Praetyre's Little SMAC Mod

[civac]

Your changes look interesting. They might actually be well balanced. Though, I would have to play some games to say anything definite.

I still think that -2 industry on Power is too much. It might help the AIs since 1) they cheat and only pay 70% of the cost of their units anyway (on transcend) and 2) they spam units without regard for support. For a human player Power is terrible to the point of being unusable. From a relative viewpoint, it's even worse for Yang than for the others.

 

[bhavv]

I simply didnt want Yang running around with Police State, Planned + Power rofflestoming everyone, like Miriam was doing with +2 Morale on Fundamentalism.

I'd say its best for him out of all the factions because he can balance out the industry penalty, and end up with +4 support, +2 Police and +2 Morale.

Although I did overlook the fact that the player can simply swap to fundamentalism too if Miriam ends up attacking them to defend against her, but the AI is thick, and neither Yang or Peacekeepers (as AI) or University or Cyborgs can do this.

The craziest thing was in one test game with buffed fundamentalism, I had Miriam, Santiago, Yang, and Zacharov on one big island. Shortly into the game it all belonged to Miriam.

One funny thing was that Santiago + Yang had already been conquered, Miriam had over 10 cities, Zach had two and they were at war. I opened up diplo with Miriam to ask her to call the war of .... 'Unfortunately it is the University who have declared war'. I though 'WUT?????'.

Open diplo with the University - Please cease attacking my friend Miriam (I play as Morgan and wanted all her bases for Commerce trading) ... Zach replies 'NO! Miriam must DIE!!!'.

Oh hahahahahaha .... AI Zach thinks he can kill Miriam with a +2 Morale fundamentalism, hahahahahahahaha!!! Fundamentalism is already OP for Morgan anyway ... Simply purchase every base on the planet for the lulz. And who cares about -2 research when you have +4 economy. I suppose That I'll just play a fundamentalist Morgan and keep Miriam as my BFF to sic on everyone to keep me supplied with loads of commerce (I give her military tech, she kills everyone, I probe everything I can into subversion).

 

[bhavv]

I tried out a few faction tweaks as well to go along with this:

Hive - +2 Growth, +1 Industry, -2 Economy

Spartans - +2 Morale, +2 Police, -1 Industry (I didnt want to give her more police at first, but with -2 econ on Police State now, it wont really do anything to allow her to wage war in FM because she will have 0 Econ with Police State)

Believers - +1 Probe, +2 Support, -2 Research (removed the -1 Planet, it didnt make any sense or do anything anyway).

University - +3 Research, -2 Probe (for the AI univ because thay are always too squishy, with random personalities and an Aggressive zach however, he actually managed to capture my cities on Thinker difficulty! I like aggressive Zach with +3 research ).

Morgan - As an AI he needs some kind of massive help (he is ALWAYS the weakest AI faction). But when I'm playing him, he needs a massive nerf because +4 Economy is simply the best thing you can get in the game. I didnt change him sine I am playing him, and dont really know how to fix him for the AI (+Econ is capped at +4, +5 is meant to give you +4 energy per base but it doesnt). Also, boosting his econ wouldnt help the AI, it is simply stumped by trying to handle his small base sizes and -1 support (screws him up for the AI even more than Santiago with -3 industry is, because all the AI does is unit spam). Hmmm, so maybe remove his -1 support, and reduce his base size penalty to -2 instead of -3.

Gains - No change. As an AI they are a decent mid tier faction, when played by me they pwn everything with mind worms. Once I tried giving them free recycling tanks in every base, and that simply overpowered them. Maybe something like free centauri preserves when the technology is researched will help them a bit because they never need to build these for the eco damage reduction, only for the native lifecycle bonus.

Peacekeepers - Very weak AI faction, second weakest to Morgan, with Zach normally being the third weakest. But I cant think of what to do to fix them because their bonuses arent helped by simple social tweaks.