Custom Factions vs prebuilt...

from Elemental Forums

I searched the forum but saw no post about this...  Hope this isn't redundant.

 

Why would you pick a faction from the game vs making one yourself?

 

I was looking at the bonuses that the prebuilt factions come with and they hardly use the 10 points you can allocate to the various faction attributes.  Creating your own faction in the workshop will give you an immediate edge over all of the other factions.  I think we either need less points to spend or the old factions need to be rebuilt with the more advanced system.  

 

That is, unless I am missing some reason they don't spend all of their points (or they spend them in some other way I am unaware of...)

 

 

elemental
33,693 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Beyond the fact that some people just like to jump right in and play, right now the case isn't clear for most of the stock factions, although some factions, if I recall, have bonuses with costs that exceed your ability to completely recreate them as a custom faction (Tarth comes to mind, at least as of 1.6).

 

Understand,  the various civs will be getting significant overhauls in upcoming updates and expansions, with a focus on unique abilities and faction differentiation, so this may not be true of the game in the months to come.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Onionfighter, reply 2
The faction creator is also rather flawed as a program (try making a race with a unique skin color).
End of Onionfighter's quote

 

Yeah that would of made making the Orcs green a lot easier. :thumbsup:

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I really think that the custom factions should be disabled by default. (but there's no reason not to have an "allow custom factions" button in a menu somewhere).

Having set factions will make the game a lot easier to balance. It provides an access point to the game's lore, rather than simply playing a graphical spreadsheet and trying to optimise your build.

 

Civ4 did this pretty well. There were some clearly unbalanced trait combos, but this wasn't a problem for game balance as you could only access them via the custom civs.

 

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Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting riadsala, reply 4


Civ4 did this pretty well. There were some clearly unbalanced trait combos, but this wasn't a problem for game balance as you could only access them via the custom civs.

 
End of riadsala's quote

How do you figure? In BtS pretty well every trait combination is available on some standard leader.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting riadsala,
reply 4


Civ4 did this pretty well. There were some clearly unbalanced trait combos, but this wasn't a problem for game balance as you could only access them via the custom civs.



How do you figure? In BtS pretty well every trait combination is available on some standard leader.
End of quote

 

But not all. And the ones that are missing, Ind/Phil in particular are probably unbalanced.

Also, the trait combinations where more unbalanced in the vanilla game. Overtime they were tweaked, and evened out. I would imagine a similar strategy would work with Elemental. Concentrate on game balance/AI development for the preset/fluff races. As remember, the AI has to be taught how to play to the different strengths and weaknesses of the different factions.

 

As the game is polished, more love and attention can be given to the custom factions. And no doubt the community will create some anyway. But getting the basic races working (including AI) should be the priority.

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting riadsala, reply 4
I really think that the custom factions should be disabled by default. (but there's no reason not to have an "allow custom factions" button in a menu somewhere).

End of riadsala's quote

If the system is broken they should fix it, not throw it out.  GalCiv has a good, robust faction creation option that seems pretty well balanced; I'm sure Elemental can get there too.