Faction Focus

## Option 1

### The Aeon: The Raw Force

Aeon forces basically embody the stereotypical image of a tank as thickly-armoured combat vehicle carrying a big gun. The units of this nation, especially the mechanized ones, are just that: their armour is reliably robust and their guns distinguish themselves with high alpha damage (the amount of initial damage dealt per shot). The downside is that the Aeon generally have slightly longer reload than average and mediocre speed, and their guns' accuracy is relatively poor.

### The Cannei: The Jack of All Trades

The Cannei are considered to be very versatile as they sport a general balance between armour, firepower, mobility and accuracy. Cannei are very effective on irregular, hilly terrain, where they can peek over hills and fire at the enemy while exposing only their sturdy shields. It is also noteworthy that high-tier vehicles of this nation are equipped with auto-loading systems (mechanical loading system that speeds up reload time), making them capable of delivering huge amounts of damage in a relatively short time.

### The Cravers: The Tireless Stinger

The armoured insectoids from the cold and unforgiving depths of space generally favour rate of fire and penetration (the ability to pierce an enemy's armour) over alpha damage. Advancing up their tech tree, you will also notice differences between the characteristics of the early tier and the late-game: the former ones are designed either as heavy and ponderous juggernaughts or fast and fragile skirmishers. The latter on the other hand follow the doctrine of a universal unit and as such, they are more well-rounded.

### The Harbosi: The Elusive Peregrine

The general characteristics of this nation are good agility, balanced relation between rate of fire and alpha damage and excellent speed. The common downsides, on the other hand, include thin armour, relatively large silhouettes and the shorter-than-average range. As a result, the faction require careful handling and maybe lots of micromanagement. And vaults upon vaults of cash because of the unholy price tags.

### The Interex: The Elite Sniper

The Interex embody the German quality in their designs, especially when it comes to their guns. This nation has some of the most accurate guns in the entire Project, which allow them to dish out effective fire even over great distances. And not to mention their surprising speed and maneuverability. However, many Interex armour is just average in the durability department and the front-mounted transmission make them prone to engine failures when shot. As a result, Interex tanks are generally expected to play as support and snipers.

### The Yharh: The Smashing Fist

The characteristics of this nation vary greatly between the early and late units in its tech tree – the former tend to be well-armoured but slow and with poor guns, whereas the latter are pretty much without armour but are fast and carry powerful weaponry and rapid autoloaders, capable of delivering great amounts of projectiles, in both saturation and burst damage. The lack of proper defence make the nation difficult, but once mastered, the Yharh can drastically influence the tides of battle.

## Option 2

### Explanation

#### Numbers

* **The Spammer Faction**: This faction works by sending wave after wave of weak units at the enemy. Their units are cheap and disposable and are produced and die in huge numbers as they gradually overrun their opponent's defenses. The Spammer faction always has reserves.

* **The Elitist Faction**: The opposite of the Spammer faction. This faction focuses on an army composed of a small number of powerful but costly units. The exact scale of Eliteness may vary, from nearly One-Man Army-level units, to units that are just a bit stronger than those of the Balanced faction. Sometimes they have very strong starting units, but not much variety other than that.

* **The Balanced Faction**: In between the Spammer Faction and the Elitist Faction. Their units aren't as powerful as the Elitist units and aren't as numerous as the Spammer Faction. This faction can only exist if there are two or more other factions to compare it to or both factions in game can field roughly the same amount of units.

#### Doctrine

* **The Generalist Faction**: None of the units in these factions specialize in anything, nor do they have any downsides. If they do have a specialized unit or two, then said units can still hold their own when outside their specific specialty, though they may not be the absolute best there is at what they do. This typically tends to be humans in a setting with multiple races. Basically, a "jack of all trades, master of none" sort of deal. Tends to be easy to learn and play, and is a good beginner's faction for getting a grasp of the game mechanics. Often overlaps with the Balanced faction.

* **The Guerrilla Faction**: This faction uses the element of surprise to their advantage, usually at the cost of raw offensive strength and/or staying power. They may have a myriad of odd stealth and cloaking or deception abilities. This faction tends to be the hardest to play effectively against the AI, since the computer is usually programmed to spot hidden troops, or just uses the same strategy regardless of where you position your forces. However, the Guerrilla faction can be absolutely infuriating for human players to face. Often overlaps with elitist numbers, due to stronger but less numerous troops being more powerful with stealth, but can arguably work with balanced or spammer numbers.

* **The Brute Faction**: A faction that pounds their enemy into submission with raw power, and does not partake in any sort of trickery, fancy tactics, or intricate micromanagement. Common disadvantages are slow movement and a lack of special abilities. Along with the Generalist faction, the Brute Force faction tends to be easier to learn due to the lack of complex combinations and special abilities. May overlap with the Balanced faction or Spammer faction, and sometimes even with the Elitists.

* **The Ranger Faction**: This team has high movement speed, better ranged attacks, and/or both, usually at the cost of staying power. Expect a lot of Hit-and-Run Tactics. If it's a fantasy setting, this faction is probably elves of some sort. May overlap with the Guerrilla faction.

* **The Technical Faction**: The opposite of the Brute faction — lots of nasty special abilities, but poor base stats and/or relatively high unit costs. Typically requires a lot of micromanagement to use effectively, and therefore not the best faction for novice players. Often have the best tech trees of the game, which make them slow starters, but very powerful in the late game. May overlap with the Elitists or Guerrillas.

* **The Unit Specialist Faction**: This faction is full of highly specialized units who will dominate in their specialty, but get curb-stomped when outside their specialty. They are usually disadvantaged by having their non-specialized units nerfed in some way, sometimes to the point of being useless. Their game tends to rely on holding out and manipulating the Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors so that their specialized unit(s) can be deployed heavily without fear of being hard-countered, and then steamrolling the opposition. Usually found when factions in a game have sub-factions, such as a brute faction having sub-factions that improve infantry power, vehicle power, or air power. Also found when a game has so many factions it covers all the other faction types and just takes the base idea of one faction and leans it to a certain unit type.

* **The Gimmick Faction**: This faction has an unusual quirk or trait that makes its gameplay very different from the others'. The nature of this quirk or trait is usually based on their lore or background within the game itself. Mastery of this faction often involves exploiting their quirk or trait to its fullest potential. Depending on how heavily the quirk or trait factors into their gameplan, they can easily end up as some form of Spoony Bard or Lethal Joke Character.

Other times, they are specialized on the basis of some non-combat strength, in which case they are one of the: Unconventional Factions. These are similar to The Balanced faction, but have some non-combat advantage (see below for examples). More common in 4X Turn-Based Strategy than Real Time Strategy. Their downside may be that they are slightly weaker in combat. Sub-tropes of the Unconventional faction include:

* **The Industrial Faction**: This faction is capable of building things very quickly. Their gameplay will inevitably have early-game rush strategies that use their fast-building advantage to get the drop on other factions who are slower to start up. They tend to overlap with the Economist faction or the Spammer faction.

* **The Economist Faction**: High income and/or trade bonuses. This may allow sneaky tactics like bribing people or buying research and units from third parties. Disadvantages vary, but having slightly weaker units in general is a common one. May overlap with the Industrialists.

* **The Loyal Faction**: Common in TBS (turn-based strategy) games which require you to keep your citizens content (or brutally oppressed), this faction has particularly high morale, which lets you focus your resources on building tanks instead of entertainment complexes. Often a good choice for beginners since it makes it a little easier to keep things running smoothly.

* **The Research Faction**: Usually only crops up in turn-based games, particularly the 4X type. This faction gets a bonus to research, allowing them access to advanced units and abilities which give them an edge early on. They may overlap with the Elitists, if their superior technology comes at a higher price.

* **The Diplomat Faction**: Has no strengths except for the ability to make other people do their work for them. They're often able to push their agenda in inter-faction relations, cover up any dubious actions without morale loss, and generally get better deals in trading and diplomacy. In games with focuses on combat, playing as these on multiplayer matches is generally a Self-Imposed Challenge, since AI manipulative skills are rendered moot, Murphy's Law, and people being jerks unless you're playing with friends, who will probably Troll you anyways.

* **The Espionage Faction**: The Espionage factions are not particularly adept fighters. Fortunately, they can cripple everyone else through sabotage, spying, theft, bribery, hacking, and general underhandedness. This can overlap with Guerrilla, but there is a difference between the two; Guerrilla focuses more on directly killing enemy troops and slowly picking away at the opponent's forces, while Esionage focuses more on undermining an opponent's systems and debuffing their enemy's army to the point that a sneeze could be lethal.

* **The Pacifist Faction**: This faction does not focus on combat, but on achieving some sort of non-militaristic Instant-Win Condition such as Victory by Endurance. They usually get either a defensive bonus in their own territory, some special units with strong defensive stats but weak offensive stats, or both. They often overlap with the Diplomat or Research Factions, depending on what alternative win conditions the game has to offer.

And then there are some exceptions:

* **The Pariah Faction**: This faction relies on some not particularly useful gimmick or combat ability, and tends to be disadvantaged with most everything else. For bored advanced players or Scrubs. Of course, an exception to this rule would be if their gimmick/ability were hard to use and/or apparently useless, but gave a substantial advantage if mastered properly, in which case they would be a Lethal Joke Faction.

* **The Game-Breaker Faction**: This faction is too overpowered, in one sense or another, because of an ability or more that shifts the game in their favor, or some other loophole, that makes self-respecting gamers avoid this faction like fire. Either these factions have no disadvantage to outweigh their broken advantage (in which case this is intentional), or their weakness isn't very noticeable, or easy to override. Often an unplayable "boss" faction of a campaign.

Copied word-for-word from the TvTropes page here.

### The Factions

* **The Aeon**: A *Spammer/Technical/Gimmick* faction. The Aeon are one of the most powerful defensive factions in the game. They have access to hordes and hordes of sturdy, if offensively weak, infantry, which can hold enemies in place for long periods of time, whilst their more powerful and fast units, and the various constructs swoop in for the kill. They make heavy use of their crystals to further support their warriors, and make them last longer (whose sustainability is enhanced even further with their battlefield mechanic, Tranquil Fury). Honorable mention to their beyond average artillery, which let them turtle even more.

* **The Cannei**: An *Elitist/Brute Force/Gimmick* faction, mostly uses relatively small number of extremely powerful warriors supported by a number of extremely powerful units that pound the enemy into submission through pure violent power. They have a number of powerful quirks like their Battle Haze and Frost Bite abilities, which allow them to become stronger to the point of insanity the longer they remain in battle and significantly slow their enemies in combat, respectively. They gain a cumulating bonus in construction time in place of the other, lending to them a "rolling thunder" playstyle which has them start off pretty slow, but can become quite powerful in the late game.

* **The Cravers**: A *Spammer/Brute* faction. Late-game tend to put more emphasis on "Brute" while low-tier units tend to focus more on "Spammer", but cheap and effective melee units are a cornerstone of both. Small units gain buffs when paired with bigger ones, and Craver units have lower population costs compared to other factions. The Cravers are however let down by poor options for technology, and absolutely no choice for trade and diplomacy aside from warfare, and can suffer attrition losses if their armies go too long without a fight.

* **The Harbosi**: A *Balanced/Technical* faction. Their units require more micromangement than most but ultimately they have effective answers to nearly anything. However if their units aren't managed well and get caught in unfavorable matchups they tend to fall apart. Not to mention most of their unit roster are amphibious.

* **The Interex**: A *Generalist/Elitist/Intrigue* faction with lots of expensive units that are capable of fighting in multiple scenarios. In diplomacy they can use influence to quickly develop alliances or trick other factions into war. Examples of their extremely generalist units are: General Defenders are effective, though not great; and basic ranged infantry which carry shields (allowing them to resist damage better) and have decent melee stats (allowing them to stand in melee). The Nashorn Destroyer is an extremely accurate tank that can switch between having armour penetration (to snipe tanks) and knockback (to disrupt infantry formations). The Blademasters are high-tier, pure melee infantry with high damage and a bonus against other infantry, does not own guns and thus should be unable to engage in range but they can anyway because they can reflect gunshots with their swords to any unlucky sot nearby (after being upgraded).

* **The Yharh**: An example of an *Elitist/Technical* and a *Glass Cannon/Ranger/Brute* faction rolled together. They have some of the best guns in the game. Even their basic artillery have extraordinary range and can fire while moving, allowing them to attack while getting into position. Higher tier units can fire in any direction without having to change facing. On the other hand they are ponderous and small in number, but a combination of heavily armoured and disciplined units with devastating ranged weaponry and support can turn them into well-coordinated steamrollers. They also have space-time manipulation gimmicks.