Favorite factions...

[Kaosium]

Also, what's the matter with the Caretakers? Considered too easy? Or is it something else, as I've seen some people say there's a few better.

I don't remember their attributes, just that they get a lot of techs, an extra colony pod and recuycling tanks--or is that the other one? I forget? They have a Growth/income penalty or can't run Dem, Planned or Free Market?

Maybe it's just they're ugly as sin?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kaosium

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....

I think you are mistaking the belivers not being a favorite as being a reason people think they suck or whatever. People have all sorts of reasons for picking favorites and in a poll such as this, the believers could be second or third favorite for 90% of the people and not the change the poll results (I don't believe this but thought the point should be made)


Second I think a majority of players on here are players that want the beeline to IA immediately. Therefore they select factions that can get there very quickly as their favorites. Others like the industrial factions

Third -- I somehow think that roleplaying the believers is just not a natural for many players. The current demogame is talking of using the believers and several players have commented that while they would like to play, they just can't get into the roleplay aspects of a religion.

Fourth--If you like the probe game, the angels are more versatile

etc etc

I can see all sorts of reasons to like the believers generally but I can also see all sorts of reasons why they may not come out as the MOST favorite for very many folks

[Kaosium]

You've a point, I just noticed going back to the beginning of the thread it started with preferred ideology gameplay preferences and kinda ended up with people arguing the benefits of their faction and how they fit the better SE choices.

I wouldn't have trouble with the Believers, but I sure do have a problem with Miriam in the game. Boy is she obnoxious! I have to take a stick to her everytime I see her practically. I can imagine with University being the best choice, and Hive right up there, The Believers might not do well with this crowd.

I guess from an ideology standpoint, I think Morgan is the most normal and whose philosophy I find the most appealing, but I dislike his faction for gameplay reasons. Other than that I can sympathize more with a mellower Spartan or a more belligerant Peacekeeper. Ironic that those were my choices. Probably on purpose. Plus I like the fact they're versatile and with a little foresight you don't have to micro-manage every turn to avoid hearing that obnoxious 'Drone Riots.'


I simply can't get into sickos like Yang, though I must admit he's got some of the more thought-provoking quotes and is brutally honest about his convictions. After all if we are just disposible chemical processes, then it doesn't really matter that he's torturing his population to death and they're all slaves to his will, does it? If he thinks it's good for us, or might be someday, then that makes it right. I far prefer Mirriams convictions to that.

Come to think of it, they're all pretty much extremist weirdos, which is probably why Lal gets called a 'wimp.' At first glance Zak comes across as fairly reasonable, but there's implications his ideology doesn't depart from Mengale's much, and that would be the example of a self-aggrandizing scientist to whom ethics are of little relevance in the pursuit of science. Why not use mind worms on captured subjects if you can learn how to defeat them easier and perhaps even control them? Think who might get credit for saving the human race?

Compared to the others, Dierdre is almost sane, but there again we have a situation where humans are clawing their eyes out as their brains are being eaten alive, but in the end she empathizes with the worms! Plus she's a hottie, I can see why she's quite popular even though she's kind of limited in gameplay.

The newer factions are all a trifle more reasonable, but at the same time less interesting. No real sickos there. though The Cult guy is definitely weird. I suppose I'd make a good pirate too, but there's not much to his philosophy than drinking and destruction. Kinda limited.

[CEO Aaron]

Can there be any doubt? I selected Morgan.

I'm really suprised there are so many fans of the Peacekeepers. I wouldn't have thought it, honestly. I expected Uni/Yang/Drones to be the top contenders.

[Kaosium]

I think it might be they're appealing for two reasons: they're very versatile to play, and from a roleplaying standpoint they're kind of the 'good guys.' Let's face it, the rest of these clowns are pretty much weirdos, kind of charactitures rather than realistic people, like they took the worst and most obnoxious elements of the left and the right. Does anyone really want any of these other psychos to have the fate of the human race in their hands?

Morgan is kind of excepted, but lassaiz-faire capitalism went out of style nearly a hundred years ago for most people and there's sure to be a lot who wouldn't care for that future either. When I play the Peacekeepers, poor Brother Lal got his weenie stuck in the airlock on the way out and unfortunately didn't make it. Thus Lord Reynolds, Brigadier of the Peacekeeping Brigade, formerly Colonel of His Magesty's elite and esteemed regiment, The Royal Welsh Fusiliers, was reluctantly forced to take over administration of the UN faction.

No one calls him a wimp, and he abides by the UN charter and sees to it everyone else does as well. Well, they still call him a wimp sometimes, but they usually regret it--eventually at least. He's a dogged campaigner and names his cities 'Agincourt,' 'Roarke's Drift,' 'Tobruk,' 'Wellington,' 'Britannia,''Victoria,' and 'Trafalagar' instead of dopey names like 'UN Commerce Comittee' and the like.

I don't go looking for trouble, but I don't run from it either, and if it looks like one faction is getting too much of an upper hand on some poor little faction, he steps in and saves them. Even Miriam and that usually causes no end of trouble later, but she does make the latter game interesting oftentimes.

Unless it's Yang in the midgame, and that's for two reasons--it's always best if that little slug gets stomped but good after the opening (first hundred years or so) for gameplay reasons, and because while I enjoy his little quotes they scare the daylights out of me and I always feel good giving the sadistic little creep his inhuman reward.

I will step in if he's being hit too hard in the beginning though--as long as I can reach him--as I want him around to cause trouble later so I can feel good about slapping him around. If I can. Sometimes I have to bide my time as he can be a dangerous foe--the AI plays his faction well unlike some others. You get to building too many Research Hospitals and all of a sudden you look up and the map is a sea of blue.

Regarding gameplay issues, while he doesn't have any positives on SE, in fact a -1 efficiency is it, he has a lot of nice little benefits that might not seem like much but make him fun to play. That extra talent makes the early going a lot more fun as you don't have to constantly micromanage to avoid hearing 'Drone Riots' and although it's hardly anyone else's favorite, you combine that with the 'Human Genome Project' and you have a lot of latitude regarding your Drones.

If you can manage to snarf up the Virtual World-tough sledding on Transcend if the University is in the game and they're in almost all mine--you can go to your max pop of nine before Hab Complexes without having to worry much about Drones. The extra pop is nice as well, giving you a little production boost over most factions and extra votes for Governor which added to his bonus makes it a lock you are a contestant for the position most games. Mind you that wouldn't work in a multiplayer game I realize, as it sounds like they all plan to have IA around turn ten from what I read here, and it's not unlikely most people still playing that post here are thinking from that standpoint.

In the end he's also versatile, can go from builder, to energy mogul (governor gets nice rewards there) to warrior without missing a beat. The SE choice he's missing is 'Police State' and after the very beginning the extra pop he generally has makes up for the +2 support others can achieve, as if you figure those extra two are sitting on forests, that's the four minerals he's missing anyway.

Those other factions are kind of tailored to specific styles of gameplay, thus I imagine that's why they're so popular with many people, but I like to keep my options open and experience all facets of the game. Going straight to IA and pumping out crawlers and formers would bore me silly and while I'm doing that Yang might be abusing the lovely Lady Dierdre.

[Munin]

I picked the Gaians, because their "philosophy" fits best with mine and is generally what I like to imagine triumphing in the future.

The "Believers" are portrayed extremely unsympathetically, the way an atheist might imagine evangelicals in his nightmares. They are mindless aggressors, with no "cool" factor like the Spartan supersoldiers or the ant-like society of the Hive. They're called "Believers" in a game where the blurb for a technology called "Intellectual Integrity" sets up a straw man argument that believing in God is an example of a lack of intellectual integrity. And, although they seem to be based on Protestants (Bible references, capital called "New Jerusalem"), there is nothing of Christianity, a religion which teaches ideals such as turning the other cheek, in them. If I were a Christian, I'd probably find the faction called the “Peacekeepers” far more in accordance with actual Christian values than the "Believers".

As for the Caretakers, they are totally without flavour. They get all the standard early-game alien advantages, and they have absolutely no prohibited SE choices, which makes them unchallenging, even if factions which can use commerce and get big bonuses to industry or research might do better in the end. And their +25% defense doesn't help give them personality - how often is a player going to be defending in single-player as the Caretakers? The Usurpers at least have that ban on running democracy, which makes administering their empire after its initial expansion nontrivial.

Originally posted by Kaosium
but in the end she empathizes with the worms!

You're saying that as if it's a bad thing?

Plus she's a hottie, I can see why she's quite popular even though she's kind of limited in gameplay.

Well, there are only three factions which can capture Planet's native life on most SE settings, and you've seen how popular the Caretakers and the Cult are. So I'd say she has unique gameplay. Seriously, not being able to run free market some games helps keep things interesting.

[Arcite]

Originally posted by Munin


The "Believers" are portrayed extremely unsympathetically, the way an atheist might imagine evangelicals in his nightmares. They are mindless aggressors, with no "cool" factor like the Spartan supersoldiers or the ant-like society of the Hive. They're called "Believers" in a game where the blurb for a technology called "Intellectual Integrity" sets up a straw man argument that believing in God is an example of a lack of intellectual integrity. And, although they seem to be based on Protestants (Bible references, capital called "New Jerusalem"), there is nothing of Christianity, a religion which teaches ideals such as turning the other cheek, in them. If I were a Christian, I'd probably find the faction called the “Peacekeepers” far more in accordance with actual Christian values than the "Believers".

Well to be fair to the designers and ingame descriptions, the 'Believers' are not a representation of christianity, but of fundamentalism. If you think about it, all fundamentalists on earth (regardless of their specific religion) behave like the 'Believers' in the game.

Actually when I think about it, all of the factions are extremists. Extremist scientists, extremist environmentalists, extremist capitalists. These factions were probably all labeled terrorists of a sort on the earth they left behind. (infact...they were probably the main cause of the disasters in the first place).


Still, I side with the scientists. Research is the path to truth and trancendence... and pity onto those who get in the way of my superior research and technology.

[Straybow]

I enjoy PK and Morgan, but i don't have SMAX so I don't know about the expansion factions. I play PK as a "kinder, gentler" Sparta, a bit like Kaosium described.

I make Morgan more of a challenge than the dedicated Morganite players because I hate ICSing.

Playing commies or fanatics just leaves a bad taste in the mouth, can't get into it. Dee is kinda too easy, and the others I've played but don't prefer.

[Xian]

Hive or the drones

as long as you can find a way to get tech, industry rules all

[Kaosium]

Originally posted by Munin
I picked the Gaians, because their "philosophy" fits best with mine and is generally what I like to imagine triumphing in the future.

Sorry it took me so long to respond, I've been playing the game with my computer time lately.

I like Dierdre too, though I must admit cuddling up with Mindworms overmuch kinda gives me the creeps! Everytime I fail to build the Virtual World, I gotta hear about the fate of poor Richard Baxton---Yuck!

Originally posted by Munin
The "Believers" are portrayed extremely unsympathetically, the way an atheist might imagine evangelicals in his nightmares. They are mindless aggressors, with no "cool" factor like the Spartan supersoldiers or the ant-like society of the Hive. They're called "Believers" in a game where the blurb for a technology called "Intellectual Integrity" sets up a straw man argument that believing in God is an example of a lack of intellectual integrity. And, although they seem to be based on Protestants (Bible references, capital called "New Jerusalem"), there is nothing of Christianity, a religion which teaches ideals such as turning the other cheek, in them.

Well put. Every time I see Miriam chastise me for Democracy I chortle. Ironically enough, it was the most Fundamentalists Christians who led to Democracy, both intellectually and where the rubber hits the road. Starting with the only republic Britan has ever known, and their progeny bringing those ideals over to the American Colonies as the Puritans who were instrumental in forcing the American Revolution. Ironically enough their later decendants forced the American Civil War--on the Union side--whilst Miriam has a number of cities as direct quotes from the Battle Hymn of the Republic:

"Mine Eyes have seen the glory of The Coming of the Lord."

"He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His Terrible Swift Sword"

I can read His Righteous Sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;

"He is sifting out the hearts of men before His Judgment Seat"

What makes that amusing is that's the song of the Union soldiers in the Civil War. It was written by a woman for 'The Atlantic' who visited the Union camps in the early part of the war and who wrote new lyrics to the tune of 'John Brown's Body'. (who was the guy hung for treason before the war for originally trying to free the slaves by force after he raided the armory at Harper's Ferry.)

Being from Atlanta, and the way she is portrayed, Mirian could only be a Southern Baptist, who are known as 'Southern' because during this period--and over this issue--the rest of the Baptists told them to go to hell. Literally. Naming so many of their cities after the song the soldiers sung as they burnt Atlanta to the ground is especially ironic. I don't think it's a coincidence that 'Christian States of America' and 'Confederate States of America' share an acronymn.

However, it's probably also just a tip of the hat to Heinlein, the Grandmaster of science fiction, who wrote so many famous sci-fi novels, and as early as the fifties was writing stories like "If this goes on..." warning about a theocratic future. You can see the same them in a lot of his novels like "Time enough for love." He was kinda anti-religious to put it mildly.

However in realistic terms one must assume "Fundamentalism" as a governement system is akin to a theocracy, and there just isn't any examples of that in Western Civilization. Not even the Patriarch in Byzantium had that kind of influence, nor any Pope in Rome or Avignon no matter how Dark the Ages got. Ironically the most hard core Christians laid the foundation for democracy instead. However I suppose it wouldn't have gone over as well with some if instead of Sister Miriam that was the Ayatollah Abdul or something.

Originally posted by Munin
If I were a Christian, I'd probably find the faction called the “Peacekeepers” far more in accordance with actual Christian values than the "Believers".

Heh, me too, I'm a Roman Catholic, though admittedly I'm not very good at it--but I do try. Innefficiant overpopulated bureacracy-run institution with a history of mistakes everyone likes to mention but that won't bend a knee on some issues no matter how silly they may seem to some people; but who spend more time and money on humanitarian isses than anyone else? That sounds like the RCC to me.

Originally posted by Munin
You're saying that as if it's a bad thing?

I hate mindworms. I hate them when they kill my poor defenseless colony pods and scouts. I hate them when they come out of nowhere to pop my artifacts headed home, I hate them when they 'worm-rape' my best city in the midgame, I hate them when they knock out the Recycling Tanks in cities they sneak up on and overwhelm my poor defenders, I hate them when I have to listen to the fate of poor 'Recon Rover Rick.'
Ick! Who likes Mindworms?

Originally posted by Munin
Well, there are only three factions which can capture Planet's native life on most SE settings, and you've seen how popular the Caretakers and the Cult are. So I'd say she has unique gameplay. Seriously, not being able to run free market some games helps keep things interesting.

The Free Market keeps things interesting--or at least the Mind Worms interested in you.] I dunno what you mean by the rest, anyone can capture Mindworms, just run Green. Even Domai can if gets his grubby little prole hands on the Manifold Nexus. I often run Green, I only run FM for a quick cash boost, and Planned for Pop Booms, once I max out pop and have enough cash and/or am sick of getting worm-raped, I go back to Green. It's a good one to war from, if I'm not playing Peacekeepers a Green Police State is a tough war option for most factions.

[Nabvrimn]

I've toyed with the idea of writing a caliphate faction. If there's one religion that would break off and form a theocracy it's islam. It would be a pretty messed up faction, though. Strict Islam's ban on moneylending would dictate a malus to econ and that's pretty hard to balance.

[CEO Aaron]

Who likes Mindworms?

I do, actually. I don't really make much use of natives when I play my favored Morganites, but even so, I view the antics of planet's indigenous defenders as endearingly cute, especially when mopping them up yields the fabulous bounty of planetpearls. Even with FM's negative planet modifier, coping with native life is pretty easy.

[Munin]

Kaosium: Good read. I'm not American, so I had no idea all those references were in there .

Nabvrimn: Interesting idea, and good point about the economy. Here are some ideas I was thinking of for a Believer variant, inspired by my experiences in a game as the Believers that I started after reading this thread and in which I ran Democracy all game (my starting point was on a different continent than all the other factions), which defeated any distinctive feel the faction might have had.

- Make their aversion Democracy. (It's a society set up by fundamentalists: a lot of things just aren't up for discussion. More importantly, I want to be sure it plays differently.)
- Give them +2 Growth (High birth rate - true for most fundamentalist societies I'm aware of and Muslim ones in particular.)
- Give them Impunity: Fundamentalism. (Social norms had already restricted research.)

Starting from Miriam, and if the penalty to Economy were only -1, that might make for some interesting SE options. Possibly too good...

[Chaos Theory]

If you want more economic details on Islam, try looking up "full-reserve banking" on Wikipedia. As a result, a negative interest rate would be appropriate for such a faction.

Islamic populations don't seem to integrate very well when they emigrate, remaining part of the Islamic world and withdrawing from their adopted homelands, as shown by some French riots, the Netherlands, Britain's suicide bombing murders. In other cases, they can push out indigenous cultures, as is happening in Indonesia and some African countries. All this suggests some sort of severe problem handling conquered populations, though I'm at a loss for how to concretely express this in terms of the rules.

[CEO Aaron]

I think the designer's intent was to create a fundamentalist faction without overly offending our real-world fundamentalist counterparts, an act of utter futility in my opinion. That said, it would be a grave mistake to confuse any kind of fundamentalist religious group with a fundamentalist state, and an even graver error to confuse either with religious extremists. While they might share overlapping values, they do clearly differ in their actions and agendas.

It's important to realize that these are conjectural ideologies set within the context of a game, and are never really a valid comparison to real-world groups, in any case.