Weakest factions?

[Ouro_827]

I voted on a conglomerate, the combined of my skill, and the computers skill.... IMHO, the Believers are worthless. If you want them for attack, Usurpers are the way to go, and the Believers are only good on small maps. If you want the probe, Roze, and the support is utterly worthless because I use Clean Reactor most of the time anyways, usually gunning for it. The leaders right now are the Gaians, University, and Hive, followed by the alients(Usurpers and Caretakers), Drones, and Counciousness. The losers(most votes) are the Cult and Believers.... I don't care for the Cult, but the computer has done quite well in my experience....

[CEO Aaron]

Originally posted by Zeiter
I've noticed that when looking at who is weakest, soooooo much depends on your starting placement on the map.

This is true for every faction, so really shouldn't be a factor in your estimation of which factions are weakest.

Originally posted by Zeiter
For example, if you are playing Miriam, you want to be as close to the other factions as possible in order to probe rape them, threaten them, and if necessary, eliminate them with your +25% attack bonus. However, if Miriam starts out on an island halfway around the planet from everyone else, you are in a load of trouble. By the time you contact the other factions, they will be so far ahead in tech and SP's that you'll have no hope but to rush them with impact rovers or something. But even then, you've got to sail around to the other side of planet in your rinky dink transport foils, moving 3 spaces a turn and carrying only 2 units apiece. So, by the time you land your troops on their continents, they are probably already defensively established, and your faction is as good as dead. In summary, Miriam is a good faction when in the thick of things, but bad when off by herself.

I don't necessarily know that you'd be entirely screwed with Miriam if you're isolated. You've got huge support to field a vast former fleet, and can quietly expand to a huge size while filling the seas with probe foils, and swipe tech to your hearts content. No, you won't be winning any wonder races, but you should have enough time to catch up in the tech race. Once you have parity, you can just mob the guy who built all those wonders with twice as many units as they have, with your 25% attack bonus, the outcome shouldn't be in doubt. If you don't catch up by the time your enemies get air power, you could be in trouble though.

Originally posted by Zeiter
For me, Morgan is the most difficult to play as because it just seems that he sorely lacks any flexibility. When things don't go according to plan (such as a neighbor invading you early on), it is hard to compensate with him. The support and hab complex restraints really hurt, in my opinion. You have to stop whatever you are in the middle of to build hab complexes early (unless you want to stay with size 4 bases). This takes too much time early on, in my opinion. I almost always run democracy, I love the extra growth and efficiency, but with Morgan, if you run democracy you are saddled with huge support costs. Then if you run FM and wealth, you've got a faction who produces puny very-green or disciplined military units, who can't support those military units, and who can't even move those units away from bases. See what I mean by inflexible? If you are in the thick of things, Morgan is a wimp. You can try to use probe team mind controls and subversions, but if your opponents are smart, they will make sure to stack their units at least 2 to a square where vulnerable and have plently of probe teams of their own handy. Also, unless you are probing Zakharov, those mind controls can be expensive, even for Morgan's tastes. And if you are fighting Miriam, forget it.

Morgan is a great builder, and if you can manage to get everything to go according to plan, he can become very powerful. I definitely agree that you generally have to have some favorable circumstances early on to get going well. He is prone to a military spanking by Yang or Miriam, and has trouble compensating for such snags as a military invasion. If you can get him past the early-mid game in good shape, he really starts to shine. For me, though, he seems like the weakest of the original SMAC factions.

Edit: I almost forgot, Morgan has a lot of trouble pop-booming without being able to run planned, which makes him even weaker!

Look at these saves, and tell me how Morgan is a pushover again: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=74982

I don't think you give enough credit to the strength of Morgan's early game. Morgan can trade body blows with any other faction, IF they have enough warning that a threat is coming. Yes, they have the support penalty, but a properly run morgan should have nearly 50% more mineral production than most other factions, thanks to the energy, growth and mineral boosts from tanks, not to mention vast base-square energy from running with a high economy. Of course, if he hasn't researched early weapon techs, he'll be quickly overcome.

The hab limits for Morgan are a NON-issue in the early game. Watch all the good players play, and they're making lots of small, easily managed bases early on. When you're ready for the big population boom, EVERYONE builds Hab facilities, so Morgan builds them 3 turns earlier, so what? The real drawback with the Hab limits comes in the midgame, when you're stuck at 11 pop per base, and likely to stay there for the balance of the game.

I never found Pop booming for Morgan to be difficult. Golden Ages aren't hard to orchestrate at all, when you've got Morgan's vast energy income. Pop booming with Yang is much harder, and no one complains about them being soft.

Originally posted by Zeiter
I'd have to say the strongest faction is Lal. He gets an extra talent every four citizens, which greatly helps out with drone problems. He can easily pop-boom. He has +50% planetary council votes for governor and supreme leader. His pop restriction is less (size 16 bases early on, or even 18 with ascetic virtues.) Best of all, he doesn't have any significant drawbacks, so he is very versatile and he can respond to threats, invasions, or snags in your strategy with relative ease.

I'll certainly agree that Lal is a force to be reckoned with, when he gets going. Grabbing HGP and EG pretty much makes the game a lock for Lal, and his early talents make an early Free Market-based expansion easy and smooth. I'd say that the Drones are still the guys to beat, at the end of the day. Huge industry bonuses, coupled with innate drone control make an early Free Market expansion just as viable, allowing them to overcome their early research penalty, and come late game, the industry bonus just keeps getting stronger.

[Zeiter]

That game was very impressive! I guess if you at least get impact rovers, you can pick off approaching invaders, even if they have plasma steel armor. Then you can focus on building up your infrastructure. It has been a while since I've played as Morgan. I might have to give him another go.

Really, all of the factions have their arguments, I guess. That's one of the reasons why SMAC is such an awesome game. There are so many different ways to approach the game, and every game is different.

[CEO Aaron]

My basic strategy is to make for a lightning quick tech-jolt to industrial automation then backfill my weapon techs, when I play Morgan. Biogenics comes first, beeline for IA, getting formers on the way. At that point, lasers, rovers and impact weapons become the priority, although in most games I'm able to trade my early techs for some of these by the time I have IA.

Really, once you have IA, cranking out a few crawlers is all it takes to be able to negate your support problems. Also, never succumb to the urge to build more than 1 SP at a time. Having your bases locked into a 300 mineral project is devastating when your angry neighbors show up wanting to borrow your hedge trimmer and decapitate you with it.

Ultimately, your early neighbors have to be dealt with, and the sooner you can manage it, the better. For me, getting IA, and impact rovers is usually all it takes to subjugate them. Remember what Machiavelli says, and don't put off for later any war you can win today. Morgan makes money during peacetime, but your best trading partners are always your subservient pactmates.

[RoadRash]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron My basic strategy is to make for a lightning quick tech-jolt to industrial automation...

I myself like to get IA asap. It gives a gigantic edge building those early SPs.

My research roadmap:
1) Crawlers
2) Clean Reactor
3) Tree farms
4) Hybrid forest
5) Silksteel
6) Air Power
7) Fusion Reactor
8) Habitation Dome
9) Mining Satellites

Before I start a game, I print out a checklist detailing the exact research sequence.

I've playtested this sequence extensively. Obviously the sequence is vulnerable early on, when I depend on other factions for military tech. Often I adopt a subservient foreign policy until the advent of Air Power.

Once I discover tree farms I stop mining/farming/etc and plant forests, which are just as productive for less terraforming. My rush built hybrid forests crank out plentiful amounts of energy, leading to mid-game tech domination.

Getting the Habitation Dome is a stretch but having it available the last quarter of the game leads to massive population scores.

Does anyone else develop such checklists? My next list will bypass treefarms to shoot for an early fusion reactor.

[Zeiter]

I sort of have a checklist that goes:

1. Cent. Ecology - I try to get those formers out there as fast as possible.
2. Doctrine Flexibility - This lets me get sea formers out there, and I can also start popping pods at sea and search for other factions.
3. Ind. Automation - CRAWLERS!!!!!!! YEAH BABY!
4. Doctrine Air Power - Along the way I get some very useful techs (Gene Splicing, High Energy Chemistry, Sythn Fossil Fuels) and of course having Air Power as early as possible is a priority. If you can manage to snag Air Power 5 years before a close neighbor, that's sometimes all it takes to crush them.
5. Fusion Power - I love the cheap, but twice as strong units with fusion reactors. And having engineer specialists is nice too.
6. Advanced Spaceflight - shard weapons, living refinery, orbital power transmitters.
7. The Will to Power - This includes all of the techs leading up to it, like biomachinery, retroviral engineering, MMI, Enviromental Econ, Homo Superior, etc. If you can get Cloning Vats, and then research up to Will to Power, you can run Power and Thought Control with no negatives, which pretty much guarantees an abundance of Elite units that are still cheap to make since you don't have the -2 ind or -3 support costs of power and thought control, respectively.

By then, the game is usually pretty much sealed.

In the beginning of the game, sometimes I'll make a detour to impact weapons if I have a hostile neighbor to deal with. I also try to get Eco Engineering, Intellectual Integrity, and Planetary Economics through trade.

And of course, sometimes the order is different, and sometimes I will make detours, but generally these are the tech lines that I try to follow.

[CEO Aaron]

I don't really beeline to anything after IA/Impact.

Once I get IA, my immediate concern is to a) cleanse my continent of rival factions. b) clean up any and all available SPs c) continue base expansion.

My research is guided toward getting all of those early SPs, so this is where I flesh out my lower tech tree, so I can take SPs like EG, PEG, and CDF. At the same time, I tend to float a modest fleet of foil probes to infiltrate other factions, so I can find out what techs I can steal instead of research.

Once I've mopped up early SPs, my next research goal is actually Bio-engineering, for clean reactors (and crank about 4+ formers per base), and a quick jump up to Genejack Factories. Environmental Economics is a quick side-trip from there, and then Air Power, Fusion, etc. However, my tech choices from this point forward are mainly decided by circumstance. If I'm at war, Air Power and Weapons are the priority. If I'm at peace, Fusion is the way to go.

[Quezacotl06]

I don't know what u guys r talking about... pirates rule. You don't have to worry at ALL about enemy factions for well over 20 turns (and then they actualy have to BUILD the ships before they can star attacking). All you have to focus on are fauna (usualy no more then other factions, and IOD rarely go out and atk, and lurkers are uncommon.)

And it does not need to be said that they're the best at making use of the sea. A mineral bonus in a rightly positioned base gives them 1-1-0 at most squares. Plus their bases all have pressure domes. That's the same thing as getting a free recycling tank at every base; the same bonus aliens have. Coupled with being able to engineer ocean squares later, they're the masters. NO faction can match the amount of resource production a pirate base can at end game with all the needed facilities and bonuses.

Granted, their penalties suck, but it can easily be circumvented by a children's creche (democracy can always do it too, but I hate the support penalty). As for ship production costs, they all get marine detatchments later in the game, which makes getting ships much easier.

And as for spartans, I have nothing to say about them, as they're not nesisairly my favorite. Their police bonus is nice in early trancend games. But I like them for their social engineering. They can have the more bonuses than any other faction through a democracy/planned/power/eudaimonia.

[CEO Aaron]

The problem is that during the first 20-30 turns that pirates are left to their own devices, they're being completely surpassed by landbased factions, who get EVERYTHING cheaper. You certainly get nutrients quickly, but with the mediocre tech rate and efficency problems, all that means is that you'll be using your food surplus to feed doctors, or did you plan on going Police state, and having -3 efficency?

[Mr. Harley]

I've noticed that the University and Morgan are very powerful research powerhouses in PBEM, and done properly are very powerful with the caveat of not worrying about an early game conflict. Playing the Pirates is tricky. First of all, you must build foils and pop pods agressively, using the "project complete" to make armored sea formers and colony pods, and later on armored rover supply units.

You must go for Centauri Ecology immediately. You can produce a 2-1-2 square ON DEMAND from the start, and your "farms" spread! Once you get production restrictions lifted, combine 4-1-4 squares with 1-2-2 forests. Two workers, one on each, gives you 5-3-6. That's why you want coastal bases with islands, but even then support will be a problem - you need garrison units (foils don't count for police), land formers, sea formers, and transports. After Free Market you need Clean Reactors as fast as you can get them.

If you can get the Rainforest or the Manifold Nexus, they are GREAT. However, that applies to any faction, but you have a better chance to find them early due to your foils and pod popping. The Pirates are tricky to play, and definitely behind the Univeristy, Morgan, and probably Lal (I haven't practiced playing him since I learned how to crawler/FM properly), but definitely competitive with factions like the Gaians and the Angels.

[Sikander]

Here's some Pirate pointers I wrote up at CGN a while back:

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Sikander's Pirate Notes

Here are a few of my ideas regarding the Pirates.

1) Choose your initial base spots wisely. I always play look first. Your sea colony pods move 4, as does your gun foil. Make use of them to scout out an area where you can get some good productive squares early. At least one of these base spots should be adjacent to some land, preferably both.

2) Meet and greet early. You have some tech that no one else should have early on, plus your ability to move should make it simple for you to meet your neighbors quickly. Do so before you start running SE choices that will piss them off. Trade tech. If you meet a few AI players early on you should be able to put yourself in the position of tech broker. Trade your early sea techs to the first guy, then trade back and forth amongst those you have discovered. You can build a decent early tech lead this way.

3) Go to land. It is much more efficient than growing at sea, and you should be able to find decent areas which are free of enemies much more easily than your land lubber competition. This will help you expand more quickly, as well as help you with the midgame mineral slump that the Pirates can get into. Keep in mind that land bases can take good advantage of the Pirate's natural ability to harvest the sea as well, as long as they are port bases.

4) Pop pods. Use your gun foil to scout, and a transport to pop the pods (under the protection of the gun foil). One or two alien artifacts are like gold, they virtually assure you will get one of the early game SPs. Probably the most valuable early game SP for you will be the Human Genome project. It makes pop booming much easier, as you will need to use GAs until you can secure the cloning vats.

5) Build infrastrcture. You absolutely need it to get ahead in the game. You have minuses in growth and efficiency, and no real plusses. You need lots of energy in order to keep your empire afloat, to rush-buy facilities and to keep an edge on the AI in science in order to get to airpower first. This applies to terraforming as well as facility builds btw.

6) Use your SE choices flexibly. One of your few advantages as the Pirates is that you can run anything. Use that flexibility. Use Green to capture IOD's for long range pod popping missions, use Market to jump start your economy early on, use Demo / Planned / Wealth / Golden Ages and 20% psych to pop boom while bringing in some nice energy via +2 Econ as well.

The Pirates have a nice advantage in the midgame, namely they can terraform shelf squares to produce 4-1-4 (with the appropriate facilities), which outproduces a borehole for energy long before you get Engineers. (This assumes that you are using the extra 2 food to support a Librarian.) If you are located next to some land, then more's the better, use the extra food to support a borehole worker to get even more energy and some minerals to make your base even more productive. Other non-borehole squares should be forested, or mined when rocky and a supply crawler used to bring those life giving minerals to a base in need.

In fact using a hollow strategy is quite viable for the Pirates. By this I mean that on a given landmass, all of the bases are placed on the shore of the land until they surround whatever hinterland is available. The hinterland (the interior of the landmass outside the the area workable by your bases) is eventually terraformed to maximize one Factor of Production (FOP) and crawlers are used to ferry that production to one of the bases. Try to maximize borehole density in the area that is workable by your population, as those minerals are probably going to be scarcer for you with perhaps half of your workable area taken up by sea squares. Again mines on rocky areas and forests elsewhere will give you a nice mineral boost.

As the game progresses I look more and more to SE choices that are going to improve my efficiency. My bases are going to be hybrid specialist bases for the most part until I can get the Cloning Vats so that I can use pop booms to grow my population and make all of that carefully developed infrastructure pay off. Thus they are semi-sensitive to inefficiency energy loss. It is tempting to spread far and wide as the Pirates, but if I do so I tend to rely more on specialist bases and less on raw energy for the new bases, as the inefficiency losses for raw energy mount up as you spread out. These bases are harder to pop boom as they produce less raw energy to use as psych, but on the other hand specialists work ok up to a point to produce psych, as long as you have all the psych improving and drone reducing facilities / SPs you can get. When the CVs gets built, then you are free to expand very rapidly via the popboom and specialist bases.

As far as base spacing goes, there is really no need to give the Pirates more than 9 squares for each base (1 for the base proper, and 8 for workers) as long as you can produce 4 food per worked tile so that you can get up the 16 (pre-hab dome, with the AV) population limit. This can be done by matching one borehole with two Farm / Condensor / Soil Enricher squares, while shelf squares will produce the requisite nutrients all by themselves. Your base square will also produce 3 nuts, so you have a bit of room to maneuver. Once you get to satellites even these requirements aren't critical, as your satellites will effectively double your nut production (and energy and mins as well). Once you have the Cloning Vats, you won't need to use Golden Ages anymore either, and can comfortably use even smaller base spacing and all specialist bases if you desire.

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While it is probably true that the Pirates are weak in comparison to a lot of other factions, they are a lot of fun to play due to their differences. In SP this weakness shouldn't matter, and they make a great change of pace game when you get bored.

[gwillybj]

3. U.N. Peacekeeping Forces
2. The Data Angels
1. Morgan Industries

[Jac de Molay]

Hmmm..never thought of the peacekeepers as necessarily a weak faction.

Their ability to popboom readily and switch back to free market alone makes them tough...Plus biogenetics as a starting tech comes in real handy.

[Starfarer]

I said Believers, Cult of Planet, and the Drones.

Yes, each of these three factions are veryh good if played right.

But the first two are horrid in thwe mid to late game, and the Drones... I just don't ike them or anything to do with them... to me, they're like Hive Lite.

And since I don't play games that will end within 200 turns, what's the point of playing a rusher? Not my idea of fun, sorry. I learned years ago to counter rushes in Starcraft, but I still hate them, and I till think the uwsers of those rushes aren't in this to play a game, bu rather, to get bragging rights and say "I R KOOL U R SUK!" Again, not mym idea of fun.

I don't imagine why ANYONE thinks the university is weak. They have the potential to be the single most powerful faction, period, end of story.

Even in early game... they don't have any real penalties to anything combat related. just because you don't have a BONUS to massing units for defense doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if you're in danger.

And since you'l get Impact/Plasmasteel/anything else sooooo much faster than your opponents, all you have tyo do is hold them off long enough for your tech to outclass theirs.

In my experience, University gets things like Missiles and Chaos about the same time anyone else can get Gatling, if you've got enough bases and energy plugged into research...

But then... I love builder games.

Silly me.

[Mart]

I voted Gaians and Cult, but it is the most difficult vote, all depends on starting locations, as Zeiter points