Nooo, its not Morgan Freeman space faction

IS THAT ILLUMANATI ?!?!?!?!

This is a really inventive and challenging way to characterize the Morgans in a game where economy is already OP. Can't wait to use this mod.

Well, not if they have strong enough bonuses to compensate. Weaknesses add vulnerabilities to a faction yes, but those disadvantages can be offset by strong advantages.

Take the vanilla sponsors. How does playing as a vanilla sponsor affect your playstyle? You tend to play to their strengths. If you're Franco, you focus on culture. If you're Brasilia, you flex your military might. Your sponsor pick affects your aggressive choices.

How does playing against a vanilla sponsor affect your playstyle? You defend against their strengths. If the ARC is in the game, you might put special priority in defensive ops structures. If the PAC, you might rethink which wonders you pursue. Your opponents affect your defensive choices.

But when you play as say the University of Planet (+20% science, enemy spies finish ops in your cities 33% faster), the scenario is quite different.

Picking the faction yourself now affects your defensive as well as offensive choices. You want to invest in science because you pick up momentum much faster, but you also want to invest in covert ops defenses because you are an easy target for others.

Playing against the faction now affects your offensive as well as defensive choices. You have to play a strong science game to keep the University from running away with their large science bonus, but you can invest in covert ops to exploit the University's weakness, even if you have no bonuses to covert ops yourself.

It add's strategic depth in a way that is orthogonal to what is already present in the game. Yes the University has a weakness, but they have bonuses that without them would completely eclipse the vanilla factions (imagine a flat +20% science along with a free tech at start alone). Morgan can spend money to buy ANYTHING he wants (techs, virtues, population, wonders), which is an incredibly strong ability. Giving the factions weaknesses is a way to not only give players the chance to try out these very strong abilities, but also increase the situations and options a player encounters throughout the game.

Every vanilla sponsor has only bonuses. Thus, by weakening these mod sponsors with negative traits, you put yourself at a disadvantage.

Why not? Venice has downsides. India has downsides. Weaknesses add texture to a faction just as much as strengths. I think they compliment one another.

I agree Morgan's strengths are not strong enough to justify his weaknesses, and this will be addressed in the next round of balancing which is coming soon. But I personally find traits that only give bonuses to be boring.

You aren't improving the game if the sponsor trait is a negative. Only use that to give bonuses.

Have you cosidered making the giving the stimulus package bonus a half life? For example, 20 science on turn 1 of the stimulus, 10 on the 2nd and so on. This 'fade' over time would be morein the spirit of the effectiveness and duration of stimulus packages.

I do like the linear bonus improvement that you made recently. However, I do feel that some kind of scaling with era is necessary to keep Morgan competative.

Alternatively, what about providing a bonus to trade route energy income linked to era?

You are really spot on with your analysis and I completely agree with you. It's ultimately a case of me being in love with the two traits, stimulus bonus and habitation drawback, but being too afraid to make one strong enough to the point of supplanting primary yield generators and the other weak enough to the point of inconsequentiality. Finding a middle ground is obviously difficult without feedback like this so I thank you a lot. I've had a nerf planned for the Gaian's for a bit now, which I'll get around to soon. I'm still looking into tweaking morgan's to make him more competitive against the other factions.

Morganite drawbacks: Must research fabrication to stay in the game, a technology that itself has only drawbacks (magrail takes more turns to construct and costs double maintenance in comparison to roads while providing an average bonus - early game suicide). Unit upkeep +100%, so with 2 workers per city you aint gonna have that much of a surplus gold early game.
So i, personally, see a huge issue in balance between what i beleive to be ur strongest SMAC race (gaia) and ur weakest (morgan). I honestly dont know how to adress this issue, nerfing gaia or buffing morgan, since there are 5 other leaders to consider. It feels that the culture and food stimpacks are very underwhelming.
How about a stimpack that offers health for 200, as said earlier, throw money to make problems go away. Here it feels to me that 1 health is too little and 2 health might be too much.

Hello. I'd like to draw a comparison between Deirdre and Morgan. If deirdre gets her capitol next to one miasma, she then over 20 turns receives 20science, 20culture and 20food. Lets translate that into booster gold. One science booster = 200 gold, almost 2 culture boosters = 350 gold, and almost 2 food boosters = 350 gold. So 900 gold over 20 turns, in other words a 45 gold per turn income for the gaians.
Can compare drawbacks as well. Imo while playing gaia one is encouraged to get the tech that allows miasma planting (alien ecology) it takes a long time, its a suicide to rush, but once there it pays off very nicely. Gaia penalty to attack can be simplified into need a 22% larger army, so maybe 15% more military upkeep costs (half of military upkeep is usually civilian units).

I went ahead and updated the mod for now. You're right about how stimulus packages are meant more to support rather than directly contribute and I like the idea of stimulus being a temporary large boost that fades over time. The issue with anything that changes overtime with mods is persistence and save-state, but I think I might have an idea of how to go about it. To be honest, I'm a bit enamoured with the idea of Morgan simply throwing money at his problems till they go away. Not sure if there's a decent way of being able to stack bonuses...

Hmmm. Well, maybe instead of it being an instantaneous benefit, it could be an over time thing? After all, stimulus packages are meant to support an economy, which is definitely over time. Perhaps bump the price up to something like 500, and have them increase outputs of whatever in all cities by 30% for 2 turns. This way, if you can afford it, it can end up putting in divedends late game, if you can purcahse one every 2 turns. And early game, it might be able to give you an edge in culture and science. Although this could potentially have the same scaling problems as the "increase by X amount of production in cities", so I dunno, maybe have it only affect buildings?

@AshenPhoenix: Making it linked to generated resources has the issue of players being able to briefly maximize their one output by changing worked tiles and assigning specialists, buying stimulus packages and resetting them. It's not so much I don't want players exploiting that. It's more that I think incentivizing a behaviour that is really annoying to perform (going around and setting/resetting all your city priorities) is bad design. I'd rather players not have to worry about it. If I link the stimulus package yields to something like #techs-researched, than it's something that the player doesn't need to flip-flop round on for his turn.

@Fishbones: Do you mean drawing off yield/maintenance ratios of things like the biowell or terrascapes for inspiration? That's not a bad idea and factor it into my tweaking as well.

a good thing to look at while trying to balance stimulus packages might be the different improvement yields..

Perhaps instead you could link it to the amount of generated resources? Like, make it 10 science plues .20 of science per turn, or culture, food, production, etc. This way, it will help early game with the base rates, then alter game help since it will be a boost to the overall rate, it of course won't ever be a game breaker, but it'll nudge you on the right path. This also keeps players from using the packages to get techs well beyond their means, since it won'tm put a dent in them if your science is still low.

I definitely felt that too when play testing it. I think it feels about right in the early game, each package will save you about 5-turns early on, but they really fall off in usefulness once the ball gets rolling. I am playing around with having the packages become more effective the more a player invests in a particular system, so the Social Stimulus would yield 10 + 1 for each virtue chosen, and Population would yield 10 + 1 for each population in the city. That way it scales a little, but it'll be linear rather than exponential, and still lag behind how much a player actually needs (which is exponential). The next time I update this, it will likely have the results from that. Won't make any promises on what I'll change however.

I'd buff the science stimulus, cause it really doesn't do too much, at least not once you get beyond the tier I techs. The production simulus works relatively well. Culture is a bit weak past the first couple of virtues but I can kinda stand it since any buff towards the next virtue is worth it. Really all of them need a bit of a buff to be viable later game, I mean sure your eco grows too, but 1000 energy for 100 science is not really worth it later. But unless you make them scale with time or somethign I don't see a way to do that.

Well there is a Ocean Cities mod for Civ V so I would think the Pirates are doable. Of course that mod has a few issues but it's a start.

Pirates might be tough to keep the same spirit as SMACx with no seabases and limited improvement of water tiles. The -1 growth and -1efficiency they had would probably be able to keep with -10% city growth and 10% longer improvement build times. To substitute for their naval perks maybe change to a bonus explorer at landfall and\or engineering tech for greater early land movement.

@Pillow007: I may take some time off before doing the SMACX factions. I'm a little less familiar with them and their style of play and I have no idea how to handle the nautilus pirates. I'd love to get around to them once I get some decent ideas though!

finally the grand corporate 8)

Playing Morgan currently. Thanks for your work on the SMAC factions, do you plan on doing any SMACX factions?