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Total Members Voted: 31

Voting closed: April 17, 2014, 06:39:24 pm

[GreatWyrmGold]

Usually you don't, but both of the factions with research penalties are damn good at popping out tons of units. And Miriam gets a very significant offense bonus.

Believers didn't make it back? God damn.

...Believers usually shrivel up and stagnate if they can't expand anywhere - whether by colony pod or soldier.

...Trying hard not to make jokes about the Believers.

Anyways. We're starting soon?

[Imperial Guardsman]

Start of may.

[Loud Whispers]

...Trying hard not to make jokes about the Believers.

We must consent: 101 surefire pickup lines by Sister Miriam Godwinson.

Oddly enough, it's the Morganites that I've seen dominate with a Spy-centric model. Spies don't really benefit much from tech advancement, and are thus cheap for most of the game - but most of what they do takes cash. Morgan has piles and piles of cash. A good morganite player has more than enough cash to be a real, serious threat with spies - there's nothing quite like building a huge army, and then having a single spy snatch the city they are based in out from under you, and suddenly your army is his army. You've also got a good chance to be the first to build the Hunter-Seeker algorithm (which means no one else can), and thus prevent everyone but the believers from having a hard counter to your strategy... and your spies will insure that if the believers become an isssue, you've got the liquid potential to do a hard pivot and beat them with the tech advantage you've almost certainly earned.

That seems deliberate. The Crossfire factions are all more powerful offshoots of their progenitor factions right? You have Domai being super Yang, Cha being super Deidre e.t.c.
Roze worked for Morgan and appears to have done what he did better (in regards to probe teams anyways) seeing as Morgan's pacifism would have led him to be probe heavy - probes do not cause more drones due to pacifism! Yet they kinda missed the ball on what made Morgan so powerful, he didn't have to rely on probes to be good at using them. Data angels do.

[Neonivek]

The Data Angels aren't really sucky because they are good with spies... it's mostly because they arguably aren't even good with spies, they are just worse with everything else

Well it is more that they overvalued how great their super spy ability is... and thus the disadvantages to make up for how "super elite spies" they are don't add up.

Few 4x games, I can't think of any, have good spies (or have a great advantage for being overwhelmingly better at spies). The only games that come close to an exception are races that aren't so much a spy bonus as a ability to be near or fully omnisentient (not given to them by having great spies) or where their super spies are a separate bonus altogether because the game lacks spies (like Twilight Imperium where the "Spymaster race" is one of the two most powerful races, with their ability to stall)

[Patchy]

Alright it has been more than a few years since I've played smac/x and thus the Data Angels faction. Like all, in the hands of a human they can be effective.

If I had to compare them to another factions style of play, it'd be a mix of Morgan and Lal. Like Lal, Roze has no real weaknesses, she is merely average at everything except probe teams where she is above average. A good Lal, has to be good at reading the opponents strategy and adjusting his to counter, and likewise Roze needs to be too. She doesn't have the raw strength to overpower the other factions at what they do best, she is more about the finesse. And in order to use probes effectively, she needs credits and lots of them. So a playstyle based around hitting FM early and maintaining it, with exception to a few certain times(planned for pop-booming and green for wartime), is key for her and Morgan. Mind you Morgan doesn't have planned for pop-booming.

She does have a few specials worth noting, she has an intrinsic planatary datalinks built into her faction, get out and infiltrate everyone and you are gaurenteed a tie in 3rd place for tech lvl. Also when you get the tech to allow covert ops centers to be built, she gets them free in each base. The +2 faction bonus combines with the +2 ops center giving your bases an intrinsic hunter seeker algorithm through superior probe rating, thats just for your bases though, units in the field can still be bought if I recall.

I'm going to end this here, before this becomes a huge write-up on the data angels.

[EuchreJack]

Few 4x games, I can't think of any, have good spies (or have a great advantage for being overwhelmingly better at spies). The only games that come close to an exception are races that aren't so much a spy bonus as a ability to be near or fully omnisentient (not given to them by having great spies) or where their super spies are a separate bonus altogether because the game lacks spies (like Twilight Imperium where the "Spymaster race" is one of the two most powerful races, with their ability to stall)

Hey now, Darloks in MOO2 are awesome!

[Parsely]

You can do some pretty awesome things with spies in MoO2.

EDIT: Ninja'd, awesomely.

[GreatWyrmGold]

...Trying hard not to make jokes about the Believers.

We must consent: 101 surefire pickup lines by Sister Miriam Godwinson.

Not the one that I would have gone for.

-stuff about Morgan and Data Angels-

Misquote

[GiglameshDespair]

PTW

[thobal]

PTW

[GiglameshDespair]

Damnit, I meant to click the believers. Discount one Angels vote.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Whoo, 100 replies.

I've been playing a bit of SMAX today, and I've appreciated a lot of it. The UI is...well, I'm unsurprisingly reminded of my days playing Civ II. Aside from that, I'm impressed with all but one thing: It keeps crashing. It crashed the first time after I tried to start the game, and then just now after I met and traded with Zakharov. Are crashes common, or is it an issue with my copy, or what?

[Patchy]

I remember it being fairly stable for me years ago (early 2000's) and crashes were quite rare. I suppose its probably just one of those old games being played on a newer system deal. Did you get your copy from GoG?

[GreatWyrmGold]

No. Don't remember the website name, actually.

[Imperial Guardsman]

The LP will start may, I will do some storytelling friday to keep hype up.

The paper I wrote the factions on was destroyed, which are they again? damn/