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tneva82 wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
That's isn't half bad honestly.

To reach this perfect imbalance they needed to reach a good enough balance first. Not perfect, but good enough that changing something has a cascade effect on what is good and what is not (for top level of competition).

The most oppressive list of 9th edition (Admech) suffered a 10% point nerf and is now not even a blip on the competitive radar.

200 points. 10%. That's all it took.

In previous editions there were armies that could fight 2 other armies at the same time and still win.

Sure, now if you want to play at top levels and always squeeze that few % of win rate then you have to pay for the privilege.

Considering though that competitive players are a very minimal part of the players, I don't see an issue with that.

This post didn't age well.

Admech didn't win LVO.
Siegler did, the man is on a whole different level.

His faction was admech...so you are wrong as usual.

You missed the point so badly I could hear the Woosh from Bolter and Chainsword.

 Ordana wrote:
yes, instead of multiple meta sub-factions where you just pick the best of everything you now have to pick 1 meta sub-faction. How terrible.

All that massive spread of possiblities, totally not like 95% ran the same 2 cults right?

It's pretty terrible if you want to play Thousand Sons competitively to have your best (possibly only viable) build removed when your army was at best merely pretty decent and all the best armies do not give a single gak about this change yeah.

All these disingenuous arguments neatly take pains to not acknowledge the simple fact that for a lot of armies this change was just a pretty significant nerf. Mostly to armies that didn't really need one. So why should anyone like this change? To fit your arbitrary idea of what an army should look like?

If a majority of armies experience a rule change that results in them having weaker performance than before that suggests that the games overall balance has shifted down a gear and that now that is the new level playing field and that a few armies simply need to be brought down to that level.


And yes the preconception of "what an army should look like" isn't just a random thing. It's something GW builds into the balance, into the marketing, into the stories, artwork and more. How an army is presented, how it looks, how if functions is VERY much an important thing. This doesn't mean it always works nor that every army follows it to the letter (you don't see marine players only taking 1 tactical squad whilst the Tyranid player takes up the entire space on their deployment with gaunts)

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
yes, instead of multiple meta sub-factions where you just pick the best of everything you now have to pick 1 meta sub-faction. How terrible.

Seems weird that GW would write an army that can't use 8/9ths of its options in each game.

Almost as if they attempted to use a one-size-fits-all approach to fix a problem more prevalent in more specific armies.

It wasn't even a problem, in reality it was a SOLUTION.

How do you balance the points of a shooting model when in one list it always counts as stationary, even after an advance, and in another it doesn't?

How do you balance the points of a melee model when in one list it had +1 attack and -1AP and in another, it doesn't?

You make it so it can always use it's best trait.

Before, they adjusted retributors assuming they were always going to be Argent Shroud and Repentia assuming they were always going to be Bloody Rose. How do you do that now? How do you make a Repentia worth taking as Argent Shroud, without completely breaking it in Bloody Rose? How do you make Argent Shroud good at all when all of your melee options are costed assuming they'll be Bloody Rose (which they are) and all of your shooting options are costed as if they'll be Argent Shroud supported by Bloody Rose? Sisters don't have the output to function without at least a 2 to 1 ratio of melee to shooting. Imagine trying to go toe to toe with new Tau when your point for point your second best shooting unit is Morvenn Vahl with her whopping 2 Krak Missiles.

Retributors, despite still seeing a lot of play, aren't good in Bloody Rose. They're not even really that good in Argent Shroud after the...8 or 9 nerfs they've taken now. They're just necessary. The only reason people still take retributors in bloody rose is because the army isn't fast enough, survivable enough, or killy enough to forgo shooting completely. If we had our own version of Thunderwolf Cav or a delivery system better than a crappy Rhino, we wouldn't bother with shooting at all.

Now, thanks to this bone-headed rule, even if they manage to find a decent balance point EXTERNALLY for Sisters, there's no way to do so and also have decent balance INTERNALLY. There's now no way to make Argent Shorud, Ebon Chalice, or Sacred Rose viable options without also pushing VH, BR, and OoML.

Of course, after every competitive list going up roughly 100 points (with the mono-faction builds actually going up MORE on average than the old mixed builds) I'm pretty sure we'll just have to settle for ANY strategy to be decent.

I know other armies are still in a worse spot than we are (for now) but no one else, not even deathguard or Tsons, got as savage a beating out of this CA2022 as we did. If they hit the bodyguard rules too, we'll be down where guard is. No offense guard players.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
If a majority of armies experience a rule change that results in them having weaker performance than before that suggests that the games overall balance has shifted down a gear and that now that is the new level playing field and that a few armies simply need to be brought down to that level.


And yes the preconception of "what an army should look like" isn't just a random thing. It's something GW builds into the balance, into the marketing, into the stories, artwork and more. How an army is presented, how it looks, how if functions is VERY much an important thing. This doesn't mean it always works nor that every army follows it to the letter (you don't see marine players only taking 1 tactical squad whilst the Tyranid player takes up the entire space on their deployment with gaunts)

The majority of armies are space marines. Space marines saw no change in performance from the subfaction rules. So that's already not correct.

You also have different severity of impact for the relatively few armies that WERE affected. Drukhari technically took a nerf, just an incredibly minor one. Orkz took more of a nerf, but several of their best builds are untouched. Deathguard were more impacted by their point hikes. Grey Knights lose 1 GM Dreadknight but are otherwise most likely fine (the Tau book will be a bigger problem for them than the subfaction rules), Tsons and Sisters are both massively impacted.

So the end result isn't the overall balance shifting down a gear, it's big gaps opening up in the middle as some armies fall down a lot and some armies only fall down a little. Hell, if anything the Custodes, Tau, and Eldar books are almost certainly going to shift balance back UP a gear. There's just less armies that can match them now.

GW can't keep together a coherent idea of what a 40k army should look like across two paragraphs in the same book. Their codex design has always been so unbelievably scattershot that saying they 'build what an army is supposed to look like into the balance' is demonstrably false (Bark Bark Star probably being the seminal example), the marketing makes it look like Epic or Kill team with barely anything coming close to the scale standard 40k is actually fought at, the stories are also almost always killteam or Epic size and are NOT consistent in how they portray the factions even a little bit. It's actually even worse with the art-work.

I agree that how an army is presented is a very important thing, but it's far worse than 'doesn't always work'. It's ' failure to create any consistent narrative through-line to build forces by, in addition to complete failure to reflect ANY of the inconsistent depictions on the tabletop'.

Rihgu wrote:

 PaddyMick wrote:
Apologies if this has been mentioned already, but can I take a Battalion of <REGIMENT> and a patrol of <TEMPESTUS REGIMENT> still?

Yes.

Ta

Overall i like the rule, however 'a warband is made of many clans': I wish they had left in an option to mix different sub-factions within the same detachment, so you don't get the special rules benefits, but you do get to field whatever models and fluff you want, even at tournaments.

Making ork clans the chapter tactic equivalent was always a bit off to me. Sure they could have thought of something else. Its become an anti fluff rule for the orks now which i am very much against

 Ordana wrote:
its almost as if the entire army building process is about making choices...

And again, it seems odd that they'd go to the trouble of adding that much choice in newer books and then gating off so much of it.

And if army building was really about choice the FOC would actually mean something and you wouldn't be able to pay some abstracted strategic resource to get more slots of whatever you need.

 Ordana wrote:
Outside of a very small group of mostly lore based factions GW wants your army to be 1 force. Not a mix where you pick a little bit of what is best from everything.

Well, they do now. They were fine with it before they realised their rules don't work.

 Overread wrote:
If a majority of armies

Gonna be honest friend, no one should read your post past this point because you've already predicated it on false information.

The majority of armies first of all are Space Marines, and this change does nothing to them. Same with Custodes, who look to be a rising star in the metagame.

Even discounting by far the most popular army chassis in the game, looking at LVO there is exactly one army that made it into the top eight that this affects. Every other army either went mono-subfaction or was allowed to soup them like doing Covens with Kabal.

The only truly tier 1 factions this has any significant effect on are Grey Knights, Orks (and only specific builds, several tournament-winning builds go unscathed), and Leviathan/Kronos Tyranids (ditto, with Crusher Stampede being mono-subfaction). I think some Drukhari builds once went double Kabal but I don't think that's been common for a little while.

It is largely tier 2 or lower factions who feel the hit. Sisters of Battle, Thousand Sons, some Admech lists (no I don't care that Siegler won with them), some Chaos Knights lists. Sisters of Battle in particular have to endure the double whammy of almost all of their builds being removed along with a bunch of bizarre point nerfs to their actual good units to compensate for their bad datasheets getting point buffs. This doesn't shift balance down a gear, it just widens the gulf between factions that was already there.

And it is arbitrary. Are you going to claim different regiments of guardsmen fighting together is not true to the lore? What about the Thousand Sons? The majority of their stories where they are the focus feature them on several occasions bringing the band back together and operating at full strength. Why is Magnus the Red now incapable of doing something as mundane as leading a force consisting of two different Cults? It is completely arbitrary, and why bring up balance at all when only like one army that's going to really feel this change is a possible balance concern?

I honestly don’t even get the problem. “Commander, higher ups say that we aren’t allowed to split companies, the assault troopers must stay with the artillery guns.” That doesn’t make sense, I feel like they’d promote splitting it up, you’d have to buy more paints at least.

Breton wrote:

 RegularGuy wrote:


Ok so I'm slow here. Do I read that right as no Cadian detachment in same army as Catachan or other? Boring if so.

Mostly, and yeah. But moreso, No Cult of the Mortal Wounds Thousand Sons with Cult of the Witchfire Storms Thousand Sons. (I'm making up the cults, obviously) - as long as the models are distinct the problem is rarely Cadians and Catachans having to share a latrine, the issue is This TKS gets this special rule and that TKS gets that Special rule - but nobody can tell them apart.

I'd like to see Orks and Guard both get a similar subfaction system where they can take all their "tribal" models but their subfaction is based on their Warlord. For Orks it would still be Clans - if your WL is Goff this happens to these units, if he's Evil Sunz, that happens to those units. For Guard it can be some sort of War College subfaction. If your warlord is a Tank Commander this happens, if he's an Imperial Officer that happens.

Well what's interesting is this. If the interpretation is that if you pick Catachan as <Regiment> all guard in your army MUST be catachan (e.g. no Cadians in same army), there's still a gateway via Psychic Awakening: Greater Good to have mixed trait groups. Greater Good says "If your chose regiment does not have an associated Regimental Doctrine in Codex: Astra Militarum, you can create its regimental doctrine by selecting two rules from the following list..."

So if you don't pick a codex regiment, does it seem your regiment is "Astra Militarium" or blank? It doesn't seem say between the books what they key word is when you don't pick a defined regiment.

Thus, you could take perhaps a battalion of guardsmen with Disciplined Shooters and Wilderness Survivors, and then a spearhead with traits Gunnery Experts and Jury Rigged Repairs since neither of these select a specific key word for <Regiment>, but you could not combine Cadain, or Catachan with each other, or with one of the custom regiments (Since even a null <Regiment> key word would be different than the other named regiment).

Perhaps I'm over thinking this or still misunderstand.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
I honestly don’t even get the problem. “Commander, higher ups say that we aren’t allowed to split companies, the assault troopers must stay with the artillery guns.” That doesn’t make sense, I feel like they’d promote splitting it up, you’d have to buy more paints at least.

You can't mix Ork Clanz. That seems wrong to me.

 RegularGuy wrote:

Well what's interesting is this. If the interpretation is that if you pick Catachan as <Regiment> all guard in your army MUST be catachan (e.g. no Cadians in same army), there's still a gateway via Psychic Awakening: Greater Good to have mixed trait groups. Greater Good says "If your chose regiment does not have an associated Regimental Doctrine in Codex: Astra Militarum, you can create its regimental doctrine by selecting two rules from the following list..."

So if you don't pick a codex regiment, does it seem your regiment is "Astra Militarium" or blank? It doesn't seem say between the books what they key word is when you don't pick a defined regiment.

Thus, you could take perhaps a battalion of guardsmen with Disciplined Shooters and Wilderness Survivors, and then a spearhead with traits Gunnery Experts and Jury Rigged Repairs since neither of these select a specific key word for <Regiment>, but you could not combine Cadain, or Catachan with each other, or with one of the custom regiments (Since even a null <Regiment> key word would be different than the other named regiment).

Perhaps I'm over thinking this or still misunderstand.

You swap out the <Regiment> Keyword for your Regiments name and then pick the traits you want. Same as Successor Chapters.
So for example, if you pick Tanith 1st as your <Regiment> Keyword, there is no associated Regimental Trait in Codex: Astra Militarum. You then go to The Greater Good and select which Traits you would like your Keyword to associate with. You cannot have more than the set amount for these traits per <Regiment> Keyword so you cannot use the example you crafted.

 RegularGuy wrote:

Breton wrote:

 RegularGuy wrote:


Ok so I'm slow here. Do I read that right as no Cadian detachment in same army as Catachan or other? Boring if so.

Mostly, and yeah. But moreso, No Cult of the Mortal Wounds Thousand Sons with Cult of the Witchfire Storms Thousand Sons. (I'm making up the cults, obviously) - as long as the models are distinct the problem is rarely Cadians and Catachans having to share a latrine, the issue is This TKS gets this special rule and that TKS gets that Special rule - but nobody can tell them apart.

I'd like to see Orks and Guard both get a similar subfaction system where they can take all their "tribal" models but their subfaction is based on their Warlord. For Orks it would still be Clans - if your WL is Goff this happens to these units, if he's Evil Sunz, that happens to those units. For Guard it can be some sort of War College subfaction. If your warlord is a Tank Commander this happens, if he's an Imperial Officer that happens.

Well what's interesting is this. If the interpretation is that if you pick Catachan as <Regiment> all guard in your army MUST be catachan (e.g. no Cadians in same army), there's still a gateway via Psychic Awakening: Greater Good to have mixed trait groups. Greater Good says "If your chose regiment does not have an associated Regimental Doctrine in Codex: Astra Militarum, you can create its regimental doctrine by selecting two rules from the following list..."

So if you don't pick a codex regiment, does it seem your regiment is "Astra Militarium" or blank? It doesn't seem say between the books what they key word is when you don't pick a defined regiment.

Thus, you could take perhaps a battalion of guardsmen with Disciplined Shooters and Wilderness Survivors, and then a spearhead with traits Gunnery Experts and Jury Rigged Repairs since neither of these select a specific key word for <Regiment>, but you could not combine Cadain, or Catachan with each other, or with one of the custom regiments (Since even a null <Regiment> key word would be different than the other named regiment).

Perhaps I'm over thinking this or still misunderstand.

You still misunderstand. You substitute your own made up word in place of {Cadian} etc.

And no you don't get to make 2 sub factions named <totally not cadians> and give them different traits. They would be different sub factions under the established rules.

ERJAK wrote:
How do you balance the points of a shooting model when in one list it always counts as stationary, even after an advance, and in another it doesn't?

How do you balance the points of a melee model when in one list it had +1 attack and -1AP and in another, it doesn't?

You make it so it can always use it's best trait.

The way to balance how some subfaction traits are better for some models is to make them unit rules instead? I ask because that is the only way it can always use the best trait is for it to not be a trait at all.

Now if you mean a unit should be point balanced with its best trait in mind, you are committing point assignment malpractice. Given the choice between a unit being stronger than it's points value in 1-2 out of 6 traits versus being weaker in 4-5 of the traits, you should error towards it being stronger less often. That's rewards the player for making good choices rather than punishing them for making less then optimal choices. This is bad only when you can make too many good choices while ignoring the less optimal ones. Allowing you to only take one trait generally requires you to make some less optimal choices to have an overall effective list.

Spoletta wrote:
It's the standard AM competitive list with minor variations.

So he optimized it past everyone else. Got it.

Hecaton wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
It's the standard AM competitive list with minor variations.

So he optimized it past everyone else. Got it.

Yep, list building indeed did him little good.

He is simply that good of a player.

Spoletta wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
It's the standard AM competitive list with minor variations.

So he optimized it past everyone else. Got it.

Yep, list building indeed did him little good.

He is simply that good of a player.

You say that, but I doubt it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
I honestly don’t even get the problem. “Commander, higher ups say that we aren’t allowed to split companies, the assault troopers must stay with the artillery guns.” That doesn’t make sense, I feel like they’d promote splitting it up, you’d have to buy more paints at least.

You can't mix Ork Clanz. That seems wrong to me.

Fluffwise you can justify it by saying that the dominant klan gathered orks from different klans merging them into their klan. Those orks still have their colours on, but only because orks don't really wear proper uniforms and don't bother replacing them with the new ones . It makes sense that an evil sunz ork fighting under a goff leader becomes a goff himself.

If there's one army whose paintjob should be completely irrelevant ruleswise that's orks!

 Void__Dragon wrote:
And it is arbitrary. Are you going to claim different regiments of guardsmen fighting together is not true to the lore? What about the Thousand Sons? The majority of their stories where they are the focus feature them on several occasions bringing the band back together and operating at full strength. Why is Magnus the Red now incapable of doing something as mundane as leading a force consisting of two different Cults? It is completely arbitrary, and why bring up balance at all when only like one army that's going to really feel this change is a possible balance concern?

I think that is an example of how some of the 'universal' rules make little sense in certain armies. In this case the detachment system. They are already piling on exceptions. How hard would it have been to have the detachment system in each codex with any changes as necessary? Would speed up referencing stuff but of course GW hates the 'one book one army' approach...

And you already paid a very heavy CP tax (which I still think is just no fun for little balance benefit).

Changing the CP tax for different armies could have worked with their theme and for something like guard say an extra -1CP per different regiment to reflect the command and control issues from different regiments would have been good. Hell different regiments could give you a different CP starting amount (Cadians +1, Catchans -1 for example).

Or...

People learn to use GT rules for GT uses and don't try to fit them into narrative games where the imposed restrictions don't make much sense?

Especially since that one isn't even a GT generic rule, but a special rule of the missions presented in that book?

So many people like I, attend clubs once a week or fortnight where the majority of 40k players wish to attend one or more tournaments in a year. As a consequence they only wish to play the tourney rules to get used to them.

I actually have more chance of playing a different game than I do a non tourney style game of 40k. So I play a lot of other games.

Yes but GT players also want their rules to make sense narratively.

Spoletta wrote:
Or...

People learn to use GT rules for GT uses and don't try to fit them into narrative games where the imposed restrictions don't make much sense?

Especially since that one isn't even a GT generic rule, but a special rule of the missions presented in that book?

people default to standardized sets (like the GT rules) because its easier to get others to agree to an outside system then it is to convince them to play 'your' rules.

There is absolutely no reason for your group to use these limits if they don't want to.

 alextroy wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
How do you balance the points of a shooting model when in one list it always counts as stationary, even after an advance, and in another it doesn't?

How do you balance the points of a melee model when in one list it had +1 attack and -1AP and in another, it doesn't?

You make it so it can always use it's best trait.

The way to balance how some subfaction traits are better for some models is to make them unit rules instead? I ask because that is the only way it can always use the best trait is for it to not be a trait at all.

Now if you mean a unit should be point balanced with its best trait in mind, you are committing point assignment malpractice. Given the choice between a unit being stronger than it's points value in 1-2 out of 6 traits versus being weaker in 4-5 of the traits, you should error towards it being stronger less often. That's rewards the player for making good choices rather than punishing them for making less then optimal choices. This is bad only when you can make too many good choices while ignoring the less optimal ones. Allowing you to only take one trait generally requires you to make some less optimal choices to have an overall effective list.

Subfactions have honestly always been problematic as they can wildly change how an army works. I remember in 8th when everyone took Alaitoc because of the -1 to hit(that was stackable then). There was just no reason take another.

Personally I just feel that GW needs to either scale down their subfaction bonuses or stick to a single theme as it is nigh impossible to balance around wildly different gameplay faction mechanics unless they start to release individual points for each subfaction.

 Eldarsif wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
How do you balance the points of a shooting model when in one list it always counts as stationary, even after an advance, and in another it doesn't?

How do you balance the points of a melee model when in one list it had +1 attack and -1AP and in another, it doesn't?

You make it so it can always use it's best trait.

The way to balance how some subfaction traits are better for some models is to make them unit rules instead? I ask because that is the only way it can always use the best trait is for it to not be a trait at all.

Now if you mean a unit should be point balanced with its best trait in mind, you are committing point assignment malpractice. Given the choice between a unit being stronger than it's points value in 1-2 out of 6 traits versus being weaker in 4-5 of the traits, you should error towards it being stronger less often. That's rewards the player for making good choices rather than punishing them for making less then optimal choices. This is bad only when you can make too many good choices while ignoring the less optimal ones. Allowing you to only take one trait generally requires you to make some less optimal choices to have an overall effective list.

Subfactions have honestly always been problematic as they can wildly change how an army works. I remember in 8th when everyone took Alaitoc because of the -1 to hit(that was stackable then). There was just no reason take another.

Personally I just feel that GW needs to either scale down their subfaction bonuses or stick to a single theme as it is nigh impossible to balance around wildly different gameplay faction mechanics unless they start to release individual points for each subfaction.

AoS was the same, Ossiarchs had one which gave a +1 to every single save across the whole army. This is in an army that already had a lot of really good saves. There was just no reason to take any other subfaction as +1 save outweighed all other bonuses

 Overread wrote:


*snip*

AoS was the same, Ossiarchs had one which gave a +1 to every single save across the whole army. This is in an army that already had a lot of really good saves. There was just no reason to take any other subfaction as +1 save outweighed all other bonuses

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Which shows how problematic these subfactions can be. The bonuses need to be so miniscule that they can't have too much effect or GW simply needs to treat every subfaction to a separate supplement with its own printed costs.

As much as I loved the idea of subfaction bonuses originally I personally loathe them now.

Spoletta wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
It's the standard AM competitive list with minor variations.

So he optimized it past everyone else. Got it.

Yep, list building indeed did him little good.

He is simply that good of a player.

There's a lot going on with the Siegler win.

Top players choose the faction they think they can win with most easily. The nerfs made that calculation less simple.

Siegler is still functioning within the "physics" of 40K. He still has to play the missions and he does that exceedingly well. Other people can place with Admech - they just don't want to bother. It's an expensive army and switching units around takes a long time for most people.

I'd have to repull the query, but when I looked at the BCP data of something like 1,000 Admech players about 50% of them haven't played since the dataslate. ~20% kept playing them, 20% jumped to a meta army, and 10% jumped to some other army.

 Overread wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
How do you balance the points of a shooting model when in one list it always counts as stationary, even after an advance, and in another it doesn't?

How do you balance the points of a melee model when in one list it had +1 attack and -1AP and in another, it doesn't?

You make it so it can always use it's best trait.

The way to balance how some subfaction traits are better for some models is to make them unit rules instead? I ask because that is the only way it can always use the best trait is for it to not be a trait at all.

Now if you mean a unit should be point balanced with its best trait in mind, you are committing point assignment malpractice. Given the choice between a unit being stronger than it's points value in 1-2 out of 6 traits versus being weaker in 4-5 of the traits, you should error towards it being stronger less often. That's rewards the player for making good choices rather than punishing them for making less then optimal choices. This is bad only when you can make too many good choices while ignoring the less optimal ones. Allowing you to only take one trait generally requires you to make some less optimal choices to have an overall effective list.

Subfactions have honestly always been problematic as they can wildly change how an army works. I remember in 8th when everyone took Alaitoc because of the -1 to hit(that was stackable then). There was just no reason take another.

Personally I just feel that GW needs to either scale down their subfaction bonuses or stick to a single theme as it is nigh impossible to balance around wildly different gameplay faction mechanics unless they start to release individual points for each subfaction.

AoS was the same, Ossiarchs had one which gave a +1 to every single save across the whole army. This is in an army that already had a lot of really good saves. There was just no reason to take any other subfaction as +1 save outweighed all other bonuses

GW being bad a subfaction bonuses doesn’t make them bad. It just means GW need to do more work.

 alextroy wrote:
GW being bad a subfaction bonuses doesn’t make them bad. It just means GW need to do more work.

The problem is that they've been bad at it for 2 editions in 40k and at least 1 in AoS(we need more AoS books to make judgement). The thing is they don't know how to scale down the subfaction traits and instead make 1(2 if we are lucky) so decisively better that you would be a fool to go for anything else.

The problem with subfactions is that you either make them so unimportant that they don't matter(making them essentially very non-defining) or you make so defining that one rises up as the best. If they want defining traits they seriously need to have separate costs for each sub-factions to make them sensible in the macro scale.