Playtesting a couple of custom facs

[ariete]

The Free Company, was played well by the AI, not too weak, not too strong.

i've always try to make my custom factions with that philosophy, to not advantage more one fac than one other. this is to get more competitive the playgame.

Not surprisingly, the AI played it kind of like the Spartans.

  all my custom facs are sons of Sparta


next time i'm going to connect i send you the txts, from which you can deduce the main line concept of the 5 faction already ''made''. i think is better in this way than i try to explain (a try is on my thread where are posted graphics too).
For aliens i'm not yet convinced about what i push for now so i haven't publish something yet ... and in this period i'm also taken in other thingz

[Kilkakon]

Fre psi gates, huh? Sounds interesting... Like I said, I will have to play LE some day. For now I'm trying to survive a game playing as the new, improved Anarchists. It's going allright, but the heavy penalties mean that you have to get on without formers for a while and then with nothing but formers for quite some time.

Yeah it is interesting to see how they go. Coping? I suppose you can have a few Scout Patrols for base defence to start things off. How do the advantages help?

And yes, I am quite eager to have somebody enjoy my game.

all my custom facs are sons of Sparta

Nice Ariete. So you think they are a good idea, Sparta-like factions?

[Rymdolov]

Yeah it is interesting to see how they go. Coping? I suppose you can have a few Scout Patrols for base defence to start things off. How do the advantages help?

Well, I also thought I'd play on a non-ocean map, and the one I had turned out to also be extremely large. So test-wise the set-up isn't ideal. The idea was just to have some fun, mind.

Anyway, the Anarchist support bonus actually helps a lot. What you need to do is go for getting formers as soon as possible, whether you play blind research or not. Then you can have one defence unit and two formers at each base with no mineral penalty. At that point I started terraforming like crazy, to compensate for the -3 EFF. It actually went quite well. With a huge number of size 1 bases and twice the number of formers I managed to get something of an income and shorten the time span between new techs. If you can stay alive long enough to get Democratic, Green or (preferably) Knowledge to compensate for you weaknesses I think you're set.

This wouldn't work quite as well on a small map with competitors close by, I guess. Maybe you would rather have to use the fanatic bonus to conquer your neighbours, which, however, might be hard without technology. Closer neighbours mean that you can start trading technology earlier, though.

The rush bonus is very nice to have, especially when you have an unprotected base threatened by mind worms. It compensates to some extent for the vulnerability of the faction during the early game.

I played on Thinker, but I think the fac would work well on Transcend as well.

[Kilkakon]

Well I hope you are enjoying the experience. Sounds like a nice, different playstyle than usual!