What is your favourite faction?

[uptons]

Which of the factions do you most like to play, to what end, with what strategy and with what SE choices?

As for myself, I like the Peacekeepers the most, as essentially, the others are little more than traitors to the organization that originally saved their arses from the fall of Earth.
They are the only sensible faction in the madhouse of twisted ideologies such as those of Yang or Santiago's.
In game terms they are powerful, with their numerous Talents keeping riots of Lal's back, freeing their forces to check the expansion of the aggressive factions. They get voted for Governors. They don't need expensive Hab Complexes. Their only downside (apart from NOT having bonuses) is the lone -1 to Efficiency, but hey, that can be overcome early with Democracy, so long as you're not engaged in a huge war, in which case you'll probably wind up having to take a loan from Morgan to rush garrisons in conquered bases...

My SE table winds up like this: Democratic/Green/Knowledge/Cybernetic
especially when I've built sea bases early on which have multiplied to span the world...

With the Peacekeepers, it's best to head for the Supreme Leader throne, after which it's time to get rid of Yang or whomever with hordes of Shard drop troops.

[Muzta]

I like Zakarov

[Blake]

I like the good chairman myself, game terms no-one expands faster or with more security than Yang, once I'm done expanding I start building, usually going to war once I get Bio-engineering using top-notch builder units, momentum is boring.

As far as his ideology goes I quite enjoy enslaving the world in my brutal police state, altough I prefer to planetbust the peace keepers, as revenge for all of Lal's crimes against humanity in previous games.

[Wiglaf]

I like Lal, too - his x2 votes is unmatched, esp with the empath guild.

------------------
The fault lies not in our SMAC, but in our stars.
~ Vanguard, February 2, 2000.

[mark13]

If you are playing a lower difficulty level, Zak is far and away the best faction in the game. The outright flexibility being able to zoom up the early tech tree gives you is unparalleled, and the drone problem is a non-issue on all dif levels up to librarian, and possibly thinker.

On transcend, though, Lal comes into his own. The extra talent lets you run FM without a rec commons and get to size 3 - the ability to get to size 9 w/o hab complexes gives you that little bit extra early/mid-game production, before you pop boom to 16. And Lal can quite easily pop boom, although the -1 efficiency means he loses a lot of energy when he does this.

Also, the double votes he gets makes you a certainty for Planetary Governorship. And he can run FM.

I rest my case.

[Sprayber]

I can't stand Lal. He and Dee have betrayed me way too many times while playing the milder factions. I just can't stand him going on and on about his precious charter. Or Dee going on and on about planet. I like playing the Pirates. The thing I like most about them is that they can get along with anyone. From the seas I cannot be beaten.

[Blake]

I can't stand Lal because he always talks about peace and congratulates you if running democracy, but would much rather pact with Miriam and Yang than you. I made a "lets all beat up Lal" scenerio where the human player is Lal and all the AI's are allied against him.

As for Lal on transcend I usually GA pop-boom, it saves me switching from FM and a GA is really easy to get for Lal, especially if you have HGP too.

[The Commodore]

Yo-Ho-Ho...It's the Pirate's Life for meeeee....

[Skanderbeg]

The strongest factions (on transcendent level) are, after my experiences the Peacekeapers (the additional votes, the additional talents, and the expanded pop limit really rock), followed by the Drones and the Pirates.

But the factions which gives me most fun to play?
Maybe You be astonished, but it's the gender-changed, orange-eyed chinese bastard! I like to play the Cult of Planet!

[cbn]

The question asks for favorites and I would rank my favorites as

1. The Cult - they are different and were my first transcend victory once I got Xfire

2. Sven -- again, I like the different
3. Drones -- the necessary come-from behind playstyle is neat


This list varies from the factions I feel are strongest which include Dee, Zak the aliens and the Drones. Since I am playing SP only I think that my favorites are the ones where there is greater challenge or you have to innovate more. Fow example, even playing double-blind Zak can just simply out-tech the opposition. I have more fun playing the ones where research is tougher or +2 ECON is difficult

One question I have is whether most players favorites are the same when playing MP and SP.
[This message has been edited by cbn (edited February 06, 2001).]

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

As for most enjoyable factions I prefer the 'vanilla' factions. Ones that can be played in any number of ways most easily.

These I consider:

Angels
Lal

then

Santi (but no wealth )

This means for each of factions I can pop boom, I can FM, or I can be tree hugger as the mood/timing fits.

I'll play the others but I would rather exercise all aspects of the game and for my money the versatility of the above are reason enough to play those factions.

OTOH if I really want a builder game I'll go Morgan, Domai, or UoP if I wan't to exercise a early rover run I'll go Borgs etc.

All depends on my mood. But in most cases since I'm indecisive how I want my game to progress from the start I'll stick with good old fashioned 'vanilla' and stay away from the Tutti Frutti (Cha Dawn) or the Banana Split Boat (Sven).

Og

[karu-san]

I have to admit that I am surprised that no one (except Ogie) has even mentioned the Spartans. There is, after all, the "Spartan Chronicles". Although these are obviously about more than just the Spartans, I think just the fact that they seem to be many people's favorite enemy (or behind Yang) should give them mention. Being a newbie myself, I have a sneaking (prejudiced) suspicion that no one mentions the Spartans because they've been played to exhaustion. (Anyone care to comment?)


Personally, I think the Spartans are great. So great, in fact, that I usually enjoy playing any other faction significantly less. It is obvious from this that I am a warmonger, but I like to call myself a reasonable, calculating warmonger

This means that I enjoy being able to expand (yes, I admit, rather slowly) without having to worry about forging a tangled web of alliances and diplomacy just to save my sorry hide. So for me, autonomous self-protection is a highly enjoyable thing. Yang has these same characteristics, but what draws my preference to Santi is the combination of the above with the first strike superiority that comes with the morale advantage. Yang can rain infantry on you like they were cats and dogs, but I prefer highly trained, efficient operations. This allows me to enjoy conquest without having to manage a bulky empire. Some people like Steamrolling. I like precision. Santi is the best for this.

My personal tastes dictate that I be militarily beholden to none. Therefore, I accept the eventual necessity of having to snivel every now and then to ensure my survival, but then comes the rapturous and vindictive joy of mowing through enemy troops with ease.

Which brings me to the philosophical/ideological end of the question: except in MP games where everyone is friends (either in reality or virtual) and people just want to ultimately get along, it seems to me that in one way or the other every aspect of this game, yea even its very design, revolves around survival. With this is mind, how does a faction whose ideology and bonuses are based on this concept have anything less than immediate ideological appeal? There you are, stranded on an alien planet, surrounded by hostility, both alien and human, and you want to be:

a) an idealist who thinks that everyone will be friends and can be united even after the crises and breakup aboard the unity, and even in the face of nothing less than humanity's entire history
b) a scientist who expects people to leave him alone to research in peace when that very research itself is probably the planet's most valuable commodity (leave me peacefully alone to stockpile diamonds in South Central L.A., yes?)
c) a fungus-hugger whose goals, although admirable (like lal's) are ultimately naive in light of fanatics like Miriam cannoning around with ludicrous attack bonuses and evangelical lunacy in their eyes (no offense to real evangelicals, of course)

Any of these sound appealing?

Then of course actually having to BE Miriam just unnerves me. With base names like hers I actually WANT someone to wipe me out.

Which brings me to Yang. Communal Utopia. Unparalleled defence. Industrial might. Sounds nice, yes? Well, I guess I just can't stomach the overt stripping of freedom and will (other factions may do this, but at least they have the political tact to do it covertly)

It seems rather obvious that, given the splintering of humanity even before landing on Chiron, a militarily weak faction will be a short-lived one.

In summary (I hear those relieved sighs) although I applaud Sid for making relatively peaceful options a part of the orginal Civ design so that the turtles out there can nest, ultimately even these turtles must, either by intimidation (plantary leader), extortion (corning market) or quasi-spiritual technology achieve the very same power to assure survival that Santi is so frank and direct about obtaining from the moment the Captian was awoken on the Unity.

Sorry about a post so long-winded that you can probably feel the breeze from where you're reading, and that probably belongs in another forum, but hey, the thread WAS started

P.S. I was going to cover the smacX factions, but then I realized that unless you've read this far you are probably drooling on your keyboard

[This message has been edited by karu-san (edited February 07, 2001).]

[sunchaser3]

The Believers will always be my favorite faction. I like to play them as hybrid/builders with a lot of early expansion followed by rapid growth and finally Global Domination. Running Democracy with them is great in the early game. Increased growth and no support worries due to their natural +2 support. You can pretty much run Democracy the whole game. My economic choices depend on what is happening in game, but I usually end up in Green before to long.

I like to play the Believers the way I feel they should behave. I am nothing like the aggressive warmonger the AI likes to play, but any faction that chooses to attack me for out of hand or bully me for money/tech will find themselves utterly destroyed by the time I Transcend.

Those factions who choose to repent of course can be spared.

I also enjoy naming the Believer cities and units. There are so many great Biblical titles to pull from.
The only yhing that blows is their colors. Why did they have to use that stupid orange. Why not purple, or crimson, or anything but orange. Oh well, I guess no faction can be perfect.

[Slimehorse]

If you've still got the spirit, go ahead and cover the SMAX factions. I enjoyed reading your post, although I can't say as such that I agree, from a philosophical standpoint. Even though yes, raw survival must obviously be the main priority on Planet, it doesn't mean that more "front-brain" pursuits like research-for-research's-sake or cooperation or environmental responsibility should be ignored! I mean, even on civilized 21st C. Earth survival is priority number one... otherwise I wouldn't waste my time at work, earning money to pay for food and the roof over my head I use to keep myself and my stuff from getting wet when it rains. HOWEVER, just because I'm interested (very interested) in survival, doesn't mean I don't quite heavily prioritize things like literature, political responsibility, and just having drinks and shooting pool with friends. Santi too heavily privileges survival at the expense of culture and ultimately humanity, and in my opinion represents an even more unbalanced, undesirable, and untenable ideology than the Gaians or the PKs or the University.

That said, in order to keep some semblance of thread relevancy, my favorites are the CC and the Drones, by a long shot. I have never even played the Spartans (although I think I'll give them a spin tonight).