Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Yes

16 (51.6%)

Yes

12 (38.7%)

Yes

3 (9.7%)

No

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 31

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

[Aseaheru]

lal wont make it in
rip

SS13 remake!

[Patchy]

We must dissent.

Anyways, voted Miriam for the last ai faction. The ai can usually do ok with her, unlike with datajack. Then again the ai is weak at using probes and both factions do rely on them a bit more than most.

[EuchreJack]

I picked Miriam because I figure Morgan and Data Angels act pretty much the same under AI control. 

Plus, Miriam's more fun to puppet (vassal troops with tech parity and +25% attack? Yes please!).

[scrdest]

I picked Miriam because I figure Morgan and Data Angels act pretty much the same under AI control. 

Plus, Miriam's more fun to puppet (vassal troops with tech parity and +25% attack? Yes please!).

Here you go.

[Mr. Strange]

As an aside, yep to all points. The Free Drones have the absolute best industry of all factions - NO ONE CAN OUTPRODUCE THEM! The Believers on the other hand have their neat +25% attack bonus, meaning they are unstoppable at a tech parity and equal at a tech disadvantage. Drones can support gigantic armies or amass brilliant infrastructure with a speed of which no faction can match, and Believers can amass momentum that if unchecked just rolls over entire factions. That said, whereas Drones can become a superpower even when isolated, Believers usually shrivel up and stagnate if they can't expand anywhere - whether by colony pod or soldier.

I never thought Believers to be unstoppable, mostly because they always sent wave after wave of redshirts to die infront of my rovers and copters. Hive at least had enough brains to use rovers and artillery, and some day I'll find out what's it with morgan and his needlejet fetish...

Every time I've played SMAC it's been 6/2/1 < 6/1/2, infantry is almost useless outside base capturing/defending.

[Loud Whispers]

I never thought Believers to be unstoppable, mostly because they always sent wave after wave of redshirts to die infront of my rovers and copters. Hive at least had enough brains to use rovers and artillery, and some day I'll find out what's it with morgan and his needlejet fetish...

That's the point, they aren't. They're the most momentum-heavy faction out there, i.e. if their assault ever slows down for any reason (sufficient application of copters for example) they will die almost immediately. If you're just happily building, ignoring that backwater faction up until it uses drones to steal your tech and start flooding your bases with shard units, that's when you start worrying, because if they accumulate momentum they start to thrash everything. Because they have such crap tech they must consume other factions to survive, or else just build trillions of formers and that's something the AI can't do well. Hive has such good industry that they can just build everything and have no weaknesses except for higher morale soldiers with good survivability.

[GlyphGryph]

And there's a pretty sharp difference between the factions-as-played-by-the-AI and the factions-as-played-by-a-person. Believers are pretty weak as an AI faction but quite powerful as a player faction.

[Patchy]

Indeed, neither of the 2 factions we're voting on are particularly good as ai's. Data Angels are complete garbage under the ai, and Believers are only marginally better. The ai simply doesn't know how to use probe teams to achieve tech parity as Miriam.

[EuchreJack]

Hence my whole "Miriam are the best puppets".  Even the AI usually has enough sense to give their puppet all their techs, so whomever vassalizes the Believers will get a ferocious attack dog.  Pray it's us...

I picked Miriam because I figure Morgan and Data Angels act pretty much the same under AI control. 

Plus, Miriam's more fun to puppet (vassal troops with tech parity and +25% attack? Yes please!).

Here you go.

Wow, it took me a while, but I finally got the joke.  Thanks for the great music!

[Neonivek]

Indeed, neither of the 2 factions we're voting on are particularly good as ai's. Data Angels are complete garbage under the ai, and Believers are only marginally better. The ai simply doesn't know how to use probe teams to achieve tech parity as Miriam.

How are the Data Angels?

Super Spies is something that has also been kind of a oddity in 4x games. They tend to be pretty ignorable in every single 4x game I can think of, where you just build enough spy defense so they don't steal tech and then forget about it. So how does Alien Crossfire make an entire faction based around Spies into a force to be reckoned with?

Also them being terrible in the hands of the AI might be a mercy if they are legitimately good.

---

Sorry so far this is nearly unbelievable... A Science pathetic faction being not terrible... and a Spy Faction legitimately based around spies being not terrible.

Why hasn't this caught on?

[Loud Whispers]

Super Spies is something that has also been kind of a oddity in 4x games. They tend to be pretty ignorable in every single 4x game I can think of, where you just build enough spy defense so they don't steal tech and then forget about it. So how does Alien Crossfire make an entire faction based around Spies into a force to be reckoned with?

It doesn't. Their only godsend is that they gain any tech any other 3 factions know, they've got their own planetary datalinks. I think if the AI just knew how to upgrade their probe teams there wouldn't be any issue, but they stick to the same infantry model.

[Neonivek]

Super Spies is something that has also been kind of a oddity in 4x games. They tend to be pretty ignorable in every single 4x game I can think of, where you just build enough spy defense so they don't steal tech and then forget about it. So how does Alien Crossfire make an entire faction based around Spies into a force to be reckoned with?

It doesn't. Their only godsend is that they gain any tech any other 3 factions know, they've got their own planetary datalinks. I think if the AI just knew how to upgrade their probe teams there wouldn't be any issue, but they stick to the same infantry model.

Ok so why are the Data angels any good?

I know it means they can piggyback off of other factions... but is that ability that good?

(Oddly enough my favorite Tech Stealer from a 4x game isn't even from a videogame but a boardgame. The Necrovirus from Twilight Imperium. I just love them. They can't research techs but steal one every time they get into a fight. Their real major weakness is that they are "too threatening")

[Myroc]

Nope. They're easily the worst among the expansion factions (if not the worst among all the factions) because of their crippling overspecialization. I guess a human player might be able to draw a lot more mileage out of them than the computer does, but they're still very sub-par compared to the other alternatives. The believers have a very decent military in addition to good probe teams (which also helps them overcome their tech penalty), and the morganites have so much money to throw around that they can just steal armies and bases from under people's noses. The Data Angels don't have anything else going for them besides the espionage thing, which ultimately just cripples them.

[Loud Whispers]

Ok so why are the Data angels any good?

High morale probes, they can take over bases/units cheaper than other factions.
They aren't that good, easily the weakest faction of all 14. I feel like Alpha Centauri would have been better if while playing Alpha Centauri you had the crossfire factions appear. A Hive drone revolt leads to Domai appearing, the Gaians being too pacifist leads to Cha appearing, Aliens could pop down from the sky occasionally, Roze appears and starts dealing in stolen tech e.t.c.
Specifically to the Data angels, they just don't know how to use probe teams well enough to counter the militaries of militiaristic factions. Against anyone with the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm Data angels are screwed until lategame, against Miriam with fundamentalism she's screwed until lategame, against anyone with thought police she's screwed and that's in the late game, against anyone who stacks soldiers or covers their units with air units she's screwed forever and against any planet units she's screwed forever, also a problem for her when Cha Dawn is a militiaristic mindworm spamming faction.

-Pros:
Probe team good unit.
-Cons:
-Faction benefits almost entirely crippled by Hunter-Seeker Algorithm
-Gaians
-Believers
-Cult of Planet
-Stacks
-Air power
-Nautilus Pirates (AI doesn't know how to make naval probe units)

Under the right circumstances she could probably destroy the Hive with ease, but that's if the Hive doesn't use stacks. The Hive always uses stacks.

[GlyphGryph]

Yeah, one of the nice things about the believers is: a) You're good at expending and paying less in support than other factions most of the time. b) You are yourself immune to probes - there will ever, at most, be one other faction that that ability, and even though the Data Angels aren't a great faction, "Super Spies" are definitely still a thing.

For the Believers, spies play an important and crucial support role to many effective believer strategies. They help your military by boosting your tech, and provide a gentle touch to cripple an opponents defenses or industry at just the right time. But the believers have other strategies and fallbacks - she's got military momentum but can ALSO play a damn good builder game thanks to her +2 support former army opportunities. Her spies can be incredibly effective, and she can make a few sacrifices to be immune to enemy spies for as long as she needs.

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.

The Data Angels get a nice big spy effectiveness bonus... but honestly, that's not enough to make Spies a major force to deal with. Without the ability to produce lots of them more efficiently, without effective alternate-strategy-fallbacks. They are a one-trick pony, and it's a trick where at least one and maybe two hard counters will exist per game.. That is a serious problem. Their only other ability is "not to fall behind TOO badly" which doesn't even synergize well with their gimmick!

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.