Rebalancing the factions with standard SMAX rules

[Chaos Theory]

My experience with them is that they are significantly weaker than most other factions in most circumstances. Since that's the general consensus here, perhaps you'd explain why they're so strong? And how does "overbalanced" mean "unbelievably strong"?

[Senethro]

I'm still working on this, somewhere in the background. I've got drafts of enhanced believers, peacekeepers, drones and an altered alpha.txt that has more than a nod towards Dilithiumdad's turbosmac. I've mostly tried to achieve a better game through faction alteration than alteration of the baseline smac rules.

Does anyone know how/if I could alter the Children Creche so that it adds only 1 growth to the city? Also, can supply crawlers have their inherent clean ability removed and can the bonus resources Hybrid Forest adds be altered?

[#endgame]

Originally posted by Senethro
Endgame: I'm no coder myself, but surely its just a question of changing a single field? PM me the email and if you ever find someone interested in playing about with SMAX I would be very interested to meet them.

The way I thought of doing it was via a memory patch, thinking that you could check if the angels faction had PSA and edit their bonus from +2 to +1 or something. Kody wrote a CMN tool that edited saves, and I think it was announced on the CGN forums. Angello Scotto (Mr. CSPL) said that an understanding of the Civ2:ToT save file format helped him considerably, perhaps the same would hold true for SMAC?

[Marid Audran]

I'll add my two cents to this thread a month late because re-juggling factional strengths and weaknesses is something I've been keen about. The original packaged seven I actually think are pretty well balanced in their way. The Hive is supposed to be a brutal opponent with his immunity to Police State/Planned; you're supposed to be afraid to be his next-door neighbor in the early game. The University is supposed to be a "handicapped" faction for players who don't want too difficult a test or need a crash course in advanced drone control. And contrary to many, I don't think the Spartans are so bad off. Don't just focus on the industry hit and observe the plusses: +2 Morale, so their troops are almost always better than their peers', and thus closer to that coveted elite status quicker. +1 Police, who doesn't like units over facilities/psych handling drones? (coupled with Ascetic Virtues, it's like having a Police State's drone control without needing to run it in SE), and prototyping new units always for free is also nice. They just require a little more finessing than a faction like Hive or Miriam.

The SMAX factions, though, I thought were ridiculously out of whack vis-a-vis the SMAC ones. So I tinkered with just about every entry.

The Data Angels now have +1 Probe to correct the probe roll-over bug. And:
^-20% penalty in defensive combat: {Disorganized garrisons; more likely to flee than stand ground}

The Cyborgs:
^-1 SUPPORT: {Cyborgs require specialized maintenance}

The Drones:
^-2 PLANET: {No environmental safeguards, scorn for native life}
^200% cost modifier to PROBE activities: {Laborers inept at hacking}

The Cult of Planet were a more serious problem, so I ditched the industry hit and added:
^-2 ECONOMY: {Disinterested in wealth and its trappings}
^Impunity to FUNDAMENTALIST penalty: {Fanatically driven to unlock Planet's secrets}

And the Pirates:
^Impunity GREEN penalty: {Driven to tame the wonders of the xenofungus rather than co-exist with it} (This notion I got from listening to his fac wav files when you build many of the new SMAX facilities)

After the novelty of the Progenitors ran out I started to dislike their presence in a game, basically ruining otherwise interesting games with their wanton disregard for diplomacy and sabre-rattling tactics, and the fact that their base infrastructure makes Yang look like Lal. Anyway, I've permanently subbed two custom factions in their stead which I worked very hard to make playable (a lot of playtesting went into that), and natural in terms of philosophy and believability, insofar that you could insert them alongside the Firaxian factions without they coming across as dubious.

The Nautilus Mercantile: This sea-based faction is sort of cross between Morgan and Sven, lead by a French Admiral who was a former governor for the Pirates.

#BLURB
While Svensgaard indulges in his Jules Verne and Captain Kidd
fantasies, the real power of Chiron's oceans remains
untapped. Beneath Chiron's fungal expanse is a cornucopia
of energy, the envy even of Morgan from his gilded terraces! All that's needed are the right tools and proper industries. Do you, as I, dare to dream?
^
^ -- Admiral Etienne Peraud
^ "Merchants at Stern" Lecture

#DATALINKS1
^LEADER: {Admiral Etienne Peraud}
^BACKGROUND: {8th French Republic; Nautilus Commerce Director}
^AGENDA: {Oceanic Energy Monopoly}
^TECH: {Industrial Base, Doctrine: Flexibility}

#DATALINKS2
^+1 ECONOMY: {Aquatic Conglomerate}
^-1 GROWTH {Long merchant expeditions away from families}
^120% Tech cost: {Cramped labs; research grants at a premium}
^125% Probe cost: {Computer techs behind latest encryption techniques}
^150% Hurry cost: {Difficult to network industries at sea}
^Extra DRONE per five citizens: {Sea-weary traders miss comforts of home}
^Penalty doubled for PLANNED: {Regulated economies breed mass smuggling}
^2% INTEREST on energy reserves: {Trans-aquatic loans}
^+1 ENERGY from fungus squares: {Attuned to xeno-energy resonance}
^Bonus mineral from shelf squares, sea former/colony pod prototype costs waived, may eventually terraform trench squares: {Nautilus Pirate roots}
^{May not use Knowledge values in Social Engineering}

My second faction are The Agrarians of Ceres: This faction is sort of a hybrid of the lifestyle and philosophy of Yang with the temperment of Dee, lead by a New Zealand Agronomist. I never decided which faction she splintered off from; she could have been on board the Unity in independant capacity. She is supposed to start with a free fungicidal former but I couldn't get it to show on the pre-designed unit list.

#BLURB
We seek only to live in peace and practice our agricultural
skills. For more people will come to populate this
planet we now call home. And none are loved more or
held in greater esteem than those who fill the stomachs
of the hungry.
^
^ -- High Councillor Wren Norbury
^ "A Cultivator's Journal"

#DATALINKS1
^LEADER: {High Councillor Wren Norbury}
^BACKGROUND: {New Zealand Agronomist; Unity Terraforming Engineer}
^AGENDA: {Planned society; Harvest of Planet}
^TECH: {Centauri Ecology}
^

#DATALINKS2
^+1 POLICE: {Populace feels secure with citizen militas}
^+2 GROWTH: {Nutrient surpluses and high-yield farms}
^-1 INDUSTRY: {Limited space for factories}
^-25% base penalty when attacking: {Lack of aggressive military paradigm}
^Robust EFFICIENCY: {Communal values; Emphasis on family}
^GROWTH penalty doubled for GREEN economics: {settlers find co-habitating with fungus difficult}
^Formers may raise/lower terrain at half the cost
^{May not use Free Market economics}

[Chaos Theory]

Originally posted by Marid Audran
The Data Angels now have +1 Probe to correct the probe roll-over bug. And:
^-20% penalty in defensive combat: {Disorganized garrisons; more likely to flee than stand ground}

I'm curious - why do you think the Angels are too strong? Fixing the probe bug makes perfect sense, but why would you penalize them in combat? Perhaps their rover detachments are remote-controlled, keeping pasty white hacker flesh out of the path of missiles.

[Marid Audran]

Chaos Theory: Because the Angels are essentially a baseline faction with a copious amount of probe bonuses that get even better with the advent of Pre-Sentient Algorithims (so that running SE Knowledge doesn't even make much of a dent). Considering probe warfare is an important part of any human player's strategy the Angels already have a considerable leg-up in this arena. The -1 Police is essentially a negligable penalty (no nerve stapling...does anyone really resort to this?). So I feel they needed something else to tame them.

For the AI of course it doesn't matter; they have the egalitarian philosophy of playing every faction badly, which the possible exception of Yang, or Deidre/Lal under favorable circumstances.

[Chaos Theory]

Angel bonuses:
+1/+2 Probe
Free Covert Ops with PSA (equivalent to another +2 probe for bases and probe team morale, since no one actually builds these)
Gains techs discovered by three infiltrated opponents (I think)
-25% cost to mind control units/bases
Free probe team upon Planetfall
Two good starting techs

Angel penalties:
-1 Police
Inability to run Police State

The bonuses definitely outweigh the penalties, but consider a similar faction:

PK bonuses:
+1 talent per 4 citizens in each base, rounded up
Double votes for governorship and supreme leader
+2 population cap per base
One good starting tech

PK penalties:
-1 Efficiency
Inability to run Police State


I would definitely rather have the PKs' advantages than the Angels'. Their penalties are pretty similar, with the PKs' slightly harsher. The Angels' probe bonuses are really overkill, as my probe teams will be successful most of the time against anything but another probe team, which can itself be taken care of by a military unit (most of the time). The tech share ability isn't very powerful most of the time. Probe defenses are still important, since bases are vulnerable to everything but mind control.

[Marid Audran]

The PKs are certainly a versitle, powerful faction, but the -1 to Efficiency is more meaningful than -1 to Police, as Lal has to work a bit more than the typical faction to achieve Paradigm Economy. If a player really cared about police rating he wouldn't be playing the Angels in the first place.

The other thing about Angels is that they are guarented elite probes before anyone else, and the road towards elite probes quicker. The fact that an elite probe has a baseline movement rate of 3 is not to be underestimated; they can sub as scouts as well as spies. With the Xenoempathy Dome I've found Roze to be a murderous faction.

[Zoetrope]

Re rollover in SE choices: it has the symptoms of a severely limited, hard-coded, statically-allocated datatype, probably bit-fields in a char. Thus they shave off 4 bits per faction, an astonishing saving! ;( MOO2's saved-game format does this in many intricate, horribly incorrigible ways. I suspect it's likewise in SMAC/X, so it may be irredeemable short of a near-complete replacement of the code.

[Chaos Theory]

Regarding SE rollover:
Different fields roll over in different ways, if at all. Very low industry (-7 or so) rolls over to +5 industry. High industry doesn't roll over at all as far as I've seen. Very low economy (-20 or lower) acts "normally", and -20 econ actually has different effects than -19 econ. Police as low as -9 is achievable normally, and works fine.

Lal's penalties:
+3 effic is close enough to +4 effic most of the time if you plan to split labs/econ allocations. I rarely push my efficiency so high anyway, as it means giving up both Free Market and Planned, for anyone without an effic bonus.
Elite probes may be nice, but even ordinary rovers or probe teams with the Xenoempathy dome do just fine at scouting. Ships are much faster through undeveloped terrain without dense fungus, though somewhat expensive. Anyone who runs Fundy can have elite probes fairly early, and the research rate can be offset by additional tech stealing, unless you're already the tech leader.

[Senethro]

Oh, thread has come back to life.

I'm still thinking of making a big rebalancing of smac but as a mod of Civ4 since SMAC tools are too limited to work with. As its so far in the future I've got a growing word file listing all kinds of crazy ideas to improve or add extra features to the game.

Some of the stranger examples are seasonal mind worm migrations and Tree farms no longer give +1 nutrients, but instead give nutrients based on tile moisture capped at +2 total. Hybrid forests would raise the cap to +3 and bonus energy if beside a fungus square. All sorts of strange and unimplementable stuff.

[Googlie]

And here's the latest (Yesterday) rankings in the current ACDG for Sparta, Morgan, Angels and Gaians (where the AI plays the Hive, PK's and University):

[Quezacotl06]

Would the Hive be tonned down a bit if the growth and industry penalties were eliminated and replaced with +4 efficiency? It's more versatile, plus the hive is still a communist-esque faction.

[Quezacotl06]

what's "ICS"?

[#endgame]

Infinite City Spam. Idea is to build lots of cities close together rather than drone control, so your pop is kept down by colony pods. Very good for factions like morgan, who get 6-7 energy from the base square, and anyone gets free facilities (Zak with virtual world being the obvious one).