Favorite factions...

[binTravkin]

What you want to say is:
"Negative efficiency is treated as 0 efficiency for the Expansion drones"
What you said is:
'If you have -2 EFFIC, your Expansion limit will be at most as small as everyone else's."

No, what he wanted to say was:

Gaia: +2 Effic
Planned: -2 Effic

2 + (-2) = 0

"Negative efficiency is treated as 0 efficiency for the Expansion drones"

Is wrong.

[Chaos Theory]

It is true that negative efficiency is treated as 0 for the bureaucracy limit. Thus, if your efficiency is 0 or less, no one can have a lower effective efficiency in the bureaucracy limit calculation, and thus no one can have a lower bureaucracy limit (assuming all are playing at the same difficulty level). If no one's bureaucracy limit is lower than yours, your bureaucracy limit is not higher than anyone else's.

Edit: I love being told what I want to say

[Sebed]

Originally posted by binTravkin

"Negative efficiency is treated as 0 efficiency for the Expansion drones"

Is wrong.

are you sure or is it just your guessing?

[binTravkin]

are you sure or is it just your guessing?

Quite sure.
I've been playing PKs and having the message after I try to establish 7th base.

[Chaos Theory]

The bureaucracy limit on normal or large-sized maps with 0 (or less) efficiency is 6.

[binTravkin]

52, 104 is "large-sized"?

[Chaos Theory]

44, 90 is the default large size. Your map size is nonstandard, but has linear dimensions 1.3 times as long as the standard map, so bureaucracy limits are 1.3 times as high, for 6*1.3 = 7.8 = 7 as the limit for efficiency <= 0. You should have gotten a warning upon trying to found your eighth base. If efficiency < 0 counted in the bureaucracy calculation, your base limit would be 7.8 * .75 = 5.85 = 5.

[Kaosium]

I'm just curious: why did only one person pick the Believers? I've never played them, picked Peacekeepers actually (Spartans are my second choice, mostly because it's a tip of the hat to Jerry Pournelle) but I've always found them a formidable foe.

Why is the Hive so popular, and the Believers so shunned? I'd love that +2 Support for early conquest games, or just for exapansion, terraforming and exploiring. One of my pet peeves is switching to Democracy and seeing my production plummet. They can steal any tech they want, can go to a situation which renders them immune to Probe teams, and that attack bonus comes in handy.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kaosium
I'm just curious: why did only one person pick the Believers? I've never played them, picked Peacekeepers actually (Spartans are my second choice, mostly because it's a tip of the hat to Jerry Pournelle) but I've always found them a formidable foe.

Why is the Hive so popular, and the Believers so shunned? I'd love that +2 Support for early conquest games, or just for exapansion, terraforming and exploiring. One of my pet peeves is switching to Democracy and seeing my production plummet. They can steal any tech they want, can go to a situation which renders them immune to Probe teams, and that attack bonus comes in handy.

There are a LOT of builder types on here and generally the research minus is the problem.

If you look closely you will see that most of the factions that do well in the polls are builder types

My second theory is that a fundamentalist style religious group just doesn't resonate well with most of the gamers on here. I could be wrong on that

[Kaosium]

I was thinking people would just steal it. At any rate, one doesn't have to run Fundamentalism all the time, just in wars for the morale boost and immunity to probes and bonus on actions. In peacetime, with a Free Market you'd think research would be pretty good anyway, and they can both do that and pop boom too, unlike the lovely Lady Diedre, the greedy Morgan or the twisted and sinister Yang. One would think from simply a game standpoint The Believers have a lot going for them these others don't.

I can't see how right-wing gun nuts, lassaiz-faire capitalists or Fascist dictators would be all that more appealing to those who would despise them on idealogical grounds. Yet overwelmingly those were all more popular than The Believers. I just started my first game as one on Transcend and it's going pretty well. I have Diedre and Santiago as my submissives and am just about to Pop-boom.

I'm usually on the 'builder' side of a hybrid type of player, thus I never tried them (for any length of time) because it seemed like an obvious all-out conquer type faction and if I'm with the mood for that I'll go with Santiago. Mirriam doesn't strike me as that bad a builder though. With the pop-boom ability and no brutal econ penalty my research will far outclass Yang, and Morgan can't boom either, and has those irritating pop restrictions anyway. Diedre can't run the market which would put her research behind me in peacetime if I didn't have her in chains already.

And the nicest thing is, who wants to mess with the Believers in war? Great troops, plus great probes to do all the tech catching up I might have to do. Peacekeepers are on another continent and must be whacking someone around pretty good as they're on top for now, but they're not ahead in military techs as I just met them and they bragged about their Laser Infantry.

Funny thing is, when I orginally read the rules ten years ago or whenever it was, I was sure I wanted to play the University. Instead I found them the most irritating. For one thing I think them way overpowered, after all build the HSA and they've really no weaknesses, and the constant 'Drone Riots' when you're not micro-managing every turn is intensely obnoxious after a while.

[dmm1285]

There are two things I dislike about the believers:

1) No research for the 10 ten turns, this is the real penaly of -2 research, the 20% itslef isnt that big of a deal, sometimes I run fundy with the other facs for the probe bonus. Like you said, -20% of FM is still way higher -2 econ

2) Number one even wouldn't be too bad if you started with centuari ecology instead of social psych, the worst starting tech in my opinion. Even Applied physics would be much better, at least they could rush much better, even if you manage to get enough mins in the starting game, rec commons wouldn't help too much. I've added a former to their starting units, it gives a nice little boost without the full benefits of Ecology

[Kaosium]

I know what you mean, but on 'blind research' it means you might get 'Secrets of the Human Brain' first anyway, even sometimes if the University is in the game! I realize that's not everyone's favorite bee-line, but I like the extra tech and it makes the Believer troops even more formidable. Thus you can get the rest of the early-game techs from the first one you beat into submission, and starting a game in that fashion often gives you plenty of expansion room and a 'research partner' the rest of the game.

The Drones have the same ten-turn penalty, yet I note that there's quite a long thread singing their praises still current on the board.

[Chaos Theory]

+2 Industry beats the hell out of +2 Support.

[laurentius]

CyCon forever!

Hives got coolest base design though.

- Kassad Omicron 9

[Kaosium]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
+2 Industry beats the hell out of +2 Support.

True enough, I'm not saying they're the best but that they're hardly the worst. Not to the point where they'd only get one person voting for them.

Also there must be times in the early going when +2 support does trump +2 Industry. Not a whole lot of point of cranking out troops and buildings when you can't really support them or pay for them anymore. I tried Domai and found by the time you get to Dem/Planned/Wealth the game is just ridiculously easy, thus I lost interest, so I certainly can understand why some would consider it one of, if not the best, but I just don't comprehend why Mirriam is all that bad so as that no one would want to play her.

Two of the biggest tools I've found and I imagine most use as well judging from my reading the archives, is the Pop Boom (Creche/Dem, Planned) and going Free Market until you get the tech to grow pop again and she can do both of those, and has that neat +25% attack bonus, can uniquely make herself invulnerable to probe actions before HSA and with a monolith, command center and Fundamentist will have an all-elite force within short order. An all-elite force with an extra +25% attack bonus. That sounds like a pretty powerful combination....