Which is better...

[Quezacotl06]

+2 Efficiency or +2 Support? Which would you rather have?

Also, what's better: +1 Planet, +1 Economy, or +2 Morale?

[Chaos Theory]

The answer depends on what point in the game you're worrying about, so I gave my answer for the midgame. Efficiency and economy together work wonders! Support is much less useful to a faction that doesn't build that many units in the first place, or after Bioengineering. Planet is handy, but not as good as economy. Morale is garbage - low Morale ratings are superior in the presence of a Children's Creche and aren't strongly disadvantaged the rest of the time.

[Lord Nword]

Because I'm a crazy city builder and terraformer, I significantly prefer to be on good terms with Planet and have 100 support-free Skybase Terraformers at some bases

[Blake]

+2 Support is very useful when your still building up at the start, being able to support 3 formers for free per base (+1 garrison) is very, very nice, because mass terraforming and expansion doesn't slow down the rest of your infrastructure growth. For Morgan in the very early game, if you have the choice of Democracy or Police State, then PS is almost a no-brainer.

Later in the game energy becomes more significant due to large bases and multipliers from facilities and thus effeciency more important, if the +2 effic reclaims an average of 4 energy per base, then thats pretty much pays for 2 extra supported units.

In some cases +2 effic is useful in the early game if you are having drone control problems because you can make more bases before running into b-drones, this is likely only to be useful on huge maps because on smaller maps you need to blow through the b-drone limit to get a comfortable number of bases.

I'd say that on average, +2 support is more useful until about L3 techs, then +2 Effic will give greater benefit... but in practise it is more complicated...

+1 Planet: Planet is only really useful in the early game to allow you to capture worms, then, it is very useful. It can be a bad thing if your actually causing pops and killing the worms for cash. (Positive Planet is basically the only sometimes-bad trait - excluding bugs like +4 probe and natives benefiting from creche)
+1 Economy: Only useful to the extent that it brings you to +2 economy or higher - in other words, if your Morgan and/or already running FM. However more energy is always a good thing.

+2 Morale: Useful when fighting to reduce unit losses, but mostly only useful to the extent that it allows you to train Elites, occasionally it makes sense to get positive morale in order to get Elite Formers.
Post-Creche -1 Morale is "Good Enough" to get elite military in combo with Monoliths. "Investing" in morale early in the game makes sense if it allows you to get surprisingly early elites - generally only the Spartans can do this without excessive sacrifice.

It's also worth noting that for all factions which start with even morale (ie: not Gaians and I think Ursupers) then +1 Morale (from Fundie) is very nearly as good as +2 Morale (from Power). For the Gaians Fundie is very nearly worthless because post-creche it gives no tangible morale benefit, in principle Power is useful for the Gaians, it's the only way for them to get Elite formers... in reality no-one should ever run power, unless they have the CV.

[livid imp]

I voted for the all powerful Econ/Eff of course.

But the Planet/Eff is nearly as good. It gives you the best element of the Gaians.


oh...and thanks....you inspired a new faction idea.

[Alinestra Covelia]

+2 Banana allows your faction to pop boom in abject poverty, especially if you have discovered the Republic tech. Switch a to a Banana Republic government, and you will have Communism-level military policing (+3 Police or better) and barbarians every turn to train your pre-teen soldiers with!

[gwillybj]

+2Efficiency +2Morale for me.
I'm usually producing enough minerals that I don't necessarily need a higher Support rating, so I'll take the higher Efficiency. Those EC's are handy for Hurrying and Bribes, so I don't want them melting away on me.
My economy is generally quite lively and I don't often have a big ecodamage problem, but I always want "well-trained, well-equipped troops" because for some reason they are frequently called upon to "stand up to many more times their lesser brethren"
M'Lady tells me +2Banana automatically results in +2Efficiency +2Morale

[binTravkin]

+2 support
+1 economy

IF you're going ICS specialist approach, you don't need efficiency (at the extent you need support for rapid terraform).
And economy will boost you at the start..

[Blake]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
+2 Banana allows your faction to pop boom in abject poverty, especially if you have discovered the Republic tech. Switch a to a Banana Republic government, and you will have Communism-level military policing (+3 Police or better) and barbarians every turn to train your pre-teen soldiers with!

[Sikander]

I chose +1 econ +2 support. This is great in the early game and I have more ways to adjust to circumstances in the middle and late game.

[Major Guz]

I chose +2 support and +1 economy.
In that case you can support more formers early on (as mentioned before). Later on, you can switch to democracy without the support hit.

+1 economy so I can choose Wealth as SE setting. This allows me to get +1 energy per square (happens at +2 economy) without the -5 Police and -3 Planet of Free market. In this case I just have to live with the morale hit and also get +1 industry. This is a real boon to me. (I also follow this choice when playing Morgan)

[Archaic]

+2 Support, +1 Econ

More formers earlier on, able to switch to Demo early without losing the 10 free mins, nice adaptability in the late game, and a nice boost to commerce on top of the +3 from FM and Wealth.

[BlackCat]

+2 Efficiency, +1 Economy

I prefer the research way and keeps my income as close to +/-0 as sensible. Admitted, the +2 eff. first do good later.

Support isn't much worth - one defender and a former can easily keep up with pop growth and expansion, especially after WP. One or two bases doing proto and army support covers until clean.

Morale could be nice from start, but since thats not possible i prefer Nexus, Cyborg, MCC and CB to morale boost (and if i dont get them for free, i spend the mins at my warfactory bases).

[ForesterSOF]

I go for Support and Moral since I like BIG LONG games.

If I could I would make it 14 factions on a 256X208 planet.

[Lord Nword]

Originally posted by ForesterSOF
I go for Support and Moral since I like BIG LONG games.

If I could I would make it 14 factions on a 256X208 planet.

If you play a big long game, you should be able to get all of the SPs that give extra moral... so then you don't need +moral

And if I could, I would make it a limit of something like 4096 bases instead of the current 512 bases (I could some damn large maps )