new 3 faction duel opponent sought

[Chaos Theory]

For #6 I'll take the Drones

I guess that's just evidence of how many good factions there are. I'd happily play any of the factions you or I picked, plus the Uni and Hive. That leaves Santi, Sven, Fungboy, Miriam, and the Aliens.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
For #6 I'll take the Drones

I guess that's just evidence of how many good factions there are. I'd happily play any of the factions you or I picked, plus the Uni and Hive. That leaves Santi, Sven, Fungboy, Miriam, and the Aliens.

Ahh-- Your dislike list is similar to mine -- I LOVE the drones but I am playing them in one of my most intense games ( and have played them a lot) so I picked others here for variety. I did actually toy with the idea of picking both aliens .

So the teams

Flubber

Morgan
Data angels
Gaians

Chaos theory

Cycon
PK
Drones

I'll pm googlie again to see if he will set this up-- If not we will find someone else-- I did a fair bit of expperimenting with computer generated starts for this type of thing and they are almost never anywhere near to being equal and fair

[Chaos Theory]

Well, I didn't actually list my dislikes. I like Svensgaard, but have trouble using him well, despite significant experience. I don't mind H'minee either, though playing as the aliens annoys me. Miriam I don't particularly mind either. The rest are those I dislike: factions with industry penalties (and the inability to run Wealth to boot) and Marr.

[Flubber]

On faction selection, I don't know that miriam, Fungboy or Santi would be that terrible in a 3 faction team environment. Each could play to their own strengths and be supported somewhat by better industrial/economic factions.

I actually have morgan/santi in a smac 3 player game and its kind of neat to have elite rovers before 2120

[Chaos Theory]

Sure, but I don't like industrially-challenged factions. Here's how I rate the various SE values:

Industry (less late in the game)
Economy (though with attention to the breakpoints, less late in the game)
Efficiency (less early in the game)
Research
Growth (more for pop booms)
Police
Support (more early in the game)
Probe
Morale
Planet (unless I have the Manifold Harmonics or lots of worms)

Note that Wealth rates very high by this scale, and Power rates very low.

[Flubber]

hmmm

We seem to think along the same lines. .. . and my experience is that these are good and effective lines

But I will say that having the spartans in a game has made me apreciate the benefits of an early elite unit-- I still don't like the faction much though

Same with fungboy-- I actually enjoy a cult game but it is very hard to stay competitive on te larger maps favored in most PBEMs. I may try them again if I am inclined to try a smaller map PBEM ( although then I would likely face spartans and believers and Hive)

My favorite 3 factions are probably the Hives, Drones and University but I have tried to get away from playing those factions lately. While I still like to win and do try to do so, the game has become less about winning lately and more about trying different factions and ways of playing. I have come to like the morganites whom I had hated ( WHAT only size 4??!!) and now also see the Angels as an underappreciated faction (although I still run knowledge with them since I am never sure of all of the impacts of a +4 probe rating.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory Note that Wealth rates very high by this scale, and Power rates very low.

I don't believe I have run the POWER choice for more than a couple of turns total in all my games combined.

Wealth early and knowledge late seems to be the way to go.

For me though the FM/Planned/Green choice is always the most interesting since IMHO each constitutes a major shift in direction from each other

The first line is more boring since most factions do best in demo most of the time, Hive in PS all of the time . .. and the Future Society stuff is rarely that important sicne the game is largely decided by when it come available

[Chaos Theory]

With most factions, I end up using:
Among Politics, Frontier then Demo
Among Economics, FM with Planned for pop booms, then Green
Among Values, Wealth then Knowledge
Among Future Societies, usually just Cybernetic, if I get that far

For the Hive, I follow this sequence:
Nothing
Police State
PS/Planned
PS/Planned/Wealth
PS/Planned/Knowledge sometime after Fusion Power
PS/Green/Knowledge
Frontier/Green/Knowledge late in the game

We can modify angels.txt to reduce their probe bonus to +1, but give them ROBUST, PROBE to try to work around the probe bug. Alternatively, announce to me when your probe rating in cities is above +3 and I'll honor it.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory


We can modify angels.txt to reduce their probe bonus to +1, but give them ROBUST, PROBE to try to work around the probe bug. Alternatively, announce to me when your probe rating in cities is above +3 and I'll honor it.

I am aware of the fix of dropping them to +1 but frankly would prefer to leave them at +2 and do the announcement. I figure that the angels wouldn't be your first choice to probe anyway

I am not familiar with the effects of ROBUST, PROBE . .. what would it do ?

[Chaos Theory]

ROBUST, PROBE:
If your universal (i.e. not city-specific) probe rating is negative, cut it in half (rounding towards zero). This means that modded Angels running Knowledge have a +0 probe rating, same as unmodded.

[Flubber]

not needed in that case-- I would prefer +2 early and the rollover issue than dropping to +1 and getting my +3 later.

I just checked your profile and see I am pitted up against a computer expert-- I could be in trouble

[Chaos Theory]

Why is that?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
Why is that?

Lets see- Probably has hours and hours at the computer to test different strategies and hone skills-- efficient at analyzing computer data outputs etc etc


Oh googlie is a little busy but may get to this soon as a setup with the same map as the other guys are playing takes him less time. If he gets swamped it could be as late as the weekend. I hope you are fine with that as I know I would rather wait a few days and get a balanced start than to waste a month or two playing out an uneven computer generated start

[Googlie]

The Flubber - Chaos Theory 2 x 3 Turn reporting Thread can be found here

[Enigma_Nova]

A 3x2 game?
I've never played anything like that before!
I suppose I could give it a shot...
But the question is, are our factions contacted at game start?

Who else is LFG...