What Is Your Favorite Faction, And Why?

[Illuminatus]

In faction.txt there is a choice of three preset aggressiveness level - peaceful (Morgan), normal and aggressive (Miriam, Yang). Other than that the initial impression depends hugely on your power. SE setting also tend to bring it down or up a level.

[CEO Aaron]

I actually like Lal quite a bit, from a mechanical point of view. Yes, as an AI opponent, he's insufferable, but so is every other opponent. For a faction you play, the U.N. is really quite a powerhouse when used properly. Extra population caps and free talents really make a golden-age population boom very powerful, and once you've got the population, your efficiency penalty ceases to matter, as specialists ignore efficiency, or lack thereof.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

You know I've never played PK a single time in ten years...

Clearly, when I enter the spells when I'm bored with playing AC, I need to widen my horizons...

[Lefty Scaevola]

I never paly the same faction twice in a row.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

I never paly the same faction twice in a row.

I'm very friendly with Dierdre, myself.

[Lazerus]

The Hive. Alot of Yangs views on things fit in nicely with my own so aswell as loving the Hiverian ICS approach to the game I really like the story of the character aswell.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Alot of Yangs views on things fit in nicely with my own

Not gonna make a personal remark. Not gonna make a personal remark. Not gonna make a personal remark.

[Ironwood]

Not gonna make a personal remark. Not gonna make a personal remark. Not gonna make a personal remark.

Too late.

I'm curious, Lazerus. Your statement of agreement with a lot of what Yang has to say is quite provocative on its face. Would you care to elaborate?

[bdanv]

does the good old Chairman still talk to you in your dreams, Lazerus?

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Yeah, well, I'll be joking in my grave, and I'm not the biggest fan of sticking smilies all over everything.

[T-hawk]

Philosophically, I'm closest to Morgan. But Morgan's gameplay style is so awkward and badly represents his ideology. Morgan has two gameplay phases, both of which work badly mechanically.

1. ICS ICS ICS like crazy. With the hab limitations, support drain, and huge energy per base (+4 economy with FM/Wealth means 6 energy per base square, up to 8 with RTs and governorship), ICS is the only right way to go. But Morgan shouldn't be building a million small companies. Massive monopoly corporations sound much more like his style.

2. In the later midgame, Morgan actually makes more money in Green/Wealth than in Free Market. Green's efficiency eventually overshadows FM's energy. Since Wealth alone brings Morgan to the magic +2 Economy, Free Market's contributions on top of that become very marginal with developed bases. But revoking Free Market goes totally against Morgan's ideology.

So how might we fix Morgan to make his gameplay line up with his ideology? He needs a disincentive against ICS in the early game, but a reason to stick with Free Market later even if he already has +2 economy. Here's a rough stab:
- ditch the hab limits.
- add another penalty to compensate, perhaps -1 Planet to further push him away from Green.
- make the SE effect of +4 Economy (which only Morgan can reach before Eudaimonia) something other than +2 energy per base. +50% energy per base might be about right.

[CEO Aaron]

I think your criticisms of Morgan are a function of your playstyle, rather than the innate strengths and weaknesses of the faction. ICS demands efficiency in the late game, because you've pushed well past your bureaucracy limits, and your low-spread out population has few specialists, making your credit and lab income come exclusively from energy.

Your problem really seems to be about ICS, rather than Morgan. I defy you to find a single faction that can't perform better with an ICS strategy than with a limited number of bases, and that's because the return on investment for base facilties is very poor when compared to founding new bases. While Morgan's hab limits exacerbate the problem somewhat compared to other factions, even Lal ICS'd will beat Lal operating at the first bureaucracy limit. More is just better, regardless of factional choice.

[Ell_man]

I agree with T-Hawk. Of course more cities is always better, but Morgan, more than other factions, encourages ics to the extreme. It just doesn't feel like how Morgan should be. Tons of bases spaced as tightly as possible. Feels more like the Hive, than big corporations. Morgan's commerce bonus encourages larger bases but every other faction bonus he has encourages ics. Then again, not many things in this game discourage ics haha.

The downside to ICS(tightly spaced) in my view is it diminishes the benefits of a pop boom and it causes tedious micro management(the unhappiness isn't too bad of a problem imo, unless it causes you to be unable to GA pop boom). When you pop boom, you're in some ways getting a free supply crawler each time you grow a pop. What a bargain. If you clump your bases too tightly, however, you'll run out of space and you'll need supply crawlers in order to build your bases. By the time you get super formers and nut sats, crawling a base up to hab complex limits isn't a problem, but before then its a pain in the ass. A farm+rainy+condenser+soil enricher gives you 6 nuts. 2 of those crawled will get you a size 15 base with nut sats. With only ecological engineering though, you'll need 7 crawlers each working 4 nut farm+rainy+condenser tiles to get size 13 bases. You need a lot of space and mineral production to get those bases built up if you're packed very tightly.

My personal favorite faction is university. I play a builder style primarily. University isn't really much better at being a builder than lal or morgan, but its early research bonus allows you to get to industrial automation and the resource cap removing techs faster. The drones aren't a problem with crawlers+specialists or wonder hogging in a sp game.

[Ironwood]

I have one answer to the charge that ICS goes against the "philosophy" of CEO Morgan's faction:

McMorgans.

[T-hawk]

You're right, Aaron - ICS is the right way to go for every faction. (Not necessarily the density itself, but the quantity of bases and speed of plunking them down.) I'm not arguing against that in mechanical terms.

I do think that ICS philosophically doesn't match Morgan, though that is a judgment call. The chief downside to ICS is the inability to productively utilize base improvements. They take longer to build with fewer minerals available, and pay back less with less raw material to multiply. This goes entirely counter to Morgan's "Build" imperative. The manual's description for Build says that the faction strives to build the best bases possible.

Also, what about the SE settings for Morgan? In the mid game, he gains quite a lot by ditching Free Market in favor of Green, since Wealth by itself keeps the magic +2 Economy. No other faction gains so much by abandoning their agenda SE. (Maybe Sparta, but that's just because Power is terrible anyway.)

Anyway, getting back to the thread topic, my favorite faction to play mechanically is the University, just like everybody else. Barely any disadvantages, and the research power (it's +80% above normal in the early game with the free nodes and SE research) gives total command of anything you like.

The Gaians are close behind. Not so much for the mind worm capture rush, though that does have a place. I like the Gaians for the fungus nutrient (the most underrated faction ability in the game - try pop booming with crawled fungus nuts), and the ability to run Police State / Planned in the early expansion phase before pop booming. Nothing else can poop out colony pods like Police / Planned, as Yang players well know. Gaia's Stepdaughters are IMO easily the second best builder faction after the University and considerably better than Morgan, who is _supposed_ to be the builder but ends up playing Hive style.