New Faction Critique

[Q_tip1976]

Lately I've been working on finishing the graphics for my new faction. Before I started serious playtesting I wanted to get some feedback.

Name: Seekers of Human Perfection
Nickname: The Seekers

Theme: The leader of the seekers beleives mankind can only reach their full potential through the use of eugenics. There society would be loosely based on the one described by Plato in the Republic (It's loosley based mostly because it's been a long time since I took Western Philosophy and I'm not going to suffer through the Republic again by choice ). Society would be divided into three castes the Gold, the Silver, and the Bronze. Children would be raised by the state (NO individual parenting) and would go through a series of exams and tests before they reached adulthood. Those that performed the best (and therefore must be genetically superior) would be allowed into the gold and the next best would be in the silver etc. Marriage would only be allowed within the cast. Your status in society and access to eduaction would eventually be determined by caste. The gold caste, to their warped beliefs, would eventaully become near perfect. I picture there leader being very narcisistic and not hesitant to use force agianst factions that "coddle the weak." Also the Bornze caste would deffinately be oppressed and regulated to menial labor for the good of humanity (i.e the Gold's)

Here are the original stats I was thinkng about.

+1 Research(Intellectual acheivement highly regarded)
+1 Morale (Only the best warriors allowed into military)
-2 Growth (Eugenics, marriage prohibitions)

Aversion: Democratic Politics (All people are NOT created equal!)
Free Facility: Childrens Creche (Societal rearing of children)
Starting Tech: The one that gives you CC's I think it's Ethical Calculus

I think those stats aren't grossly under or over-powerd but seem like they might not give the Seekers much of a different feel. I was thinking maybe a psi combat bonus but that ay be hard to balance (Very strong native units and planet little threat in the early game.) I appreciate any comments or suggestions.
[This message has been edited by Q_tip1976 (edited April 24, 2000).]

[korn469]

Q_tip

hey your faction sounds good...the story behind them is better than most and they remind me of a faction that i am still in the process of creating

it too was a eugenics faction except that every member of the faction was genetically engineered for perfection and grown out of a test tube...on earth they had fought a war with the rest of normal humans and they built their own smaller version of the unity right before it looked like they were about to be overran by the vastly superior coallition that had formed against them

here is the faction's abilities

quote: *Morale, 3 - (troops base morale level is vetern) genetically engineered for combat Fanatic attack bonus - believe they are a superior race Immune to mindcontrol - developed with strong innate loyalty Free Children's creche in every base - used to manufacture their population Free Psi Gate in every base - experimental technology brought from earth Hab limit 5 - maintaining a breeding program limits the size of a base -4 growth - process of creating the perfect population is resource and time intensive penalty democratic - population innately developed to follow a strict chain of command...democratic process goes against their genetic programing starting techs - applied physics, doctrine:mobility aversion: eudaimonic *note: Morale, 3 is not the same as Social, +++Morale...Morale 3 means that every unit gets 3 extra morale levels...Social, +++Morale means that that faction has +3 morale on the SE table

but i like your faction...the modifiers seem a little bland though and the free children's creche's is an especially good ability

korn469

[Q_tip1976]

korn,

Thanks for your comments. Yeah the Seekers do feel a Little vanilla right now. Maybe I coudl come up with a cool advantage in exchange for Drone problems (The underclasses doen't appreciate their status.) I just don't want it to be unbalancing. I think the free CC's are balanced by the inability to run Democratic Gov't though. (Makes it pretty hard to Pop Boom w/ their -2 growth.) And the +1 research/morale aren't big advantages. I was thinking of making the faction Darker with them performing all kinds of genetic experiments (many with grotesque results of course ) but the leader graphics I found just didn't portray that level of Evil.

Great Concept for your faction!!!! I'm not sure the -4 growth (even though that is severe!) and hab limits will balnce all of their increadible advantages though. Although I think you input on faction balancing in other threads is usually right on the money so who am I to say. (Maybe the psi gates are a little much though.....)

Any way when you finish be sure to post how they turned out.

[korn469]

Q_tip1976

hmmm i read your faction outline again

so you have:

a caste system
a eugenics program
a collectivized society

what i would suggest for your faction's modifier's would be the following

talent for every 6 or 8 citizens (gold caste)
drone for every 3 or 4 citizens (bronze caste)

so that basically you would have one extra talent for two extra drones

your society also sounds very rigid

that brings to mind either an increased cost to hurry or a inefficency penalty

then you have the growth penalty

but maybe the growth and the drones taken together would be enough to offset their advantages

but what are their advantages? you never really mentioned what they excelled at

as for my faction, my basic vision is a group trying to establish the master race through a eugenics program where everybody comes out of a test tube in a lab ready to take on a hostile world...they actually would be superior, virtually unbeatable when fighting in equal numbers however they would never be fighting with equal numbers

now i am trying to make them competitive but still very slow growing

growth is one of the most unbalancing SE modifiers in the entire game

i know from personal experiance that if the AI is playing a -3 growth faction it will only have one base the entire game

you gotta remember that at -3 growth your faction never gains a unit of population no matter how many nutrients it accumulates

so when the AI plays a faction with -3 or greater growth it spends the entire game building a colony pod that it will never have the population for

whereas on the same hand +2 growth as a starting modifier is a great thing to have...you can then pop boom and run FM which is very over powering

so i am trying to build a faction that is super in everything but especially with its military but will always be fairly small (unless it ever gets the cloning vats) i don't wanna give them high support though...

if all things were equal they would be decent at building, decent at getting energy, decent to good at research and the very best at military matters

however things won't be equal they will have that a very small population, i want them to always be outnumbered

also Psi gates are very effective for quickly moving a strike force around...they are in effect a force multiplier because they let you almost always have local superiority but the AI doesn't use them

so how does this sound

morale 3
fanatic attack bonus
immune to mindcontrol
+15% in psi combat
free children's creche
+1 research point per base
-4 growth
hab limit of 4
penalty democratic
penalty planned
starting tech: doctrine mobility
agenda: power (maybe thought control)
aversion eudimonic

this means without the cloning vats this faction can never get better than +4 growth which would come at great penalty (dem/planned+CCs+GAs)...no they are not balanced in a normal way, and i doubt the AI would be very good with them, but a human player could pull off very very dangerous rushes with them or if it was later game and they had managed to stay even in tech you would be in lots of trouble when facing them

korn469

[Q_tip1976]

Korn,

I had forgotten that a -4 growth would mean zero pop growth. (I was thinking it was simpley a -40% growth rate) In that case your faction is probably more balanced than I was originally thinking. (I know it's been a while since I responded to this thread but I've been travelling.) How has your faction been playtesting?

Last night I (finally!!) finished the graphics for my faction (All new ) and now I'm going to try and flesh out their story and abilities a little more. I'll post once of worked on that part some more.

Basically I want a faction that sacrifices growth for excellent warriors and researchers. (I do think that an efficiency penalty would be appropriate.)