Worst Faction

[CEO Aaron]

Under standard settings, dumb luck and opening position have far more to do with how a faction will fare than any innate bonuses, and even so, ANY game with the AI is winnable, provided you're suitably aggressive.

Blind research has a huge effect on the playability of certain factions, since if you take 40-50 turns to get Centauri Ecology, you're going to seriously behind the eightball.

Even so, even the crappiest faction can win against the AI, simply because the poor AI is so dense.

[joncnunn]

Morgon can't choose planned! No pop boom except via GA until Cloning Vacts built! Wouldn't do much good without Hab Complexes anyway.

Originally posted by Lazerus

true with any faction in my experience, I'd definately recommend FM for morgan atleast until mid-way in the game just after his first pop boom though when you can have a quick switch around to see which will yield greater results.

1-1-1-trance units, dirt cheap and if i remember right planet rating has no effect on defense?
You'll have enough cash to just probe the enemies units.
As for fungus blooms just keep an eye on your clean mineral limit and push it up with a few early pops and tree farms then you'll have no problem with them as im sure i remember reading planet rating only affects the severity of eco-damage caused by the minerals that are over the clean limit.

If i wasn't so reliant on my cheap 1-1-1-police units for Yang then I'd definately be running FM most of the time.

[joncnunn]

Agreed; I think I could create a faction with all the negative attibates of the 7 standard civs and still beat the AI.

Originally posted by CEO Aaron

Even so, even the crappiest faction can win against the AI, simply because the poor AI is so dense.

[Lazerus]

Morgon can't choose planned! No pop boom except via GA until Cloning Vacts built! Wouldn't do much good without Hab Complexes anyway.

With the amount of energy morgan makes thats no problem at all. Nobody pop booms before IA, which morgan gets rather quicker then most, thus a few crawlers built and habs are soon finished thereafter.

Agreed; I think I could create a faction with all the negative attibates of the 7 standard civs and still beat the AI.

Put Yang or Miriam on the monsoon jungle, standard or small map and turn techsteal on then try it

[Qualicide]

Actually I find the pirates to be incredibly easy to get money with because you have 1. pods 2. 5 energy squares (FM+tranducer thingy)in the first 100 years. When you get a bunch of 7 pop cities with every square having 5 energy it's easily the most energy you can get until you can make energy parks. Global market corner rush?

Yeah I would say Miran is the worst. If you can't find anyone to pick on your doomed. Well, unless you like spending an hour every turn with formers.

[MattyBoy]

Domai in SP is the worst.
In my experience there is one way to play him and that is to go all out military production and expansion, with no effort to research tech. Then you get your tech by whatever non-research means that you can. Once you do that he usually wins far too easily.

The whole Domai experience ends up being quite one dimensional.

[Lazerus]

Run demo/FM/wealth

you can get high tech rates with domai then, and you'll still have +3 industry.

[UnityScoutChopper]

I still maintain that Miriam is neither the worst nor inflexible (assuming you're playing with blind research off). Miriam's +2 support does NOT have to be used to attack, and is a more important part of her profile than the extra attack (unless you do happen to start right next to a scout-rush victim -- which actually happens fairly often even on large maps, in my experience). Use the extra support for formers, use it when running Planned or Green to easily field escorts for colony pods so that you don't need a doctor or RC to immediately apply the first pop point, use it to support more transport foils for overseas colonization than you could with other factions, use it to support more explorers, use it to run democracy sooner, which, if not running Planned, means a higher baselimit... the range of possibilities is quite wide, and there's nothing "one-dimensional" about it.

As to "spending an hour every turn with formers"... if you don't like using formers, what are you doing playing SMAC? (Unless you like no-formers challenge games.)

Again, Miriam is one of my favorite borderline builder/hybrid factions, second only to Domai.

IME, since one has plenty of other worthwhile things to build in the first 15-20 turn besides just formers, Miriam's real weaknesses are:

- part of her pluses truly are wasted until she can attack (that I'll buy, though I wouldn't say it makes her inflexible -- just penalized for certain situations)

- FM/Wealth is absolutely horrible until she gets trance or preferably empath (and eliminating those nasty fungal towers outright requires the latter)

- problems with blooms arrive sooner

- a bit harder to trade her way to science, since she obtains trading material more slowly

- IA comes later.

Still an all around pretty rocking faction, as all those forests that she builds quickly while still handling many other things means really goods FOPs per square... or if she has the chance and desire, she can just let loose, kick a$$, and gain early submissives with benefits equal to the formers she passed up.

In a way, you could say she's more flexible than, say, Morgan, who can be a builder and perhaps a hybrid, but never an early-momentum faction. Miriam has all three choices.

Incidentally, my vote for hardest faction in SP would also be for the Cult--most of the penalties of the Hive and the Spartans together, with very little to show for it. In my experience you are stuck without contact with other factions -- preferably ones suitable for worm-rushing, you're kind of SOL. But from the posts above, it's clear that there are those who have no trouble with them.

USC

[Sarxis]

It also depends on the rules you are playing with. Believers get weaker when 'tech steal' is off.

[CEO Aaron]

Any momentum faction gets weaker when tech steal is off, but that doesn't mean that Miriam is weak. Use the early support to expand aggressively and build lots of terraformers, get Planetary Networks, then probe rape every faction on the planet to eliminate your only significant weakness. Yes, you'll lose out on getting the early SP's, but you've got the muscle to go and grab them once you've caught up in the tech race.

The +25% attack is much better than +2 morale, IMO, since no matter how good your morale SE value is, your units don't get any higher than Elite. This means that Miriam's elite units are that much tougher than everyone else's. In addition, Miriam can pop-boom easily, something Yang has much more trouble doing. Finally, the crappy planet rating is a complete non-issue once you've got trance and tree farms to take care of worms and your clean mineral count, respectively.

Miriam is equally happy starting next to sdmeone and starting alone, since if you're next to someone, you can break out the scout swarm and make their life hell, and if you're off on your own, you can concentrate on growing and building, and rely on foil probes to cover your tech problems.

[Qualicide]

I plant forests and build roads, forming is boring. It's not like you need it to beat the AI.

[Curiosity]

Well, the results are in - here's the last word on the matter... yeah, right.

I've compiled the stats from the Apolyton tournament games (too much time on my hands) and here they are - the factions from strongest to weakest, based on games awarded points out of games played.

Hive 11/18 - 61%
Drones 7/13 - 54%
Believers 2/4 - 50%
PKs 8/20 - 40%
Pirates 4/10 - 40%
Spartans 3/9 - 33%
University 7/28 - 25%
CyC 2/8 - 25%
Gaians 4/19 - 21%
Cult 1/5 - 20%
Angels 1/5 20%
Morgan 2/19 - 10%

Of course, this is all of quite questionable significance.

However, the very poor performance of Morgan and the Gaians, and the very strong showing by the Hive and Drones, is interesting.

[Chaos Theory]

Industry helps tremendously early on, and continues to remain helpful throughout most of the game.

[CEO Aaron]

I'm suprised to see the Believers so high on the list there, given how wildly unpopular they tend to be on these boards. Then again, they have so few games, their sampling is almost doubly meaningless.

[BustaMike]

The pirates are the weakest. There is no argument otherwise with any merit. They have no helpful bonusses, and several severe weaknesses, the worst of which being IMO the extra cost of sea colony pods at the beginning. This forces you to go for land thus negating any of the insignificant bonusses you had to start. Basically, all you get is a craptastic faction with -1 growth and -1 efficiency.

The Cult is pretty weak also, unless they're played from a pure worm attack standpoint. Then they can be powerful.

Of the original seven, I would say the Spartans and Believers are slightly worse than the others, but not by much. The original SMAC was very well balanced IMO.

Domai in SP is the worst.

That's absolutely ludicrous. In single player he is without a doubt among the strongest. The +2 industry is just too much. You don't need to attack at all, go all out builder instead. Running FM + Wealth lets you build basically anything in one turn due to the decreased costs of buying stuff and the increased money you make. Domai is tough to the point of being imbalanced.

If you go by worst meaning lame and not weak, then the Angels take the cake. What a freakin' retarded faction. Oooo, we're a faction made of hackers oooo data and jazz ooo what a bunch o' idiots. I hate the Data Angels.