits.  For instance, no MORALE bonus.  This is to keep the AI from being all that interested in it.

Morgan has netted me many early wins because of the combo of extra commerce and +4 econ making it easy to win economically.

How early is 'early' ?  Generally speaking I think it is always faster to achieve Diplomatic Victory than Economic Victory.

Standard size
50-70% ocean coverage

That's not gonna give the AIs much room, which is gonna hurt 'em.  At least 2 factions guaranteed to be runted.

Librarian difficulty

They might not get anything done on that setting for all I know.  I only design my mod to be played on Transcend.

I played as the Peacekeepers, relegating myself to a single base

That's not an efficient way to do an AI vs. AI test.  Start as a faction and play the first 2 turns.  Don't hit the END TURN button at the end of the 2nd turn.  Activate the Scenario Editor.  Switch your view to a different faction, and don't take control of them, pick the "just watch" option.  Put a weight on your Enter key.  I've used pennies wrapped in electrical tape, to make a bar.

Sometimes the AI will get stuck for some reason.  At that point you'll have to switch your view to a different faction.

So I realized that putting the AI on Build, Explore, Conquer may have had little to no effect. I wonder if I should keep that.

I don't think it's relevant.  Your AIs aren't building many Creches because your map conditions don't warrant it, and because you're playing on totally sad Librarian difficulty.  My Transcend AIs on bigger maps with more land, build Creches just fine.

I feel that multiplayer/human user balancing is more important

I don't believe in multiplayer as any kind of priority.  This is a long, old game.  I don't have the hours to wait for other people to do stuff, it's bad enough finishing my own games as is.  You're not going to get lots of players available because it's such an old game.

I do a combo of playing against the AI, and running AI vs. AI to verify stuff.

[eddieballgame]

One thing to consider when 'balancing' factions is the value of what can be applied.
A friend of mine & I redid a Power Rating Formula someone did up years ago.
See attached file if interested.

[bvanevery]

How would you actually test all those weights?  Doesn't seem terribly doable.  If you ran AI vs. AI games, you'd need to run tons of games to see if your factional rankings are matching some kind of reality of victory.  And if you relied on players to run the games, you'd have the complications of different player skills, and very long times before getting results, because humans are way slower than AIs.

To balance the factions in my own mod, I do a combo of playing games myself, i.e. "dog feeding" my own work, and running AI vs. AI games.  If I see that some faction's performance is consistently poor, I give them something.  If I see some faction consistently dominating, I take something away.

So my work is empirically tested.  However the feedback lead times on such testing are rather long.  I'm only 1 person, and I've not really had anyone giving a lot of actionably detailed feedback about my work.  I don't have a player base hammering on the stuff and reporting results.  There's just me for the most part.  It might be a few months of random opponent games, before I realize hmm, this faction really is exhibiting a consistent problem.

And that's why it's taken 3.5 years to tune my damn work.  Long lead times on results.

[eddieballgame]

Thanks for your reply.
We (a good friend of mine & myself) have been playing this great game since it came out in the late 90's.
We have a very good feel, if you will, per much of the values that were assigned by some one else years ago.
We even made some adjustments from the original formulas based on our many hours of playing, to include letting the AI run all the factions via the Scenario options.

We use 'our' numbers to create 7 pt factions & have been very pleased with the results.
I will add, we have a lot of experience with doing these sorts of things per many similar type games where faction/race, creation/adjusting is permitted.

I concur on this not being an exact science, unless the 'devs' are willing to offer their insight on their values per the assigned traits.
It is good to see that there are others 'out there' willing to take on these fun challenges.

[eddieballgame]

I will add, it is not exact balancing we are looking for, generally. (if that is even possible for any/many games like this)
We are more interested in creating factions that are equivalent to what all ready exists in the main game.
Thus, 'flavors' of faction types is one thing we consider to be important & we already know how easy it is to create 'op' factions...so we strive to be reasonable as well.

[Misanthrope]

Just from an overall perspective, it LOOKS Like it might be a little strong, esp with the reduced drones
The stat modifiers  balance out pretty well since industry and morale are fairly important, but then you have the negative research balancing it out.  The economy is sort of a lesser evil, IMO, and against the efficiency penalties being cut, pending a player's style, that could either be useless or a huge help.

Someone, somewhere on the forum, years and years ago posted something about how weighted certain stats are, and how shifting straight number-for-number doesn't always make for a balanced faction.  You got the big three covered, so good job on those.  Small bumps aren't usually a major consideration, but if you're messing around with +3 or more, that threatens to break stuff.
The one I'm working on finishing up takes big hits to Morale and Research, but gets a massive boost to Growth, so managing problems caused by having huge bases ends up the focus.

I think the biggest goal (aside from just being fun to play, of course) is making a balanced faction that's a new challenge, an interesting and different experience from the regular factions.  Being totally overpowered is fun at first, but with the difficulty nerfed, you'll roll over the competition with an OP faction, or the computer will Dr.Octogonapus blast you into oblivion.

Hope this helps.

[Induktio]

In the original version -2 RESEARCH would have been an awful penalty, especially the larger the map. In the vanilla game you wouldn't even get research for the first 10 turns but my mod has removed that extra penalty.

In the 2.0 version, you give it -1 ECONOMY and Wealth aversion. This means of course they can't get that important +2 ECONOMY anytime soon, so they will lag significantly behind in research. Also it's a common misconception that Yang is a strong faction. It only appears so because the vanilla AI only knows how to play to that faction's strength. Overall, Hive is not overpowered and Morgan is not weak at all with Thinker AI.

Hive's most important weakness is the lack of energy. If they can't conquer some other faction quickly, they will start to fall behind in research. By the mid game industry bonuses/penalties start to lose their meaning and everything becomes about energy and research, because you can easily overcome most penalties with it. This is more true the bigger map size. On smaller maps it would be more about momentum tactics of course. So overall this 2.0 version does not seem unbalanced, maybe I could say it's kind of an average faction.

[JoGr223]

note I speak about vanilla smac/x and/or Thinker AI boost

I'm surprised you think Yang is weak. I think he's one of the easiest factions to play the original game with.   +2 SUPPORT from Police State is pretty worthwhile in the early game.

The worst faction is Morgan.  -1 SUPPORT at the beginning of the game is crippling, not to mention the silly hab restriction.

this is true when you think about factions controlled by AI... and only in such scenario  so I guess at the end of each sentence "for AI" should be added 

if you play with them vs AI both these factions are good, but vs AI there are like top8 good-enough "easiest factions to play" factions with whom any good player will win vs any combination of transcend AI (even in Thinker mod).

So it's only interesting to consider human vs human. and here Yang is only kinda good on tiny map and hold a chance on small map with maybe 12,5% win rate (I'd say top8 factions are kinda equal** here so 100%/8=12,5%).

Any standard map size human morgan vs human-controlled hive in my estimate morgan wins 90% cases; hive's 10% chance is only when he get lucky dice roll with nearby AIs (they are v.friendly with him and share tech). Morgan doesn't need to rely on luck - he only would prefer neutral AIs nearby, but that's not even win condition for him. All else being equal, given same level of RNG/luck morgan would always beat hive even on standard map.
Main reason for this is structural balance between teching and building - morgan got it perfect, while hive is really crippled in tech so he won't be able to complete PTS or maybe even no key early SPs (PTS,HGP,WP,PEG,AV). With no SPs or even 3v1 SPs (morgan v hive)  hive has no chance, mostly due to the power of PTS and the fact morgan is the most likely faction to complete it. Morgan with PTS is better at hiving than Hive itself 
Maybe it's worth consideration if Yang has a chance in case of Morgan's PTS vs his HGP/PEG/AV+WP (so 1vs2 SPs total)+50%more bases (that let's assume translate to +50% total minerals) - still this is unlikely scenario that probably would come under the 10% win chance for him that I estimated. On large+ maps his win chance is 0%.

(Zak is OP, right?)

Hardly.  In the original game he has a crippling number of drones, and no production or financial advantages at all. +2 RESEARCH does not make his research go all that much faster than everybody else, and people steal from him like the dickens.  Tech trade in general means that techs will leak and factions will catch up just fine as far as military force.

again it's not true when univ is controlled by humans; drone problems is not a problem cause u just keep all bases at lvl3 until u build VW (and better build PTS before that anyway and not even grow vertically for longer); you get great build/eco advantage in the fact you pick free tech at day 1: so formers as 1st unit build with free minerals (or even biogen for rec-tanks if it was for example random game by IP where u start with money). Then of course u get a ton of other build/eco boosters like techs for FM/wealth, restrictions lifting and so on before anyone else and this has compound interest on economy+industry+tech. Simply put OP faction like no other (than aliens ).

"+2 RESEARCH does not make his research go all that much faster" TRUE  what makes it that much faster is network node giving +50% research. And early bases that produce 1 lab isn't it even +100% research ? cause in city 1 lab + 50% lab will be rounded UP to output 2 labs ? I suppose.


** - well even on small map I'd likely differentiate them further to tiers: t1 OP univ; t2 peace,morgan,angels; t3 gaia,hive,drones,cons; t0 aliens not considers of course

[bvanevery]

I've had very limited exposure to human vs. human SMAC play.  Seems like a pile of Infinite City Sprawl, thermal borehole exploits, and other hoopla.  Hearing about these sorts of things, I tried plugging up the game exploits in my modding work, and The Will To Power mostly did too.  I don't think either of us are writing for the "multiplayer bust it with the original rules" crowd.  I have my doubts about the Yang vs. Morgan claims, but if I'm not going to put the effort into verifying them in human vs. human play, how could I know?  Meanwhile, I've never heard of SMACX AI Growth mod actually being used in human vs. human play.  It would be a good data point if we all found out that various tactics don't work when those holes are plugged, but if nobody ever cares to try, then who knows?

It's almost like multiplayers don't actually need mods.  At least, not rules changing mods.

[Nexii]

Yea generally I'd agree with that tier list. Angels I'm less convinced are good, no real upside?

Only takes a bit of modding to throw all faction balance into chaos though. If I had a dime for every time I boosted up momentum play and Cult or Sparta stomped the map... elite troops and native life can really be a thing to smash builder style