Hi, I just started playing SMAC again, but was fed up of always playing as the university. I found that out of the other factions, ones that suited my play style were too disadvantantaged, as was the same with the militaristic factions when I could just conquer everything with my faster aquisition of better guns and armor. Also when playing aginst the AI, I always observed the same trend. The morganites would always completely fail and only have a few cities, mostly due to their city size cap and how crap free market is. The Gaians at first were a good second choice for my play style, but as the AI they were too cripled by their -1 morale and slow growth rate from green and would lose to any of the warlike factions too easilly. The believers are incredibly powerful at the start of the game and would manage to wipe any AI they sarted nest too gaining a huge power boost, but then they would be stuck with their -40% research and by the time I had Chaos Guns and Photon shields (8 att, 5 def), they would still be on Particle impactors and synthmetal armor (4 att 2 def). In the later game they couldnt keep up with the Spartans. And the hive were just a mixed bag of uselessness. They have a free perimiter defence in each city, but in my game I just completed the Believers, Hive, and Gaians all started on the same landmass. Very early on only the Believers were left and had taken over every Gain and Hive city, regardless of those free perimiter defences. So I tried to iron out some of the crippling factors of the social engineering choices and factions to boost the AI and make each faction appealing to play.
Please note that these changes are only intended for playing vs the AI on the top two difficulty levels as I always boom ahead of them eventually in any game I play. They are not intended for multiplayer as everyone would become imba powerful with the right stategies.
Firstly, I changed the following in the Social Engineering choices, reasons for the changes will become clearer after you tie them in with the faction changes:
Police State - +2 Police, +2 Support, -1 Economy
Fundamentalist - +1 Morale, +2 Probe, -1 Research
Free Market - +2 Economy, -2 Planet, -2 Support
All the rest are kept the same.
Faction changes, firstly I dont know if the AI will adapt to these changes with the social engineering choices, but this is how I intend them to work:
Gains - +2 Efficiency, +1 Morale (yes, changed to a +), +2 Planet, free bio lab per base.
Reasons for changes - These changes were made to make the Gains suitable for a Builder and Military based strategy. The increased Planet, Morale, and free Bio lab aim to vastly improve the power of their native units (mind worms, locusts, Isle of the deep) and give them a small science boost to go along with their Efficiency. They are now Better in combat and defence, and can progress through the tech tree a bit faster.
Morganites - +1 Economy, +1 Efficiency, free Energy Bank per city.
As well as the changes to free market, these changes enable the morganites to be what they were meant to be, the richest faction in the game. Also the Police State change gives the morganites an extra advantage - They are able to run Police State with FM, negate their support to 0, and their Economy will be +2 with +1 efficiency. Furthur adding the Research social chioce to this will create an equally powerful faction to the university with +2 econ, +2 efficiency, +2 research, but remember that if using this strategy, they will not reap any benefits of extra growth or industry from Democ / Wealth, and they still have the lowered hab complex requirement which provides a cripple while expanding. Also, if they run Free Market + Democ for extra wealth, they suffer from -4 support, which is still not a nice thing to have in this game.
Peacekeepers - -1 efficiency removed so they have no social changes. Free Childrens Creche per city.
Changes made to keep them in line with the other factions. They become (hopefully) extremely fast and efficient city boomers with the downside of not having any social benefits.
University - +2 reseacrh, +1 Industry, +2 Efficiency
More power to the university to keep up with the other buffed factions, but seriously, I am playing the Morganites and Gains now and want to see if the AI university can handle these changes well. -2 probe was just useless anyway because a human and AI university always favor building the wonder that makes them immune to probe teams.
Believers - +2 support, +2 probe -1 Research. Along with fundamentalist, this 'improves' their research rate from -40% to -20%. I am also testing a free bioenhancement centre per base, but this might end up too powerful in the hands of the AI.
Hive - +1 growth, +1 Industry, +1 Morale, +2 police. When combined with Police state, they now only get a drawback of -1 energy per base. This also allows them to reap the benefits of combining planned for +3 growth and +2 industry with a much better efficiency rating.
Spartans - +2 morale, +1 police, +1 support.
Removed the -1 Industry which should allow them to expand and build up their military faster. I would also like to allow them to create units with two enhancements from the start of the game, but dont know how to do this without giving them a giant tech leap with free neural grafting, so decided not to for now.
Starting a new game on librarian as the Morganites to test this out.
Please note that these changes are only intended for playing vs the AI on the top two difficulty levels as I always boom ahead of them eventually in any game I play. They are not intended for multiplayer as everyone would become imba powerful with the right stategies.
Firstly, I changed the following in the Social Engineering choices, reasons for the changes will become clearer after you tie them in with the faction changes:
Police State - +2 Police, +2 Support, -1 Economy
Fundamentalist - +1 Morale, +2 Probe, -1 Research
Free Market - +2 Economy, -2 Planet, -2 Support
All the rest are kept the same.
Faction changes, firstly I dont know if the AI will adapt to these changes with the social engineering choices, but this is how I intend them to work:
Gains - +2 Efficiency, +1 Morale (yes, changed to a +), +2 Planet, free bio lab per base.
Reasons for changes - These changes were made to make the Gains suitable for a Builder and Military based strategy. The increased Planet, Morale, and free Bio lab aim to vastly improve the power of their native units (mind worms, locusts, Isle of the deep) and give them a small science boost to go along with their Efficiency. They are now Better in combat and defence, and can progress through the tech tree a bit faster.
Morganites - +1 Economy, +1 Efficiency, free Energy Bank per city.
As well as the changes to free market, these changes enable the morganites to be what they were meant to be, the richest faction in the game. Also the Police State change gives the morganites an extra advantage - They are able to run Police State with FM, negate their support to 0, and their Economy will be +2 with +1 efficiency. Furthur adding the Research social chioce to this will create an equally powerful faction to the university with +2 econ, +2 efficiency, +2 research, but remember that if using this strategy, they will not reap any benefits of extra growth or industry from Democ / Wealth, and they still have the lowered hab complex requirement which provides a cripple while expanding. Also, if they run Free Market + Democ for extra wealth, they suffer from -4 support, which is still not a nice thing to have in this game.
Peacekeepers - -1 efficiency removed so they have no social changes. Free Childrens Creche per city.
Changes made to keep them in line with the other factions. They become (hopefully) extremely fast and efficient city boomers with the downside of not having any social benefits.
University - +2 reseacrh, +1 Industry, +2 Efficiency
More power to the university to keep up with the other buffed factions, but seriously, I am playing the Morganites and Gains now and want to see if the AI university can handle these changes well. -2 probe was just useless anyway because a human and AI university always favor building the wonder that makes them immune to probe teams.
Believers - +2 support, +2 probe -1 Research. Along with fundamentalist, this 'improves' their research rate from -40% to -20%. I am also testing a free bioenhancement centre per base, but this might end up too powerful in the hands of the AI.
Hive - +1 growth, +1 Industry, +1 Morale, +2 police. When combined with Police state, they now only get a drawback of -1 energy per base. This also allows them to reap the benefits of combining planned for +3 growth and +2 industry with a much better efficiency rating.
Spartans - +2 morale, +1 police, +1 support.
Removed the -1 Industry which should allow them to expand and build up their military faster. I would also like to allow them to create units with two enhancements from the start of the game, but dont know how to do this without giving them a giant tech leap with free neural grafting, so decided not to for now.
Starting a new game on librarian as the Morganites to test this out.
