4X The Unsurpassed Brian Reynolds' Alpha Centauri thread

[Average Manatee]

So imagining an hypothetical official patch released these days, it should increase the penalty for excessive number of bases, making it heavily onerous to go beyond the threshold, right?

Nah, then you just force players to develop workarounds or you've punished all blobbing/conquest. In any case part of the advantage of specialists is that they already effectively ignore all expansion penalties. Specialists can't be drones and suffer no efficiency penalties.

A better way would be to increase the pop cap for bases, start it around 15 and make habs take it to 30 or so, making it take about the same time to get to 15 as it takes to get to 6 or so now. Then increase the cost of facilities so that they aren't very cost efficient to build unless you're going to use 15+ squares. This way players want a lot more room for bigger bases like the AI does, which then forces more confrontation and fights that prevent out of control city spam. The problem with ICS now is that bases need so few squares. Roughly 6-8 squares gives you a fully functional and populated base. When you get satellites it goes down to 3-4 squares. So an ICSer only needs roughly a 10x10 region to throw down 10-20 cities that easily outproduce an entire map of "normally" placed cities, and if they can lock down a 20x20 region then they'll have 50+ cities even though that's not a huge amount of area in an average map.

Also nerf crawlers by making them cost support and make them unable to be made clean. Make raising seafloor to land much more expensive/time consuming too, since it's currently just way too easy to have 10 speeder formers going around building more space for much more efficient land bases than it is to build sea bases.

About the 2 power build paths, thanks. I knew about the option #2 (Specialists) but never tried it out. What factions would acomodate it better?

Anyone who can get lots of formers, either through support (Miriam, Yang w/ Police State, or really anyone running Police State) or beelining to clean tech (Zakharov if you have directed and non-stagnant tech, otherwise it's probably too much a longshot). You also really want the Weather Paradigm to unlock condensors and boreholes, which shouldn't be difficult to beat the AI to. Even Miriam can reliably get an early secret project or two on Transcend if a base with a mine on a mineral deposit goes straight for it. Once you've gotten a half dozen cities with boreholes and condensors up you can get into your popboom SEs and just pay the support costs.

If you want extra money, find some shitty-ass land nobody is using, raise it and then use it as a solar/echelon farm.

Solar farms are kind of a waste. Way too many former turns. Instead just plant more condensor farms and run Econ specialists. Part of the power of specialists is that you effectively override the Social Engineering bar and it's penalties if you aren't at 50/50 econ/labs, instead you just run whatever specialists you like at 100% efficiency. Though it is very tedious to manage if you have lots of cities, usually you just run labs and let the boreholes produce enough energy.

 

[Dzupakazul]

The core design of most 4X games is that "bigger is better". Forsaking growth for other stuff can give you a momentary advantage that you need to push (e.g. instead of Settlers you make a wonder or a handful of units) and if you don't leverage that advantage really well, you will fall behind. Civ2 and SMAC (which is in many ways a Civ2+) kind of don't really give you any real penalties for just pushing horizontal growth, as making a shitton of small cities mostly just causes the bureaucracy penalty which isn't a big deal because even a city running just a talent is still producing resources from its center square. That, and wonder cascading allows you to get pretty much any wonder you wish by just prebuilding it until you get the tech you want for it, especially if you supply its building with Supply Crawlers. Unless you play on a small map with a lot of opponents or self-restrict, there isn't really an incentive to go taller than wider, I don't think, unless you just really, really like having huge cities (and don't mind micromanaging them to be super-productive).

The only game that really emphasized smart planning along with "bigger is better" is, I think, Civ4, because lots of cities would quickly drain your treasury, but growing them quickly appreciated them in value. There was also a player, Obsolete, who invented a ridiculously tall Civ4 playstyle that went against the grain yet still pioneered Immortal and Deity victories: he settled few cities and built a shit-ton of all the wonders. Wonders themselves were a nice benefit and it turns out that denying the AI wonders really slows it down, since you deny them Great People Points, tech bulbs, tech-oriented wonders like Oracle and Great Library. AIs losing wonder races inevitably makes them have a lot of cash (because if you fail to complete a wonder in Civ4, you get cash consolidation), so you can sell them outdated techs for gold to funnel your research or conquest. So that was a nice, alternative way to the predominant "expand hard until 1 AD, crash your economy and recover it throughout Classical/Medieval, rush the Renaissance age with Scientists, snowball from your strong infrastructure, choose victory option" for tall players.

But yeah, everyone above has good advice. I'm gonna link a playthrough to a superfast Transcendence with Zakharov on a small map, which has some pretty good tall play and some advice on efficiency of plot improvements. Spoiler has a quote about why a full-blown ICS wasn't the best choice for the goal:

Spoiler

Let me also talk a little bit about build density. SMAC is well-known for encouraging ICS strategy, but I'm not going maximum full-blown here. I actually think it's more efficient to give the bases a little room to breathe, about 8 tiles each. The reason for this is buildings, primarily the Children's Creche but also any multiplier facilities. Each building costs the same amount but is worth twice as much in a city twice as big. This network of bases is already working every available land tile at size 7. If I had more bases, they would both need more Creches and not all be able to boom to size 7, for the same total population and output.


Mostly the key for ICS is plunking bases down FAST; they don't have to be dense. I've done that by pushing hard with formers for roads, and also by conquering four established bases. Relaxed ICS also means I'm not adhering to a strict spacing grid, but instead planted each base at the best available short-term site, working around fungus and rocky tiles. Only Morgan, with his higher base square output (8 energy at +4 SE economy) and hab limits, really needs to ICS at true maximum density.


The other reason max ICS doesn't work quite so well is terraformer efficiency. There are exactly two types of tile improvements that blow everything else away in terms of productivity per former turn: forests and boreholes. Forests go to 2-2-2 (with either jungle or tree farms; mostly my cities outside the jungle built tree farms right away) for a tiny investment of less than 4 former turns per tile thanks to auto-spread. Boreholes at 0-6-6 are just huge once you can afford the former turns to build them -- and the minerals beget more formers for more boreholes. Mines and solar panels are a total waste of time. Condensor + farm + soil enricher is nice at 6 food from any tile (9 in the jungle), but takes so much former time at 18 turns, and on the whole really doesn't match up a borehole. So at this point, my formers mostly let the forests expand on their own and shifted over to borehole production.

 

[Average Manatee]

But yeah, everyone above has good advice. I'm gonna link a playthrough to a superfast Transcendence with Zakharov on a small map, which has some pretty good tall play and some advice on efficiency of plot improvements. Spoiler has a quote about why a full-blown ICS wasn't the best choice for the goal:

Really not great advice for a normal game. Tech costs in such a start are miniscule while terraforming/facility costs are the same, which heavily lopsides everything in the equation. He has no reason not to stay small (he effectively conquered the other AIs immediately) and rolled a map that was 3/4ths land in a game where land is supposed to be around 30%. Also kind of abusing the Monsoon Jungle for food, the difference between forests starting at 1/2/1 and 2/2/1 is insanely massive. Normal games don't have the jungle covering 50% of the map.

That is pretty much full-blown ICS anyway. As I stated, 6-8 squares per city. Max ICS of 3-4 squares per city only becomes useful after Satellites and in his low cost tech game he's ascending 10 turns after he can build satellites, so they are a waste of time. In a larger game and/or with different tech options he'd plant double the amount of cities in between and quickly grow them up, because satellites OP.

 

[Cael]

Just remember that SMAC is Civ2 in space. Anything that works in Civ2 will work in SMAC. That means ICS all the way. There really is no substitute, I'm afraid.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Really not great advice for a normal game. Tech costs in such a start are miniscule while terraforming/facility costs are the same, which heavily lopsides everything in the equation. He has no reason not to stay small (he effectively conquered the other AIs immediately) and rolled a map that was 3/4ths land in a game where land is supposed to be around 30%. Also kind of abusing the Monsoon Jungle for food, the difference between forests starting at 1/2/1 and 2/2/1 is insanely massive. Normal games don't have the jungle covering 50% of the map.

Agreed; it is generally meant to be some form of a record-setting/breaking game, and shouldn't be used as a template for a Standard map on random settings. I still found the info on tile improvements, and to be able to read someone's thought process in-depth, to be in general decent information, especially since I'm a lazy wide expander and tend to run exclusively tree farms everywhere, so I wouldn't say I'm the most experienced in terms of varied tile improvements.

 

[Silva]

What faction AIs fare better overall? Say I want to make the most competitive game as possible with the most badass AIs. Which ones should I pick (counting Crossfire too)?

The one I remember always giving me a headache is the Hive. Don't know why but they always seem to be strong in my games.

*Edit: oh, the (Foreman Domai) Drones also usually dominate in my games. Don't know why, as I've always thought they are an average faction overall.

 

[Average Manatee]

Gaians and Morgan seem to usually be runner ups to Hive in my games. Haven't really played with the Crossfire factions though. Aren't the alien factions mad OP or is there something that gimps the AI for them?

Domai is gud for the AI because the AI needs lots of minerals.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

In my experience, Hive is often the strongest.

 

[Jason Liang]

Probably turn fungus down, since the (unmodded) AI can't deal with fungus. Also accelerated start.

Obviously Sven can give human players headaches, as well as the 2 Alien factions.

Yang
Mirriam
Sven
Morgan
Aki
Lal

would be my picks among the humans. Zak usually ends up as someone's bitch very early. Santiago is terrible at teching.

 

[Dzupakazul]

The one I remember always giving me a headache is the Hive. Don't know why but they always seem to be strong in my games.

The most dominant AI in most 4X games tends to be one that leans somewhere around 70% rampant production and expansion, and like 30% everything else. They need to walk a fine balance; psychos like Miriam, Montezuma or the Mrrshans, who make a stack of like 51 Impact Rovers and then mishandle it hilariously until it becomes irrelevant, tend to become isolated and their outdated armies destroyed while peaceniks like Gandhi, Zakharov and Psilons tend to forsake expansion and military to build shiny stuff and then get their shit pushed in.

Yang's AI is generally good because it gets a shitload of free production to expand with (it helps that Yang is not penalized by Police State + Planned and Yang AI tends to favor this combo, so the AI instantly sets itself to the most efficient combo for itself), has enough juice on standby to be a threatening adversary, isn't afraid to declare war to absorb the Zakharovs and Morgans nearby, but is also unlikely to completely fall behind in tech early because he gets a lot of raw resource input from all the colonies he makes. His AI is simply made to multiply the AI's greatest strength, which is simply producing a lot. The AI lacks tech direction, can't micromanage Supply Crawlers like a human does, and will not build stuff efficiently, so the best bet is to allow them to produce a lot of stuff and see what happens. It's further multiplied by difficulty - Transcend Yang with 10 colonies, each boosted by difficulty level, is more likely to become a competent techer, warmonger or secret project competitor than Zak with 3 colonies, still stuck trying to wonder-cascade the Human Genome Project he started in the early game into a desperate attempt at a Xenobiology Dome to make his investiture relevant, and getting bullied by warmongers.

It also helps that Yang's "opposite" is Lal, who is a pretty well-rounded AI himself and doesn't really lend himself to blind aggression early; the two will not be best friends because of Democracy/Police State clashing, but they will generally leave each other alone since they should be remotely close in power. Compare it with Zak, who will almost always piss off Miriam *AND* Santiago, neither of whom are fans of either the Research or Democratic policies, which the University tends to go for. Morgan draws the ire of Santiago (who dislikes the pursuit of Wealth) and Deirdre (for running Free Market), and Deirdre AI can actually sometimes roll over some empires with mindworms.

For an ultimate vs AI game I'd probably do something like Firaxians vs the two alien factions (since they're kinda meant to be broken), Yang, Domai (another industry nut who simply tends to get big through colony spam with industry bonuses and then makes up for deficiencies with his robust eco), Peacekeepers and Gaians (they're Yang-lite in most of my games, but they lack his sheer productivity) and either Miriam, Aki or Santiago to amass units and keep the player on their toes for the first few turns in case they spawn close.

EDIT: I forgot about Sven, but I'm skeptical about his real impact (other than the aggressive AI) since historically 4X AI isn't particularly adept at performing naval invasions and his entire Civ thrives in water.

 

[Silva]

Perhaps Yang domination comes from it's inherent growth + expansion advantages, giving him leverage over the game precise point you bros made above (ICS) ? [Edit: Ninja'ed]

Which leads me to the next question: normal or large map of planet? If the expansionists have an innate advantage, shouldn't we go with Normal map, as to mitigate this?

 

[Silva]

For an ultimate vs AI game I'd probably do something like Firaxians vs the two alien factions (since they're kinda meant to be broken), Yang, Domai (another industry nut who simply tends to get big through colony spam with industry bonuses and then makes up for deficiencies with his robust eco), Peacekeepers and Gaians (they're Yang-lite in most of my games, but they lack his sheer productivity) and either Miriam, Aki or Santiago to amass units and keep the player on their toes for the first few turns in case they spawn close.

Got it. Indeed, Lal and Deirdre use to stand by themselves frequently. Btw, Lal is the Gandhi of SMAC. The fucker talk like a pacifist but never behaved like one in my games, the hypocrite (Morgan is usually the pacifist in my games).

EDIT: I forgot about Sven, but I'm skeptical about his real impact (other than the aggressive AI) since historically 4X AI isn't particularly adept at performing naval invasions and his entire Civ thrives in water.

The pirate is poor at amphibious assaults, but is great at building bases next to the coast and scorching your ass out with missiles and air power. Not enough to eradicate you but enough to stall your progress, I think.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Believers can become strong in my experience if they have good area to expand early, or early conquests. That extra support helps early on.

IMHO AI agression needs to be more logical, proximity-based I mean. There's no reason for, say, Miriam to want to destroy Lal... who's on the other side of the map. That's just losing trade income. Which really handcaps warmonger AIs.

 

[Dzupakazul]

IMHO AI agression needs to be more logical, proximity-based I mean. There's no reason for, say, Miriam to want to destroy Lal... who's on the other side of the map. That's just losing trade income. Which really handcaps warmonger AIs.

There's a peculiarity in Civ2 itself (no clue if it works the same in SMAC) where if you try to use the Go-To command to tell an unit to walk across the "meridian" that wraps up a globe, the unit will be confused because the x/y coordinates of one end of this wrap are completely different from the other. If one end of the wrap is at a point 1/1 and the other is at 360/1, the unit will think it has to take 359 steps to get to its destination instead of just taking a single step. I wonder if the games calculate distance similarly for those foreign relations issues.

 

[Silva]

I'm unsure about picking the aliens for my challenge /badass AIs game because I think they're too OP. Righr now Im inclined to this:

- Hive
- Peacekeepers
- Believers
- Pirates
- Drones
- Cyborgs

...though I could see the Gaians (or Planet Cult?) entering depending on fungus settings.

Now I must ask: what is the single worst faction to play as? I always found it difficult playing the Drones, Cult and Hackers myself, but I've tried them only a couple times to be sure. (the Cult seems good if played ultra-agressively, for eg)

 

[Cael]

The AI is fairly straightforward in most cases.

Hive is the nastiest for all the reasons already mentioned. It is aggressive, not afraid to declare war and absorb other factions, but are still nasty as hell if left alone. Only way to avoid them going rampant in late game is to hem them in early, and even then, be prepared for war at all times. Risky as hell.

Depending on proximity, Miriam and Santiago can be nasty as they like to war early and in the beginning, that is the last thing you can afford on the higher difficulties. That said, they are both incompetent as hell and depend on numbers to overwhelm you.

Gaians can also be problematic if there are enough fungus nearby for them to get mindworms en massed. I believe that they tend to have a lower AI aggressiveness, so you can appease them far easier than most to avoid war.

Lal is a hypocritical SJW shithead who never gets the chance to bloom much in my games. I am not sure what he is like in the late game because he is always dead by the mid-game from either mindworm poisoning or fossil-fuelled rockets to the face.

Zak is a patsy and folds at the drop of a hat. A good target for probes, though. Just make sure you get the Hunter Seeker first or take out the city with it fast.

Morgan can be good or bad. I have seen him be both. He seems to be one of the more balanced ones, but if you let him expand enough, you can get armpit deep in high tech units pretty fast.

Not too sure about the Crossfire factions. Pirates and Drones seem to be fairly nasty from my playthroughs. Roze and Cha Dawn seem to be patsies for different reasons. Others are somewhere in the middle.

 

[Average Manatee]

Now I must ask: what is the single worst faction to play as? I always found it difficult playing the Drones, Cult and Hackers myself, but I've tried them only a couple times to be sure. (the Cult seems good if played ultra-agressively, for eg)

For a player on transcend? Well, Cult is still truly horrible even if you rush. But Data Angels sounds pretty awful too, since Probes are really hard to afford and get going before you've crested the hill that lets you obliterate other AI's in production, and without that they have nothing.

 

[Jason Liang]

For me the worst are Morgan and Santiago. I know that Santiago can Rover rush but other than that her starting tech makes for a slow start, same with Morgan.

- Cha Dawn starts with 2 great starting techs, he's super underrated IMO
- Roze's probe bonus is awesome, just needs to find Zak or Aki. Her tech start lets her get to probes/ probe boats ASAP

Domai is also prone to slow starts. He can build stuff fast but if he gets a bad tech start there isn't much for him to build, if you get locked out of early secret techs for example.

 

[Silva]

- Cha Dawn starts with 2 great starting techs, he's super underrated IMO
- Roze's probe bonus is awesome, just needs to find Zak or Aki. Her tech start lets her get to probes/ probe boats ASAP

The problem of Roze is her advantage is too dependant on your neighbours setup and how they fare, making her a flimsy faction. I love their cyberpunk theme though (and their bases names, like "Tears in Rain", "Gibson Base" and "The Sprawl" :D).

And the Cult look like the school bully who beats little kids, but the kids will grow faster than he expected and soon will kick his ass back, so he turns to new little kids to beat. I mean, he is a Spartan that can't do anything outside of war. His internal development/building potential is horrible.

*Edit: btw, this only illustrates how awesomely multifaceted the original 7 factions are in contrast to the expansion ones. Santiago don't need to play bully to win the game, she has a gamut of viable strategies and styles at her disposal. You can't really say that of Cult, Drones or Roze. They're more uni-dimensional, both theme and gameplay -wise.

 

[Cael]

Aki has that hidden bonus where she is IMMUNE to the drawbacks of the cybernetic future social.

 

[Jason Liang]

You can never build enough probes... Roze's pre-crawler production is never wasted.

How is Cult's "potential" bad? -1 econ is trivial, and -1 industry just means it's slightly more expensive to rush. Neither are crippling like -growth, -support, -research, -probe or -police. Starting with both Centauri Ecology and Social Psych MORE than makes up for those trivial maluses. Wealth is terrible for anyone except Morgan.

Meanwhile, your bases come with free Brood Pits, which is basically +2 Police for free. Police is awesome.

 

[Absinthe]

There's two general power builds:

1. Forests spam + tree farms + boreholes
2. Farm + Condensors spam feeding specialists + boreholes

#2 requires more investment of former turns and is eventually more powerful. It's also a lot more dense with a smaller tile footprint per base. #1 is a lot quicker to lay down and early forests are production powerhouses, letting you produce more infrastructure and more bases quickly.

#2 also runs up massive ecodamage scores unless your bases have hybrid farms or you have a high PLANET rating. Personally, I prefer no borehole games. It reduces the OP-ness of The Weather Paradigm, increases the value of sea bases, and encourages the use of mines and solar collectors. I find that the borehole supertile runs roughshod over the terraforming game because it's always in your best interests to build more boreholes.

The concept of Wide vs Tall didn't exist then. Its a relatively new concept. SMAC expansion generally happens until all the land area is filled, and then you either go out after islands and new continents, or expand into the sea. Also, conquest.

Tall vs wide wasn't a serious thing but there was always a question of "too much expansion." That's why you had mechanics like corruption or bureaucracy to punish you for out of control base spam. Also implementations of tall vs wide don't work all that well. ICS is still too rewarding, played right. I've played Civ 5 with its horribly onerous anti-expansion mechanics in ICS by popping a great prophet from liberty finisher and using the religion to get something like pagodas and church property. I would settle even into desert, tundra, and snow tiles with their nonexistent yields.

Morganites would be one helluva Tall expansion civilization if not for their low pop limit, just stay there Free Marketing and expanding your economy into the infinite.

They can still go "tall" by just crawling a ton of tiles per base. It's still somewhat rewarding if you go treaty/pact heavy for the trade bonuses, and you don't have to lose econ to bureaucracy penalties. Early on with a high economy you can get very potent multipliers of your bases' energy production with the commerce rating. The downside is that between low populations and a 4 ECON economy giving you a free +4 energy per base square, it's really in your interests to ICS spam bases to become rich.

So imagining an hypothetical official patch released these days, it should increase the penalty for excessive number of bases, making it heavily onerous to go beyond the threshold, right?

Civilization 5 did that. It was a very unpopular decision. They started ramping up access to happiness bonuses in the expansions, since people hated this unhappiness mechanic that punished you for expanding or conquering or even growing your bases too fast.

About the 2 power build paths, thanks. I knew about the option #2 (Specialists) but never tried it out. What factions would accomodate it better?

Believers running a builder game (yes, this is a thing) demand this kind of former-heavy playstyle because their only advantage as builders is converting their support rating bonus into a massive former army to accelerate their bases, and they can actually run survivalist / Free Market / Wealth. They're the only ones who can couple this high support rating with a Free Market (Well, so can Yang, but Free Market is worthless with his penalties), but the ecodamage is immense that way (-4 PLANET). That means Forest Boreholes are probably safer early on (change into farms/condensers later when you have the improvements to keep ecodamage under control), but you can still use a lot of formers to build a lot of boreholes fast. The accelerated tile development gives them a serious infrastructure advantage to make up for their tech penalty, so the strategy works really well for them. Yang just enjoys a Police State for free so this also plays to his advantages nicely. Morganites are in the worst position to try this before clean reactors, since the support penalty combined makes it difficult to sustain a large number of formers per base, plus they have small bases making the food generation less valuable early on, but they can go Police State / Green / Wealth. Morganites usually like forest tiles anyway though because they're very quick to plant, and Morgan gets +1 energy on forest tiles from a 2 ECON rating, resulting in the 2 energy tile cap, plus forests reduce ecodamage which helps while you go Free Market. Lal cannot run Police State so his support rating is even worse than Morgan's, assuming Morgan uses Police State. Everyone else can do this while running Police State, but Police State is generally unpopular because it doesn't combo well with Planned or Free Market.

Nah, then you just force players to develop workarounds or you've punished all blobbing/conquest.

This is exactly what Civ 5 did. Early in Civ 5 the best way to go was permanent golden age Persians since golden ages suppressed all unhappiness. Later on they nerfed that but also relaxed the system by introducing more sources of happiness bonuses like through the religion system or by expanding the variety in luxury resources.

A better way would be to increase the pop cap for bases, start it around 15 and make habs take it to 30 or so, making it take about the same time to get to 15 as it takes to get to 6 or so now. Then increase the cost of facilities so that they aren't very cost efficient to build unless you're going to use 15+ squares. This way players want a lot more room for bigger bases like the AI does, which then forces more confrontation and fights that prevent out of control city spam. The problem with ICS now is that bases need so few squares. Roughly 6-8 squares gives you a fully functional and populated base. When you get satellites it goes down to 3-4 squares. So an ICSer only needs roughly a 10x10 region to throw down 10-20 cities that easily outproduce an entire map of "normally" placed cities, and if they can lock down a 20x20 region then they'll have 50+ cities even though that's not a huge amount of area in an average map.

Also nerf crawlers by making them cost support and make them unable to be made clean. Make raising seafloor to land much more expensive/time consuming too, since it's currently just way too easy to have 10 speeder formers going around building more space for much more efficient land bases than it is to build sea bases.

I agree with these suggestions. I would also include probe teams in the list of units that should never have clean reactors (as opposed to always, which is their default). It's a little asinine when you can create defense grids of armored crawlers / probe teams. In general, there should be a price associated with going crawler heavy, but at the moment there really isn't one.

What faction AIs fare better overall? Say I want to make the most competitive game as possible with the most badass AIs. Which ones should I pick (counting Crossfire too)?

The one I remember always giving me a headache is the Hive. Don't know why but they always seem to be strong in my games.

If you want clever playing AI, I would strongly recommend you just play Alpha Centauri classic with Kyrub's AI enhancement patch. If you just want to stack a SMAX game with the hardest foes though, then my guess is Aliens, Hive, Free Drones, Spartans, and Nautilus Pirates. I'm mostly curious how the inevitable Spartan+Pirate alliance would fare, since they both love the Power value.

I'm unsure about picking the aliens for my challenge /badass AIs game because I think they're too OP. Righr now Im inclined to this:

- Hive
- Peacekeepers
- Believers
- Pirates
- Drones
- Cyborgs

Without Aliens I'd guess Hive, Cyborgs, Drones, Pirates, Believers, Peacekeepers

Now I must ask: what is the single worst faction to play as? I always found it difficult playing the Drones, Cult and Hackers myself, but I've tried them only a couple times to be sure. (the Cult seems good if played ultra-agressively, for eg)

Spartans probably have it worst in the long haul. They do the best early game rushes, but they tend to fall off as the game progresses, thanks to their industry penalty. Once they're out-teched, they're generally screwed. Cult is also generally considered the worst faction in the game. He plays like a native version of Spartans, except he also has -1 ECON and thus can't even make use of Free Market, so his development is even worse than Santiago's. On the upside though, he can capture and wield mindworms really well for an aggressive native assault (every point of PLANET gives you +10% psi attack, so Green Cult = +40% psi attack), and natives tend not to go out of style until your enemies are packing trance, but if you get Dream Twister and Neural Amplifier even that won't stop your mindworms. Even with Trance, there exists a 3:2 advantage for land-based psi combat on top of your 40% psi attack bonus from your +4 PLANET, so your attackers stay viable. Essentially Cult is good at being aggressive and bad at everything else, but at least his psi units tend to stay relevant while he falls behind in tech.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Now I must ask: what is the single worst faction to play as? I always found it difficult playing the Drones, Cult and Hackers myself, but I've tried them only a couple times to be sure. (the Cult seems good if played ultra-agressively, for eg)

Drones are pretty good, they're the best builders in the game, their only weakness can easily be negated by probes. Go Demo/Planned/Wealth, get +4 Industry, out-produce everyone. It doesn't matter if your stuff is junk, if you have ten of it, and the enemy has only one. You can easily play any strategy, peaceful or not. Probe the enemy for tech until you get big enough you can ignore the penalty.

Cult is considered the worst faction, their economy sucks utterly. Only thing the Cult is good at, is Mind Worms and Psi. Its like playing a cross of Gaians with Sparta. You are kind of fucked if the AI starts using lots of Resonance Lasers, 3-r armor and trance - a human player would deck out for anti-psi fights. Worm rush to victory is their only strategy.

 

[Absinthe]

As Free Drones, you can also go Demo/Market/Knowledge. Sure you won't have the monster +4 INDUSTRY of Demo/Planned/Wealth or the relentless pop booms with Children's Creches, but you will have +3 EFFIC, +2 ECON, and the removal of your research penalty, while your faction's +2 INDUSTRY keeps your development fast-paced. Go throw your sliders into high labs and you'll tech well enough. Demo/Market/Wealth is the middle path, with a large econ to spur your science and development and a large industry to accelerate production, but less research and efficiency. It helps that INDUSTRY gives you discounts to hurrying production by reducing their mineral costs.

Against human players Cult is rush or die mostly. Once humans heavily invest in counter-measures for psi, it's a lost cause for Cult.

 

[Cael]

For some reason, I recall using Demo/Green/Knowledge with Gaians. I haven't played in years, though, so my memory on that could be faulty. I also remember Demo/Planned/Know, but that could be waiting for Green to appear.