balancing out

[yavoon]

I've been messing with the alpha.txt a lil bit lately. and I've decided to tinker with the factions a bit. I wna bring them up to atleast what I perceive as more parity(read:make da weaker ones better).

basically I feel the believers, spartans, and morgan are the weak end of alpha centauri. and its these three I wna change something to. have yall discussed this before? what have ya done? Also a lil trickier cuz I'd like to keep the relative uniqueness of the factions.

I not interested in changing Zak, Deidre, Lal or Yang cuz I think they're fine as is. but if u wna comment on them thats fine too

[Blake]

All SMAC factions are balanced. (it's true - if you find some stronger than others it's just your playstyle)

However, if you want to make the AI play better then:
Miriam: Reduce agression (1 -> 0) This makes her more sociable, which I like....
Santiago: Give explore and/or build priorities, this encourages construction of formers....
Morgan: I find morgan is fine as he is....

If you dont want to go with AI factions, then a thing to try is to give every faction a starting former (unit, 1), this avoids the formerless deathtrap so loved by Santiago and Zak, helps Morgan a bit (free support for the former), helps Miriam a lot (she can start on terraforming a good 20 years earlier), free stuff is good for Spartans too, because things are expensive for them. It doesn't help Yang much, because he already builds formers, and also his heaps of support. The benefit is less for Dee, Zak and Lal, because they tend to get CentEco very early (or right away).
Also it removes none of the unique feel of the factions, and allows some interesting choices of early research (you can safely delay CentEco a little bit...).

[Black Sunrise]

Miriam: Reduce agression (1 -> 0) This makes her more sociable, which I like....

Makes her more likely to trade techs with people, too, which, for her, is a must.
Indra

[yavoon]

I don't know how you could be more wrong blake. but its ok, I meet lotsa ppl like you, who think that somehow everything is balanced.

Miriam and Yang have very similar playstyles and there's no way miriam can do what Yang does. its great morgan has +1 econ, but he gives up 1 support early, he can only be size 11, and HE CAN'T POP BOOM. considering how u realize how powerful of an ability pop booming is. look at yang, who also can't, and look at all the bonuses he gets. Yang gets more bonuses than neone else.

oh btw I'm playing SMAC, not sma. I really didn't wna discuss a huge balance thread, but to think that firaxis made all the races perfectly fair, is frankly, naive.

[wheathin]

Ifyou want to enhance Morgan while keeping him in "character", give him a free EB at each base, like Zak's NN. That should make him quite a bit stronger...

[Blake]

I've played SMAC for much too long to be naive about anything in it (except maybe some multiplayer). Played to their strengths all the factions shine under the right circumstances, played to their weakenesses, well, eheh. You get what you deserve.

Morgan: Morgan starts with Ind.Base, which makes him one step closer to IndAuto, add the bonus energy per base and he will arrive at IndAuto a good deal sooner than anyone else but Zak (also, Plan.Nets is on the way, and probes are Morgans best friend). Crawlers immediately eliminate the support and growth penalties. Additionaly, you get loads of energy per base tile. This means more bases is better than more population, you dont need to pop-boom, just found bases more densely to get a simialler number of workers.
If you think Morgan is weak, you dont know how to play Morgan. Simple as that. If your probophobic, base packingophobic or Free Marketphobic then Morgan will seem weak.

Miriam: Personally I dont like Miriams faction, I have not played it much. You need to trade tech and make friends, then just roll over your neighbours, never understimate the power of support. The believers do suck on huge worlds, and with tech Stag. This is just a result of being a momentum faction. However the Believers can run FM and popboom.

Spartans: I've played the spartans even less than the Believers, but you can have a lot of fun with easy elite troops. Also the spartans are fully FM capable, and can use full military under FM+Police+Know. They can also pop-boom and have extra police to make that easier.

I'm not going to debate terribly much the strengths of Spartans or Believers, because as a pure builder I shy away from those factions. But they can be truly spectacular on momentum. Both of them can also pop-boom (and we ALL know how strong that is!) both can also get +2 econ.

Balance more comes into issue in relation with map size:
Huge:
Strong: Morgan, Zak, Dee
Medium: Lal, Yang, Santiago
Weak: Miriam

Small:
Strong: Miram, Spartans, Zak, Yang
Medium: Morgan, Dee, Lal

Tech stag+Isolation:
Medium: Morgan, Zak, Dee, Lal, Santiago
Weak: Yang, Miraim

If you want to improve Miraims performance on huge worlds give her IMPUNITY, FUNDIE . Altough realistically she is going to suck in such adverse conditions unless you completely change the faction.

If you still believe Morgan is too weak, or refuse to pack in bases tightly (or refuse to go probe happy), relax the hab restrictions a bit.

There is NOTHING wrong with Spartans, but you could always remove the industry penalty. Keep in mind this would makes the spartans a penaltyless faction.

Zak IS overpowered, but I'm happy to just accept it as that. If you want to hobble him, a support hit would probably do the trick.
Yangs -2 econ hurts him plenty enough. In the worst case yang only has 1 energy to work with until founding a base near a river/energy bonus / planting forest.

[Blake]

Just another post.
Some factions are more easily crippled by bad starts than others. In order of robustness:
#1: Zak. The University can just choose CentEco as first tech and be away laughing. On an island? research doc:Flex, in trouble? Nonlinear Mathematics.
#2: Dee. Already starts with CentEco, and can found a good deal more bases than other factions before drone worries. Hunt worms for pearls&army and crank up labs for research. Dee is spectacular on huge worlds, even with little fungus.
#3: Morgan. Free energy per base is INVALUABLE if your starting terrain sucks. In the worst case morgan can just found more bases to get more energy. This means more research, and sooner to the goody techs. Also an overlooked advantage is starting with SynthArmour. This can stop the Hive/Believer scout patrol rushes dead. (admitadly a scout patrol rush generally seems like a pretty illfated endeavor, but beggars cant be choosers)
#4: Lal. The Peacekeepers have no real benefit, in a bad start they dont grow quickly enough or get to IndEcon early enough to take full advantage of the talents. Biogenetics is a nice tech, though.
#5: Spartans. When isolated the Spartans have to rely on their own research, infrastructure is a bit slower than the others, and they have no real builder bonus. Altough losses to worms are a lot lower, thanks to the high morale. They are also one step closer to Doc:Flex in case of isolation.
#6: Yang. Poor Yangs energy is so pathetic that if he cant trade he can be doomed to stagment, sure you can sprawl bases over half the world, but what good are all your bases when the noodles drop by, or Zak rolls up with Fusion reactor. Stagmentation can be a real problem with the Hive.
#7: {{Drum Roll}}Miriam. The Believers, in the worst possible case they start isolated on a continent, CentEco is a good twenty years away, doc flex hundreds of years away... with a bit of luck they might do okay. But without an early conquest (or tech trade) they will always be behind. (Altough with Demo/FM they can easily overtake the Hive, -2 econ hurts more than -2 research.)

The moral of the story? Huge dry maps, isolation, blind reserach and tech stag can cause some factions to majorly out perform others.
On a more typical start they all have oppurtunities to use their strengths. Steps can be taken to make the factions more well rounded (you could say 'balanced'), but that makes the factions less distinctive.

[yavoon]

haha, I know perfectly well how to play morgan. I agree, its amazing that u play the game that long and are naive to things like balance. then agian, I'm also confused because u all but make my point for me a few times, only your conclusion is different.

either way, u can think wutever backwards things you want. I'm not saying morgan is weak in any absolute way. surely they have strengths, and surely smac is a very large game in scope that u can through play/luck/indifference makeup lotsa time.

but when it comes down to it, morgan is weaker then the strong factions. its just a fact. u aren't gna impress me by giving me some two sentance strat advice, expecting that I haven't heard it before and somehow it will change my mind. cuz I have heard it before, and it won't change my mind.

[yavoon]

since I hear its popular to make two posts now, I guess I should too.

u r correct in saying that vastly altering the starting conditions changes who has the upper hand. that u can make extreme conditions to give different ppl upper hands, I prefer moderated conditions, and thats wut I play. you can say I'm ignoring the extreme, and ur right, I am. but thats ok.

u r incorrect about most of ur assemsnets, like normal. morgan I pack my bases extremely tightly and make retarded amts of probes.

spartans are weak, they aren't nearly the early agression faction miriam or yang are. which is ironic cuz the only ppl they can outbuild is miriam. I'd say yang, and indeed it might be close, but yang can usually power by them w/ his net of +4 industry over the spartans. with spartan u basically rely on perfect tactics, which u can do against the computer, never lose a unit. but his morale is easily negated by mismatching, since early armor can't handle early weapons in the open field. the only impressive exception is some uber early unity rover rush w/ santiago. which of course u can do well w/ miriam too.

btw I'm thinkin of giving santiago +3 morale. which does one special thing, a trained unit out of a command center, that then goes to a monolith is elite. atleast I'm pretty sure, been a while since I played santiago. neway, this would give santiago a gigantic early advantage, in that they can make early elite infantry(is there nothing cooler?)

I don't know what to do about morgan he's hard, maybe I just overpower him and see when I shoot past my mark. its hard to overpower a builder tho, cuz ur up against zak, who is like builder god.

I was thinking something like +3 support for miriam, or something, that'd be cool to play even. net effect of relieving miriams need for clean units for a very longass time. and it wouldn't really make her ne more powerful early(as how many bases are past size 4 early?)

[yavoon]

omg u reminded me. I wna put SAM the anti aircraft ability lower on the tech tree. for just that reason, getting noodles earlier than someone else can be abnormally devastating.

[Blake]

When your not worrying about high populations Morgans benefits easily outweigh his penalties. 100 starting cash goes a long way to getting early rec tanks / commons. Then when you switch to FM your getting about 2 more energy per base than a normal freemarketeer, and when you add wealth and a bit of commerce you probably get about 4 more energy per base. This easily outweighs the -1 support.

Morgans ONLY real weakness is the inability to pop-boom.
Unfortunately pop-booming is grossly unbalancing, so I suppose a faction unable to do something grossly unbalancing is a weak faction. In SMAX Morgan can quite easily pop-boom. So SMAC Morgan is weaker than SMAX morgan.

Ufortunately, the only way you are going to be able to remedy the inability to pop-boom is to give Morgan the ability to pop-boom. Such is the way with unbalancing features (everyones gotta have access to them). A few solutions:
Change aversion away from PLANNED. Simple. Morgan can then boom.
Meddle with the Alpha.txt to create alternate routes of pop-boom. One combination could be:
Demo -> +1 Growth (for +3 total)
Wealth -> +1 Growth.
So a faction could then either pop-boom by Demo/Planned or Demo/Wealth, or Hive+Planned+Wealth
Or, the best solution, remove pop-booming all together by reducing planned or demo to +1 growth.

Okay, so I admit Morgan is weak. But only in SMAC, and only on the basis of the unbalancing pop-boom. And the only way to remedy that is to give morgan access to pop-boom, one way or another Anything else will either make him too powerfull in non-pop booming situations, or still too weak when pop-booming is easy.


Believers and Spartans are weak Builder factions, they can both beat the snot out of traditional builders if they get in early with armed units. Giving them more warmonger bonuses (support, morale) is not going to change the weak builder aspect , you would be better of giving them bonuses to make them better able to survive in a builder game.
For Believers, Impunity, Fundie, Interest, 0 comes to mind, -2 research hurts quite enuff, without it being deducted twice. Interest, 0 is +1 energy per base, as 'donations' or something.
You may want to remove the PLANET penalty too. Makes FM just a little easier to run for them.

For the spartans, remove the Industry penalty (this makes them a penaltyless faction!). Or you could give something ridiculus like +3 police, for real easy drone control.

But Spartans and Believers are Momentum factions, they dont play on the same playing field as builders, so comparison is very difficult, it depends entirely on how you like to play .

[Blake]

Oh yeah, and continuing the multi post tradition, everyone is weak compared to Zak. The real obvious solution is to cripple Zaky a bit, -1 support would hurt him a bit, or take away some of his research bonuses (for example, remove the +2 research, but keep the netnodes).

The universities overpowerness is mainly on the basis of getting crawlers earlier, when Zak snags the VW he gets that nasty free netnode+free holo theatre per base combo, which is worth about 120 minerals per 30 mineral CP. So another idea is to change his free facility, prehaps to bio-lab, or research-lab, or remove it altogether and give something like +1 labs per base. Whats the deal with Zak being the only faction getting a free facility anyway ? Now I think about it removing that free netnode would fix Zak's overpowered problem, he would need another bonus and maybe relaxed penalties, though.

[DavidByron]

Couldn't Morgan pop-boom with Democracy/Creche/Golden Age?

[Blake]

Originally posted by DavidByron
Couldn't Morgan pop-boom with Democracy/Creche/Golden Age?

In SMAX, Yes
in *SMAC, No

Anyway, thats what I meant by SMAX morgan is stronger than SMAC morgan.

* In Mac SMAC the GA's actually work properly, so Morgan CAN GA pop-boom in Mac Smac.

[DavidByron]

Ok, its been a while since I only had SMAC. I remember something about that. Guess they never fixed it......

Time to buy the expansion maybe?