stra-TE-gy

My recent Teut-teutoning in EU4 got me a-thinkerin' on how far we've come in terms of strategy faction choices since I started playing computer games.

 

It was primarily Starcraft's popularity which redefined megalomaniac genres in this regard, with the Zerg/Terran/Protoss raising bases by different means, but I'll get back to that next time.* Most strategy like Warcraft or Command and Conquer up to that point (and to a lesser extent still after) merely used cosmetically different but virtually identical factions. Chess colors, so to speak. Civilization thereafter set the still extant tone for using common mechanics with small but meaningful stat differences. Is it enough? Well, in Old World at least I've found myself gravitating toward Babylon, which combines most of my were-turtle preferences:

- shrines with mountain and wonder adjacency bonuses

- archers with splash damage, closest you can get to spellcasters

- most importantly, families include both researchers and traders (which come with that old Civ 4 favorite, India's fast workers)

And I always, always (almost) always lock the throne within Amorite technocracy, even as the other families start revolting. Nerd rule 4evah!

 

Okay, that's slightly grander strategy. So let's call that our baseline. What else is anyone trying?

Ah, Age of Wonders, whose wonder is lasting an age before the series got good. One of its more interesting quirks was always taking Heroes of Might and Magic's neutral creature recruitiment and running with it. In #4 your race only gives a couple of bonuses, with your actual roster depending on

- culture

- magic specialization

- vassalized neutral towns

- captured locations

- quest rewards and captures

Admitting the caveat of watering down your faction's identity (especially since you can pursue completely different magic after you start) after trying eight combos I've nonetheless been finding synergies make a noticeable impact.

 

- My nature/arcane predilection relies on strong casters and shores up its front line with summons, packs of wolves, and weirdly enough, ogres. Due to the many summons, flyers, rooting and nuking, battle lines tend to be chaotic at best.

- My second faction (chaos/materium rats) were pretty much the opposite: high cash flow, low mana. Still high turnover, but by production not summoning. Less squishy than expected due to materium magic and industrious culture providing some of the game's toughest melee, they've been the most prone to rush tactics so far, rapidly stacking buffs/debuffs with every attack (instead of spellcasting) to tear down enemies. The challenge there is recruiting any support casters to keep the swarms of Leeroys alive. If you can hold the line they're a slow tide of ratty death, but whenever the enemy broke my ranks, it pretty quickly wiped me out.

- Weirdly, my avian reavers and my slaving goblin barbarians play less aggressively, with fewer repeating attacks but strong initial ranged volleys or charge offensives, meaning first strike timing tends to be everything. (Especially with magelock muskets in play.)

- My order/materium high culture dwarves or feudal hobbits proved the most defensive options, sitting there buffing until the enemy attacks One strange difference: the dwarves worked better as a wide front line with casters shifting behind to buff/heal where needed, while with the hobbits I've tended to form cute little tercios around their few ranged options (bannermen/zephyr archers) and rely more on the feudal adjacency bonus.

- Shadow magic seemed difficult to work into combos at first, as it follows the precept of necromancy not playing nice with others and only creating/affecting undead, but given it also offers many of the game's debuffing and crowd control effects, it's actually a workable "who needs defense" alternative, especially if you're building a squishier, magic-oriented faction.

And that's barely scratching the economic and town building aspects. Strangely, my orderly chosen uniter dwarves tend to be the most aggressive strategically while defensive tactically. Economy's shit but everything's on sale, no point trying to build up cash, and since you need vassal cities, the best thing you can do is declare war early on to vassalize two or three enemy towns. Was going to bitch Triumph out on this discrepancy, but noticed the crusading tyrant aspect of order was very much built into the faction... well played, players... well played.

 

The highest replay value I've seen though comes from Stellaris. From planet preferences to workforce to means of expansion, I've gotten a different flavor with every attempt. If nothing else, consider that fanatic pacifists cannot initiate wars, a notion strategy games in general don't even bother toying with. Before giving it a couple years' break, for my ninth empire I decided to bite the bullet and try my habitually antithetical concept: fanatic spiritualists.

While I was at it, I paired it up with the origin I knew I'd hate the most, Teachers of the Shroud, which gets its own quest chain about psychically exploring the alternate dimension. Ooooo-eeee-oooooooo...

 

Unsurprisingly, superstitious cretins turned out to be the most idiot-friendly choice, easy mode, a faction with virtually no weaknesses, from industry to social order to expansion. Even its logical weak point of intellectual progress is, if anything, even stronger than other societies' thanks to the game's most blatant gimmie: psychic powers. I ended up effortlessly maxing out my fleet and letting the clock run out to victory, not bothering to finish the aetherophasic engine.

In a "word": imba.

Of course, that's gonna happen when you implement radical differences, features accessible to some factions but not others. The more divergence the less balance. Due to the lack of unit stacking and zones of control, even minimal changes like archers with splash damage really are a bit overpowered in Old World, duplicating what is otherwise the role of catapults. AoW4's Chaos magic and its corresponding empire skills center on destruction, pillaging, razing cities... but there's no real call for that in AoW4, where you can vassalize infinite towns for continuous income instead of a frankly paltry pay-off for razing. Chaos also reduces upkeep for tier 1 units... in a game with five unit tiers and limited stack size. It's about as useful as Civilization's bonuses to basic warriors.

 

So how far can you split strategy game faction mechanics, and is there some major confounding variable here we're ignoring?

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* No, you don't get any bonus points for figuring out I'd write a third post titled strate-GY.