Custom factions

The Ecumene; a technocratic, collectivist, good-aligned alliance of races flying under one banner, who abandon diplomacy and co-operation almost entirely in preference for forcing other civilizations to accept their philosophy through violence. They have massive advantages to research, loyalty, approval and militaristic elements, but a crippling malus to diplomacy alongside expensive (But very powerful) improvements and technologies. They have a poor early game, and a strong end-game, which biases them towards larger maps.

I made them because I like building an extremely powerful, compact civilization that is entirely self-reliant, with violence and conquest being the only ultimate path to victory.

Modding races is fun :3

Neat. The custom race I spent the most time working on had pretty much the opposite working; very good early colonization and economic bonuses, high pop, fertility rate and moral, but low research and very low diplomacy and influence. The only way to survive late game was by managing to build an economy of scale in the early game.

Did you have any original tech?

Yep.

With the exception of Xeno Ethics and the Star Republic/Democracy/Federation techs, everything in my civilization, from the technologies, improvements, ship designs, race portrait and attributes was custom-made using the built-in modding tools.

Took a few days, but the end result was glorious.

I had a lot of fun customizing everything at the exception of the tech tree. Maybe it just me. My goal was to make it AI playable, but the AI was terrible when it was at the helm.

The GCII AI was pretty terrible in most respects when you really got down to the brass tax. It's very predictable, and easy to exploit. Failing to make the AI use your faction well is akin to failing to code the AI as well as Brad Wardell; you're not really at fault.

Hopefully when GCIII is out, my Ecumene will have the opportunity to brutally slaughter your guys and convert them into valued citizens.

we must have been separated at birth. Lol. "if your not with me your against me."

I make my factions based on novels and role play, I also used custom tech trees for them.

on a unrelated sub, I made a Armored Core modd were combat was based on units of one thousand. huge ships would have that much HP.

DARCA.

Which novels and roleplay? Thats what I want to know about, what inspire my fellow... fellows.

As a picture the Ferangi was one of my custom races before that would be the Zandar ambassador. For awhile I used the minor race tech tree, and later used the torian or Krynn tech tree.

Usually super adapter sometimes super hive.

My abilities are morale, economics, creativity, research and then population growth.

Probably populists, but depending on what they did to the morale maybe the big party will be federalists this time around.

I'm usually a maximizer when I play except when it destroys the Ai challenge without arbitrary bonuses or minuses.

My own novels yet to be released...and some other floating ideas. I also mimic Mass effect and Star wars. (this were rudy_102 would say something about mass effect. But I think Russia has blocked US servers and media sadly. He must be angry missing out on the fun.

Rudy the Russian lost his connection.

Because of Russian localization thing. ( I don't know what Russian localization is) (half lol.)

DARCA.

Oh that sucks. Hope to see Rudy back!!!

I do my own custom factions that were created over a series of years for roleplaying purposes (And possibly a novel ro two... eventually)

I have three that I regularly try to make in games:

The Terelain Star Kingdom

Officially named the Third Kingdom of Terel, it is an ancient civilisation of bipedal ageless felines. Arrogant and aloof they are meant to be played as highly isolationist with a primarily defensive mind-set - I'd hope to give them a population growth penalty so they have a small slow-growing population that they have to protect. On the flip-side they'll be very good at research and have a high soldiering skill to represent both the highly trained nature of their army and their advanced technology. In general they would do poorly in war against a foe with considerable numbers on their side, and as such their war-time strategy would be to leverage an early technological advantage to attempt to cripple possible future enemies (Drengin, Yor, etc)

The Xin'Ta'Faxi Imperium

Fragile of body and telekinetic, they are master shipbuilders and architects and in their original universe their city-planet homeworld was one of the major hubs of interstellar civilisation. as such I often give them bonuses to social and military production, ship health and minor bonuses to influence or diplomacy. Penalties would be to soldiering and research due to the power of their monolithic religion, the Church of The Guardian. They excel at blockading and planetary bombardment, but they fare poorly against other races at groundside combat.

The Sithrimni Collective

A race of Telepaths hailing from the twin planet of the Xin'Ta'Faxi homeworld, they were driven from their home system in the early days of space travel by the Xin'Ta'Faxi. Pacifistic and peaceful, they would gain large bonuses to influence and morale but significant penalties to soldiering, diplomacy and military production. Very much a race intended towards diplomatic and influence victories, they wish to peacefully expand the influence of their group mind in order to spread peace and understanding across the galaxy. Despite the fact that forcing individuals into the Collective is forbidden they are generally viewed with mistrust and suspicion by other races.

Generally the races I make tend to either be bad at war or be defensively-minded as a handicap. I need to develop a culture and economy capable of making up for poor skill at war.